Today's Reading
I raised my eyebrows at Leonard. "I thought you said everything was under control?"
"Wouldn't be space without contingency planning." Leonard's voice was relaxed, but I could see the alertness that straightened his neck.
"What's going on with life support?"
"It's stable." Nathaniel ran his hand through his hair and grimaced. "I mean, stable enough. One of the secondary redundant flow sensors for the scrubbers isn't coming online the way I'd like, which we'd expected might be the case after being shut down for four years."
"So it's nothing outside of mission parameters?"
"Nothing we don't have contingency plans for." Nathaniel took a step away from us. "I should really..."
"Go." Leonard made a shooing motion. As my husband awkwardly bounded toward the donning station, Leonard looked back to me. "I would remind you that you're scheduled for a rest period but I know you well enough to recognize the urge to stress bake when I see it."
"Baking is resting." I stuck my tongue out at him. "And there's no way the kitchen is set up enough to be able to bake in yet."
He laughed and that felt good. During the first expedition, I had been a replacement crew member due to political pressures. The rest of the team had resented me. I was part of the crew but also outside of it.
This time, I was here from the start. I was a part of the team.
* * *
After I dropped my suit off with our techs and changed into a clean flight suit, I went down the corridor to the airlock that led to the main dome. I'd opened airlocks hundreds of times while living and working on the lunar base but on the other side of this one, the sense of the familiar and strange intertwined.
Just like Artemis Base, Bradbury Base was a broad hemisphere about sixteen meters across, half buried with ten meters of regolith mounded over it save for a large translucent skylight to let in natural light. The "buildings" were large packing containers lining "streets." The staircase down to the two lower floors curved from the same spot near the outer wall.
Where they had offices, we had a large open area along the north wall that doubled as a recreation area and as a large project assembly area. I imagine this is what Dorothy felt like stepping out the farmhouse door. It's the familiar door, but strangeness awaits on the other side of the threshold.
Waving at crewmates, who were all following their own checklists, I walked across the dome toward the kitchen area, but my path curved to one of the imprints left by the First Expedition.
Along the north wall, behind the large project assembly area, was a gorgeous mural in sapphires and umbers. I stopped in front of it, staring in wonder at the brilliant color amid all the white and gray and aluminum of the dome. I hadn't seen anything like it in the other habitats. If Nicole had been here, she would have told me what style it was, but all I knew was that what had at first seemed like abstract shapes resolved into an organic cityscape.
"What are you staring at?" Wilburt Schönhaus, one of our mechanics, looked up from the case he was unpacking and followed my gaze. His brow creased for a moment.
"The mural. It's amazing. Who did it?"
The line between his brows vanished and his shoulders relaxed. He opened his mouth, then gave a little head shake as if changing his mind about what he was going to say. "Dawn's work. The city of tomorrow."
"I didn't know she painted." We'd had two ships on the First Expedition. Dawn and Wilburt had been on the Pinta, so we hadn't had much interaction until ours was disabled, and then...well, then we were focused on other things.
"Very good, too." He stood, stretching. "I have a joke about paint drying. It's a bit boring and takes too long to tell."
I snorted. "Does it feel good to be back?"
"It does. I had expected that cobwebs and dust would cover all, but everything is flawless as if we had yestersol departed."
I blinked, looking at everything again. My crewmates on the First Expedition had been on the surface for 380 sols, about 13 months by the Earth calendar, and had left signs of wear but it was as if they had left yestersol. "That is...surprising."
"This was my thinking as well. Kam took great delight in informing me that most dust in a house comes from human skin. So..." He gestured at the dome. "No inhabitants for four years means no dust. And also there are no spiders to make webs."
Would there ever be? We were supposed to be making another home for humanity here. Would future generations of Martian children recite "Little Miss Muffet" and be as baffled by spiders as I was by tuffets?
Wilburt's checklist sat open on the floor next to where he'd been kneeling with only a few items marked off. I was supposed to be in a command role, not distracting him with chitchat. "Well, I'll let you get back to it."
He sighed and knelt again as I headed to the kitchen.
...
