Bachelor on Mars

by Leigh Wyndfield

  Unable to help it, Jack moved to the back of the cave again and studied the formation. He didn’t have any of his collection tools, but he needed a sample. “Let me have your wrench.”

  “Why?” she asked, coming up beside him. “Wait, are those diamonds?”

  “I think they’re a new type of quartz.” He ran a finger along the face of a larger specimen, wishing he could take it into the light.

  “Are you going to knock my wrench against those rocks?” she asked suspiciously.

  “Yes.”

  She stepped back, holding the tool close to her chest. “Do you know how much these cost? They’re a titanium alloy mix.”

  He held out his hand. “I need a sample,” he insisted. Because he did. If these were diamonds, just sitting here, and if he made it out of this mess alive, then this could be the answer to all his money questions. Two rather big ifs at the moment. And if it wasn’t diamonds, which was more likely, then it might be something totally new. The thought excited him more than the answer to all his cash flow issues. Which was why he should never have signed up to run a station alone.

  She still cradled the wrench against her, obviously not wanting to give it to him.

  “I’ll let you drive all the way back from Station 3 tomorrow,” he said, part of him doubting they would be around for tomorrow. The other part of him thought they were going to get out of this in one piece, he was going to have discovered a new type of quartz on Mars, and his whole life was about to change.

  “I was already driving back.”

  He closed and opened his hand. “This is important.”

  She paused a beat, but placed it on his palm.

  He freed a few shards with several hard smacks. She hissed as if he’d hurt her.

  Handing the tool back, he gathered the pieces. Straightening, he noticed her examining the handle in the dim light by the edge of the cave.

  “It’s a wrench,” he reminded her.

  She gave him an insulted frown. “It’s not just any wrench, just like those rocks aren’t just any rocks.”

  She had a point, so he gave her a small nod.

  “Daylight is burning,” she said, peering out of the cave at the sky.

  “I agree.” The heavens were empty. “Do we stay or go?” He didn’t like waiting around for them to come back and blow up the rover. Maybe it was a small chance, but he’d rather make a run for Station 3 then stay here.

  “Go,” she said, without hesitation.

  “I agree. Let’s get out of here.”

  They moved quickly, without further discussion, and climbed into the vehicle.

  She had it in gear and going before he’d even put on his seatbelt.

  Despite not stopping again, they made slow time.

  “You need me to spell you?” he asked.

  “Not a chance.”

  “Wow, and I thought I was controlling,” he teased, but he liked her moxie.

  “Huh,” she said, then fell silent working them around a tricky piece of ground.

  It took thirteen hours, but they rolled into Station 3 with an hour’s daylight to spare. Margaret slowed as they crested the hill so they could take a long look. Everything seemed abandoned and quiet.

  “Well I guess the Russians aren’t using this as a base,” she said.

  “No.”

  “It looks like it’s been abandoned for years instead of less than one.”

  She was right. The fine, red dust that covered everything on Mars had drifted in once the biodome field stopped sheltering the space. The winds and storms had beaten all the buildings into a weathered, falling-down ramshackle of a sad little village.

  They rolled forward, parking the rover inside a small lean-to to keep it away from prying eyes. He hoped the winds would pick up to cover their tracks.

  Then they went into the largest building, figuring that would hold all the equipment.

  Station 3 had been a working research center for less than two years. The staff hadn’t been able to keep their testing equipment running after several storms came through and caused energy surges. The cost of upkeep far outpaced the money the United States government was willing to shell out. Congress voted to shut the station down and the researchers living here, all of whom were suffering from either a flu-like illness or Red Meningitis or both, were flown out and the station temporarily shut down. Congress never approved a NASA budget big enough to open it again. When the US government had gotten out of the Mars exploration business, others had stepped in to fill the gap, and private ventures like Jack’s had sprung up.

  What Jack counted on was the fact that it was supposed to be a temporary decampment. Which meant they’d left everything in place. He hoped.

  All the buildings were constructed out of prefabricated metal and wood from Earth. Due to the cost of rocket fuel, everything had been abandoned when they left. Just as his station would be deserted when he returned to Earth. Which could be on the next quarterly shuttle, the way things were going.

  That’s if he lived long enough to get on the quarterly shuttle.

  The building they entered was a combination command center and living quarters. The left half of the room held the same console setup as his lab. The right was a small sitting area with a sofa and two chairs, a small dining table and what looked like a galley kitchen. A door led to the back of the building, probably to sleeping areas and storage. Dust lay thick and undisturbed on the floor.

  He shut the door behind them, kicking up a cloud which obscured his view for a moment before it settled again.

  He waved a hand in front of his face to clear the air. “All of this is garbage. Even on a different planet, Americans manage to litter.”

  Goldie picked up an abandoned coffee mug still sitting on the kitchen table. “Well, we’re glad they left all this stuff, or we wouldn’t have a hope of calling home.”

  “We still might not.” He surveyed the equipment in the far left corner, staring at the stacks of abandoned binders and notebooks, wondering what they contained that had been so disposable, they could leave them behind. “There is no reason the console wouldn’t work. As far as they knew, they were returning or another crew was taking their place on the next rocket up here,” he said, trying to reassure them both.

  “Only one way to find out. Fire up the generator and see.”

  “It will be in one of the outbuildings, in case of fire.” In fact, there should be two, since without a generator, they would die without a steady supply of oxygen.

  “Let’s go find it, then.”

  They trooped back and split up to search the five small buildings. The first building held a rover, the wheels flat to the ground, covered in dust.

  Static came in his ears and he figured she was calling him. He stepped outside. “Goldie?” he asked.

  She leaned out of a nearby hut and waved him over. “What’s up with the Goldie name anyway?”

  “From the dress you were wearing when I met you,” he said, squatting down to look at the weathered generator. It had taken a beating. Rust already browned the edges and most of the paint had been stripped away by the wind coming in from the missing boards on the far wall.

  He flipped on the switch. Nothing happened.

  “You have to prime it,” she said.

  “I keep forgetting I have a mechanic with me.”

  “I’m hardly a mechanic,” she said, her tone prim and annoyed.

  He grinned.

  “It’ll take a bit for me to figure it out,” she said, clearly implying she wanted him to go elsewhere.

  He stood, relieved to gift her the task. “All yours. I’m going to have a look around, unless you think you’ll need me?”

  “I’d rather you not stand over me,” she said, her voice a bit distracted and a bit commanding.

  Normally he didn’t take orders from others, but he discovered he liked her tendency to boss him around.

  “I’m gone then,” he said.

  She didn’t react, already having
forgotten him as she leaned closer to the generator and opened a panel he hadn’t even known was there.

  Thank God he’d brought her. He would have been screwed trying to get it started. The thought he might have to fix the generator hadn’t even crossed his mind, although it should have. That showed how rattled he’d been when the rocket had blown.

  He went back to the main building. The coffee mug Goldie had touched earlier still sat on the table, a stack of papers beside it. As if someone had stood up and walked away. Creepy. Like some sort of Stephen King movie.

  The people who’d once been here had all lived. He’d met the mission leader before he’d left Earth, so he knew for a fact they were alive and well.

  But part of him thought the scene before him had come from the Walking Dead.

  He forced himself to study the control panel, making sure it was still intact.

  Beside him, a floor lamp jumped to life, making him start.

  “Okay, enough of that,” he said firmly. No more jumping at shadows or comparing his surroundings to horror movies.

  “Enough of what?” Goldie asked, shutting the door they’d left standing open.

  “This place is creeping me out.”

  She studied the control panel, looking for the on switch he’d bet.

  He walked to the left side and threw the switch.

  “Oh, it’s there.”

  “Same panel as at Station 7,” he said. There hadn’t been anyone else to buy from, not that he would have. He hadn’t been able to afford upgrades.

  The computer went through its boot cycle and he brought over a straight-backed chair from the table for her to sit in, then took the one at the console.

  “Wow, that was gentlemanly of you to bring me a chair,” she murmured.

  “It’s just a chair,” he said, distracted as they stared at the cursor as it blinked and numbers flashed by, taking its time as it thought whatever computers thought when they’d been neglected for so long.

  Finally, it ended by asking for a password.

  “Damn,” he said, his heart sinking. He didn’t have a password on his computer. Why would he? It wasn’t like some stranger was going to come in off the street and get his personal information. Station 3 had had more people, but they were all on the same team. They shouldn’t need passwords from each other.

  “Do you know the password?” she asked.

  “Nope.”

  “Oh shit,” she said.

  “Yeah,” he agreed.

  CHAPTER NINE

  We are royally screwed,” Boyle said, pacing around the room, still trying to come up with passwords.

  They’d tried everything he could think of—combinations of the team name and the year, famous rover names, and last names of the team members themselves. She’d contributed “password” and “Mars” with the date Station 3 had become operational. But none of them had worked and really it could be anything.

  “At least they don’t have a password limit set up, or we’d have been locked out a hundred tries ago,” she said, trying to look on the bright side.

  He grunted, but kept pacing.

  Jack Boyle was an interesting guy, part scientist, part explorer, part warrior. She felt comfortable with him, even though they’d had a rough start.

  “We could eat,” she suggested, realizing she was hungry.

  “We can only stay here through the morning, tops, before we have to leave. If we miss the shuttle, we’re stuck here until we starve to death.” Boyle went through the stack of paper on the console, flipping pages aggressively. Then he put his hands on his hips and sighed. “But we aren’t accomplishing anything right now, so let’s eat.”

  “I’ll get the pack,” she said, starving now all of a sudden. She slipped outside quickly to release as little of the increasing pressure inside the main building as possible. Once it had risen to Earth’s oxygen level, they’d be able to take off their suits. She trudged across the space, feeling the drive catch up with her. She was pretty damn tired. Perhaps she should lie down and sleep after grabbing a quick bite.

  The sun was setting and for a moment she watched it in awe, then she scanned the sky for the Russians. Nothing greeted her except red golden rays bathing the broken landscape.

  Then it hit her. She’d be spending the night alone with Jack Boyle. The thought made her shiver.

  Jack stared at the password prompt, hearing Goldie come back in behind him.

  He wondered if this was it, if they’d come all this way, only to be met with such a simple roadblock.

  Fabric crinkled and rustled behind him. “I think the oxygen level is high enough now to take off our suits.”

  From out of nowhere, he suddenly wished he’d had a more normal life. With a wife. And kids, maybe. A home filled with pretty rocks and sunlight that wasn’t red except at the end of a glorious day. He’d never wanted these things before, but now faced with his own mortality, he found he did.

  For all that he’d wanted to be on Mars, he didn’t want to die here.

  “I’m going to see if their cleaning unit is still up and running and try to get some of the spacesuit ick off me.”

  He should do that too. He knew time in a suit made him smell atrocious. It usually didn’t matter but he found he didn’t want Goldie smelling him that way.

  He typed in a series of his favorite old school astronauts—Armstrong, Aldrin, Gene Cernan who did the longest moon walk ever at twenty-two hours. The list went on and on.

  “We should eat,” she said, resting a hand on his shoulder, the touch adding to the strange melancholy that had swamped him. “This seems harder than it really is because we’re hungry.” The gesture was oddly comforting, though. And it occurred to him he’d been waiting for someone to touch him just like that his whole life. He wanted to turn and capture her hand, pull her close for a hug. Or more.

  He tapped his finger on his leg, trying to focus on the password again, but he knew they needed to shake it up and stop doing the same things over and over, getting the same results. “You’re right. We’d planned to spend the night here anyway and it will be dark soon.” He stepped out of his suit. “The cleaning unit still work?”

  “Yep, seemed to.”

  “I’ll go take my turn in it. Be right back.” His last glance over his shoulder showed her unpacking their meager provisions. He found the sight strangely comforting.

  When he returned, she had meal kits warming on the now working stove. He helped her set the table, then they sat down and ate in an awkward silence. He tried to come up with something to talk about but had no interest in rehashing their impending deaths and didn’t think any other subject would come across as normal.

  “It feels nice to be out of the suits,” she said.

  “Yeah,” he said, feeling stupid. Why was he struggling to talk to this woman? He’d had no problem until she touched him and brought up all sorts of weird emotions. He’d never wanted to live like a civilian before.

  “I’m trying to come up with a topic that doesn’t include Russians or death,” she said.

  He sputtered a laugh, realizing that they were similar thinkers. “Yeah. I’m sick of thinking about that too. Russians and death are off limits for the duration.”

  They lapsed back into silence, but the tension had eased, with nothing below the surface. It was the same silence he had at mealtime most nights, only better because he had a gorgeous sexy scientist across from him.

  “Did you get an endowment for Station 7?” she asked.

  “Nope. I did the whole thing with grants.” It had been a complete bitch.

  “Wow. How many did it take?” From her voice, she understood completely the enormity of what he’d done.

  “Fourteen.”

  Her mouth dropped open. “So many. How many from the government?”

  “Six.” He watched the horror grow on her face. This was a woman who had done her share of government grants.

  “Oh my God. The work must have been crushing.”
r />   With the amount of documentation required, government grants tore your soul from your body.

  He nodded. “Total hell, and I’m almost out of money again.”

  “You didn’t go the sponsor route?”

  “Maybe I made a mistake there, but I didn’t want some battery company using me as a spokesman and making this into a money machine for them.” Not that he hadn’t had a ton of offers. Sports cars and watch companies, health insurance and video games, they’d all wanted a piece of him. He regretted now that he hadn’t taken the easy money.

  “Changing your mind now?” she asked.

  “I’m leaning in that direction.”

  “I would have broken long ago. You must be one stubborn person not to fold under that pressure.”

  “This reality TV thing was my first step into selling out.”

  She shook her head. “You aren’t selling out. Compromises have to be made to get things accomplished. That’s just life. Mars is worth some sacrifices.”

  “Mars is worth everything.” He met her gaze and they shared a moment of complete accord. He was pretty sure no one understood exactly what he’d given up—and gained—when it came to Mars. Except maybe this woman.

  Seemingly caught up in this moment of realization herself, she cleared her throat to break the silence and intensity of their shared experience. “For me too, obviously. You might have to put up with us for a month, but I had to squeeze into a ball gown and accept a rose from some a-hole who only kept me around to get back at Lynette.”

  “Who’s Lynette? The women who’s running things?” he guessed, realizing that he hadn’t been properly introduced earlier.

  “Yeah. Don’t underestimate her. She might have had a small breakdown after those people died, but she’s a ballbuster at heart.”

  “You sound like you like her.”

  “I do. She’s got the toughest job on the planet I think.”

  “Huh.” Not that his job was hard, not the geologist part anyway. He’d always found his work a joy. “Did you have a sponsor for the rover? Or did the university support you?” He took the last bite of his meal.

  “Are you kidding? We’re a public university. Funding is nonexistent. And I haven’t found a sponsor who is even remotely excited about a climbing rover. But NASA paid a large chunk with the understanding I’d share my design.”