The first two airlocks were deployed leaving approximately four meters between them, a space large enough to accommodate ingress and egress by a team of colonists and their equipment. Another two airlocks were similarly deployed 50 meters from the first providing what was hoped would be the first living space for the colonists that might later be further subdivided as needed into smaller living and working spaces. The airlocks were then closed, and the air vacuumed out of the enclosed space by using the airlock evacuation valves powered by a Tesla Coil generator that could wirelessly provide energy to any equipment within two-kilometer radius of its location. Within ten minutes, 99.98 percent of the thin Martian atmosphere had been sucked out of the massive space and the airlocks shut down the air evacuation cycle, leaving the colonists to monitor the airlock atmospheric readings closely and nervously for the rate of change. Five minutes later, the readings remained at 0.02 percent of normal atmospheric pressure, a clear sign that the space was far more airtight than they could have dared to hope. The unusually glassy surface of the tunnel was clearly as perfect in fact as it seemed in appearance. The process that created this vitrification in the first instance is one that puzzled the colonists and would require further study and exploration as time allowed. Water alone would not have created such a perfectly smooth and imperfection-free surface on Earth on the similar rock formations, nor would lava tubes contain such uniform dimensions or leave behind such a polished-glass surface that seemed eerily reminiscent of intelligent design rather than of natural origin. For now, however, the colonists were far too grateful for the unexpected boon and far too busy to look a gift horse in the mouth.
Their job done, they left back for the space elevator site, leaving the Tesla generator on drawing power from a small nuclear generator. In due course, solar panels would supplement the generator’s capacity as would several additional methane driven generators yet to be brought down from the shuttles. When they next returned, assuming that the readings still showed a workable airtight seal, the ARE unit would have extracted a sufficient amount of oxygen and nitrogen from the Martian atmosphere to allow them to begin the process of pumping breathable air into their new home.
As the other AREs were brought down from the shuttles, air would be supplemented with water generation, turning the separately reclaimed hydrogen and oxygen into water with the aid of electricity borrowed from the Tesla coil by one of the two spare AREs. Weaving the carbon also reclaimed into nanotubes suitable for repairing spacesuits and making new ones, as well as clothing, tools and a variety of utensils would have to wait until dedicated equipment could be offloaded from the shuttles--not a priority for day one of the mission. Likewise reconstituting the Martian atmosphere into methane gas to be compressed and used as fuel for additional generators to fuel more power-hungry tools and the heating needs of a new society in an inhospitable world. Important as these tasks might be, they could wait until day two for the expeditionary force which this first day in the new dawn of humanity still had much work to do after returning to the space elevator site and replenishing their oxygen and water supply from the ARE there.
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Earth might be breathing its last, a dying planet with few pockets of humanity still breathing underground as the surface burned at the impact sites on land with the power of twenty-five thousand hydrogen bombs set off simultaneously on an unsuspecting world. The ash cloud and vaporized bodies of water within hundreds of miles of ground zero already blocked the sun while tsunamis and the ash from thousands of volcanoes world-wide exploding in succession as tectonic plates violently rent old fault lines and created new ones driven by the irresistible force of a massive space rock meeting a not quite immovable object. The sun would not shine again with its life-giving force for more than a dozen years, killing off all vegetation and the fauna that depend on it for its sustenance. Almost all life on earth and in the oceans would die as a new ice age of previously unknown proportions shrouded the dying planet. Whatever life eventually emerged again from the thawing planet millennia hence, it would most certainly not be human.
The moon colonies might perdure. Mars might yet be reclaimed again into a planet capable of sustaining higher life forms by terraforming it a cubic meter at a time. Both the Mars and the several lunar expeditionary forces carried with them carefully selected eggs and sperm to provide a reasonably varied, healthy genetic pool for humanity’s new genesis.
Whatever else might happen at this time of unprecedented tragedy and loss, hope would not die. It would be kept alive as long as a human heart beat on the Moon, in any surviving habitat among the myriad underground cities built to withstand man-made catastrophes on Earth, on the expanded international space station or on Mars.
If necessity is the mother of invention, a Phoenix might yet rise from the ashes of its destruction to herald the most radical inventiveness in the annals of humanity. Some subterranean pockets of humanity yet thrive on earth for a time, despite the odds, and Mars and the Moon might yet yield up hidden secrets and unknown bounties to the remnants of humanity fighting for survival. Come what may, there were still miles to go before humanity would sleep, and room for dreams of a better tomorrow that might still be realized in the forced reboot of the human race.