The Destroyer

Chapter Three

Distant past - Four hundred years earlier.

"We are definitely not ready to be cut loose. We have got to have that solar orbiter. We simply can't get enough power out of the ground array." Bill Jantzen's voice was shaky with fatigue and declining health, which more or less the norm on Mars. He had already been living on Mars since he was a teenager, having gone with his entire family.

"Bill, I really don't even know how to begin to empathize with your situation. If there were any way at all, it would be happening for sure. But the situation here is, ... , well we are just running out of options for launching payloads." Art Fabre talked with his eyes closed. It somehow made the conversation easier, feeling the darkness . It gave him an ability to concentrate. It also allowed him to doze off between exchanges, which varied from ten to twenty minutes apart due to the distance involved.

"Art, I knew what the answer would be. Look, we have the two MERVs. I can send back about twenty eight in each and there are a lot of people here with serious problems. I believe they might be able to recover on Earth. If they stay here, they won't survive. In fact I would like to send more than fifty six but we have done a selection process already." A MERV was a Mars Emergency Return Vehicle.

"Bill, let me run it by Command and see if there is another perspective on that."

"No! You don't understand! Those MERVs will launch next week when we have the window. I need to pare down to below six hundred. It's unsustainable. What's the point of the MERVs anyway? Isn't this the point? We can't all go home. Buy by god we would if we could. That's for sure! But we can't!" Bill Jantzen took some deep breaths, trying to calm himself.

"Okay, okay! Just let me get back to you with some other thoughts on the subject. Maybe it will be fully supported, probably will be," Art lied. The prospects for fifty six mentally imbalanced or physically impaired individuals returning to Earth was not what it had been forty years earlier when the colonists first began populating Mars. Earth's decline had been precipitous, just as many had predicted. But despite forewarnings and eventually a general consensus, mankind slavishly continued to gut the planet of resources, while poisoning the environment in equal measure. The fundamental drive for individual gain and personal survival was part of human programming. Nothing else, including irrefutable logic, could establish much of a foothold.

Ironically, the various space programs seemed detached from the reality that was unfolding all around them. In the heady days of the 1960's when people waited for days to witness the latest launches at Cape Canaveral, flags waved and bands played. Now, the military spent a good deal of its dwindling resources managing massive protests that assembled on the same hallowed ground. The protests focused on a variety of dissatisfactions including the reopening of coal mines to fuel the production of liquid hydrogen and oxygen.

The old promise of gaining mastery over gravity never came to fruition and in fact it was now believed to be physically impossible. Thus, the shuttling of people and supplies to bases on the moon and in orbit, as well as on Mars, still occurred the old fashion way, akin to lighting a giant firecracker. And making water was still the most potent reaction within practical reach. But now, Mars was in a relatively more stable position as far as the ability to produce oxygen, water and food. The problem was more to do with the long term effects of being away from Earth.

Aside from an obvious absence of any real atmosphere, there was too little gravity, and a much weaker magnetic field. The days were only slightly longer but there was no moon exerting a rhythmic gravitational influence. All of these changes wreaked havoc on physical and mental health. It was especially impactful to reproduction and child development. Modeling suggested there would ensue a kind of natural selection over a series of generations and it would weed out more than ninety eight percent of human traits, evolving a human subspecies far different from earth humans.