So I loped along, another gait they teach at LSS: pushing off one leg and stretching out the other, then landing and switching. It’s not nearly as fast, but there’s less impact, and it’s still better than a walk. Soon I was at the top of the first ridge. There I had to stop and search to make sure I was still on the tracks. The wind was stronger up there: I could hear the low rumble around my suit, and the tracks were blown completely clean. But looking down the other side, I saw more tracks a ways down, continuing into the valley and up the next ridge.
And there! Not on the ridge, but on the mountainside beyond it, there was movement. I zoomed my helmet cam, and sure enough, there were Carver and Van, working their way down the slope. Van held a crutch—no doubt that was what Carver had used to mark his trail—but the slope was so steep, their progress was slow.
Well, another hand could help there. I loped downhill, feeling each jolting step, but too eager to let the aches slow me down, and then up the next ridge. Carver and Van were halfway to the valley floor, but the terrain was still against them, more vertical than horizontal. Carver saw me and waved. I waved back and continued down to meet them up on the mountainside.
“It’s great to see you,” I said as I climbed up beside them. “Geez, Van, when you decide to hide, you don’t mess around. Why did you climb so far up here?”
“I am a meteorologist,” Van said. “From a small child, I watch the storms and try to understand them. So when I planned to die, I said, ‘Not without climbing up to see that.’” He pointed to the west. I looked: sand clouds were mounting, halfway to Phobos I swear. The winds were picking up.
“Whoa . . .”
Van nodded. “Now you see, at last. Please, you and Carver leave me. I do not wish to die knowing I killed you too.”
“No one’s dying here today,” I said. “We just have to move a little faster. Here.” I plugged my spare air tube into Van’s environment pack. As I did so, I couldn’t help seeing his vitals: 38.1 °C, almost to the danger range. But for now, I was more worried about air; and Van had plenty of air for both of us, at least for a while. I disconnected my own pack, and Carver helped me to remove it. Then I turned my back to Van, he hobbled up behind me, and he and Carver hooked his bodysuit onto mine, using clamps designed for rescues like this. The official term for this was dorsal assist mode, but spacers called it doggy carry. There were, naturally, plenty of doggy jokes made about it.
Jokes aside, it was an effective rescue carry in low gravity, especially with a partner. I picked up my environment pack and clipped it to Carver’s. The second pack bulged awkwardly from Carver’s back. His load was heavier, less balanced than mine—as long as Van didn’t squirm. But both of us were balanced enough to climb, and this way we didn’t have to leave behind precious air and water.
We descended as fast as was safe. In training we had scaled far worse slopes, requiring cables and crampons and other gear. By comparison, this was no challenge—except every time I happened to look west, the dust clouds had snuck closer, like they were stalking us. With the Martian air devouring all sound, it was easy to forget there was a storm at all. Then I would glance up, and . . . Wham! The dark-red clouds were that much closer.
Before long, we had to slow down. The first wisps of dust were thick enough to blind us at times and make us misjudge our hand- and footholds.
But just like that, we were in the valley, momentarily sheltered from the worst of the sand. The dark clouds still stalked us from behind the mountain, but for the moment it felt like we were safe.
“Van,” Carver asked, “can you walk these slopes?”
“Not in time. The storm will be here soon.”
“How soon?” I looked at the time on my comm. “Oh, fuuuuuck.”
“What now?” Carver asked.
“I told Elvio to head for pad B if we weren’t back in an hour. There’s only eight minutes left. We’ll never clear both ridges in time.”
“Maybe he’ll give us more time,” Carver said, but he didn’t sound confident.
“Maybe.” And maybe Gale had talked him into leaving already. “One way to find out, sir: double time!”
Despite the ache in my ribs, I jogged the best I could manage with Van riding doggy. Without any pain to hold him back, Carver ran ahead, perhaps hoping to catch the crawler before they left. But a glance at my comm told me he would be too late. Another glance over my shoulder gave me chills despite my exertion: the storm front was now directly over the mountain, like the biggest wave ever about to crash down upon us. Silent doom was ready to take us.
I looked back ahead, and Carver had stopped at the top of the ridge. Had he seen the doom storm as well? Was he giving up? But he wasn’t looking back, he was looking down into the valley ahead. And waving me forward.
I ran faster, crying out slightly at every step; but a little rib pain wouldn’t matter soon anyway. Wincing and puffing, I pulled up beside Carver, and I looked down into the valley. There was the crawler, speeding across the valley between the two ridges.
I got onto the local comm circuit. “Elvio.”
A smug British voice answered, “Negative, this is your commanding officer, Ensign. Keep moving, we’re short on minutes.”
Carver and I started our downward jog. I refused to look back. It felt too good to be running toward something, not away from something. So I peered ahead. “You repaired . . . sensor tower.”
“Indeed. You ordered us to wait; you didn’t say we had to be idle. The repairs are far from perfect, but they’ll get us to pad B. Pagnotto’s a top-notch engineer, and I can follow instructions. When they’re delivered clearly.”
I thought about the punch. “Sorry, sir.”
“About what? I seem to have had a bump on my head. I do not recall how that happened, but I do see a bit more clearly now. And so does the deep radar. It’s about 70 percent effective, good enough for us to find safe terrain and make top speed. Which we’ll need if we’re going to outrun that sand. So shut up and run.”
I shut up. I ran. Before the end, I hobbled. I had cracked the ribs worse than before. But Carver helped Van and me along, and we all reached the crawler ahead of the storm. I looked back one more time, and I saw the storm tower over us like a giant ready to smash us with great red fists. Then Gale punched the accelerator, and we were off to landing pad B.
ASCENT STAGE
The rearview camera showed the sandstorm not far behind us the entire trip. Carver was at the sensor console, running images of the sky; and despite Van der Ven’s fever and his weakness, he stood right behind Carver, leaning on his chair and urging him to turn back to the rearview. Van was delighted with that storm, pointing out its features: sand cloud banks, cell formations, and signs of weak wind shear. His only complaint: “I wish the Doppler radar worked. I’m sure I could find cyclones.” Me, I didn’t even want to think about cyclones, even though I knew they would be harmless in the thin air. A guy I knew once had his entire semi, load and all, picked up by a twister, spun around, and dropped back to the road going the wrong direction. That load was heavier than the crawler! So even weak cyclones gave me chills.
But we crossed the quadrangle without further incident. As we rode into view of landing pad B, Captain Aames came on the comm. “Don’t waste any time, Gale, that sandstorm is on your ass. We’ll have the shelter pit open. Drive in and park on the ramp. Now move!”
“Yes, Captain.” Gale pushed the accelerator to the max. The ground near the pads was well mapped, both surface and deep radar. There was no risk in speed, especially when we got onto the smooth surface of the landing pad itself. Soon we saw the pit doors standing open, along with two spacers standing ready to close them behind us. The shorter one could’ve been any of the crew, but the tall one could only be Adika.
Gale slowed so as not to spray the spacers with dust, and then he smoothly turned the crawler in line with the pit and drove it down the ramp. Adika and his companion pulled the giant plates shut behind us. It was a tight fit, but the ra
mp had been built for emergency crawler parking. Barely. Gale stopped the crawler nose to nose with lander 1, not centimeters between them.
That still left us with a pretty cramped exit: the airlock at the rear of the crawler was less than half a meter from the pit doors at the top, somewhat more at the bottom. I had to back out of the lock and then shuffle sideways to make room for Van and the rest. As I slid free, Adika grabbed my hand and gave it a hearty shake. “Welcome to Mars Shelter One.”
I tried to smile through the visor. “Not a very inspired name.”
Adika shrugged. “It’s descriptive.” He turned back to the lock. “Welcome, Van der Ven. Do you need assistance?”
Van emerged from behind the ladder, crutch first, and shook his head. “Thank you, Adika, no. I must learn to use this.”
“My apologies. Please, Ensigns, proceed to the bottom of the ramp. We have converted the access shaft to additional shelter.” The ramp had no guardrails, and there was only a narrow walkway between the crawler and the edge, so I moved with caution. I thought about just jumping down in the low gravity, but I didn’t want to tempt Van to do the same, so I stuck to the walkway.
When I got to the bottom of the pit, I noticed some of the wall panels were missing. Not fallen, like in our pit: these had been deliberately removed and were nowhere to be seen. The panels weren’t just decorative, they covered plumbing and wiring and storage, so someone must have had a more important use for them.
Gale, Carver, and Pagnotto joined us, and we entered the tunnel airlock. When we got through the other side, I saw where the panels had been put to use: the lander 1 crew had walled off the rear of the shaft as a makeshift dustlock and suit locker, and they had affixed panels as benches or bunks all up the wall of the shaft. They had turned the shaft into a vertical shelter with room for the five of us. Sanitary facilities, recycling, medical, and the workshop were all in the main shelter, but at least we wouldn’t be cramped for sleeping quarters.
At the top of the stairs, I saw a new airlock attached to the exit door. The entire access turret and shaft were pressurized. They must’ve produced a lot of air to fill this space. Of course, they hadn’t had to dig out from an explosion and cave-in—or amputate Van’s leg and dispose of Shannon.
Captain Aames stood on the stairs, waiting for us. “No one move,” he said. “Let’s not get any more dust in here than we have to. That dustlock can only handle one of you at a time, so the rest of you hold still.” He crossed his arms and glared at us as Van hobbled into the dustlock. “Now Lieutenant Gale, would you mind telling me why you stopped and made nonessential repairs after I instructed you to make best time?” I cringed, fearing a big blowup.
But Gale was smarter than I expected. I can’t say he and I were ever friendly after I punched him. Certainly he never hit on me again. I don’t often let my temper loose like that; it gets me into too much trouble. So I had surprised myself as much as I did him, and I still make him nervous today. And he could have made a big deal about the punch, could’ve made the entire trip look like a bunch of insubordinate crew defying him in a crisis. Legally, he would probably have been right to do so.
Instead, for that moment at least, Gale proved he was a spacer, not a space lawyer. He must’ve decided we needed each other, because he lied through his teeth. That’s a big risk with Nick, his one unforgivable sin, but Gale did it anyway. “I understand, Captain; but on further investigation, Pagnotto judged we could do most of the repairs very quickly, and that justified the delay.”
Aames glared at him. “It justified the delay.”
Gale nodded. “Yes, sir, in my judgment it did. We needed the data.”
The captain’s eyes widened. “Oh?”
I saw Gale glance at Carver. Had these two cooked something up while I was worrying about the storm? They must have, because Carver spoke up. “Yes, sir, Captain. I think it did. I’ll need another orbit to confirm, but I think my mods to the motion detection algorithm have found the Bradbury.”
With that news, Gale and Carver successfully distracted the captain. Aames practically leaped down the stairs, ignoring safety and Mars dust to crowd in beside Carver and stare at the display on his suit comp. Then I saw something I’ve almost never seen: Nick Aames, exuberant. “Yeehaw!” He slapped Carver’s shoulder, and red dust sprayed through the air. “Martian Springs all around. Carver, Gale, you just put us weeks ahead of schedule.” And with that, the subject of our unscheduled stop was dropped. Aames had a plan.
Or I should say, he already had a plan, and now he had a better one.
Nick’s original plan had been simple: Convert the pad B pit into a shelter for the two teams, tear apart pads A and C for spare parts, and do whatever it took to stay alive while we searched for the Bradbury; and if we found it, scavenge it for supplies. If we didn’t find the Bradbury, then the backup plan was to scrape by, improvise more catalytic compressors for water, try to cultivate yeast using our food rations as seed stock (that was part of mission survival protocols all along) . . . and slowly, inexorably descend into hunger, cannibalism, and death, in the vain hope that some of us would survive until the Collins arrived.
If you think I’m making some grim joke, I’m not. I saw the captain’s plans in writing, including projections for how much water we could produce, how we would have to ration it, how long the food would last, and when we would start dying. He even had a recommended suicide schedule to maximize the chances for the survivors; and just so no one could question the fairness of that plan, his name was first on that list.
But with the Bradbury found, and so soon, everything changed. The captain’s original priority had been expanding our air and water production. With eleven people, the shelter would be overtaxed. But now his number one priority was getting back to the ship, and to her payload. She was carrying supplies that would have lasted us all the way back to Earth, with recycling. Food stock. Hydroponics tanks filled with algae and ivy for oxygen as well as food plants. Water. Electronics. Spare parts. Hell, spare landers. And most precious of all: the mactory deck, the big disk that extended out from the main hull on a long axis tunnel and spun to create gravity. The machining tools, stereolithography tanks, laser sintering macro factories, and nano assembly tanks in the mactory all worked better with gravity to pull away resin or dust or chips, whatever were the remnants of their work. With that deck full of tools and the raw stock to feed them, us eleven skilled spacers could practically build a city to keep us alive. That had been the whole point of that payload: our mission had been to construct a base for long-term habitation on Mars. We just hadn’t expected to do the habitation.
So we had to get back to the Bradbury, and the captain decided we had to go as soon as it was safely possible. “We won’t get any more rested if we sit around,” he explained. “We’re going to get more tired, thirstier, and hungrier the longer we wait. So as soon as it’s safe, we launch.”
The captain’s revised plan still gave us time to expand air and water production and to nurture the yeast vat, but our top priority was to build a Mission Control center. We needed to get a team to orbit, rendezvous with the Bradbury, scavenge supplies, and land them safely back at Mars Shelter One. Launching would be easy, even easier than it had been for lander 2: Ensign Somtow had already installed plenty of propellant disks from the pad B factory. We had enough power to get to orbit twice, even with a fully loaded lander, and maybe some spare capacity beyond that. We wouldn’t have to burn any liquid fuel to launch. But the landers were built for telepilot assist mode and weather reports from orbit. Without those, landing in them could be a disaster, especially if the lander was weighed down by a hold full of supplies. We would need absolutely perfect weather recon and ground radar if we wanted to land in one piece.
So the first thing Nick had us build was an impromptu meteorology station. Pagnotto started the effort, designing a sensor mast that could be raised above the access turret to give us a high platform for scanning.
Once Van recover
ed from his fever enough to handle the math, he started designing meteorology instruments, and Pagnotto, Somtow, and Roberts started arguing about how to construct them out of available supplies. Captain Aames joined in these discussions, not as an engineer—though on that mission, every one of us had some amount of engineering training; it was a mission requirement—but as a veto. “No, you can’t use that backup pressure circuit from the crawler lock. We could lose air if the main circuit failed.” “No, you can’t take plates from the propellant factory roof. If any dust gets in a propellant disk, it could blow apart an engine.” “Yes, you can strip out some wiring from the wall panels, but be damned sure it’s from the lights, not the air recirculators.”
The rest of us worked on the construction crews, tended the machinery, or expanded Mars Shelter One as Captain Aames ordered us to do. All except Carver: he spent all his spare time on his image processing algorithms, trying to refine his plot of the Bradbury’s orbit and get a clear image of the ship itself.
It was after four days of code cutting and image crunching that Carver emerged from the access turret and walked across the Martian sands to consult with Captain Aames. We were mounting the new meteorology package on the mast, running it through final checkout before raising the mast, and the captain was supervising—meaning he shouted at us when he thought we were working too slow, and also when he thought we weren’t being careful enough. Carver came over, tapped the captain on the helmet to get his attention, and showed him something on his suit comp. The captain looked at the comp, looked closer, and then shook his head (though his helmet barely moved). He and Carver switched frequencies to talk in private, and I saw Aames shake his head again.
The Last Dance Page 19
