Martian Hermitage

It was Mayday in the year 2515.

The people living on the Moon, or Loonies as they liked to be called, were still using Earth time. But with the shocking recent developments on Earth, that convention was about to be challenged.

In theory, forty-one-year-old Fritz Schmidt was still the Chairman and CEO of Moon Base Corporation. In practice, he was now the transitionary leader of the twenty-thousand, two-hundred and fifteen human beings living and working on Earth’s moon who were suddenly calling for democratic self-government and free elections.

Fritz was waiting rather impatiently for the arrival of Abbot Giorgio De Luca. He was pacing around his large, ornately furnished office in the highly secure inner sanctum of the mostly underground South Pole Moon Base. In the low-gravity field of the Moon, Fritz’s pacing was more like an unconscious, repetitive hop-skip-and-jump routine.

It was not that Abbot De Luca, also called Dom De Luca, was late for the requested meeting. It was just that Fritz Schmidt was a man driven by his many ambitions, and he was a compulsive worry-wart. But he always did a good job hiding his anxieties and inner fears when critically important situations called for such a deception. And Fritz knew the upcoming meeting would be one of those situations.

So, a few minutes later, when Dom De Luca arrived and quietly tapped on the open door to the office, Fritz instantly bounced in a relaxed, practised manner to greet him at the threshold with a firm handshake and a warm smile.

“Welcome, Your Eminence!” Fritz boomed in his gravelly bass voice. “I was so pleased when you agreed to have this friendly, social chat with me! And here you are, right on time! And I am deeply sorry that we have not had many chances to meet like this before. Please come in, and take a seat in the lounge area, while I close this big old door to give us some privacy.”

Dom Giorgio De Luca was a slim, shortish, well-groomed fifty-five-year-old man, with completely grey hair. He was dressed in the simple brown, synthetic-wool hooded-habit that all male and female priests, monks, deacons, novices, and postulants of the Reformed Benedictine Order wore.

The unadorned, solid-gold Christian cross hanging from the thin chain around the abbot’s neck denoted his supreme ruler status within the Order. He was a priest and could also be called Father, although members of the Order would never refer to their exalted leader in such a way, except perhaps during a confession.

Dom De Luca’s prior, or second-in-command, was Mother Sargasso, and she was also a priest. De Luca and Sargasso frequently spoke to each other in Latin to stay sharp. Mass and the other daily religious rituals, songs and chants were always conducted in Latin.

Mother Sargasso wore an unadorned, polished solid-silver cross on a silver chain around her neck. The Order also had a third priest, Father Benjamin, who performed Mass, confessions, and baptisms in English for Loonies outside of the Order. Those people were Roman and Orthodox Catholics and Anglicans, for the most part. But other interested or perhaps remorseful Loonies seeking consolation were always welcome to participate in Mass.

The third priest; and the one deacon or priest ‘under formation’; and the forty-eight monks, or Brothers and Sisters; and the nineteen novices or monks-in-training; and the three postulants who had yet to take temporary vows, all wore rosary beads around their necks with simple, unadorned wooden crosses. And they all wore brown leather belts, except for the novices, who wore synthetic-fibre rope belts, and the postulants, who were not allowed to wear any kind of belt.

In contrast, Fritz Schmidt was tall and broad-shouldered, and hairy everywhere except on his smooth bald head. He was dressed in a smart-looking, light grey suit that fitted his large, athletic form perfectly. Like most people on the Moon, he was a non-practising agnostic. As a young boy, he had been baptised as an Anglican, but that had been his parents’ idea, and they never explained why they had arranged it for him.

But like all Loonies, Schmidt believed in tolerance. The well-established cultural norm was to get along with everybody else, and not make a big deal out of personal beliefs and religious affiliations.

The Moon had a couple of hundred Muslims, a hundred or so Hindus, about five hundred Catholics, Anglicans, and Protestants, about fifty Jews, some polytheistic pagans, and a few espoused atheists. Only the Roman Catholic Church, however, conducted organised regular services, as it enjoyed the enormous benefit of a resident monastery.

Schmidt sat down on a leather lounge chair opposite Dom De Luca and studied the abbot’s face for a moment. He tried to establish eye contact, but De Luca simply stared off into space. He looked extremely uncomfortable for some reason.

“Can I get you a cup of coffee, or a drink of some kind before we start our conversation, Dom De Luca?” Schmidt asked pleasantly.

After another long moment, De Luca replied meekly, “No, thank you, Mister Chairman. And what is it you want from me today?”

“Okay, fair question,” Schmidt replied warily. “And we can get right into our discussion if you would like. The fact is, there have been some exciting, and unfortunately also some disturbing, developments recently. I know we have different communication channels with the folks on the Earth, and I thought comparing notes might be a useful, perhaps illuminating, exercise for both of us.”

“Oh, and what events are you referring to, Mister Chairman?” replied the abbot, using a stronger voice. Then he finally turned his head to look back at Schmidt.

“Please, call me Fritz, Dom De Luca. The good news is, the Second Chance generation spaceship is finally en route to New Earth at its planned cruising velocity of 4.2% of light speed. Have you been following the project of late?”

“I must admit that technical matters are not my forte, Mister… Fritz. The monks and novices are always talking about it amongst themselves — in whispers, of course. I try not to notice. I understand the excitement driving the whispering, and let it go unchecked, because I know completing the orbital construction project was the reason this base was established. Could you update me, in layman’s terms?”

“Sure, I’ll keep this high-level and brief. We built the spaceship in lunar orbit, over the last century, using modules we fabricated here. Some stuff just had to be brought up from Earth, at great cost because of the deep gravity well around the planet. I will come back to that critical point later. Most of the structure of the vessel is high-compressive-strength mooncrete, reinforced with high-tensile-strength synthetic fibres.

“The vessel is massive. It is basically a ten-kilometre diameter, ten-kilometre-long cylinder with hemispheric ends. It spins around its long axis, completing one revolution every one hundred and forty-two seconds. This unimpeded angular momentum generates centripetal acceleration, or artificial Earth gravity, on the inside of the cylindrical surface, to help create the pleasant living space we decided to call Tube World. A slender tube under high tension runs down the centre line of the cylinder where there is no gravity. It is called the Sun Line and it provides simulated sunlight for twelve hours per day. It also houses a high-speed tramline that connects the crew’s cockpit at the front of the vessel with the engineering section and engine compartment at the rear of the vessel.

“There were initially six thousand occupants. They are called Tube Dwellers. They will have everything necessary to survive and thrive. Their descendants, after eighty or so generations, and carefully selected domestic plants and animals, will reach New Earth around the year 5029. That is because the target planet is a mind-boggling 106.6 light years away!

“We strapped massive chemical rocket boosters to the vessel to start it on its way. The ancillary, hydrogen-oxygen rockets placed it in what is called a ‘Hohmann Transfer Orbit’ to send it to Mars. It took about eight and a half months to get there, but it made it safely. The booster rockets were ejected en route to Mars. The Second Chance passed by the back side of Mars, and the planet’s gravity well and orbital momentum transferred a lot of energy to the vessel, to give it another boost of acceleration free of charge, so to speak.

“The vessel’s MPDD, or magnetoplasmadynamic drive, then kicked in. The vessel accelerated at one Earth-gravity for two weeks. By force vector addition, the Tube Dwellers weighed forty-one percent more during that time, but they had gimballed seats and beds, and provisions and chemical toilets close by, and they all made it through the trying ordeal okay.

“The vessel should be clear of our solar system’s widely dispersed Oort Cloud in about seventy-five years. It should be clear sailing from there. But you and I will not be around to celebrate that significant milestone, unfortunately.

“Now, was that enough information for you, Abbot?”

“More than I needed probably, but thank you very much… Fritz.”

“Right, onwards then, with that useful bit of context out of the way.

“As you briefly alluded to earlier, this base was built and populated, with the support of profit-driven and wealthy Earth dictators and oligarchs, to assist with the construction of the Second Chance. We mined frozen water around this base and converted some of it to oxygen and hydrogen using electrolysis and electrical energy from fission nuclear reactors. We mined and processed moon rocks to extract what we needed to make synthetic air, and to make soil for our underground, artificially-lit greenhouses, and many other things for both ourselves and the spaceship that just departed.

“I do not know how much of this history you know. But I will make it brief in case it is not news to you. People came to the Moon initially because of the high pay. They had to sign on for a full year. As the situation on Earth deteriorated, more and more people chose to stay. Earth people said they were lunatics for staying, and well, they proudly became Loonies. Money became less important, as there is nothing much to spend it on here anyway. And with so few people here, long-term Loonies are part of big family groups that like to hang out together. Children are few and treasured. Since the day we set up here, a Loonie couple must get a licence to have a baby. And to control population, some never get licences while they are still in what we consider to be the safe age group of under forty years of age for both parties in the marriage.

“And now, suddenly, all the orbital construction workers have returned to this mostly underground base, safe from cosmic radiation again. And everyone is wondering… what is next for us?

“This gets us to the heart of what I wanted to talk to you about today, Abbot. My news for you, and for you only, in confidence, is that the so-called benevolent oligarchs on Earth have decided not to fund us or support us any longer. And they refuse to help us to return to Earth, if that is what we want to do next.

“They are blaming another novel virus pandemic on Earth. They say it is worse than the influenza outbreak of 1918, and the corona virus outbreak of 2019. It could even be worse than the bubonic plague that started in about 1340 and went on to wipe out half of China and a third of Europe.

“Things are falling apart on Earth, it seems, in every sense. The place has been in decline for centuries, of course, with over-population, pollution, climate change and depletion of natural resources adding to the mess. And wars never end there! There were three during the century it took to build the Second Chance.

“So, not many Loonies are going to be interested in returning to that literal hell on Earth, especially now… if we can present them with another viable and exciting alternative. Realistically, most of us are conditioned and physically adapted to one-sixth Earth gravity. We do not have the muscle and bone mass of Earthlings, although it is hard to tell that by looking at me! So, the strain of sudden full-Earth-gravity might kill some or most of us, even if we are fortunate enough to have regular access to our one and only working centrifuge trainer.

“And what might an attractive and viable alternative be for us? I suggest it is to stay right here… and work on another exciting megaproject, on our own, without needing or wanting the help of any selfish oligarch hoodlums and gang leaders back on Earth!”

Dom De Luca recoiled at Schmidt’s strong choice of words, so Schmidt added quickly, “I’m sorry I said it that way, Abbot, but you can tell now that I’m actually pretty worked up, and I need to get some things off my chest. Please be patient with me, and even forgive me, if you can.

“The other highly confidential news for you today is that my corporate leadership predecessors, starting with Heather Farquhar and Jurgen Mayer, were highly proficient pilferers as well as competent executives. It seems they foresaw something like this happening to us eventually. And like efficient and empowered squirrels, they gathered and stored away vast quantities of high-tech equipment and scarce materials in secret, highly-secure lava tubes adjacent to this base. They did it quite elegantly, so no Earth-bound auditor would notice, or if they did, squawk about it.

“This is how their system worked. Things got damaged in transit somehow, and just had to be replaced. Or things sent here were not quite right and had to be redesigned and remade, and it cost too much to send them back. Or the estimates were far too frugal and skimpy, and much more was needed.

“I think you get the idea.

“Now, I believe we need a new raison d’etre, something that will excite us again. I suggest to you, and again strictly in confidence, Abbot… that we should build a few spaceships of our own that could take some of us, or a lot of us, or most likely our descendants… to Mars!

“There is certainly more water and other natural resources on Mars, and we could potentially subsurface terraform more readily there. We will have to build mostly underground again for radiation shielding, but we know how to do that, and very well.

“And not many people know that we will have to halve our population on the Moon to ten thousand or so through strict birth control edicts to sustain ourselves here for a few more centuries. Time is of the essence to deal properly with that harsh reality.”

“Pie Jesu Domine, dona eis requiem!” Dom De Luca gasped with horror. “Have Loonies not sacrificed enough already for the sake of humanity? Why can we not let them pursue their own dreams and desires? Why must we drive and control them like this, and deny them children?”

“Because morale has now fallen to a critical point, Abbot,” Schmidt answered quietly in a sombre tone. “Most of the people in this base know what I just told you, about what is happening on the Earth that is, through the rumour mill. And this new megaproject will give us interesting work for years, or more likely for generations. You see, we will first have to design functional spaceships that can be built without any help from Earth.

“As a space engineer, off the top of my head, I think we could produce, say, two-hundred-person capacity vessels with a complement of twenty-person Mars landers. We will have to move enough people to maintain a minimum viable population for a healthy gene pool. The transit vessels for the eight-and-a-half-month voyage would not need to be anywhere near as big as the Second Chance. They could have a toroidal section for comfortable habitation. We could spin the transit vessel or ‘mother ship’ to produce centripetal acceleration equivalent to Moon gravity at the start of the voyage. And we could progressively spin the vessel faster to end up producing Mars gravity near the end of the voyage, for gradual physical conditioning. Mars only has a little over a third of Earth’s gravity, so the strain on us should not be too severe.

“We would use hydrogen-oxygen thrusters. We have a pilfered MPDD or magnetoplasmadynamic drive with its ancillary fusion reactors in our secret stores. But I think we should convert components of the drive system into fusion-powered electrical generating devices for the South Pole Moon Base, as our fission reactor fuels are depleting. And at least one of those converted fusion generators should end up on Mars.

“When we make the trip, we will want to go en masse, or, most likely, in a steady stream of mother ships. That would give us the best chance for survival. Metaphorically, we would first establish a beachhead, with some especially hardy and brave pioneers, then progressively build up our new civilization. And some of our landers, at least initially, will have to haul freight down to the surface of Mars, rather than people.

“The lowest energy needed for transfer between orbits is fixed by something called the synodic period. Practically speaking, to conserve energy, our launch windows will need to be about twenty-six months apart. But this needs careful thought, and vast amounts of engineering.

“And we need to develop many new engineers and technicians. And that is where I believe you and your Order can help us, Dom De Luca.”

“We are devoted to a life of poverty and abstinence, Fritz. Our raison d’etre is to pray for the salvation of souls. And as librarians, archivists, and bookmakers, to preserve human knowledge, including spiritual knowledge. If there is ever an apocalypse, we want to be able to provide surviving human beings with a head-start towards re-building a civilization...