The Last Dance

by Martin L Shoemaker

  Once I was done with the suits, I turned to the dustlock itself, filling the hand vac by the time I was finished. Then I decided there was no sense in half measures: I swapped a new bag into the vac, returned to the shelter, and started vacuuming all around the exam table and the bunk. Then I went around the rest of the room, obsessively hunting every grain of sand.

  But before I could finish with the sand, there was something else I had to deal with: more blood, on the table and on the floor . . . and Van der Ven’s severed lower leg. It lay in a gray plastic tub under the exam table. Around it was a thin pool of blood, speckled with fragments of bone. I found myself staring at the coarse black hairs on the pale white calf, and also at the big hairy foot with its enormous toes. We had often kidded Van about his giant Dutch toes. Now I had to dispose of them.

  I knew what I had to do, of course. We had trained for this and had been conditioned for it, but there’s a difference between training and doing. If Gale and Carver could rise to the occasion and perform the surgery, the least I could do was the cleanup. So I took several more biodegradable wipes, used them to swab the table and the floor, and tossed them in the tub with the leg. Then I applied some antiseptic and used more wipes to sanitize all of the surfaces. When I couldn’t avoid it any longer, I took the tub back to the utility room, I opened the large chute to the nanomolecular composter, and I dumped the tub’s bloody contents in. Then I took more wipes, used them to clean the tub, and tossed them into the chute as well. After one more round with antiseptic, I tossed in the last wipes, and then I closed and sealed the chute. The composter’s screen lit up, asking me what the remains were. It even provided a helpful dropdown menu, so all I had to do was check “1 human leg, partial,” “<1 liter human blood,” and “biodegradable wipes (with antiseptic).” Then the composter did the rest, selecting the ideal mix of nanomachines and the ideal temperature to break down Fadila van der Ven’s lower left leg into component elements and nutrients that we would try to stretch out for the next eight months.

  I’d done what I’d had to do. It was all according to protocol. But when I stopped and thought about what I had done, I fumbled open the chute just in time to add more organics to the composter. Then I closed the chute again, opened the dropdown menu, and added “<0.5 liter human vomit” to the list.

  After a few minutes, to be sure my stomach had settled, I stepped away from the composter, and I looked around. Suddenly I noticed, over in the corner, another pile of uniform pieces and a shattered helmet. And just like that, I remembered Shannon. With work to do, I had put her out of my mind for a while, concentrating just on the next minute and how we would survive. Now here was her uniform, but . . .

  I held down my gorge this time. And much as I hate him sometimes, just at that moment I had the urge to go embrace Gale, to try to comfort him. Suddenly I felt deeply for him and his cold, dazed attitude. I had gotten sick just disposing of Van’s leg; but Gale . . . Shannon’s body was nowhere to be seen because, while Carver and I had been out scavenging in the pit, Gale had done his job. I know you’ve heard stories of what an ass Gale is, including from me, and you’re gonna hear worse. So right now I want to say this as clearly as possible: Gale’s an ass, but under that, he’s also a spacer. I’m not sure I could do all he did that day.

  So then I went back to cleaning one more time: hauling Shannon’s suit to the dustlock, wiping off the blood and vacuuming off the sand, and hanging it in a locker. Then I went back to the utility room and cleaned up the blood and the sand where the suit had lain. More wipes went into the composter, and I tried not to think about what was decomposing in there.

  And then, finally done with cleaning at last, I looked down at myself. My sweaty white skivvies had become red: rust-colored dust streaks mixed with darker-red smears. Van’s blood. Shannon’s blood. Great. We were all extremely healthy, the best that modern nanomedicines could make us, but blood was still an infection risk. And it was on my arms and knees too. I stripped out of my skivvies, scrubbed down with yet more antiseptic wipes (while wondering just how many were stashed in the shelter), and added the wipes to the composter. Then I hung my skivvies in the laundry cabinet, where a combination of cleaning fluids and nanomachines would scrub them clean, separate the wastes, and pipe the organics into the composter and the water into the shelter’s reservoir. Shannon’s skivvies were already hanging in the cabinet, halfway through the cleaning cycle.

  I pulled a survival blanket from a shelf and wrapped it around myself. Not that I much cared if I went around bare-assed, usually, but I never did on duty. And it looked like we would be on duty for the duration. Plus I may have been feeling sympathy for Gale just then, but I was in no mood to deal with his leering. So I turned the blanket into a makeshift toga, and I returned to the workroom.

  Gale was at a desk near the dustlock. He was on the comm with Captain Aames, and they were going over my inventory and making notes. Carver was tending to Van and Elvio. I was ready to collapse, but I was too well trained to go off duty without being relieved—or to interrupt the conversation between Aames and Gale. So I crossed to where Gale could see me out of the corner of his eye, and I stood at ease.

  Finally Gale noticed me. “Captain, hold a bit. Yes, Ensign?”

  I stood straighter. “Lieutenant, I’m done cleaning the shelter, and I could use a rest.” I didn’t add: And so could you. Rank hath its privileges, but sometimes it doesn’t hath a lot of sleep.

  “What?” Gale looked ashen and drawn, as well as unfocused. I pictured the composter again, and I managed not to shudder. “Oh, yes, Smith. It’s been a bad day. Get some sleep.”

  “Thank you, Lieutenant.”

  I turned to leave, but the captain’s voice stopped me. “Smith, have Carver check those ribs first. Your suit comp shows repeated abrasions and constrictions there. I want to know how bad those injuries are before you hit the bunk.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And Smith, I know you’re tired. I hate to do this. But two hours. We can’t spare more time than that right now.”

  “Yes, sir. Two hours. I’ll make good use of them.”

  “All right. Dismissed.” Aames and Gale went back to their planning, and I went to see Carver. He nodded, having heard the discussion, and he gestured at a bench folded up against the wall. Without saying a word, I pulled down the bench, sat down, and unwrapped my toga so Carver could examine my ribs. If Gale wanted to leer, let him. I wasn’t going to violate the captain’s orders.

  But Gale was too busy in his conversation to notice, and Carver was too much of a nice guy to leer. Instead his eyes were like a quantum wave function: they moved from my face to my ribs and back, somehow without ever once crossing the territory in between. I almost laughed, and I suspected his dark skin hid a blush. He examined my ribs with a hand sonic, probed them with his fingers (making me gasp in sudden pain), and finally injected me with a small dose of osteo-nanos to help heal some hairline fractures that had shown on the sonic. Then he taped up my ribs, stood up straight, and looked discreetly away as I rearranged my toga to cover myself. Finally he spoke, subdued but no longer defeated. “Try not to smash those ribs again, Ensign, and you’ll be fine.” He managed a slight smile.

  “Thank you, Lieutenant.” I stood. “I’m not going to smash anything but my bunk for the next two hours.” Then I walked to the water reservoir, filled a flask, and sipped at the straw as I went into the bunk room and found myself a bunk. “Martian Springs,” I whispered. The water was just delicious enough to keep me from falling immediately asleep; but as soon as the flask was empty, I closed my eyes, and I was out.

  I woke to the sound of snoring: two tones, out of sync and off key. Carver and Gale were both asleep in bunks across the room. One of them should’ve been watching over Van and Elvio; but with all we had been through, who could blame them for catching some rest?

  I checked my comp. In less than ten minutes, Captain Aames would send his wake-up call. I hadn’t gotten enough rest, not with t
hat dream. I thought about ten more minutes of sleep, but I decided against it. I thought how easy it would be to cocoon, to try to hide from our troubles and let depression and sleep wash over me until the end came; but I was afraid that dream would return, and it had wrung me dry. Besides, I knew the captain expected better of me than to just give up. He wanted my best, and damn it, I would give it to him.

  I sat up, tightened my toga, and got up from my bunk. I went into the workroom, and I saw that the lieutenants hadn’t forgotten their patients: they had set up a camera on a tripod, and it swiveled slowly back and forth between Van der Ven on the table and Pagnotto on the bench. I stepped in front of the camera and waved my hand at it. “Hello?”

  “Good morning, Ensign Smith,” came the deep rumble of Ensign Chukwunwike Adika. The big Nigerian had been a late addition to our crew, replacing Danita Williams after she had broken both legs in a training accident. We didn’t know him that well, even after the months in transit. He was a very private man. But Aames gave Adika his highest recommendation, and the ensign was always calm and polite.

  “Good morning, Adika. I guess.” I looked at Van’s diagnostic readout. He had a slight fever, but his heart rate was steady, and he slept. “How are they doing?”

  Adika paused. “They are no worse. I only wish that I could say that they are better.”

  I nodded as I looked at Elvio’s readings. He was also asleep. “It’s early. Give them time.” I wasn’t convinced time would be enough for them, though.

  “And speaking of time, Ensign, I do have other duties here. Do you relieve me?”

  I nodded. “I relieve you, Ensign. I’ll watch the patients.”

  “Thank you, Smith. Adika out.” The camera light turned off.

  I checked the medical readings again, and I saw no immediate problems. So I went to the utility room, opened the laundry cabinet, and pulled out my skivvies. They were clean and maybe not as white as when they were new, but white enough. I dropped the blanket and pulled on my clothes. Then I folded the blanket, hung it in the laundry cabinet, and returned to the workroom.

  I walked over to the reservoir for another flask of water, but the flask was only half-full when a dark hand reached over mine and turned off the tap. I jumped a bit: Carver had come up so quietly, I hadn’t noticed him at all. I looked at him, and he shook his head. “Sorry, Ensign, we’re on temporary rationing until the compressor and the composter can catch up. The captain says our patients have first priority for water, especially Van der Ven. He lost a lot of blood. We need to keep them both well hydrated.”

  I understood. The composter was an efficient recycler, but nowhere near 100 percent, and the compressor needed time for the catalysts to tease out water from the soil. Our mission plan called for installing many more catalytic compressors as well as other improvements over the First’s systems, but all of that gear and a treasure trove of tools and raw materials had been lost to us along with the Bradbury.

  And what about Maxwell, Weaver, Koertig, and Uribe? And Shannon, and Van’s leg. I had no right to complain by comparison. So I took my half flask of Martian Springs and told myself to be grateful as I sipped it very slowly.

  A voice came from the bunk room. “It’s a bloody waste of time, if you ask me. And water.” I looked up and saw Gale in the doorway, leaning against the frame and staring over at Van. “Pagnotto’s going to make it, but Van der Ven . . .” Gale shook his head.

  In shock, I looked back at Van. Once I reassured myself that he was asleep, I wheeled on Gale and spoke in a low, calm voice. “Keep it down, Lieutenant. He might hear you.”

  “I doubt he’s hearing anything.” Gale turned his eyes from the exam table. “He’s too far under. And he won’t be with us long.”

  Carver glared at Gale. “You don’t know that, Lieutenant. The odds of post-op infection are low. There’s nothing on Mars that can infect him, we’re all pretty sterile, and we cleaned the area thoroughly before the procedure.”

  “Then explain his fever.”

  Carver blinked. “Probably his body still adjusting to the damage and the loss. Maybe some of his therapy nanos are rebalancing.”

  “Maybe.” Gale snorted. “And maybe we’re just losing him.”

  “So what? You want to just let him die? Just—” I almost said: just drop him in the composter. But that wasn’t fair. Damn it! I was pissed off at Gale, but I couldn’t let that make me forget that five hours earlier, he had saved Van’s life and performed his first surgery ever. Not to mention dealing with Shannon. This disaster had been harder on him than on me. So I tried for a more calming approach. “I’m not ready to give up on Van der Ven.”

  “Of course you’re not.” Gale looked down at his feet. “You’re just like Captain Aames. He never knows when to give up, and that attitude’s contagious. He gets people to believe that nothing’s impossible if you push a little harder. Well, some things are impossible. Sometimes it’s time to stop pushing and just make do with what you have. And we don’t have enough to keep Van der Ven alive.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Look, Smith, it’s all about our resources and how far we can stretch them. Will they stretch far enough for the Collins to get here? The captain has some crazy idea we can actually rendezvous with them. That is never going to happen, but they’ll drop off a package of colonizing supplies. We can use those and keep going until there’s a real rescue. But we can only do that if we can make our resources stretch that far.”

  “And we will.”

  Without looking up, Gale shook his head. “I know the captain thinks so, but I don’t see how. Even with the most stringent rationing, I don’t see all of us stretching our resources past six months. That’s not far enough, not if we have to support people who are going to die eventually anyway and who can’t carry their share of the load.”

  I bit back my instinctive reply and instead said, “I’m glad it’s Captain Aames in command. He’ll see it differently.”

  Gale kicked his bare foot against the doorjamb. “Yes, Captain Aames, he’ll push us to do the impossible. And he’ll kill us all.” He sighed. “But you’re right, we already have his decision: ‘Every one of us is essential to our survival,’ he said, and that’s that. He promises to make life hell for anyone who suggests otherwise. And we have his orders: we’re to keep Van der Ven comfortable and healthy and get him ready for the trip.”

  I looked up. “Trip?”

  “As soon as the storm lifts, the captain wants us to consolidate with lander 1 at landing pad B. He says it will be easier to maintain one shelter instead of two, especially as this one is damaged. He has prepared a list of equipment and supplies, and we are to load these into the crawler for a trip across Coprates quadrangle.” Gale swiped a finger across his sleeve comp, and my own comp beeped. “Carver and Smith, get that list together and into the crawler, while I see to our patients. Start by inspecting the S3 cable.”

  “Yes, Lieutenant.” Synthetic spider silk is a miracle fiber for space travel: stronger than steel, at one-tenth the mass, and flexible as optic cable. Its one drawback is it can develop microscopic flaws that will cause it to unravel under stress, so it has to be inspected on a regular basis. The coils there in the shelter had been uninspected for nearly two years, so Carver and I ran it through the scanner very carefully. We rejected three out of ten coils, then we packed the rest into a travel case.

  After the S3, most of the captain’s list was out in the pit, so we had to suit up for that work. That gave me a chance to inspect the damage to my suit. Looking at the crumpled shell, I felt lucky that some minor fractures were all I had suffered. Our bodysuits were made of a semi-rigid polymer, individually fitted to each of us. The shell would absorb impact and shield us from most of it, but it might crack under enough pressure. That’s what had happened to mine. Fortunately the vacuum resin between the layers had been good enough to save my life, sealing up the cracks and keeping my air in.

  I had Carver double-check, and we
both certified the bodysuit for use even with the cracks; I scavenged Shannon’s water system, patched up my environment pack, and asked Carver to inspect my work again. When we were both satisfied, we suited up, buddy-checked each other, and returned to the pit. There we gathered up the rest of the captain’s list: tools, spare parts, water bags, medicine, dozens of other items all went into the travel case. When it was full, we started on a second case, and then a third. By the time we were finished, we had five of the cases, each a meter square by half a meter high. They were made of a light polymer, extruded on-site by robots from the First, and they were easy to handle even when they were fully loaded.

  With our cases packed, it was time to load the crawler, a low enclosed platform designed for medium-distance travel when it was safer to drive than to risk flying in storms. The video from the crawler garage showed that the building had survived the worst of the explosion: one wall was collapsed, but the rest had held, as had the roof. The crawler itself looked intact: an ugly rectangular box, three meters by five and two high, squatting between eight giant wire wheels. The reactor and the power train were all embedded in the understructure, designed to survive anything that didn’t destroy the entire crawler. The whole structure was low, its center of mass below its axles, all to make it as stable as possible in case of Martian storms; but a pilot turret, a sensor tower, a winch, and cargo racks rose up above the box structure that housed the crew compartment with seats and bunks. Six could ride in comfort, twelve in a pinch.

  The vehicle looked functional, except for the sensor tower, which had twisted and bent beneath the wall panel. Communications and radar were probably out, but we would find out soon enough. In deference to my ribs, Carver took the surface duty. He climbed the ladder to the surface, opened the lock, and climbed up into the ruins of the turret, crouching down between the two leaning panels. I watched the feed from his helmet cam on my screen as he peered through the cracks between the panels and out at the Martian surface. “Looks like the storm has passed, Lieutenant.”