Eye of the Beholder

Chapter 2.6 Bullfrog

At breakfast Sedna and Newt sat across from Cheryl and Ray, who were there ahead of them.

"What have you two been up to lately?" Cheryl asked. "Ray told me you want to fly your drones to Mars next. What's that about?"

"Lava tubes," said Ray.

Cheryl frowned at him. Sedna helped him out. "Lots of people think it's a natural to colonize Mars. But it's not hospitable to human bodies. It's easy enough to go as drones, not so easy to actually live there.

"The volcanos on Mars are all dormant now, but they made lava tubes when they were active. The tubes would make perfect shelters for explorers and colonists."

Ray clarified. "The air's too thin. There isn't enough protection from solar UV and hard cosmic radiation. Eventually we could build big domes with enough shielding, but in the meanwhile the lava tubes are perfect."

Newt said, "It will be easy to section off tubes into units where we can have breathable air and comfortable temperature."

Sedna added, "We talked to Marian and she agrees our farm cylinders could be adapted to the horizontal tubes. By using the tubes we won't have to transport complete prefab shelters from Earth. And we can grow our own food."

Ray said, "The first humans on Earth lived in caves. Makes sense that the first humans on Mars will be cave men too." This time everyone frowned at him a little, but he had a point.

Cheryl rescued him by saying, "When will you go?"

"We'd go now, except Mars is about as far away as it gets," Sedna told her.

"So it would be a really long trip?"

"Kind of. The Drones can still get there pretty fast."

Newt said, "But the faster you get going, the more slowing down you have to do at the end. It gets a little tricky."

"Right. A crash landing would be bad," Ray added.

Cheryl understood some of this. But she said, "Then what's the best way to go?"

Ray said, "Normally you'd want to wait until Earth is close to Mars in its orbit, like we do when we want to go up to one of the bolas. We launch as the bola is approaching, and time it so we reach the bola's orbit speed at the same time the bola gets to that spot."

"Yes," said Newt, "Except we're already going faster than Mars when we leave Earth, so normally we would want to launch when Earth is approaching Mars, and slow down to Mars orbit speed as we go out to meet it."

"You both said 'normally.' But right now isn't normal?"

"Exactly. If we don't want to wait for the next close approach, we can do the other drone trick of accelerating halfway there and decelerating the rest of the way."

"But that gets tricky? How?"

"The fastest way to get there is to go retro."

"You mean...?"

"Fly toward where Mars is coming from, back in the direction Earth came from."

"Okay. But the tricky part?" Cheryl was persistent.

"Well, it's kind of like flying from a bola to some place on Earth. The best way is to leave the bola before the place you want to land is under you, so when you slow down enough to match how fast Earth is turning the place you want to be is right where you will land.  Going to Mars we need to fly out to its orbit distance and slow down to its orbit speed at the same time, so we don't crash when Mars catches up to us."

"Ah. So the trick is to slow down to Mars orbit speed just as it catches up with you."

"Yup."

"That's is a little scary. But you're going to do it anyway?"

"Yup."

"That is, if we can't track down the droners here," added Sedna. "I've been hoping we can find the Mars droners at home here on Earth, instead of going all the way to Mars to meet their drones. So far we haven't had any luck with that."

"Actually, I have a new idea," said Newt. "Something one of them said when we were snooping on them."

"What was that?" Sedna asked him.

"I was trying to dredge up everything I saw and heard when we were there in the dream. He was studying the wall, shining his light on it. He said, 'This looks like rhyolite.'"

"What's that?"

"I wondered about that too. Turns out it's a type of rock commonly found in lava tube skarn on Earth. Anyone familiar with what it looks like in the raw would probably have seen it in one. So that narrows it down. Bullfrog Beatty. Nevada-born miner."

"Wait a minute. How does that narrow it down? And what the heck is 'skarn'?"

"Sorry. I've been getting into this. Skarn is the exposed layer of rock inside a lava tube. To a miner it can suggest what you might find if you dig deeper. We saw a lot of it in the Hawaii tubes. But I didn't know what to call it then."

"And Bullfrog Beatty?" Sedna was grilling him.

"I knew him from Houston. I knew he looked familiar to me when we were in the dream, but it didn't click until I was, like I said, dredging it up. In the dream he was dressed like a miner. When I met him in Houston he was wearing something more usual."

"Then we have our link to the Mars miners! Do you want to go and see him?"

"Yes. I was thinking we should take a shuttle down and look him up in person. But now I think we should try a QAR link from here first."

Cheryl clapped her hands excitedly. Apparently she was catching some of Newt's enthusiasm. "Can we join you?"

"Sure. But maybe I should get in touch with Bullfrog myself first. I'll let you all know when I have a meeting set up."