The Martian Race by Gregory Benford Page A

the meals were balanced nutritionally by the inexorable program, which tended to homogenize them. The mission eating experience was designed to be like repeatedly visiting a favorite restaurant. Sure, the menu was familiar, but familiar was reassuring. So the theory went.
    They took turns in the tiny galley. On the outbound voyage Julia bowed to the public's expectation and dutifully did her time, but the others agreed that the results were definitely substandard, and she was relieved of cooking. Instead, she did extra cleanup.
    That didn't bother Julia, a dedicated non-foodie, who believed that eating was a somewhat irksome necessity. Food was fuel to power people through the day. Something to keep the “little gray cells” nourished, as her favorite detective said. But unlike Poirot's fastidiousness in cuisine, her palate was undemanding. She went through school with a minimally equipped kitchen. Dumping a box of macaroni and cheese into boiling water stretched her limits. Viktor joked that he sure as hell hadn't picked her for her kitchen skills. He had done most of the cooking for the two of them before the mission, and filled out her food survey. “Either that,” he had said, “or risk eating junk food, or worse, Vegemite sandwiches, on Mars.”
    But there were limits to the technology. The microwaved frozen vegetables were especially resistant to creativity, but Marc kept trying. He and Julia worked in the greenhouse to grow fresh ones. He had asked for a wide range of spices as part of his personal picks. Some of his more infamous attempts had produced stomach-rumbling distress. Still, the food was much better than the freeze-dried horrors of NASA days.
    “So what did you two do while we were gone?” Julia asked later over very slightly grainy pudding. The chocolate color disguised any visible traces of Martian dust, but the tongue found its sting.
    Marc licked his spoon carefully. “Well, we were drilling into the giant gopher mounds again, ya know. Found something … interesting.” He went back to his pudding.
    Julia glanced over at Viktor. Something was up. You didn't live with people for two years without being able to read them.
    Twenty years earlier, Earthbound scientists at NASA analyzing Viking photo data had discovered a field of dozens of regular, hundred-foot-tall hills just north of the small crater Thyra. They put forth a strong case that the hills were actually pingos, buried mounds of ice known from Earth's arctic. But so far, Marc's attempts to drill through what turned out to be layers of salt and rubble had been unfruitful.
    “So what you found?” asked Viktor.
    Marc stood up. With studied casualness he said, “C'mon, I'll show you. You can watch the robot vid. It's Raoul's turn to clean up anyway.”
    Aha. It's something big. She decided not to challenge him. Just let him do it in his own way. Anyway, she was enjoying the mystery.
    She helped as Viktor got up clumsily and hobbled to the control room. The tape was already loaded and ready to go. Marc and Raoul must've planned this. Julia wondered, why the production?
    They settled into chairs and Marc started. “Looking back over the robot's vid data, I found a hill where the morning fog seemed to have been a bit thicker or more persistent several times. Figured maybe the regolith covering was a little skimpier than on the others, ya know.”
    The base sported two open dune buggies the size of ancient VW bugs that the crew used for short sprints of less than fifty klicks round-trip. By taking both buggies, two people could haul the drilling gear. The buggies had been part of the Outpost Mars robot post established by NASA in 2010 to characterize the future landing site. The buggies had been telerobotically operated from Earth, and later, from the hab at Zubrin Base. On arrival, Raoul and Viktor had added the seats to enable two people to ride in each buggy on manual mode. When not in active use, the buggies were sent out to robotically