Free The Attempt (The Martian Manifesto Book 1) by Bob Lee Page A

long, low greenhouse looked just like the poly-tunnel hoop houses found on Earth. Before the mission biologist entered, he turned around and looked at their habitat. It was squat and round with a flat top. For years, the designers had referred to this as the ‘tuna can’ style habitat. The advantage of this design was that the hab fit perfectly on top of rockets being launched from Earth. Charles shook his helmeted head.  “Someone back at NASA must have had this tuna can shape in mind when they decided to label our base the ‘Star-Kissed’ habitat,” he thought with a grin.
    After he entered and cycled the greenhouse airlock, he took off his helmet and gloves. This section of the greenhouse was Earth normal atmosphere as well as containing supplemental growing lights. In here, he tested plants for their ability to thrive in treated Martian soil. He was testing cool weather root crops like beets and carrots, as well as leafy plants like lettuce, spinach and Swiss chard. He bent over and pulled a few of the beets and carrots. “The carrots are doing well,” he thought, “but these beets are pitiful. No wonder Serge complains so much. I think I’ll plant some over by the edge of the greenhouse where it’s colder. Beets supposedly taste best when subjected to a few weeks of frosty weather.” He also decided to add a bit more of the small amount of the nitrogen fertilizer the astronauts had brought to Mars. This environment section of the greenhouse was similar to what the approaching colony’s greenhouse would consist of, and so the NASA plan was to transmit his findings to the group after they landed.
    Charles put on his helmet and gloves, and moved to the next section of the greenhouse. In this section, he was testing genetic modifications to the plants that would allow them to deal with increased contaminants in the soil of Mars, as well as lower atmospheric pressure. He had modified the genes for the stomata of the plants. Even though the Mars atmosphere was almost pure carbon dioxide, because of the low pressure , he had had to tweak the plants’ DNA so that they would have more of these leaf openings. This would allow the plants to be able to bring in enough of the carbon dioxide in spite of the low pressure to perform photosynthesis. He had only Swiss chard in this section, with each row of plants having a different genetic modification that varied the number of the stomata on each leaf. “It looks like row 5A is doing the best. I think I’ll take that as a base, and try some modifications of that one,” he mused. He pulled a few of the plants from this row to take back and examine under a microscope.
    As Charles was about to go through the door to the final section of the greenhouse where he was testing genetic modifications for plants to survive in unmodified Martian soil, his helmet radio squawked. “Hey, Chuck, you better get in here. We have a problem.”
    # # #
    “Warning, Warning, Alien machine approaching,” the hopper transmitted.
    Probe Spit could see from the hopper video feed that the alien robot was nearing its crater, with the machine’s eyes and threatening light weapon pointed directly ahead. It was a bit surprised that the mechanism had taken so long to approach, as it seemed to weave and stop at every dep ression in its path. But that had given the factory enough time to finish both of the electro-biosynths. 
    The probe released the electro-biosynths with the instructions to incapacitate the alien device. The synths could find their own way. They were long and skinny, and would move under the soil using hundreds of tiny claws along each side of their bodies. Although they had two eyes for stereo vision, while underground they would use a third parietal eye that would be just above the surface.
    Spit watched the hopper video feed as the almost imperceptible raised soil tracks of the synths approached the menacing alien machine. The synths split apart and came at the machine from each