Margaritifer Basin (Margaritifer Trilogy Book 1) Read online

  MARGARITIFER

  BASIN

  Volume I of the Margaritifer Trilogy

  by

  Gregory F. Gates

  MARGARITIFER BASIN

  Copyright © 2015 by Gregory F. Gates

  1st Edition.

  All rights reserved.

  This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the author is illegal and punishable by law. Please do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  Printed in the United States of America.

  ISBN: 978-0-9908543-9-5

  To my beloved wife, Mary, who put up with me for six years while writing this volume.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Mary G., Steve, Mary P., Noelle and Denise for all their insights and patience.

  All the guys at W&E for your perseverance, encouragement, and suggestions.

  David Woods for his editing, along with Eric Jones and all the other contributors to the Apollo Flight and Lunar Surface Journals.

  Dr. Timothy Frantz, M.D. for his exceptional publishing assistance.

  NASA for its unswerving commitment to continue to make available to the public the historical records contained within the Apollo Flight and Lunar Surface Journals.

  Cover photo courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech.

  Mars maps courtesy of U.S. Department of Interior/USGS Astrogeology Science Center.

  THEMIS night infrared image courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech/Arizona State University.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Gregory Gates is a graduate of California State University, Dominguez Hills, holding a degree in music, and of the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California, with a master’s degree in National Security Affairs, Middle East Politico-Military Analysis. He is a former United States Naval Officer and a Vietnam veteran. Mr. Gates is retired and resides in northern California with his wife and two dogs.

  Table of Contents

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  EPILOGUE

  GLOSSARY

  MAPS

  INTRODUCTION

  Jeffrey Grey, a schoolteacher and Gulf War bomb disposal veteran, wants to do something memorable with his astronomical lottery winnings. It’s appropriate then that he chooses a flight to Mars. But Jeff is astute enough to know that a few hundred million dollars isn’t going to buy a ticket. But it might just provide the lubricant to get private industry moving in the right direction.

  In Greg Gates’ enjoyable, well-researched and highly believable novel, Margaritifer Basin, Jeff moves quickly to gather a crack team around him who will make the impossible happen - colonize Mars. In Gates’ present future, NASA is left behind, plodding to help where it can as Jeff gathers the components - all available now or in the near future - to take a memorable journey away from the cradle of Earth and onto the Red planet. But there’s a secret that he is keeping from the government and the media; and he won’t reveal it until he gets there.

  Gates has created a story that doesn’t indulge in sci-fi fantasy. Rather, it’s a piece of memorable and enthralling ‘tech-fic’ with a human heart that careers along on an adventure that was unthinkable only a decade ago. Yet it is possible, and Jeff and his crew will show us how.

  David Woods, author How Apollo Flew to the Moon

  Margaritifer Basin

  CHAPTER 1

  Wednesday, March 27, 1991

  The Kuwait Oil Fields

  Jeff came to and, as he lay in the sand collecting his thoughts, concluded he was alive. That was the good news. But opening his eyes to find nothing but utter blackness was not encouraging. Crap, this can’t be good. He gingerly wiggled his fingers and toes. They worked and, so far as he could tell, were all present and accounted for. He started to rise but the searing pain in his back prompted him to reconsider.

  The last thing he remembered was seeing the wire running to the corrugated sheet metal that Gar was pulling off the wellhead. “STOP!” he’d yelled, but too late. A bright flash, concussion like he’d been hit by a runaway train; and here he was.

  “Gar? You alive?” he called out, but got no response.

  Jeff gingerly rolled on his side and, much to his relief, noticed a light in the distance. He squinted, trying to get his eyes to focus. Flames. A burning wellhead. He pushed up on an elbow and looked around. There were other fires here and there, and it was night. He looked at his watch, just past nine; he’d been unconscious for almost five hours.

  Smoke from hundreds of fires surrounding them in the Kuwait desert made for a night blacker than the oil they burned. Jeff began inching around, trying to locate Petty Officer Garland “Gar” Stewart. Groping around in the sand he finally came upon a boot, and sincerely hoped that young Garland was still somehow attached to it.

  Jeff wiggled the boot. “Gar, if you’re not dead, say something.” Gar didn’t say anything, but he did moan. “Alright boy, that’s better than nothing.” Jeff slowly inched his way up Gar’s body, checking for damage. It didn’t take him long to find it. Both of Gar’s legs were broken just below the knee with compound fractures. “Ugh.”

  Gar twitched at Jeff’s poking and prodding. “What?”

  “Hey, you’re alive.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah, I think so.”

  “Oh jeez, LT! I’m hurtin’ bad.”

  “I’m not surprised. Your legs are broke.”

  “Ah, fuck.”

  “Eh, shut up you whiner, it could be worse.”

  Gar moaned in pain. “What the fuck happened?”

  “Trap, I’d say. Pretty good one, we should have seen it. Thank God the rest of that H.E. didn’t go off and blow the well head, or we’d be crispy critters about now.”

  “You okay, sir?”

  “Better ‘en you.”

  “So, what now?”

  “Well, you’re also bleeding some and we’ve got no gear, that ain’t good. We need to get you back to that aid station.”

  “Won’t they come looking for us?”

  “Yeah, but probably not till after dawn, and you may not be with us that long. We gotta go now.”

  Gar coughed. “Oh crap that hurts.”

  “That’s a good sign.”

  “Well, sir, you can have it if you want it.”

  Jeff laughed. “Nah, you just hang on. Alright, let me see if I can stand up here.” He slowly got to his feet. The pain in his back – probably from sheet metal shrapnel – was agonizing, but not debilitating. He exhaled audibly. “Okay, that hurts.” Jeff looked around in the dark. “Hey, Gar? I don’t suppose you know which way the road is?”

  Gar pointed. “Uh, that way… I think. Sir, you do know there’s 200 meters of landmines between us and it.”

  “Uh, yeah. Thanks for the reminder.” Jeff knee
led down beside Gar. “Alright bubba, you’re gonna have to help, and it’s gonna hurt, a lot. I’m gonna pick you up over my shoulders and haul your butt outa here. But you’re gonna have to help with some balance.”

  “LT, you gonna walk through that minefield at night with no light and haulin’ me?”

  “That’s the plan.”

  “Sir, you’re gonna kill us both.”

  “That is possible. Now shut up and climb aboard.”

  Jeff managed to hoist Gar over his shoulders in a fireman’s carry, struggle to his feet and slowly began plodding toward the road, he hoped. “Jesus lard-ass, how’d you ever get in EOD?”

  Gar groaned in pain. “Somebody thought I was too big to blow up, sir.”

  “Well, they were half right.”

  Jeff struggled along, one foot in front of the other for some 200 meters until suddenly his left ankle buckled and he fell to his knees.

  Gar gave a brief yell of pain. “Sorry sir, that hurt.”

  “Yeah, tell me about it.” Jeff sat there on his knees for a minute, trying to catch his breath. As he was about to put his hand down to help force himself back up he stopped, feeling something against his knee. He gently pushed his fingers into the sand. “Oh shit.”

  “What is it?”

  “Hang on…” Jeff felt around the object. “Cylindrical… oh crap. Ribs, about a foot in diameter. Russian TM-46 anti-tank, I’d guess. Motherfucker. Alright, Gar, I’m gonna lean forward and pull your leg over my shoulder, I need this hand to get up, or I’m gonna blow us to bits.”

  “You have my full cooperation, sir.”

  Jeff pulled Gar’s leg up over his shoulder, Gar groaning in pain at every tug, then pushed himself up with his other hand. He gingerly sidestepped around the landmine and began stumbling forward again.

  “How much further you think, sir?”

  “I dunno, can’t see a fucking thing. Maybe 100 meters.”

  Eventually Jeff reached the embankment at the bottom of the road and dropped to his knees. “Okay, we’re here. I’m gonna drop you off, go find the Humvee and come back for you.”

  “I’m not going anywhere, sir.”

  Jeff gently lowered Gar to the ground then sat and caught his breath. “Back in a minute… I hope.”

  “Sir, you think those rags that shot at us this afternoon are still around?”

  “Nah, I think we scared ‘em off. Hang tight. I’ll be back.”

  Jeff clambered up the embankment and, pointlessly in the pitch black, looked up and down the road. He wasn’t sure which way it was to the Humvee. He mentally flipped a coin and started walking to his right. About 200 meters down the road he found the vehicle when he walked into the back of it. “Halle-fuckin’-luiah.” He got in, turned around, drove back down the road to where he thought he’d left Gar and yelled out the window. “You there?” There was no answer. Jeff was pretty sure this was about the right distance back down the road, so he turned around again, stopped and got out. “Gar? You down there?” But there was still no answer.

  Jeff’s head was reeling but he fumbled around in the equipment packs in the back of the Humvee until he found a flashlight, then stumbled down the embankment in search of Gar. Shining the light in both directions, Jeff quickly found him, unconscious. Under the light, Gar’s injuries were much worse than Jeff had originally thought, and it was clear he’d lost a lot of blood. “Come on bud, hang in there.”

  Jeff used every last ounce of his strength to hoist Gar over his shoulders again, then struggled, half crawling, up the embankment and dumped him into the Humvee’s front passenger seat. He thought about trying to find something with which to bandage Gar’s wounds, but decided the trip to the aid station would probably be shorter, so off they went with Jeff’s foot to the floor.

  Fifteen minutes later Jeff pulled into the encampment and up to a tent with a large red cross on it. He stepped out of the Humvee, yelled “Medic!” and fell to the ground, unconscious.

  Twenty-one years later…

  Friday, April 13, 2012 (T minus 1439 days)

  “Alright then, settle down. Everyone read last night’s chapter assignment?”

  Jeffrey Grey looked around the class of 6th graders. There were a few bright and shining faces, many more not so shining, and a few barely registering signs of comprehension. He had spent most of the previous 20 years teaching 6th and 7th grade Earth Science in the Long Beach, California Unified School System. In the early days he enjoyed it; opening young minds to new concepts, creatively exploring ideas, imparting knowledge of the wondrous universe around us, and not merely spoon feeding facts but, more importantly, helping his young charges learn how to think and reason. But that was then and this is now. Today there was standardized testing and reams of state and federal “guidelines” dictating – without any benefit of subtle nuance – exactly what, when, and how a child should be taught. The key was teaching to the test. Everything depended upon it: school budgets, federal funding, teacher performance evaluations… everything. For the most part teaching was no longer teaching; it was instruction, with a touch of indoctrination. Nine months a year of rote memorization and pass the test. Jeff hated it.

  His students generally did well on the state tests, though never up to his expectations. Today he would rebel, depart from the syllabus, and see if his class was actually learning anything.

  “Okay, we’ve spent the past few weeks learning all there is to know about our solar system. Right?” A general chorus of agreement, punctuated with a handful of groans, followed. “So, what can you do with all this new-found knowledge? Where can it lead you? What bearing does it have on your very existence? Have you acquired this vast wealth of knowledge because you hungered for it? Or because I told you to learn it?”

  Jeff again looked around the room. Blank stares. “Cassie. What have you learned and what good is it?”

  “Uh, we’ve learned about the planets and their orbits and gravity and stars and, I dunno, because it’s good stuff to know… I guess.”

  Jeff nodded, “Good stuff to know. Okay, but what can you do with it? Daniel?”

  Daniel shifted uncomfortably in his seat, “I dunno, be an astronaut?”

  “Would you like to be an astronaut?”

  “Yeah, I guess. It would be kind of cool.”

  Jeff paced slowly in front of the blackboard, nodding in tempo with his steps, “Why?”

  Young Daniel squirmed a bit more; ‘why’ was a dreaded word. “So I could ride in a rocket and go visit other planets?”

  “Rocketman, huh?” That broke the ice a little with some smiles and giggles. “But, why? Just something to do?”

  Daniel pursed his lips in exasperation, “Yeah, I guess.”

  Jeff stopped pacing and faced the class, “In 1923, in an interview with the New York Times, the British climber, George Mallory, was asked why he wanted to climb Mount Everest. His reply was, ‘Because it’s there’. And in 1953, Sir Edmund Hillary, along with his Sherpa guide, Tenzing Norgay, finally reached the summit of Everest – because it’s there.” He paused to give that little thought time to sink in. “By the way, when Hillary got back down from that climb, the first man he met was his friend and fellow climber, George Lowe. Hillary said to Lowe, ‘Well George, we knocked the bastard off’.”

  The class snickered and giggled at his use of the quasi-profanity.

  “So, Daniel, why would you want to visit another planet?”

  Daniel smiled and thought for a moment, then blurted out, “To knock the bastard off!”

  When the howls of laughter quieted down, Jeff smiled, “There you go. Exploration, discovery, and man’s indomitable spirit and curiosity. We go because it’s there. On September 12, 1962, President John Kennedy said, ‘We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard’. And go to the moon we did, just seven years later. July 21st, 1969, Apollo 11, Neil Armstrong stepped on to the surface of the moon and said, ‘That's one smal
l step for man, one giant leap for mankind’. We had the choice, we made the choice, and we did it. That was 43 years ago.” He paused for a moment and tapped his fingernails quite audibly on the desk. “So, all you budding young astronauts and astronomers and aerospace engineers, why have we not gone to Mars?”

  Hoping for a volunteer, he waited for a hand to go up. “Brianna?”

  “Because it’s too far and takes too long?”

  “Too far? We’ve sent a number of satellites and robots to explore Mars, and men and women have stayed in space, in Skylab and the Russian Mir space station and the International Space Station for periods far longer than it would take to get to Mars.” Looking around, “Anybody else? Roberto?”

  “It’s too dangerous?”

  “Perhaps. More than 150 people have died attempting to climb Mount Everest. Nearly all of them are still up there because it’s too hard to bring their bodies down. How many people have died on the moon? None. So which is more dangerous? Climbing Mount Everest or landing on the moon?”

  Several murmurs of “Mount Everest” came forth.

  “Well, statistically speaking, yeah, climbing Everest is a lot more dangerous, but people still do it, every year. So, do we know for sure that going to Mars is too dangerous? Particularly since we haven’t tried it? Sure, it’s dangerous. No argument there. It’s dangerous to climb Mount Everest, it’s dangerous to go to the moon… it’s dangerous to cross the street in front of the school here. But we still do it. Risk, reward. It’s a calculated risk.”

  Jeff walked around his desk and up one of the rows between his students, “Any other thoughts on why we haven’t gone to Mars?” He looked around for a while and one hand finally went up, “Rhonda?”