Mars stowaways' find a new place for their pod
There's a little complication
MARS CAROUSEL, Nov. 50 - The two Earth fleet stowaways have found a temporary home, but they’re not out of the box yet and likely to have a little company soon.
Their heavily modified cargo pod has been removed from the ship that took them from Earth to Mars, and stashed, with them inside, in a used space liner that is being refurbished for use in the O’Ceileachair orbital shipyard.
But they’re waiting for more than a final determination of their status. Orla Calaveras and Luis Roving say they’re expecting “a little Martian” in early January.
The couple had been offered housing in separate quarters on the Mars Carousel, but opted instead to remain together in their pod and have it moved to the shipyard.
"Right now, we're very happy to stay together," Calaveras and Roving wrote, after more than 270 sols spent in very close quarters.
The two Luna Orbital Industries workers shipped themselves from their Earth orbital factory over 472 million miles to Mars in a double container they turned into a mini-habitation on the cargo ship Pallene, which arrived with the fleet Nov. 30.
Mars DevCo has said the couple will not be permitted to transfer to the surface of Mars and would only be allowed to stay on the Carousel until a flight berth back to Earth opens up.
The next scheduled cargo and passenger flight to Earth doesn’t leave until late June, or about 420 sols, although a Luna shuttle flight may depart sooner.
Calaveras, a product design specialist, designed the living quarters in the double cargo pod, and Roving designed and built the compact environmental and recycling systems.
They'll be in orbit for a while
The unit was built out of scrap in a double cargo pod slated for recycling, and the couple paid the shipping fee for it, Calaveras said.
The living space is consolidated in one half of the double pod and the supplies and environmental systems in the other.
“We didn’t eat their food or use their resources at all,” Calaveras said, adding that they had fulfilled their contract terms with Luna Orbital.
The cargo pod has been secured adjacent to the crew quarters in the spaceliner hull in the O’Ceileachair (O’Kelleher) shipyard and the couple will be able to access those habitational areas.
“They might like a bit more room to move around in, but really, their pod is better than the crew quarters,” said part-owner Electra O’Ceileachair. “We’re going to hire them to help us upgrade in the meantime.”
The O’Ceileachair Exploration Group has negotiated a licensing deal for the couple’s designs and has offered to cover any unpaid costs related to their journey.
Calaveras will not need to transfer to the surface the birth as the Mars Carousel can provide any needed medical care.
It’s not unusual for newborns to arrive soon after the Earth fleet, Census Mars Chief Willow Demeter says.
“The contract workers skew young. It’s a long flight and there’s not much to do but train and exercise. Still, it’s very close quarters and privacy is decidedly a limiting factor,” Demeter says. “Now that they’re here, some couples among the arrivals are likely to stop waiting. So we’ll see an uptick in 250 sols or so.”
All quiet in the Cubbies, for now
It’s going to get very noisy, very soon
TITHONIA (URBS VALLIS), Nov. 51 - The blankets are stretched tight across every bunk in the contract worker dormitories.
The clothing and supply packets have been neatly placed on top and labelled with a welcome packet that includes each resident’s work and training assignments with information on where and when to report.
“It’s quiet, but that’s not going to last. Everyone is keyed up about finally getting to Mars, finally getting to start their new lives and it all begins here,” Tithonia Residential Supervisor Giulia Villanova says, sitting at a table in the common room of one of the empty 25-person dorms that will soon house 1,983 workers.
“Some of the newcomers will be very happy, some will be disappointed, and all of them are going to spend a lot of time training,” Villanova says. “That includes a lot of safety training, training in safety suits and surface suits, on-the-job training. Hopefully, they’ll all be very tired by the time they hit their bunks.”
The new contract workers will start arriving on shuttles to Ares Port, the space port just west of Tithonia, on Thursday.
While the cubbies have earned their nickname from the tight quarters, they still provide a bit more room than the workers endured in their long trip to Mars, if not very much more.
The dorms’ shared common rooms open out on a third-level terrace in HabTube 1 that overlooks hydroponic and aquaculture gardens, giving them a feeling of space.
But behind the common rooms, which provide couches and basic kitchen facilities, are the stacked bunk beds separated by narrow aisles that lead to the shower and sanitary facilities behind.
No bumps in the night
The bunks are assigned to specific workers through the first part of their training, but they can exchange them later on.
“We try to assign the bunks to create as little friction as possible, given the tight quarters,” Villanova said.
With that, and past experience in mind, they have moved the individual storage lockers from under the bunks to across the aisle, meaning each set of bunks is separated from the other by the storage closets.
“Not everyone wants to get up in the middle of the night in their pajamas and bump into someone else getting up in the middle of the night on the other side of the aisle,” Villanova said. “That had led to some issue in past cohorts.”
City Residence experimented with different layouts for the workers who arrived in September, Mars year 100, or a bit more than two Earth years ago.
“We found that keeping the bunks on just one side of the aisle makes it easier for everyone,” Villanova said. “They’re going to be together in close quarters for a while and we want to make that as easy as possible.”
Workers now on the Mars Carousel have been reviewing shared living strategies and ‘cubby etiquette’ before they land on Mars.
“They have to put up with their assigned bunks for the next eight weeks, but we do respond to some requests,” Villanova says. “Where there are real problems, we look to solve them as quickly as possible.”
The common rooms offer a bit more space and a City view and residents are free to go to any of the city canteens for meals at any time they’re open.
Some of the canteens remain open around the clock to provide service for workers on overnight schedules.
The overall experience is a bit like old-school colleges or new orbital facilities where people find themselves sharing sleeping quarters and showers with people they’ve just met, says agronomist Yora Tal, who moved out of the cubbies in September.
“You’re never alone, and it’s a challenge being social every waking hour. The only place you can be alone is your sleeping pod, and there’s just enough room to lay down in those,” says Tal, who arrived in September 100 and spent nearly 700 sols living in group housing.
‘I took to exploring the City and the canteens and the gardens and the WestHill terraces,” Tal says. “I took a lot of long walks.”
New residents can expect to be busy.
“From my own experience, everyone has to learn what’s in their hab, how to use it, and where to go eat, how to get into the safety suits. They have to learn what supplies are in the shared kitchen and fridge, what they can get, where they can get it and how to share it in a group,” Tal says. “Like don’t eat all the cookies.”
Candor Council supports road printer project from Melas to Noctis
Industrial plant ready to get started
CANDOR CHASMA, Nov. 51 - The Candor Chasma Council threw its support behind a road-printing project proposed by Noctis to link the Labyrinth and the western Valles Marineris cities, with the caveat that the equipment be built here.
The Noctis Labyrinthus Council voted earlier this month to fast track a project for a 750km road connecting it with Ius with a 250km extension to Ares Port.
“We can speed up development and growth in the western Valley by making it easier for goods and people to move around,” Candor Councillor Sabrina Argo said at Thursday’s meeting here. “But the point has been made that the only places that can build the equipment are Candor and Ares Port. We want it to be Candor.”
The project would provide a substantial boost to the growing industrial plant in Candor and could rely on the manufacturing expertise in the Chasma’s ‘inventors sandbox’ that has continued to spark innovation.
“We’ve got the skills and the industrial base to do it here,” Argo said.
Still, it would require revising the road plan to start at Melas Chasma and proceed over 500km to Ius and then 750 km to Noctis, Argo noted.
The proposal for a so-called Mars Route 1 was reviewed by the Noctis and Ius Councils in July, with that section to be completed first.
Noctis Councillor Icario Fletcher suggested earlier this month that Noctis could win crucial support from Tithonia (Urbs Vallis) and Mars DevCo in building the shorter stretch to Tithonia Chasma first.
New Candor Councillor and inventor Artemis Tungolwys argued that it would make more sense to begin at Melas as it could provide crucial water supplies needed for the printing from its water mining project about 70 km west of Melas city.
“They want to build a pipeline to bring water to Melas, and Ius wants to build a pipeline to bring the water there,” Tungolwys said. “The road project will need water, so it would make a lot of sense to build those projects together.”
A road would cut travel time by about two-thirds, enabling supply trains to travel at an average speed above 15 kph compared to 5kph or less now, depending on the terrain, Ius-based construction engineer Trevia Bothar said remotely from Ius.
Currently, it takes wheeled supply trains about 11 sols to make the journey between Candor and Melas, and the different stages of the road-printing train could be shipped over that route and assembled at the Melas water mining project.
“Instead of treating this as either Candor or Ares Port, perhaps we could think of it as both places, and meet in the middle, at Ius,” Candor Councillor Antonia Quick said. “And then we could get Candor linked up too, and then Coprates.”
Phoebe Nyx smolders in one-woman Geryon show
“La Bandita” will steal your heart
GERYON MONTES, Dec. 2 - The smoldering one-woman show, “La Bandita — Thief of Hearts,” starts with a look, two really.
Phoebe Nyx sits alone on stage, her face a mask of care and concern as she gently breaks up with her imaginary romantic partner.
She nods her head, framed in long dark hair, in sympathy, and lowers her eyes as she turns toward the audience.
Her gaze shifts to a man sitting alone in the audience and stops. She shakes her hair to one side and that look of feigned sympathy turns into something else entirely different.
Her eyes drift up to the man’s face. She holds the gaze just a little too long.
Their eyes meet and without even a smile, the audience sees that La Bandita has hooked her next victim.
Lowering her eyes again, Nyx turns back to her invisible boyfriend and picks up where she had stopped, with words of sympathy and understanding, as if that look had never happened.
She waits in her chair and watches as her now-ex walks off. When she turns back to the crowd, the audience erupts in applause. But this is only the beginning.
The look a lion gives a gazelle
After the show, sipping a coffee outside the Cafe du Mont, Nyx says about the show’s first scene, “I imagine the look a lioness might give the gazelle, but here the victim is entirely willing.”
The look doesn’t always work, and sometimes it works too well, says Nyx, who opened her show in Geryon on Friday after an extended run in Tithonia.
“The audience is here because they want to believe,” Nyx says. “It doesn’t always work, so it’s sometimes just my look. But when our eyes meet, I hold it long enough for the audience to notice—if not the person I’m staring at.”
That moment can be awkward.
“I’m usually looking for someone who’s alone. The last night in Tithonia, this guy sitting by himself looks back at me just as his partner came up to sit in the empty seat next to him. She saw us looking at each other, and gave him a look of her own,” Nyx says.
“So I turned that come-on gaze at her, until she looked back at me, totally flustered. That really worked. When it doesn’t I just have to work harder.”
For its part, the audience has to follow the story through just one side.
“I think that engages their imagination more than if there were two or more people on stage,” Nyx says.
Nyx’s character collects other partners until she falls hard herself, and the audience now gets to hear her saying the same kind of pleading and angry words she parried earlier.
Sing in me, oh Muse
Throughout, Nyx remains totally in character sitting in a chair on stage, seemingly nonchalant as she dominates relationships and increasingly nervous as she finds herself on the other side.
“It’s not so much that I memorize and recite the words. It’s that I’m totally absorbed in the role in this world that the words create,” Nyx says, waving across the terrace toward the towering north wall of Ius Chasma. “It’s like it comes through me from somewhere out there, and I’m just in it.”
Nyx stresses that her role has nothing to do with her real life, which until she left Tithonia four weeks ago, focused on what she calls a somewhat dull job in environmental systems.
“It’s nothing like me at all. It’s a totally fictional character,” Nyx says. “Offstage, I’m shy and off in my own world half the time, and totally miss most of the flirting cues. My friends have to tell me.”
Nyx says the inspiration came to her while changing scrubber filters, but that she’s always had a daydreaming, creative side.
“My grand-mum says I’m away with the faeries all the time. My daydreams come in a lot more detail than is strictly healthy. They turn into plays,” Nyx says smiling.
Asked if there is another play on tap, Nyx says she is exploring other ideas, having had lots of time to daydream in her four week overland journey from Tithonia to Noctis and then Ius.
For now, though. she’s focused on “La Bandita,” and would like to bring it to other chasmata, including Melas and Coprates.
Asked about "La Bandita,"" Nyx says, “She’s in love with being loved, but that initial thrill lasts for only so long, and she needs that feeling with someone else.”
The play gets really intense when the audience at the Geryon Agora sees the look on Nyx’s face that marks the moment when La Bandita herself has become a willing target for another player.
That sparks a fiery romance, with Nyx acting out the highs and lows.
Happy ending?
Find out at the Geryon Agora Saturday at 21:00
Calendar
Hello December
Just a reminder that the last month of the annos started yesterday. Start your Novus Annus planning now.
They're almost here. Safety trainers, City guides wanted.
City officials are issuing a last-minute call for volunteers with the appropriate credentials to act as safety trainers for the new arrivals in coming weeks. The City is also seeking residents willing to act as guides for small groups of new residents to acquaint them with their neighborhoods and the wider city. Contact City Safety for training, City Residence for guides.
City Strings Quartet
Quartet performs selections from Mozart's "Night Music." WestHill Terrace 4 Friday-Saturday 19:00
“Rhumba Room”
Fun song and dance review threedee. Goofy, guilty pleasure with great dancing Stage 3 Hab 1 Terrace 8 Dec. 6-12 18:00, 20:00, 22:00
Melas Karaoke
You don't have to memorize the words, but you'll want to practice. Sing solo, in groups or just hum to yourself at the Bottom of the Sea cantina. Friday 20:00. Melas.
Acoustic Song Share
Everyone gets a song Cafe du Mont. Geryon Agora Saturday 16:00
Volleyball
Get ready to jump without worrying about the ceiling. Learn to play volleyball at the new Hab3 beach. Saturday, Sunday sessions 08:00, 10:00, 12:00. North Beach Hab3 Terrace 1
Lawn bowling
Learn how to play the lawn bowling game of bocce (bot-chee). WestHill Terrace 2 by the terrace edge. 10 am. Message City Parks for information.
City farmers' market
Going green with veggie envy? Get to the City farmer's market. Stalls available by appointment. Industrial Tube Terminal. Saturday 0900-1500
City Social
Mix and mingle with new arrivals and old hands. Acoustic music by Harris and Fitz Hab 2. Terrace 4, by Tithonia Gardens. Every Friday 17:00
- Merry Grace, lifestyle correspondent
Classified Ads
SHIP REFITTING, BREAKING All craft, parts and refurb. PONTUS 100 751
DUST MAGNET. Won’t let the dust get past the airlock. CANDOR 286 87919
FURNITURE Printer Stock. And cushions for a comfy seat IUS 278 58897
WALL PRINTERS All shapes and contours. MELAS 285 45672
SURFSUIT Refurbishing. Fabric and boot repair, seal replacement, visor refurbishing, comms upgrades. COPRATES 297-14210
CARGO HANDLERS. Space experience required. Contract exemptions considered. PONTUS 100 419
ROCKET SCIENTIST. Engine upgrade project, Ex-contract only. PONTUS 100 637
SHUTTLE MECHANICS. Experienced preferred, but we’ll train you if you have the skills. Ex-contract only. PONTUS 100 635
CONSTRUCTION All specialties. Some outside. Ex-contract only. GERYON 278 68034
DRILLING specialists, supervisors and crew. Ex-contract only MELAS 285 13941
APPRENTICES Recycling systems. 8 annos and up. IUS 278 98559
APPRENTICES Metal smith, forging, casting, 8 annos (14 years) and up. URBS 269-37728
APPRENTICES Machine repair 8 annos (14 years) and up. NOCTIS 260 21188
APPRENTICES Hydroponics. 8 annos and up. URBS 269 44085
APPRENTICES Environmental systems. MELAS 285 74223
SPACE CAMP. Get ready for orbital work. All ages. ARES PORT 268 00910
BALLET Poise, strength, balance, beauty. Très grands jetés URBS 269 62577
RAAS / GARBA Dance performers for existing troupe. COPRATES 295 45788
CRICKET Mars style. Two teams. Unfamiliar? They’ll explain it. COPRATES 295 21508
MARTIAL ARTS. Conditioning and confidence. Weighted and natural. GERYON 278 71435
The header photo is the iconic mosaic of the Valles Marineris hemisphere of Mars from 2,500 km above the surface taken by the Viking Orbiter. (NASA/JPL-Caltech)
The Candor Chaos Courier, Candor Chaos, Valles Marineris, Mars
The Chaos Courier gets you over the rough spots
Future News from Small Town Mars
Copyright © 2025, M. Fitzpatrick, all rights reserved
Photomosaic: Viking Orbiter: NASA/JPL-Caltech