Cold Sunrise on Mars

Even after 4 years, I’m still not used to seeing the blue-grey sunrise on the horizon, peeking just above the Gusev Crater. Funny how Google Images only ever shows you pictures of Mars in the afternoon, when the sky is a pinkish-red, a hue that people have come to associate with the Red Planet for millennia. But standing on a rocky outcrop atop Anseris Mons, gazing at the purplish expanse of sky before me, I can say with qualification that the Curiosity Rover (and much of mankind) missed out on just how mystical the Martian sky can be during dawn.

It’s a welcome sight, and I need it to calm my nerves. Because for all I know, I’ll be dead by the end of the day.

A crackle of static in my headset interrupts my musings. “CC to all units. Reminder to punch in at 0400 hours.”

Tearing my gaze away from the twilight, I curse and begin propelling my way down the mountain. Bursts of pressurized air spurt from my jetpack as I descend the rocky slopes, heading towards a shimmering constellation of lights in the distance.

My helmet visor has been polished thoroughly, but that doesn’t stop me from having several close calls with a series of jagged pillars emerging out of the gloom. It is the reason why we have to make the most of daylight hours when tilling the land – working after sunset is impossible. I cringe as I recall Dexter and Hardman, two fellow Martians who met their grizzly ends at the hands of a nighttime dust storm 2 years ago. We found their broken bodies at the bottom of a crater almost 4 km away from the ploughing fields, and an autopsy concluded that they probably lost their way in the gloom.

Though between you and me, they’re better off dead. Whatever dreams you’ve had about visiting another planet get squashed when you’ve been a prisoner working at Crop Command for 6 years.

Ever since then, CC, (Crop Command for all you Earthlings) forbids us from working at night, while micromanaging our labor during the day. And with today being the Summer Solstice, CC will get to squeeze a couple extra hours of work from each of us.

I’m halfway to the Base Camp when my watch beeps at me. 3:50am. 10 more minutes till I have to punch in, or I’ll be docked 1 Square Meter of pay. Work usually doesn’t start until 6:00am, but the “official” Solstice sunrise time on Mars is 4:00am.

So here we are.

I cross the security checkpoint, ignoring the guards on duty, and scan my ID at the punch clock kiosk with 3 minutes to spare. CC is pretty lax about where its prisoners go off-duty because honestly, we’re the only people here. The rest of the planet is an irradiated mess, and even if we did try to escape, we’d have nowhere to go.

A weight settles in my stomach, anxiety replacing all the merriness I felt while drinking in the sunrise atop the mountain. All around me, I can sense 600 workers feeling the exact same way. The shuffling footsteps, bleary eyes, accentuated yawns and foul language – the Summer Solstice is our most hated day of the year. But underneath our grumbling façade, there is something new. An uncharacteristic alertness which I have never felt before.

Because today is the day we make our escape.

Walking together, dragging our feet, we hike toward the Storage Depot. Picture the biggest warehouse you’ve ever seen. Now multiply that by 2, raise the ceiling by a factor of 3, and add 8 levels of floors. Fill the warehouse up to the brim with cutting-edge agricultural equipment, and you’ll have a good idea of what the Storage Depot looks like. Without a word to each other, we hook up our ATVs to the machines, and drive out the building in a single file line.

The plan has been rehearsed many times. 600 voices, whispered breaths under the cover of night, diligently avoiding the watchful gaze of the guards. Team A will fake radiation illness, getting them transported back to Base Command where they will overpower the lax security team and access the control tower. They will knock out the generator that powers the guards’ weapons, leaving Team B (the largest group which will remain in the Cultivation Zone) free to round them up. Team C will play the most important job of all – getting the fleet of spacecraft ready for us to make our way back to Earth.

And the guards? Oh, we won’t be taking them with us.

10 minutes of driving, and we’ve arrived at the CZ – the Cultivation Zone. Thousands of acres of land have been boxed in by a large plastic dome, and turned into a hydroponic greenhouse the size of a city. An army of armed guards are spaced at intervals every couple dozen meters. The 600 of us park our equipment near the acre we’ve been assigned for the day, and get to work.

Deciding a date for our escape was difficult. Choosing the summer solstice was brilliant, because it's the one day the guards expect our spirits to be so crushed, that we wouldn't try anything.

I check my watch: 4:40am. Along with 19 other workers, I’m a part of Team A, and devised the plan myself. We made sure to add only 1 iodine tablet to our water rations instead of the required 3, so we should be overcome with a mild bout of Mars Sickness in about 20 minutes. And thank God, it goes off without a hitch. By 5:05am, 15 of us are hunched over, retching uncontrollably. The other 5 are lying on the ground, convulsing.

A couple minutes later, and we’re all in the back of a sterile van, speeding our way back to Base Camp for a check-up. Looking around at the sickly faces, I want to say something encouraging, but the words die in my throat. So I resort to staring at my knees, trying not to think about what will happen if everything goes to shit.

30 minutes, and all 20 of us have been docked in the hospital bay, strapped to IVs with a cacophony of heart monitors. In the fourth bed, I swivel my eyes to count the staff.

1, 2, 3, 4 doctors. And 1, 2, 3, 4 – no 5 security guards, all of them unarmed, milling by the window and chatting. We won’t get a better opportunity than this. I let out a gust of breath, and staring out the window at the reddish wasteland, I decide that it won't be the worst place to die.

Looking around at the faces of my crew, I can feel the tension emanating from all of them, waiting for me to give the signal. My heart thudding, I raise my thumb and index and let out a deafening taxicab whistle.