On Mars Pathfinder (The Mike Lane Stories Book 1) Read Online Free Page A

supplies would last (all that we had room for), and the transit vehicle would take almost two years for the orbital alignments to allow Terra and the transit vehicle to cross paths again. They only loaded an extra eight and a half months’ worth of supplies. Even if I went to half rations on a diet that was low cal and very basic to begin with, I’d still wind up four months short of the time needed to return home safely. This meant there were extras for me to take to the planet. It took me a full day to get everything bagged up and moved to the Lander, then securely stowed. It was a complete waste of time as things would turn out, but I didn’t know that then. Work like this is easy in zero-g, much easier than the heavy work outside: but it’s slow work nonetheless. This completed, a stop for lunch and two uses of the ESA approved Emergency Biological Evacuation System (basically eliminating into double thick plastic bags, cameras off), and I was ready for sleep. Thirty six hours until descent and I spent four hours in slumber to rest up for the next phase of preparation.
    Awake, refreshed and fed, I had T-Minus 31 hours 20 minutes on the descent clock. It was time to get back into my pressure suit and space suit for my second (though the first planned) EVA. This was a secret part of the Jalopy-Sat’s future, so the live feed cameras were turned off. Mission Control would be getting delayed telemetry as usual, but they would not be getting any video, nor would the world. Only a small handful at Mission Control knew what I was up to. As far as the rest of the flight control crew were concerned, there was a problem with the relay satellite, Relay-1, in Terran orbit.
    Opening the floor compartments, I pulled out the five square boxes and the one very long box which had been stored there by a “special” night shift crew of “experts”, shortly before assembly of the transit vehicle to the booster rockets. I put the long box and one of the square boxes in the airlock, finished getting my suit sealed and running properly, then went into the airlock and depressurized. I was installing a 1.5 metre long telescope on a mounting unit on the exterior dorsal portion of the Jalopy. This was a small telescope, but very powerful. Completely outside the Terran high atmosphere and just that much further from the sun, there was high hopes for what it would provide, in secret, to those planning future space missions. It’s true that the Martian thin atmosphere extends farther from Mars than the Terran atmosphere extends from Terra; however, the differences in atmospheric composition made it an insignificant consideration. The mounting platform for the telescope was hooked into the ships power and COM system to allow the telescope to be remotely controlled from Terra or Mars. They had made it idiot proof (a good thing, with me doing the installation). Other than a few mounting bolts, it was plug and play. Well, the secure point screws on the power and communication lines were a bit fiddly, but they had designed it well so I got it done the first try. All I had to do as a last step was run the power-up sequence. It worked like a charm, thankfully.
    Finishing this installation, I went back inside, re-pressurized, and exchanged the empty containers for the four full ones which I had tethered together. Back in the airlock I depressurized and went EVA again.
    The four boxes contained four cameras. One camera was a bit beyond Ultra-Hi-Def. It would be able to read the output of my suits control panel on my left forearm, when I got to the surface of Mars. Its capability was beyond what NASA or the NSA had, and had been developed in secret by the ESA as a contribution to this mission. They had plans to go commercial with it, but not just yet. The second box contained a targeting camera. It was part camera, part radar, part optical motion-tracker; and all American made. It was hooked up to some very powerful targeting software on board the