Twelve Units

The last thing his mother had said before climbing into the rover, three days earlier, was something Luken thought he would never need: “In a storm, air first; then, getting found. Everything else can wait.”

At six in the evening, colony time, the dust storm swallowed the Lindero-4 greenhouse and the main power went off. The emergency lights bathed the module in a dull red. Julen, his ten-year-old brother, pressed up against him.

“Backup battery active,” announced the calm voice of NODE, the module’s AI. “Capacity: twelve units per hour for the next ten hours. Power use: air recycler, six units. Heating, five. Radio beacon, four. Greenhouse lamps, eight.”

“Without the recycler, the air in the module will stay breathable for forty minutes,” NODE went on. “Without heating, the temperature will drop to twenty below zero within an hour. The beacon must transmit for one full hour for the rescue rover to fix our position; it will arrive three hours after receiving the signal.”

“The tomato plants!” cried Julen. “If they go six hours without light, they’ll all die.”

Luken looked at the trays: three months of work. Then he looked at the locker at the back, where two thermal suits were hanging. He read the label: “Duration: five hours.”

He took a deep breath, handed one suit to his brother and put on the other.

“Listen to me, Julen. We’re going to do this in order.”

And he began giving instructions to NODE.