16

The mood of celebration and camaraderie on the ship, however, encouraged Flinders in his efforts, and he and Barrow continued to harass the crew with such fabricated emergencies. Flinders and Barrow caused the toilet to stop working for half a day; they pretended the ship’s air supply was threatened; they even had the lighting switch off at random intervals over the course of a week. But then Barrow suggested turning off the ship’s high-gain antenna so that the crew would lose access to their logs, and most interaction with the Martians back on Earth. The ship could still communicate with Earth through its low-gain antenna, but at such low bandwidth that it was only useful for mechanical orders and emergency communication.

Flinders resisted the idea at first, for he knew how important the logs were to the crew. But the past successes made him over-confident. Obviously, when we consider the primitive state of Martian space-travel, something was bound to go wrong.

Greenstockings was the first to notice that the logs were not updating. She went to find Flinders. By the time he had assured her that the matter would be addressed, Hood and Lu arrived to announce that their logs weren’t updating, either.

Flinders announced that there appeared to be a problem with the ship’s antenna, but that the Martians back on Earth were aware of the problem and working to fix it.

‘What are we supposed to do now?’ asked Hood.

‘How do we check our logs?’ asked Lu.

‘Don’t worry,’ said Flinders. ‘I’m sure they’ll have things back in working order in a few days.’

‘A few days!’ they all exclaimed.

Back and Hood almost immediately got into a very loud argument. Akaitcho floated about the ship asking repeatedly if anyone wanted to play chess. Richards looked very frazzled, since everyone kept cornering her and making very personal confessions about how unhappy they were.

Flinders looked about him at the evening meal, and quickly realized that removing access to the logs, even temporarily, had been a great mistake. He contacted Barrow and ordered the reactivation of the high-gain antenna.

This was when they discovered a real problem. In order to create the effect that the antenna was no longer working, they had shut off the circuit providing power to the heaters at the base of the mechanism that adjusted the antenna’s orientation. The heaters maintained a minimum temperature around the bearings on which the antenna moved, and when the circuit was shut off, the lubricants froze. This was an expected outcome of the exercise and should not have been a problem. However, the orienting motor was designed to shut off when it sensed that the temperature was too low. When the power was restored, and the heaters reactivated, the orienting motor remained locked. It was determined that while the heaters were inactive, the mechanism’s thermometer had gotten so cold that its calibration was ruined. The Martians had no means of bringing the orienting mechanism back online.

When Flinders was informed that the antenna may have been permanently disabled, he retreated to his sleeping chamber. Several hours later, he summoned the whole crew to the galley. He described the damage to the antenna and said, ‘So it seems that we no longer have access to the logs, nor are we able to transmit personal communications of any kind via the low-gain antenna. We’re going to have to entertain ourselves.’

Prior to this misfortune, there is a wealth of information regarding what went on aboard the Investigator. After the high-gain antenna stopped working, very little is known. The sparse information provided from the low-gain antenna, and the accounts written by Franklin and Jane are the only sources. Although the following relation concerning the rest of the expedition is founded only on circumstances, and is unsupported by direct evidence, it has been judged proper to include it here, especially as the outcome was so shocking. Also: the circumstances are very strong.¹