Mars Sample Return 3
A speculative tale based on the history of the Viking Lander experiments and recent NASA plans
Welcome back to Glass Half Full and thanks for reading!
In this week’s Mars Sample Return episode, I’m introducing a new narrative thread. I’m not sure it would go here in the final version, but I thought it was time to introduce some new characters, and it was the bit I felt like writing.
That’s the advantage/disadvantage of publishing in serial form, writing as I go. You get a glimpse into my writing process, but the work won’t be as organized and polished as it otherwise might be. Publishing as I go has given me new respect for everyone here on Substack who regularly produces high-quality serial fiction. I’m realizing it doesn’t fit very well with my usual writing process, in which I build up layers over multiple drafts.
I’ve ret-conned the chapter so that the right-wing podcast host is now named Cutter Tarkelson.
With those caveats aside, on with the show, which has moved to western Utah.
Randy Jameson looked around at the crowd of protesters milling amongst the scattered saltbush and blackbrush outside the Utah Test and Training Range. The crowd had gathered at a remote spot on the boundary of the federal facility, arriving in everything from regular pickups to lifted Jeeps and monster trucks to Subarus, a couple old Teslas, and even a beat-up VW microbus. The people were as varied as the vehicles they’d arrived in: hippies (old and young), ranchers (old and young), off-roaders (middle-aged), miners, public lands activists like himself, birders and other tree-huggers, and even a few old folks in faded MAGA caps. The boundary here was nothing but a fence and a locked gate across a gravel road, with two bored-looking Air Force sentries standing on either side of it, not showing much interest.
In former times Randy would have found himself on the opposite side from most of this crowd, whether it was a fight over a new lithium or gold mine, a stretch of wilderness being opened to off-roading, or the sale of public lands to private developers. But it was a beautiful spring day, the sky a deep, cloudless blue, a slight breeze wafting the scent of sagebrush around, a sparrow calling in the distance. Everyone seemed in a mood to get along, the camo- and Carhartt-clad mingling with the wearers of L.L. Bean and Patagonia, smiles and nods from the off-roaders as the birders hushed them, encouraging them to listen to the birdsong.
“That’s what we’re all here to protect,” one said.
Some of the protesters had even traded signs, “Don’t Tread on Me” for “Save the Planet.” Randy had to smile at the old miner carrying a cardboard placard that read, “Earth First!”
The various factions were united today for the simple reason that no one liked a billionaire, especially not since the billionaires had so openly captured the levers of the federal corporation, née government. And more especially a billionaire who was willing to risk all life on Earth to further his own goal of colonizing Mars.
Until a few months ago, the subject of today’s protest, the Mars Sample Return mission, had been a NASA program no one paid much attention to — or no one but the space nerds. It sounded benign: bring some rocks back from Mars for study. Since everyone knew Mars was lifeless, it didn’t seem like a big deal. The most controversial aspect of the mission was its expense, and again only among the space nerds, plus a few budget hawks in Washington, who were about as rare these days as the black-footed ferret. With the trillion dollars already spent on the war with Iran, a few billion on this effort seemed like the shells left at the bottom of the bag of peanuts.
Randy had remained entirely ignorant of the mission until Ephraim Hollender, the owner of a large mining and pipe-fitting company, collared him at the end of a public meeting. They’d battled each other for years, Hollender always trying to open up more public land to drilling or mining, and with a lot of success this past decade, much to Randy’s chagrin. They never had much to say to each other, unless it was in public statements before one public board or another.
But that day, Hollender had marched up to him, shoved a phone in his face, and said, “You’re always going on about fake environmental disasters. Here’s a real one that’s about to happen, and it’s right here in our back yard. This could be worse than the old nuclear tests.”
Randy hadn’t taken the bait at first — a Cutter Tarkelson podcast being a highly distasteful lure. But the young woman sitting across the table in Tarkelson’s faux-rustic studio, a former NASA employee, seemed highly credible. Enough so that he’d “done his own research,” as all the conspiracy theorists liked to say, and concluded there was something to her warning. And with the return capsule slated to land in the center of the test range not too far west of Salt Lake City, who better than Utahns, with their long memories as “down-winders,” to oppose it?
Randy now believed the chances were 50/50 that bacterial life existed on Mars, not in some distant past, but in the present. The odds of that bacteria surviving in the canisters in which Martian soil samples had been stored for over a decade, not to mention the months-long journey back to Earth, were much smaller. And the chance that all the precautions NASA scientists had designed into the project might fail seemed smaller still. But when the consequences were potentially so large, was any chance worth taking?
There was no telling what an extraterrestrial bacteria might do once released on Earth. It might be so foreign that it would have no effect. But it could prove so rapacious, and Earth’s biological defenses so ill-prepared, that the result would be annihilation on a scale not seen since an asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs or — more aptly — since aerobic bacteria decimated their anaerobic cousins. If the precautionary principle ever applied, now was surely the time.
But when had anyone but a few enviros ever followed the precautionary principle? More the opposite, the planet was now one vast biochemistry experiment, with all of life its test subjects, unwittingly exposed to plastics, PFAS, mercury, and, in too many cases, opioids once claimed to be non-addictive. And then there was the planet-wide physics experiment involving CO2, the results of which were looking more conclusive every day.
Hollender had understood the risk right away — a bit strange coming from a man for whom “arsenic” was practically a middle name. Maybe it was the extraterrestrial nature of the threat, another foreign invader to vilify. Or maybe it was that his family, like most other down-winders, had experienced a lot of cancer.
However strange the bed they’d made, Randy had worked with Hollender to organize this demonstration, the old codger not having much in the way of activist skills. Ephraim had reached out to other miners, the off-roading groups, some of the MAGA old-timers, anyone with a mailing list or social media channel who cared about preserving the freedom of the western way of life — “western” in this sense being the Intermountain West, of which Utah was the beating heart.
Randy had started with his friends in the environmental health community. They were more familiar with toxic chemicals than with bacteria, especially of the alien variety, but they were quick to grasp the risks, and they had large followings. The public lands groups were slower to come around, not seeing an immediate threat to their hunting, fishing, skiing, mountain-biking, hiking, climbing, and other outdoor pursuits. Only the birders were quick to jump on board, which Randy assumed had something to do with canaries and coal mines.
And so it was that the crunchy granola nature lovers at this demo were outnumbered by their cultural and political opposites by a margin of two to one. Randy felt himself relaxing, only now realizing how anxious he’d been about how these groups would get along.
He getting ready to give a speech when the sound of vehicles interrupted the peaceful gathering. It was hard to make them out beneath the giant dust cloud they were kicking up on the same gravel road the protesters had used to get here. As the vehicles drew closer, Randy saw that one was a flatbed boom truck, exactly the kind someone like Hollender might own.
He turned to his co-organizer. “What’s going on? Who’s this?”
Before Hollender could answer, another protester who’d been monitoring the descent pod’s progress via livestream called out, “It’s getting close! It looks like a ball of fire!” He held up his notepad so those around him could see.
“Perfect timing!” Hollender said with an enigmatic grin and started walking toward his own pickup.
Randy followed him. “What’s that truck all about?” Hollender didn’t answer but walked around his pickup and climbed into the cab. Randy approached from the other side and opened the passenger door. “What’s going on here?”
The sentries looked apprehensive. The entrance wasn’t usually manned, since it was more of an emergency exit than an entrance. Being a good protest organizer, Randy had let the government know of the groups’ plans. He’d arrived early and chatted with the sentries, assuring them this would be a peaceful protest, and that the various groups just wanted their voices heard. He’d made sure the gravel road remained clear, as the sentries instructed, with Hollender helping to direct the parking in wide spots amongst the saltbush and cheatgrass.
From the beginning, Randy had thought this was a strange spot for attracting attention to their cause, since it was so hard for the media to get to. And sure enough, no media had shown up. But Hollender had insisted it was more important to be close to the landing site. Now Randy began to suspect why.
The boom truck was close now, followed by three monster trucks, one bearing a sign that read, “Protect Plant Earth from Alein Invasion!”
Whatever. Randy didn’t have time to wonder about bad spelling because the boom truck wasn’t slowing down. The sentries moved to block the gate, hands palms forward in the universal “Stop!” gesture. But they jumped out of the way as the truck blared its horn and kept on coming. The gate popped open as the reinforced grille hit it, swinging 180 degrees and slamming against the fence like the business end of a mouse trap.
Hollender grinned and turned to Randy. “Come on, son, in or out. That capsule ain’t going to wait around for us.”
Randy hesitated for only a moment. Someone had to stop Hollender from whatever he was planning to do, and who else but him? He jumped into the passenger seat and closed the door behind him, giving an apologetic shrug to the sentry on his side of the road as they drove past. The guard was already on his radio. Ahead, all Randy could see of the other vehicles was a cloud of dust.
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Here’s Chapter 4.