FOGGIE'S MOP
A short story about how to solve the oil crisis and mop up any resulting spill
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Not admitting to having written this pile of nonsense: Thomas C. Gibbons
Human beings, 181 of them from fourteen countries, first reached the surface of
Mars in the mid twenty first century, capping a voyage in space that had lasted
about eight and a half months for the two dozen or so spacecraft in the swarm.
The project had been so expensive that it became one of the most criticized
endeavors in the history of the world. However all criticism ended when the
astronauts discovered oil on the planet Mars.
Then the astronauts on the red planet became media heroes, especially the mission
commander, Harvey Albright. The world’s various news feeds screamed headlines
that sang his praises for leadership, intelligence, and scientific ability. Harvey was
amused to hear that since he had become used to being the spendthrift villain.
All over the world they uncorked huge barrels of beer, to celebrate. Generally it
was felt that the best way to feel good was to lose not only as much feeling as
possible in as many extremities as possible but also consciousness. In that
condition, you could forget the world’s troubles.
The earth was starved for oil. Land-based oil reserves in Texas, Saudi Arabia, and
other such temporarily wealthy places had played out leaving a pin-pricked ground
covering vast deposits of carbon dioxide and other such propellants that had been
used to squirt the last remaining drops of the stuff out of the ground.
The action moved off shore into progressively deeper and more difficult waters
where more and more oil was recovered. This forced the invention of new cleanup
equipment for spills, since most people believed that the wings of birds were
insufficient for such a purpose. Eventually, with technological progress, most spilled
oil was not only recovered but actually sold. The new equipment came in handy
whenever the Arctic Ocean turned into an oil puddle. In earlier years it had been a
major pain when such a spill occurred in the winter, but spill workers considered it a
blessing that ice no longer hindered their work no matter what season it was.
Land-based sources such as shale and tar sands were developed as well, but at first
they could not produce fast enough. New technology again came to the rescue thus
increasing the production volume to unheard of levels in spite of the poor quality
deposits of the stuff. Advanced shovels large enough to swallow a small mountain in
a couple of gulps eventually came with automatic control. Of course there were
scandals such as the time one of these shovels swallowed half of Pittsburgh.
That shovel was just under construction, and someone had installed a switch
backwards. Fortunately most people survived because by that time trucks and SUV’s
were so heavy, powerful, and well-armored that they could survive any such shovel
at will. It was safety first with these large vehicles. At the time of the accident,
the vast majority the population was actually on the road. Some were going out for
a loaf of bread or a beer or something; others were just cruising, although no one
was actually able to move very fast given how packed the roads were. The image of
the gigantic shovel gobbling up the expressway was a comic staple for years.
With the world oil demand doubling every few years, even these supplies were
threatening to run out. There were accidents that shortened the time even more.
A project to produce improved bacteria that made oil backfired when it accidentally
produced improved bacteria that ate oil. By that time, since oil spills were being
reclaimed for actual use, there was no demand for such bacteria, so a few
microbiological workers threw away their samples in frustration. The discarded
bacteria started multiplying exponentially while eating the oil out of the tar sands,
shale, and sea bed with alarming speed.
A sense of impending doom by oil crisis grew despite assurances from officials that
all was well. Technology had always produced enough oil in the past, and it would
again. Before the trip to Mars, no one suspected that space travel would be the
technology that came through.
The Martian astronauts became worried at the reaction to their oil discovery. They
had expected the jubilation on earth to fade, but in the one year of their planned
stay on Mars billions of earthlings just celebrated more and more. That was one
Mars year – one trip of Mars around the sun. It was just short of two earth
years, so the people on earth had a lot of time to work up a frenzy. Mostly they
celebrated by building newer, larger, heavier automobiles and trucks and by driving
them farther and faster, except in Pittsburgh.
Albright and his crew had dug below the Martian surface to find permafrost,
because they had become adept at using solar panels to make hydrogen and oxygen
from the ice. That was their standard rocket fuel anyway. Some icy comet pieces
had been steered into earth orbit for fuel for such a purpose. When they dug for
water on Mars, out came oil, much like some of the original oil drillers on earth.
Without oxygen in the atmosphere, they had no way to burn the oil, so they just
moved away from the ugly, messy stuff to hunt for cleaner ice, which they
eventually found in abundance.
They found the ice a few miles away from their oil strike. At first nobody thought
about the fact that it was all downhill from the oil to the ice and the nearby
encampment.
They also found ancient, organic soil under the surface of Mars. Between the oil
and the soil, it was clear that ancient life had existed there, but it must have been
very ancient. There was no sign of anything currently living. Fortunately they had
brought seeds and nutrients from earth, in case experiments with them became
possible, and by using these along with some minerals found on Mars, they dug up
and mixed up a large patch of soil that could grow food for the group. This soil
was on the edge of the settlement, downhill from the oil.
Earth-bound scientists and engineers worked on the problem of how to get the oil
back from another planet like Mars. That proved to be a difficult problem requiring
much time during which the Martian food was growing well. So the length of the
mission was increased to two Martian years – about three and three quarters earth
years. That was enough time for the next US presidential election to roll around.
One presidential candidate named Foggie Foghorn, actually Robert A Foghorn with
the nickname Foggie, ran on a platform of building a pipeline. When the scientists,
engineers, and other candidates called that too difficult, Foggie ran commercials to
ridicule their low opinion of American know-how. The commercials were so effective
that Foggie rose in the polls by at least ten points especially after he started to
talk about how American skill could easily build a 34 million mile long pipeline. He
adopted the slogan “skill, baby, skill.”
Someone pointed out that both planets were actually moving and 34 million miles was
only the minimum distance. Foggie replied that since the earth was in the center of
the universe with Mars moving around it in a circle, then the distance had to be a
constant 34 million miles. He then promised to reform American education and to
fire all the stupid math and science teachers who didn’t even know that a circle had
a constant radius.
It turned into quite a bitter debate. Foggie had his critics, but he also acquired
many angry, vocal supporters. The stars of most of the various kinds of news
outlets tended to point out that Foggie was nuts, but they usually said that quietly,
or off the air, or in interviews away from their regular programs. While reporting
they generally gave both sides of the issue and pointed out that such strongly held
beliefs had to be taken seriously because they were so strongly held.
The pipeline vs. no pipeline debate became so divisive that a number of political
moderates and independents stepped in to attempt a bipartisan compromise. They
suggested building a pipeline half way to Mars.
Foggie may have had a point about math and science education, but actually when his
support rose ten points it was from twelve to twenty-two, and he lost in the
primaries. However, that didn’t solve the problem of getting the oil back from
Mars. So the next administration, headed by the newly elected president, Marjorie
Duckworth, put a whole department full of scientists and engineers to work on the
problem. The vice president was Foggie Foghorn, but Marjorie had not chosen him
because she believed a word he said. She just needed the swing votes. Marjorie’s
opponent had also offered Foggie his choice of jobs, but Foggie had chosen
Marjorie. To get him on board and satisfy his supporters, she also had to put him
in charge of the Martian Oil Project (MOP). Foggie’s MOP went into action.
When the astronauts on Mars heard about Foggie’s platform and the support it
received, they wondered if they could ever fit in after their return to earth. But
they reasoned that even though 22% of the American voters might have lost their
minds, the others must be OK. When they heard that everyone else was pandering
to Foggie for the votes, they decided to not even come home. That had become
feasible because of their food, fuel, and water production as well as other mineral
and raw material discoveries on Mars. Besides, it was cooler on Mars; the earth
was becoming very warm.
The tone of the news stories on earth changed immediately, especially when they
heard that the Martians thought that the American voters had holes in their
heads. Headlines in the various news feeds suddenly screamed about Martian
traitors, about that ungrateful Commander Albright who didn’t appreciate that the
earth had made his adventure possible, and that earth people including Americans
had perfectly intact and hole-free heads. Many headlines also suggested that
Albright was the reincarnation of Benedict Arnold. A “birther” movement sprang up
claiming that Albright really was a native Martian who had come to earth to subvert
it before going back home.
President Duckworth, who had taken office by then, immediately called for the
arrest of everyone on Mars, although it took the Justice Department a while to
figure out the charges. Besides desertion and treason, the government settled on
theft of government property. The president appointed a commission to figure out
how to make the arrests.
It was actually an international team of astronauts with members from fourteen
countries, and all fourteen decided to press charges. About twenty more counties
with equipment on the mission filed lawsuits to get their equipment back and then
tried to figure out how to serve the legal papers.
The scientists and engineers in Foggie’s MOP eventually persuaded Foggie to drop
the pipeline idea in favor of a big, and that meant really big, space-going
supertanker. The final meeting on this was pretty tense, but Foggie was finally
persuaded by the proposal to make them out of the large number of empty fuel
tanks currently in earth orbit and in various eccentric, inclined, and otherwise
cockeyed earth-grazing orbits around the sun. They were left over from many
launches of spacecraft into earth orbit and of robotic missions to other planets.
Foggie could at least swallow the earth orbit part of this, and although he had
doubts that anything could be in a solar orbit, he gave in anyway.
There was around a thousand such fuel tanks drifting around by that time, and
armies of space workers were recruited to round them up. The entire fleet of
shuttles was pressed into service to snare any such tank that happened to float by.
Before long, a group of fifty tanks was lashed together in a ring as the shuttles
continued to find more. Another group of fifty soon made up another ring attached
to the first one, and almost before anyone could say WTF, the rings of fifty tanks,
all lashed together, stretched to more than a mile.
This contraption would not be a space ship without fuel and engines. Humans had
mastered the art of making rocket engines, but there was still the problem of where
to put the fuel. The plan was to put it into the space within the rings of tanks, but
unfortunately there were far too few floating, used tanks to fill up that space. So
they made a big baggie instead. Actually it was several really big baggies
interspersed with some extra metal fuel tanks. People had become really good at
making baggies by that time. They could be used as long as the outer ring gave the
structure some rigidity. Unfortunately, that outer ring kept bending into funny
shapes because it was so long. The clever engineers sort of solved that with some
ultra-modern, high strength, light-weight plastic rods. Well, there was that and
welding all the tanks in each row together to form 50, mile-long, continuous tubes.
In Las Vegas, they started taking bets about what kind of waves and knots would be
set up in the contraption as it flew.
That left two problems. One was how to get the oil from Mars up to the tankers,
and the other was how to get the oil from earth orbit down to the actual earth.
The answer to the second of these seemed to be some version of firing it out of
the tanks with enough reverse velocity to make it fall out of orbit into the ocean –
maybe even without a spaceship in some early versions of this proposal. Spills of oil
into the oceans had become so common and methods of reclaiming the oil so well-
developed that the ocean seemed to be a perfect receptacle in which to plunk the
oil. But the engineers eventually settled on developing another kind of big baggie,
one of which would line each mile-long tube. After the tanker entered earth orbit
full of oil, astronauts would attach some rockets and heat shields to eject it from
the tubes and carry it out of orbit. They hoped the baggie would survive and float
on the water. It might, however, break on impact, something that was not seen as
a problem.
On Mars, Albright told everyone, “Well, it ain’t rocket science, but maybe it will w--
. Aw, never mind. It ain’t rocket science.”
He also wondered how they were going to dig the oil out of the Martian ground and
get it from the surface to orbit. Actually, this was related to President Duckworth’
s determination to arrest the traitorous Martian astronauts and return them to
Earth for trial. There needed to be a large expedition to Mars for both purposes.
It could ride in a couple of converted tanks embedded in all the fuel baggies.
The two presidential commissions combined into one and decided on a first step of
issuing a toughly worded ultimatum to the newly minted Martians to relinquish any
and all claims to the oil and to get home immediately for trial and punishment.
Harvey Albright was a former ship’s captain who was now retired and working for
the space program. Actually, he was no longer working for that either. Besides
being indicted, they had also been fired. But he did receive the ultimatum and was
puzzled. For one thing, he had made no claim to most of the oil – other than a bit
of it for lubricant and fertilizer. Besides, none of the Martians could return to
Earth even if they wanted to. They had carefully brought all of their spacecraft to
the surface even though most of them were never designed to land and had required
much converting. They had been modified for various daily living tasks, and at most
only a couple of them could still fly, and then no farther than to orbit.
The Martians had been divided on the subject of the oil. A slim majority didn’t
really care if someone from the earth came and dug it out, but they knew that they
had no time for it themselves. That was before the ultimatum and the threats of
arrest and trial. Now not a single Martian wanted a single visitor from Earth to
set a single foot on the surface of their planet. The question was how to prevent it.
“At least,” Harvey told them towards the beginning of all the planning, “they will
need time. They have no ships, no astronauts trained for this kind of mission, and
probably no money. So we have time to make plans.”
In his reply to president Duckworth, Harvey tried to make things clear. Among
other things, he said that no one should see their actions as a revolt but rather as
another, indefinite extension of their mission. “We know we have freely walked into
a very difficult and dangerous task. We know we must work long and hard to even
survive, and we may fail. We do have oil. Apparently, according to our studies, we
have vast quantities of it. But it is of no use in our situation, and we simply have
no time to work on oil recovery now. Eventually both Earth and Mars can benefit –
Earth from the oil and Mars from many specialized products and services that we
will need. You should see this as a mutually beneficial exercise and not a revolt or
separation.”
He continued, “Part of our mission has always been to discover how the earth can
benefit from Mars. We are simply devoting more time than originally planned to
that end. But right now we need to devote full time to establishing ourselves here.
So please stay away and do not keep us from our struggle to survive. You should
not need the oil for some time anyway. Later, when you do need it, we can
certainly help you with it. But not yet.”
After the message was received and released worldwide, newsfeeds of all kinds
screamed information such as:
Mars rebels say “NO” to oil. Maybe later.
“Devoting full time to ourselves,” says Albright.
“Mars is ours. Stay out and drop dead!”
All of this started a war. It was not a war between Earth and Mars. It was
between hawks who wanted to invade Mars immediately and doves who wanted to
forget that and develop the earth’s oil resources more completely. A number of
political moderates and independents tried for a bipartisan compromise. They
assumed that Albright would surrender when an invasion force was about half-way to
Mars. So they proposed sending such a force half way.
President Duckworth ignored all of this and sent a reply claiming possession of the
oil and ordering the Martians to keep their hands out of it and return immediately
to earth. That produced the consensus on Earth that Duckworth was pretty weak.
According to the hawks, she should have declared war and threatened the death
penalty. The doves wanted her impeached for not drilling, or at least digging, for
more oil. Moderates thought it would be enough to design a bigger shovel. In
Pittsburgh, everyone said, “not here!”
Albright’s reply pointed out that there was no time for his people to stick their
hands into the oil except for a little for lubricant and fertilizer and that when he
used his head in the way it was designed, he knew that the earth could survive until
his colony had time to produce oil. Generally the news feeds reported that he had
no time for the people of the earth and probably had his head stuck in a bag of
fertilizer. There followed many publicly expressed opinions of where else he could
put his head along with more calls for the aforementioned head. More than a few
suggested that it was Albright with holes in his head. Albright’s head became a
popular topic of conversation.
Duckworth said that the oil belonged to the earth and that the Martians would have
to pay a fee for any oil that they used for lubricant or fertilizer. She also
repeated her call to get back home. The political opposition called that much too
weak and a few people wondered if Foggie would make a better president. He had,
after all made a campaign speech in which he called Albright “Not-all-bright” as well
as “All-dim” and “Bright Cheeks”. No one was sure just what that last one meant,
but it did catch on.
Bright Cheeks Albright said no to paying for the oil and that there was no way to
return to Earth. He also said that, although he had personally advised against it,
the people there were reacting so badly to the tone of the earth’s messages that
they wanted to call a meeting to declare independence.
That caused a panic on Earth. The stock market crashed. Several leaders of
nations that had contributed astronauts to the mission said that the Martians couldn’
t declare independence because their countries already owned Mars. When they all
realized that they were all claiming the same territory, they backtracked a bit to
call a conference to divide Mars up among them but still said Albright couldn’t
declare independence.
A couple of days later, Albright did just that, or rather, he said, the people in his
group had done it in a meeting. They were also drawing up a declaration of
independence, and Albright was supposed to read it over the radio as soon as it was
ready. Duckworth said don’t bother, and if you do I will ignore it. Most of the
news media said, “Go ahead and read it, Bright Cheeks.”
Albright answered, “I will when it is finished. And, ‘Bright Whats?’ What the hell
does that mean?” Generally the public comment on Earth held that he must be
stupid and evil in addition to the holes in his head. After all, he didn’t even
recognize his own name. Also he shouldn’t say, “Hell” in public since children were
listening. There were more calls for war.
Duckworth said Albright should stop being a dumb ass and show some respect.
Almost immediately, Duckworth was vilified in the media for saying, “ass”.
All this talking back and forth took some time. The two planets are too far apart
to allow a radio signal to pass between them quickly, and the distance constantly
shifts in spite of what Foggie might have thought.
It seemed to most members of the media that Albright was losing his marbles and
might turn dangerous. There were many ideas about how to control him. Although
none of them seemed very practical, there were many entertaining fights about it.
That does not mean debates. The news media had moved well beyond debates.
They often staged fist fights between opposing political factions.
President Duckworth, under the impression that she had been hired to think, put
some of her thoughts quietly into action. Partly these thoughts were inspired by
the progress at Foggie’s MOP in designing the tanker as well as a process for
actually obtaining the oil.
Much of that oil was under pressure under the Martian surface, so holes blown in
the surface at the correct points would produce gushers. They wanted to blow the
holes and then use a series of tubes to feed the spurting oil into tanks that could
be sent into orbit and emptied into the interplanetary supertanker. Those tubes
were called “fish” by the engineers. Nobody knew why, but it probably had
something to do with fishing for oil. The surface to orbit tanks would be powered
by rocket engines that ran on hydrogen and oxygen which, in turn, could be made
from the frozen water under the Martian surface.
The construction of the tanker in earth orbit was almost finished, and it would soon
be ready to leave filled with explosives, other equipment, oil workers, soldiers,
weapons, and even handcuffs for the Martians. It was fueled by hydrogen and
oxygen made from water in the orbiting comet parts that had been moved into earth
orbit sometime earlier. A suitable comet had once made a close approach. That
episode had inspired much alarm about a conspiracy of some sort to destroy the
earth or at least water someone’s plants. That was supposed to involve a dangerous
rain from heaven that would drown a lot of people or maybe get them wet. But
everyone survived and there was no rain.
There were a couple of highly secret radio frequencies available that were originally
intended for use for private family communication especially if some disaster left the
astronauts sick or dying. These transmitters and receivers also had encoding and
decoding capabilities. So President Duckworth started communicating directly with
Albright through one such channel. She told him that she had no intention of
arresting him or his group and that there was no need for his people to take time
away from their own work. However they had to cooperate with the oil workers.
She also let him know that earth really needed the Martian oil more quickly than he
realized because those pesky microbes that were accidentally designed to eat oil
were doing exactly that at an ever increasing rate.
She also let Albright know that she was aware of something else. The number of
people in his colony was about to grow by one, and although there were doctors
available, there was no pediatrician. The impending birth was still several months
away, and there was still time to get one out to Mars in the big tanker. As it
happened, there was a pediatrician who actually wanted to join the Martians and
who would bring some badly needed medical supplies. She promised that, at the last
minute, the soldiers and weapons on the ship would be replaced with medical supplies
and a pediatrician. Actually, that left a lot of extra room, and Albright held out
for a variety of other supplies including more food. The pediatrician was actually an
old friend of Albright’s who would contact him to verify that the president was living
up to her end of the deal.
So Duckworth and Albright struck a deal, and the big oil ship went through its final
preparations. There were a couple more conditions. Albright and the Martians
couldn’t say anything about the deal on any radio frequency that someone on earth
might hear. Also, the Martians needed to ignore any statements that Duckworth
might make to other Earthlings about the oil ship. She then told everyone that she
was sending the ship whether Albright wanted it or not and he had no choice but to
accept it. Anti-Martian passions were running so strong on earth that everyone
there ate it up. She was no longer thought of as too weak.
She couldn’t admit to sending the medical supplies and food, so she made up various
stories about the extra packages. One story held that she was sending liquid
refreshments for the oil workers, but that they couldn’t touch them until the tanker
was loaded with oil on Mars. She displayed a large beer barrel with a very large
cork and watched it as it was loaded into an orbital shuttle. Of course, the barrel
actually contained some of the food, medical supplies, and other items that Albright
needed. The rest of the supplies were smuggled aboard in various other ways,
because no one would have believed that even the oil workers could drink that much
beer.
Later, when the pediatrician inspected his cargo, he discovered that the cork was
missing from the barrel. Of course, it really wasn’t needed, but he went into a
panic that someone might find it and figure out that the barrel couldn’t be full of
beer. He searched hard for it all through the warehouses and loading areas without
finding it until he had to give it up for the big launch. Unfortunately, he had asked
a couple of people whether they had seen the cork. One of them was a friend of
Foggie’s, but he didn’t realize that beer should be spilling from the barrel without
the cork. At least he didn’t realize it yet.
Time went by. The tanker left earth orbit with rocket engines not roaring exactly
in the vacuum of space but at least vibrating. As it pulled away, observers debated
whether it looked more like a question mark or, when the sun hit it just right, a
dollar sign. In Vegas, people started collecting on their bets.
The pediatrician arrived, the baby was born, some tanks were put in place, the fish
–er, tubes – were laid down, and the first hole was blown in the surface to the first
oil chamber. The tube that was supposed to catch the oil was blown to pieces and
the oil spewed from its underground chamber all over the Martian surface. Some of
it evaporated into what passes for an atmosphere on Mars, and a big mass of oily
tar rolled down the slope from where the hole in the surface had been blasted.
This was at the site of the original oil strike, and the oil was rolling directly toward
Albright’s new Martian village.
Albright started to call the earth on the radio to demand that Duckworth do
something about the avalanche of tar descending upon his house. But the oil
workers, who were much too embarrassed to admit to the earth what had happened,
persuaded him that they could stop the flow. So they all got to work, dug up a lot
of the Martian surface, and used it to dam up the avalanche. It seemed to work,
but then they started to wonder why the thick stuff kept rising toward the top of
the dam where it would soon spill over. Oh, right, they realized, the oil is still
coming out of the ground.
When they tried to attach one of the fish tubes to the top of the gusher in order
to contain and direct it toward a suitable tank, the tube slipped and so did all the
workers. They all started sliding downhill along with the tube. After some mad
scrambling and slipping, they got the tube back up to the gusher and tried to push
it in place. By this time their Martian suits, which allowed them to breathe, were
covered with tar, and they all looked like walking oil spills. But some of them did
manage to hold the tube in place long enough for someone else to bolt it down to a
foundation that had been previously fixed in the surface. The oil flowed into the
tube instead of onto the surface. The gusher seemed to be controlled by this
procedure, which in oil company jargon was known as the “fish kill”.
Everyone breathed a sigh of relief inside their helmets. Then they noticed oil
shooting out of the other end of the tube. They had forgotten to attach this end
to the tanks destined for orbit. After much oily slipping and sliding, they finally
they attached the tube and created a continuous line to the tanks. As each tank
was filled, it was fired into orbit, unloaded, and parachuted back toward the
surface, where it landed with a big thud because, face it, what passes for a
Martian atmosphere is practically not even there.
When this relay had finally filled the orbiting tanker, it left orbit, assumed a funny
shape, and headed for earth. Unfortunately the oil was still running through the
tube and spilling out the far end. So they filled the tanks again, but there was
nothing in orbit to empty them into. So the oil from the ground continued to spill
onto the sand and roll down toward the dam that protected the village. Then it
rolled over the dam and down the hill.
In the medical supplies, someone found a big cork. It was stuffed into the tube
and the flow stopped. But, as they watched, the cork started to move. Then it
blew out and flew away. The oil spill resumed. No one knew where the cork had
gone, but a couple of people started splashing around in the spilled oil looking for
it. Others searched the medical supplies for another one. When they asked the
pediatrician where another one might be, he muttered, “Aw jeez, is that where it
went? It was on the ship the whole time?”
They built another wall out of the Martian sand to dam the flow. When the oil
neared the top, they built it higher. Again the oil approached the top and again
they built it higher. And higher. And higher. But the oil level continued to climb.
The sand wall made a huge “U” from the top of the hill, down most of the way,
across in front of the village, and then back up the hill. This big “U” continued to
fill with oil, and everyone realized what a flood would descend on the village if and
when the dam failed. They could build dwellings elsewhere, but it was going to flood
the food growing region as well, and they were not sure they could move the
plants. They had not prepared any soil in any other location.
All this took enough time for the big space supertanker, on a fast course to earth,
to approach its destination. It reached orbit and, with the supervision of the MOP,
the plan for bringing the oil to earth was put into operation.
By that time Foggy had become more powerful than ever, because the negotiations
between President Duckworth and Albright had been exposed along with her promise
not to arrest him and her decision to not even send the soldiers. It all started
when Foggie heard about the cork and a friend explained carefully that there may
not really have been beer in the barrel. Quiet investigations followed, and the
truth finally emerged. With every passing day it became more likely that she would
be impeached if she didn’t resign first. Vice President Foggy was quietly preparing
to take on the job of president.
Workers in orbit had prepared the baggies for the trip to the surface. They were
fitted with some retrorockets and heat shields. After the rockets burned to slow
them down, the mile-long baggies, all fifty of them, entered the atmosphere in a
big, strangely bent and tangled mess. Mostly everything worked, and soon the
atmospheric drag had slowed the fifty oil-bearing balloons down to subsonic speed.
Unfortunately, by that time, the plastic bags had ripped away – all of them. Fifty
oil globs descended through the atmosphere, becoming flattened by air pressure,
mostly merging into a miles-long, amoeba-shaped glob of oil, twisting and turning,
changing shape, splitting and remerging, and there was nothing much left but a big
glob of oil. It all spiraled down through the atmosphere toward whatever happened
to be in the way on the surface.
What was in the way was Washington DC. Duckworth was holding an unscheduled
press conference in front of the White House where a number of press
representatives had surprised and cornered her. As they asked questions such as
“Well did you promise not to arrest him, or didn’t you” and “Did you really send
medical supplies” and “Where is the cork”, Foggie stood to one side and listened.
He was very pleased with himself, because he was the one who had alerted the
press when Duckworth was going to try to sneak out for a mud bath. Just as a
reporter asked if she were looking for mud again, a big glob of oil hit Foggie right
in the face.
More globs followed. The president and all the reporters ducked. They covered
themselves with their arms, and ran about. However, one glob after another
splashed into first this reporter, then that one, then the president, then another
reporter, then Foggie again. As the shower of oil became thicker, members of the
secret service tried to shield the president and instead turned into a little mountain
of oil that was slowly sliding toward the White House door.
As Foggie’s own secret service detail tried to help him inside, he thought that
maybe he shouldn’t have aimed the load of oil at the Chesapeake Bay. He only did
that to make it easy for him to travel to the delivered oil shipment and have his
picture taken with it. Besides the Chesapeake Bay had become a fairly large target
given the way that the recently rising sea had expanded its size. As he thought
about this and slowly slipped and slid toward the White House, a reporter took his
picture with the oil as someone else shielded the camera with an umbrella.
At the time no one in Washington knew about the oil spill on Mars, because the
Martians had not said anything about it. But about the time that Washington was
turning into the owner of some of the world’s largest oil reserves, the dam on Mars
was about to fail. Martian people desperately pushed more sand into place in front
of the wall, but the cracks, tunnels, and eroded crevasses were enlarging at an ever
increasing rate that was about to exceed the rate of piling up new sand. Besides
the pool of oil had reached the top and started to spill over carrying sand away
with it. For Albright and his workers, it was a case of throw on a bucket of sand,
duck a spurt of oil, throw on a bucket of sand, duck a spurt of oil.
Finally, and just in time, Albright yelled “Get out” through his helmet radio, and
everyone ran away from a gigantic, 60-foot sand bulge in the center of the dam.
The bulge grew and grew and turned into a red, Martian sand explosion. It gradually
turned black as a 60-foot wall of oil followed and replaced the sand. The dam
peeled back left and right of the break producing two moving red sand gushers each
of which turned black as oil overtook sand. The wall of oil tumbled down the hill
albeit at a slow pace because of the low Martian gravity. In spite of the pace,
there was nothing more that the Martian people could do to keep it from swamping
the field where the food was growing.
The houses had been moved or rebuilt out of the way, and nearly all of the
equipment was safe. The people had frantically picked any food in the field that
was ready or nearly ready, and had moved the previous stores to safety. But when
the advancing oil wall reached the field, most of the plants were still there and still
growing. A short time later, they were no longer growing. However, they were
still there.
Later, after the oil had spread out and thinned out, Albright walked through the
remains of the field poking at the remains of plants and sniffing oil-soaked leaves.
He reached down and picked up a large, oil-soaked cork and said, “So that’s where
it went.”
Meanwhile huge puddles of oil were growing in Washington DC, running off the hills,
and collecting in low places. There was a levee around the central part of the city
to keep the rising Potomac River out. It filled with oil creating a lake that
deepened and widened. The oil came in long, irregular, sort-of connected strands
that mostly missed the suburbs but splashed into the central part of the city and
spread out as the suburban residents watched from a distance and as the strands
became shorter while breaking up and spreading out at ground level.
Buses at the bus station had all the oil they needed, but no one could enter them
any more. Passengers decided they would rather be on the roofs.
The Smithsonian had a supertanker on display in the river just beyond the levee,
but the oil had long since been drained out of it. Now the oil was back, and a
group of oil blobs that used to be tourists continued to inspect the ship.
In some low areas, the oil was deep enough to threaten people with drowning.
Rescue workers used long ropes to haul them up. An oily rain drained from the
Capitol Building’s dome and onto the steps and walkways below bothering tourists,
senators, and lobbyists alike. The big Lincoln in his memorial looked puzzled.
Tourists on top of the Washington Monument decided to stay there. The city’s
emergency personnel, well trained in what to do for any possible problem, stood
around scratching their heads.
By the time it was over, Marjorie Duckworth, Foggie, members of the media, and
various others were watching from the White House roof. It was no longer white.
The part of the city inside the levee, the main target of the oil strands, was now a
lake of oil averaging about five feet in depth.
Later, when it became possible, Marjorie contacted Albright and discussed the
situation. Their conversation was, as always, slow due to the time delay for a radio
signal to pass between the two planets. But, without the delays, some of it went
like this:
“The whole field, huh?”
“Yeah. The whole city, huh?”
“Spared the ‘burbs. Most of it is a big lake inside the levee. Its aim was pretty
good. And there is another problem. I’m going to be impeached unless I resign
first. They are going to cancel that deal about you not being arrested. They want
to adapt that same tanker to sending the army to Mars to get you.”
“I’m going to have to save them the trouble. We have to come home. We only have
a couple of months of food. I was going to ask for the tanker to come and get us.”
“Well, don’t do that. I need you to stay put.”
“Why?”
“Because I want to move to Mars. I’ve had it with this planet.”
“How can you do that?”
“They want me to quit and get out of here, so I still have some bargaining power.
I can use that tanker to bring a big load of supplies up there – if “up” is the word –
and am told that I can get it to you in a couple of months plus just a little. We’ll
use some of the oil tanks for extra fuel and some for cargo. So we can pick up a
lot of speed. And the planets are lined up well enough to allow a quick passage. So
if you can hold out just a little longer, I can come to the rescue.”
“What about the army?”
“Hey, I pulled a big switch the last time didn’t I? I have a group of people who
want to join you. I’ll sneak them into army uniforms and aboard the ship. Most of
them are from Pittsburgh, so they are on your side. Plenty of room for the extra
supplies, too. So what if Foggy thinks they are army supplies?”
“Won’t the army object?”
“Nope. The army is on my side. We have sent them into so many crazy foreign
wars that they are tired of it. Why would they want to go to Mars to fight one?
So can you hold out until we get there?”
“Sure, we can hold out. Barely, but we’ll make it. Can you start soon?”
“Sure. But, you know, I have a question. Instead of trying to hold back all that
oil half-way up the hill, why didn’t you build a levee around your garden?”
“You mean we could do that? Huh. Well, of course, we could have done that. I
never thought of that.”
“We do it on Earth all the time. Especially now with all the storms and floods. I
hear they didn’t have nearly as much of that 50 years ago. Of course, we didn’t
know we had to build a levee facing the sky.”
“Well,” said Albright, “I have a question too. Did you know that your people here
were using sunlight to separate water into hydrogen and oxygen for rocket fuel to
lift that oil off of Mars?”
“Sure.”
“Do you know how many kilograms of water they used for each kilogram of oil they
lifted off?”
“I’m not an engineer. Half a kilogram, maybe?”
“No, it was about nine. That was just to get it off of Mars.”
“Wow, are you going to run out of water?”
“No, we got the water back. The hydrogen and oxygen burned in the rockets and
spit out water, which just froze out on the surface again. All they used was
sunlight.”
“Was that your question?”
“No, my question is this: Why even bother with the oil if you can use hydrogen
that way? Oil is a lot of trouble. Why don’t you just use sunlight to make
hydrogen fuel, or something, and burn that?”
“You mean we could do that? Huh. Well, of course, we could have done that. I
never thought of that.”
“We do it on Mars all the time.”
“Well, I’ll mention it to Foggie. He’s going to take over.”
But later when she told Foggie she had a suggestion about fuel, he interrupted with,
“Don’t worry about that. I still have my MOP. I am going to clean that spill up
with my MOP.
I just knew he was going to say that, sooner or later, she thought. To Foggie, she
suggested that he might want to think about some other fuel besides oil, some
alternative.
“Are you kidding,” he said. “Look at this oil lake. We can still clean it up and sell
it. We’re rich! Rich, I say. Rich. Do you mean just throw that away? Oil is
what we do. And we’re rich. And when that ship of yours comes back, we’ll have
more.”
Marjorie decided not to tell him that his oil lake was just about a one day supply
for the country. If he started thinking clearly, he might suspect that she was
about to hijack his tanker and it wouldn’t be returning. So he would not be getting
any more Martian oil. And there was nothing to make another tanker out of.
There was really only one thought that interested her. It was, “Get me off of this
fog-brained planet.”
She did get off the planet. The ship blasted out of orbit full of settlers with many
new skills and supplies, much of which were valuable and specialized such as movies
and construction equipment. When it was about half way to Mars, Foggy realized
that the soldiers he thought were on it were actually still waiting for their orders
from the Secretary of Defense. When he asked where the Secretary was, the
answer came back, “On the ship.” Foggy then screamed that the only reason he
couldn’t think straight was that it was so hot. “Why is it so hot?” he wanted to
know. Nobody knew.
He soon forgot all this because he was so busy cleaning up the streets, storing the
oil, trying to keep germs from eating it, dealing with all the people who were trying
to get Washington to give them more oil, and trying to figure out why so many
people didn’t even know that Mars orbits around the earth.