Ice And Fire - Part III

It was at about the moment when the Hawthorne control centre lost the Smaug's signal during atmospheric entry that Yuanna Green-Lisulo felt fatigue creeping up on her at last. Like many others she had been burning the candle at both ends for many days leading up to the Mars landing. Coffee and sheer excitement had kept her pushing on, but with the brief loss of narrative tension as the feed from the Smaug crackled and died, all she wanted to do was to sleep. She keeled over into one of the easy chairs and closed her eyes for a moment.

"I know exactly how you feel," Dosanski murmured from close by, as he too sank into a chair. "I've been living on pizza and strong cups of tea for about a month."

She opened her eyes and gave him a frank stare. "You drink tea?"

"Oh yes," he replied warmly, "I've been a tea drinker forever."

"Me too."

They discussed types and brands of tea. She had grown up drinking herbal tea with honey whenever a cold or sore throat had threatened. He was inclined to oolong, rooibos and what Yuanna regarded as boutique teas. He touched on the subject of fair trade and sustainability in the tea industry, and that made her think.

"Mr Dosanski," she asked, "how do you intend to make a return on your investments in the Mars settlement? You've raised a huge sum to finance all this, and I've heard many say it's like pouring water into sand. Do you ever hope to regain any of it? What can the Mars people produce that will be profitable here?"

He nodded. "I've asked myself that many times in the past year or three. But it comes down to this: There's a waiting list as long as Route 20 of the people who will gladly pay half a million bucks to go live on Mars. They fascinate me, those people. Give it all up to live in an airless, freezing desert, a hundred million miles from the nearest surf beach? Not for me. But you need all sorts to make a world, as they say.

"Now, a large part of that money will be for transportation. A one-way ticket, with an option to buy a return journey for some. Most of these are scientists and engineers, technical people, and adventurers who feel the stirring of history in their veins."

Yuanna shrugged. "So SpaceX will be the bus company, and you'll recoup some of your investments. But even a thousand settlers will only get you five hundred million, most of which will cover the spacecraft build costs. That's peanuts to your total investments, all the R and D."

"Correct. So when a settler reaches his or her destination, what then? Where do they live? What gear do they have? We are offering them contracts for life support equipment of their own, robot excavators, 3D printers, and so on. It's a big catalogue. All paid for up-front before boarding the ITS. We can't sell them a title deed to land on Mars, because of the Outer Space Treaty and all that, but we can offer them the next best thing: the ability to stake their own claims and build their own empires."

She glanced at the big screens: still no resumption of communications. The ionisation effect as Smaug tore through the upper atmosphere would last from two and a half minutes to ten, depending on who you asked. "So the new settlement in Arcadia Planitia will produce all this kit for the newcomers and give it to them. How can they afford to do that? What if they refuse?"

"Ah! There's the rub. As the Arcadians manufacture these new items they are paying off their debts to us."

She blinked. "Debt?"

Dosanski smiled wearily. Perhaps he had explained this many times over to many other people. "Debt. Sure, SpaceX built most of the hardware they'll be using to set up their first base, so you might expect us to own it forever. But no! In a gesture of pure magnificence, we're allowing the Arcadians a straight shot at financial independence – by working off their debts within maybe two years of setting up their simple manufacturing capability. It's more complex than that, it's a rolling program whereby the newcomers can join in the market and start producing kit for the next wave, thereby building up credit with us or helping to pay for their buddies to go out there. It's – oh, my head aches with it some days. But I'm pretty sure it will work." He glanced at her. "Absolutely sure."

"So you aim to keep making money well into the future."

"That's business. And there's broadcast rights, research, small 'made-on-Mars' items that can be shipped back & sold at handsome profits. Some of your own people in Mars Society came up with some of these ideas, you know. We will own a high enough percentage of the settlement that we will profit whenever they do these things, long into the future. We have a pretty tight business plan."

Just then the screens came back to life and there was the Smaug's crew again. Yuanna immediately read the situation and sensed tension. They were all too preoccupied with their descent to spare a word for Control. The verbal exchanges between the crew were sharp.

From the quiet reports of the various controllers at their desks it was clear that some of the parameters of the trajectory were awry.

Dosanski peered through the glass at the big screens. "What's up out there? Are they OK?"

"I'm sure they're fine," she replied, "but we don't have complete info on their status. Something's a bit off. We'll have to wait until they're down." If they make it down, she caught herself thinking.

"Sounds bad," said Dosanski, and he stood up and started pacing again. "But they'll pull through, right? After all, we got Sable in charge up there. I've got a lotta people counting on this. They are gonna make it?"

Yuanna hesitated. "It's out of our hands." She spread her fingers wide.

Dosanski snorted, but calmed himself and spoke softly: "Then whose hands is it in? You a religious person? Do you think we should pray?"

She smiled uncomfortably. "Like I say, it's in the hands of a very capable crew."

Ice And Fire - Part Four