Child saves mom and dad with SOS call
Intercity shuttle makes emergency stop at remote Ophir Labes hab
OPHIR LABES, Jan. 36 - The call for help came in a small voice across all emergency channels as the sun was beginning to rise over the Valles Marineris on Friday. “Mamma. Daddy. Mamma. Daddy. Mamma. Daddeeee!”
Mars Carousel emergency operator Gabrielle Marin was the first to answer, pinpointing the call as coming from a minor valley at the boundary of Meles and Coprates chasmata
Switching to video, Marin saw a young boy, somewhere between 2 and 3 annos (4-6 years old), standing on a chair to look into the camera. He slipped off the chair when she popped into view and climbed back up. “Hey honey. Where’s Mom and Dad?” Marin asked.
“Out back.”
“Outside?”
“Out back. In the hill.”
“In tunnels behind the hab?”
The boy nodded. “Out back. Late.”
“What’s your name, hon?”
“Manny.”
“Okay Manny, we’ll find Mom and Dad. Leave the vid on, hon, so we can talk, okay?”
Marin broadcast the location, about 16 km southwest of the Ophir Labes (ancient landslide) in a little valley along the main cargo train route that runs from Coprates east toward Melas and Candor.
“There’s a cargo train about two sols away coming west and one coming down the Melas Labes from Candor, about five sols away,” Marin said. “And the interchasma shuttle is just dropping down from orbit to Orson Welles, so we’ll go with them.”
Wipe your feet at the door
While the hab lies 1,500 km southwest of Orson Welles, and about 200 km west of Coprates the orbital shuttle was the fastest option as none of the Survey Mars craft at Ares Port could get there faster.
“Distance-wise it’s a wash, but the orbital shuttle has a lot more power, it’s moving and can carry more gear,” Marin said.
That gear included the search rover the Welles shuttle port had ready to load when the shuttle landed, and 15 minutes later it was in the air, with a rescue crew, bringing along a dozen passengers who had booked the trip to Coprates.
“Hey Manny, we have a shuttle coming from space to help,” Marin said. “You have to wait a little while. Sit in the chair so I can see you.”
Manny sat and waited, playing with a toy drill sled and rover.
The next problem for the shuttle crew was finding a relatively level place to land.
“We have a bit of maneuver room on the descent, but the way we take off pretty much determines where we’ll land,” pilot Oberan Tan said as the shuttle soared into the sky toward the top of its arc. “It’s pretty close to the same distance as Coprates but we have to skew west a little and hope we don’t land on a cliff.”
They found a relatively flat spot used for parking by cargo trains just a few kilometers east of the hab, located on the east side of a long, moderate descent.
The Class 4 shuttle landed in swirling clouds of dust, and the rescue crew had the rover on the ground and moving within 10 minutes.
“Hey Manny, we’ve got a rover on the ground about 30 minutes out,” Marin radioed. They can get in?”
“Gotta use the dust vac in the air lock, Mamma says,” he answered.
“They’ll wipe their feet too,” Marin said.
Opening doors
Twenty minutes later, the dust vac whirred in the front air lock, and moments later shuttle mechanic John Belmonte and rescue medic Ariella Tulua ran to Manny.
Tulua worked the comms until she got a burst of static with garbled words.
“Manny’s okay, copy?” Tulua radioed. Another burst of static and garbled words followed. Tulua interpreted. “Jammed back airlock.”
Closing his visor, Belmonte went to the back airlock, took the locking mechanism apart and rebuilt it.
It failed on the first two tries and then opened into a lighted interior tunnel to find a drill sled parked about 10 meters back.
Clad in surfsuits, Manny’s parents Max and Tori Graziella climbed carefully out of the sled, and Belmonte helped them back into the airlock.
The exterior lock whirred but didn’t lock until the second try.
When the atmosphere and pressure matched the inside, Belmonte led them into the utility room and then the main room, where both Manny and Tulua were sitting in sealed surfsuits.
Belmonte opened his visor and the others followed suit.
Manny launched himself at his parents shouting, “Mamma! Daddy! Mamma! Daddy!” and was scooped up into a family hug.
“Emmanuel!” Max and Tori Graziella said at the same time.
When they thanked their rescuers, Tulua shrugged. “We just answered the call. Thank Manny. He saved you.”
Learn about Ophir Labes, an ancient landslide
Valley Councils agree to pay to bring in 250 Earth workers
Will guarantee jobs for up to 750 who pay their own fare
CANDOR CHASMA, Jan. 33 - Led by Tithonia, the cities of the Valles Marineris agreed to directly sponsor 250 Earth immigrants on the next supply fleet and to provide guaranteed jobs for up to 750 more prospective migrants who pay for their own transport.
Under the agreement, Tithonia and Ius will share the 75 megacredit cost for Martius Endeavours, the former Mars DevCo, to bring one spaceliner carrying 250 people to Mars.
“We’ve identified the crucial skills we need and we’ll select people on that basis, in coordination with Ius and other Valley cities,” Tithonia Councillor Tiberia Hernandez said in the threedee meeting on Tuesday.
“We’ve also identified at least 700 other positions that we or the other Valley cities can guarantee for workers willing to pay their own way,” Hernandez said. “We won’t have a problem finding the other 50.”
Martius has already vetted about 1,500 people on Earth, its orbitals and Luna for jobs on Mars and its orbitals.
Last month, however, the company announced it was ending its larger transport program that brought almost all the people to Mars in exchange for 3-annos work contracts in favor of a more selective approach.
On the next fleet, which leaves Earth in just under 400 sols, the company is bringing 500 workers in two spaceliners for dedicated jobs in its facilities on the surface and in orbit.
That’s just a fifth of the 2,500 workers the company brought on on the Nov. 30 Earth fleet.
Essential for the future
Martius has offered to bring up to a thousand workers in four spaceliners for the Valley cities at a cost of roughly 300 kilocredits per person, or up to a total of 300 megacredits.
The company, which announced a large scale restructuring at the end of December, had set a late February deadline for the Valley cities to decide.
The potential immigrants will be held to the same deadline, Martius Endeavours Transportation Chief Hartley Adams told the meeting.
“We’ll set aside four spaceliners as we wait for formal agreements with each of the workers but they have to decide quickly,” Adams said. “We also need at least 200 passengers for each spaceliner to bring them to Mars.”
That means that if only 600 people agree to pay their own way, Martius would only bring 500, Adams said.
The spaceliners can be quickly reconfigured to carry cargo, Adams noted.
Each of the Valley cities has agreed to provide jobs for the potential 750-self paying passengers roughly proportional to their population share, Candor Councillor Antonia Quick said, adding that the deal doesn’t involve taking on debt for any workers.
“We’re going in a little bigger at 10 percent even though we’re under that,” Quick said. “We have a thriving industrial center and we’re actively looking for people.“
That works out to 350 job guarantees for Tithonia, 125 for Ius, 110 for Coprates, 90 for Melas and 75 for Candor.
For Tithonia and Ius, that’s in addition to the workers that are sponsoring.
“It’s expensive,” Hernandez said. “But in the long run it’s worth it if we want to grow and become the base for further exploration.”
Tithonia Council votes for elected mayor
Council President wants to be first mayor on Mars
TITHONIA, Jan. 35 - The City Council voted 6-1 to approve adding an elected mayor to city government, and long-time Council President Claude Paddingbury immediately announced that he wants the job.
“It’s going to be a crucial position that requires in-depth knowledge of all the City functions, and someone who is able to manage a very complex organization,” Paddingbury said. “The City has be well run if we want to not only survive but thrive.”
The vote for an elected mayor came after residents objected to the idea of hiring a city manager to oversee operations for Mars’ largest city.
The city manager proposal followed the announcement by Martius Endeavours, the former Mars DevCo, that it was handing over all responsibility for Tithonia and its other residential holdings in other cities to the local councils.
That forced a thorough reorganization of City departments and a recognition that someone was going to have to take overall responsibility for running the city, all its environmental systems, its agriculture and utilities.
While the mayor will be in charge of running the city on a daily basis, the council will continue to hold overall authority,” Councillor Luca Matteo said.
“The mayor will report to the Council, which will retain the power to approve or reject changes to city governance,” Matteo said.
“And City residents will now have one dedicated person to complain to,” Matteo said, drawing laughs and applause from the audience and council members, including Paddingbury.
“We’ll all look forward to that,” first-section resident and second-generation Martian Belinda Patel told the council. “But really, it’s a positive change from dealing with corporate-run departments whose main concern is their bosses, to someone whose main priority has to be the lives of city residents.”
Campaign starts now
With 61,000 residents, Tithonia accounts for nearly half the population of the Vallis Marineris and nearly as many as the other settlements combined, from Noctis to Ius, Coprates and Orson Welles.
About 46,000 city residents live in the three sections of the habitational tube and the rest on the terraced settlements on the adjacent slope, known as Westhill.
The city mayor will be a full-time position, in contrast to the councillors who all have other jobs.
“The position is a manager of all the department managers, in essence,” Matteo said.
The council provisionally set the election date for Feb. 7, the first Tuesday of the month.
The mayor’s term will run through the annual council elections at the beginning of November.
“I guess campaigning starts now,” Patel quipped, drawing more laughs from the audience.
Noctis hab-jumping trial set for three weeks
Charges include rover theft and endangerment
TITHONIA, Jan. 36 - Three men were charged with rover theft and endangerment over an alleged hab-jumping attempt in Noctis Labyrinthus four weeks ago and will stand trial in Tithonia Superior Court on Jan. 50.
Two of the men, Cosmo Izar and Elio Ginan, both logistics workers at the Fabrica industrial area, appeared in court for an initial hearing on Friday.
Both men arrived in September 100 and also face Labor Council hearings for being absent without leave as their contracts don’t expire until March 103.
The third, Ares Port senior mechanic Murgo Sonestro, attended by video from the hospital where he was recovering from injuries suffered when the stolen rover rolled halfway down a 1,900m slope Jan. 20 following a long, slow chase through the Labyrinth.
The men, who spent a week in the upside down rover after the crash, were taken into custody by a Noctis rescue crew about 225 km west of the Noctis Grange Hall on Jan. 27.
As the men were wanted for stealing a rover from Ares Port, the Noctis Council agreed to have them stand trial on all charges in Tithonia Superior Court.
The three had gone into a secluded Noctis family hab and initially refused to leave when the family returned Jan. 6 from a trip to the Noctis Grange Hall, about 120 km east of their home.
Ares Port Manager Ernesto Bosch said Sonestro had cleared the rover for work on a corporate facility 45 km south of Ares Port the last week of December, but had turned off comms and tracking and headed south toward the Noctis Grange Hall.
“Based on an initial inspection of the badly damaged rover by Noctis officials, we believe that they brought along a substantial amount of home-distilled alcohol,” Bosch told the court. “We’d like to thank the Noctis rescue crews for their patient work in apprehending the men.”
The three are expected to formally enter a plea with the court next week, after discussions with their court-appointed attorney.
Learn About Noctis Labyrinthus
Sprockets hit Orbits with meteor shower
TITHONIA, Jan. 35 - The Fabrica (industrial area) Sprockets outlasted the Ares Port Orbits with a meteor shower that lasted from the first period through the closing buzzer to win Thursday’s Marsball match 65-57.
While some flashy long range two-point comets gave the Orbits a four-point edge going into the final period, the Sprockets kept up their consistent stream of short-range one-point meteors in front of 217 fans at the Terrace One Arena in Hab. 3.
With just three minutes left, the Orbits scored a costly error, losing three points with a crater and didn’t score again, while the Sprockets added four meteors.
“They were strong at long range, but we played to our strength, the close-in game and just kept adding the one-pointers,” said Sprockets forward Kiernan Shah, high scorer with 11 points.
Next week, the Sprockets meet the Hab 1 Rockets (0-1) in the second round opener
- Deroy Duval, Sports Correspondent.
Arrivals
MARS CAROUSEL, Jan. 37 - The private explorer scout Fortuna, captained by Bartolomeo Vasco, arrives in Mars orbit Tuesday, Jan. 40, after a 3 annos (5 year) exploration of the asteroid belt, particularly Vesta, the second largest asteroid after Ceres.
Calendar
Tithonia Planning Commission hears proposal for brew pub
The City planning commission will hear a proposal for a brew pub on Terrace One in Hab 3 near the newly opened sports arena. 18:00 Wednesday Jan. 41
Melas reports initial water mining results
The Melas Council will review preliminary results from the water mining project 70 km east of Melas, and consider whether to proceed with a proposed pipeline at Wednesday's meeting (Jan. 41). Aquarium Dome. 19:00
Dance at the Cubbies
City Residence hosts a weekly dance party outside the Cubbies, or contract worker dormitories Friday, Cubby Terrace at 18:00 Friday. Hab 1 Terrace 3. All resident are welcome.
“Landslide”
Early explorers stranded after aking a long, long tumble down a Valley wall. Adventure threedee Stage 3 Hab 1 Terrace 8, Jan. 42-48, 18:00, 20:00, 22:00
City Social
Mix and mingle with new arrivals and old hands. Acoustic music by acoustic duo Harris and Fitz. Hab 2. Terrace 4, by Tithonia Gardens. Friday 17:00
Marsball Week 4
The 1-0 Sprockets v the 0-1 Rockets 20:00 Thursday Hab 3 Terrace One Arena
- Merry Grace, lifestyle correspondent
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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)
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Copyright © 2025, M. Fitzpatrick, all rights reserved
Photomosaic: Viking Orbiter: NASA/JPL-Caltech