A few days later, a massive excavation site had been cleared. According to the engineering blueprints, this pit would house the residential sector, laboratories, industrial zone, and power plant, arranged in distinct tiers. After the foundation walls were poured and capped with radiation-shielded glass, the outline of the Mars Forward Base began to take shape.
While construction on the surface proceeded smoothly, the crew aboard the Noah remained busy. They continued to attach heavy ballast to the spaceship's exterior hull, increasing its mass to counteract buoyancy. Slowly, the Noah's orbital altitude began to drop.
Now, everything hinged on the geological exploration teams. If they could discover a rich mining site and stable terrain, the Noah could finally attempt a landing.
The Martian surface was desolate and silent, a graveyard of gravel, mountains, vast plains, and rift valleys. The terrain in the northern hemisphere was relatively flat, allowing the heavy-duty rovers, vehicles the size of city buses, to traverse the landscape without issue.
The scenery was far more spectacular than anything on Earth. As far as the eye could see, vast deserts met polar ice sheets. The polar caps, composed of dry ice (frozen carbon dioxide) and water ice, merged with the rust-colored rock to form a unique, alien geology.
Violent winds occasionally swept across the sky. While the wind speed was incredibly high, the thin atmosphere meant the actual force was low—barely enough to stir up dust devils. Even the sky was permanently tinged with an orange-red hue, a fiery expanse stretching into the void.
However, even the most magnificent scenery loses its appeal after three days of constant viewing. By the third day, even the embedded reporter had stopped talking, turning off her camera to rest her eyes inside the rover.
They had traveled nearly one hundred and fifty kilometers, and they were exhausted.
This expedition wasn't just a road trip; it involved stopping to excavate rock samples, cataloging specimens, and performing detailed geological mapping. It consumed a tremendous amount of physical and mental energy.
The reporter was Zack's girlfriend, Victoria. She and Zack had been fortunate enough to be selected simultaneously by the administration and, by a stroke of luck, assigned to the same rover team.
But this trip was grueling, devoid of romance. They didn't complain, though. Scientific exploration was inherently tedious and arduous. They had mentally prepared themselves for the grind before ever stepping into the airlock.
With no significant discoveries, Victoria's interest waned. Seeing the same desolate red rocks hour after hour would bore anyone.
Their team consisted of twenty people: scientists, journalists, medics, soldiers, and mechanics. Every necessary profession was represented, and they had all undergone rigorous survival training.
"Time's up. Let's take a break!"
The speaker was Dr. Clark, a female scientist in her thirties and the leader of this subgroup.
The twenty crew members cycled through the rover's airlock in batches, underwent chemical decontamination, removed their helmets, and finally sat down to eat and hydrate.
Although the rover was the size of a bus, twenty people in bulky suits made for cramped quarters.
Zack, acting as both the lead geologist and mechanical engineer, was responsible for the rover's technical status.
He ran a diagnostic on the powertrain and life support systems. Finding no major issues, he checked the energy reserves.
"Dr. Clark," Zack reported, stepping forward. "Battery cells are at sixty-six percent. Life support is nominal. To be safe, we have a range of another fifty kilometers before we reach the point of no return."
The rover was their lifeline. If the battery died, twenty people would freeze or suffocate on the Martian plains.
Hearing this, Clark frowned but nodded. "Understood."
"Listen up, everyone," she announced. "Due to power constraints, we can only push out another fifty kilometers. We need to save enough juice for the return trip. If we don't find anything by then, we turn back."
A collective sigh echoed through the cabin. The mood shifted to dejection.
"Let's hope we find the jackpot in the next sector!" Dr. Clark tried to boost morale, but her voice lacked conviction.
To be fair, they hadn't found nothing. They had discovered a substantial ice deposit and a vein of iron ore.
But these discoveries were merely average. Mars is a planet composed largely of iron; its red surface is literally rust (iron oxide). Finding iron on Mars was like finding sand in a desert. It wasn't enough to justify the mission.
"We've excavated rock samples from thirty-two sites..." one of the biologists muttered, looking at his data pad. "No bacterial activity observed under the microscope."
"Maybe Martian life doesn't utilize oxygen. They could be anaerobic extremophiles," his colleague replied. "Or maybe we're just looking in the wrong places. Hell, it's possible they aren't even carbon-based..."
"I think that probability is low, but non-zero..."
No one knew the truth. Perhaps the dust particles outside were actually silicon-based life forms? If life here was silicon or sulfur-based, it wouldn't require water or oxygen to survive.
Humanity's understanding of the universe was so small.
Humans inevitably used Earth's biology as the template for hunting aliens. Earth life is "carbon-based" because the complex amino acids that build proteins utilize carbon atoms to connect the amino and carboxyl groups.
But humanity had never discovered non-carbon-based life. It existed only in science fiction, silicon monsters, electromagnetic entities, pure energy beings.
Without evidence, the scientists wouldn't blindly believe in fantasies. After searching so many sites without a single hit, the consensus was shifting: Mars was likely a dead world.
"Wait... look at the needle!" Zack suddenly shouted. "Radiation index just spiked by one percent!"
He had been watching the peripheral monitors. The Geiger counter needle had jumped slightly and then stabilized at a higher baseline.
"The atmosphere here is thin; it can't completely block cosmic rays," Dr. Clark reasoned, though she moved toward the viewport. "Maybe a solar flare stripped away some of the upper atmosphere, causing a localized rise in background radiation..."
She stopped mid-sentence.
Through the reinforced glass, she saw it. A grayish-black stone.
Against the endless backdrop of red dust and orange rock, a black stone was screaming for attention.
She scanned the area. There were more of them. Her heart began to hammer against her ribs.
"Zack! Get out there. I want a composition analysis on those black rocks immediately!"
Zack suited up and retrieved a sample. Back in the airlock lab, he crushed, ground, and dissolved the sample, feeding it into the mass spectrometer.
"Sixty-six percent molybdenum, 8.3 percent silicon, 1.2 percent calcium, 0.2 percent lead..." Zack's eyes went wide. "My god... this is high-grade molybdenum ore! And... yes! I'm detecting trace amounts of Uranium-235!"
Inside the rover, the atmosphere exploded.
Victoria instantly switched into professional mode. She grabbed her camera, frantically snapping photos of the ore sample and speaking into her recorder. "This is Victoria reporting live. You aren't going to believe what we just found..."
"Clark!" Zack shouted, his voice cracking with excitement. "Molybdenum is a primary associated mineral of uranium! Where there's this much molybdenum, there's a uranium vein nearby! If we find the source, we're rich!"
Zack grabbed his helmet. "I'm going back out!"
"Everyone, listen up!" Dr. Clark commanded, her voice trembling with suppressed thrill. "Look for exposed uranium ore. We split into teams of four. Search the immediate vicinity. Keep communication open and do not wander beyond line of sight!"
"Remember your geology briefings," she continued. "Earthy uranium ore has no luster, it looks like dirt. But blocky pitchblende has a tar-like, pitchy luster and is heavy. Look for black or bright yellow streaks!"
The fatigue of the last three days vanished instantly. If they really found a uranium mine, it would secure the colony's energy future for decades.
They had to find it.