Planetfall

by L. E. Howel

  Mars had been the beginning of it all. The belief that humanity could conquer its own limitations, that it could tame the untamable and that perhaps our living might finally equal our dreaming. And they had done it. They had created a paradise on the crimson soil of cold, cold Mars. But now it was silent.

  “I’m starting to get some preliminary feedback from the probe, Major,” Karla’s voice cracked. “Atmosphere reports at thirty-two percent off recommended levels, breathable, but only just. Something’s gone really wrong here.” Birch winced; the great achievement of Mars, and all other projects that had followed, had been built upon the super-science of terraforming. If this cornerstone had crumbled and failed then a whole generation of plans would be doomed.

  “Keep me updated. As soon as anything comes in let me know,” he turned his attention to Jane. “How does the ship status look, are we in a position to do much here?”

  She shook her head and frowned. Tapping a few more keys she turned to Birch. “It doesn’t look good. Take a look for yourself.” He moved closer to the screen as she pointed to the scrolling display. “Fuel is low, as you’d expect, but the worse news is that the ship’s hull is pretty badly damaged and the internal structure’s been weakened too; I’m not sure how long it’ll last. This ship has been made to do things it was never designed to do and we’re all paying the price right now. Worst of all it looks like the heat shield on the command module has been damaged. If you remember our last launch was a mess; that seems to have torn a hole right through the shield.” Jane sighed and looked pointedly up at Birch, “Basically we’re stuck unless someone comes up and gets us down.”

  “Hmm,” Birch stood staring at the monitor, as though willing the information on it to change. “It’s starting to look like we’ll need a better plan than that though. I’d like you and Lieutenant DeSante to see what you can do about fixing the structure and hull damage. Are the auto-repair systems operative?”

  Jane nodded. “Somewhat, some systems are down though and I’m not sure there’s much material left for them to work with after all this time. The self-repair mechanisms should have kicked in already if there was.”

  “Improvise.” Birch pointed to Jane’s monitor, “It doesn’t look like all of this is going to fix itself, and I wouldn’t count on some angel of mercy coming to take us home, so we better get to work if we hope to survive.”

  Jane sighed and moved to DeSante’s station. As they began their work Birch looked questioningly at Karla, she shook her head; no news yet from the surface. After an eternity of waiting these few moments should have seemed as nothing, and yet they appeared to be everything. The future- their future- hung on the events to come and the waiting seemed to make them weigh heavier still.

  “I’ve got something!” Karla’s voice shattered the silence and all faces turned to her. “Reports coming in show large developed areas, significant industrial development and infrastructure. Intact, but no sign of life,” Birch moved quickly to Karla’s monitor, “just buildings.”

  “Can you get a visual on that?” Birch barked. “Let’s see what it looks like.”

  Karla nodded and punched in the code to enable the probe’s visual display. The screen flickered and the tawny glow of the Martian sky merged with the dusty red of its rock and soil. As the probe shifted position structures and buildings came into view. All were covered with the same red coating, like rust eating away the very memory of human aspirations. It was lifeless. The buildings were dilapidated with holes that gaped like open wounds that would never heal; debris lay in the street, and a harsh wind blew the lifeless orange soil hard against the cowering buildings that would eventually succumb to its bullying.

  This was the perfect picture of a ghost town of the old west, but it was a planet- a ghost planet. Something had gone terribly wrong here and, for the first time since this had all begun, Birch was scared. “Is it all like this?” Birch looked at Karla desperately. Her face was blanched; even in the light of the screen it was obvious.

  She nodded, “It’s all the same. There’s nothing there.” She paused for a moment, took a deep breath and tapped again at her console. The display flickered and changed. It was conclusive, this was a dead planet. For a moment everyone stood silent, looking at the screen, then desperately away. Birch’s breath hissed through his lips as he hit the console. Whatever lives had been built on the rocky surface below were gone now and there was nothing left for them here.

  “We're going on to Base One," Birch announced. The others looked dumbly at their commander; no one moved. In the stillness of the moment each face showed varying expressions of shock and grief. There seemed no room for hope.

  Gray laughed bitterly. Her face was drained bloodless but her eyes were fiery. Birch recognized the signs: a storm was brewing. Jane Gray served as his co-pilot and had been as close to a friend as he had found for some years, but that was a long time ago and the strains of command had built barriers between them. They were adversaries now. Her soft, long black hair and dancing blue-grey eyes belied a bitter streak that ran deep into her soul. Birch had recognized that only recently, but it must have always been a part of her. Now he could feel her animosity rising toward him again.

  "In a hurry to go, Major?” Jane’s voice grew shrill as her seething rage let loose. “Well, hell can wait! I’m through with running! I’m through with doing everything wrong! We’ve got to stay!" The words were hurled like spears and their echo was left quivering in the wall. "That breaks all protocol," she rasped, "we can’t go on until we find out what went wrong here first. If we do we risk getting there and finding ourselves in a worse position!”

  “A worse position?” Birch spat the words back at her. “What exactly could be worse than this? If Base One is finished then we’re all finished, so we may as well get over there and find out if it’s our own funeral we mourn here today. I don't care what regulations you want to quote at me. We’re not staying! Those old ideas are gone, they’re dead, the people who wrote them are dead, but I'm alive and I’m here and since I command this mission then this is what we’re going to do! If you still want to follow your rotting regulations then I'll be glad to leave you a space suit and an hours’ worth of oxygen and you can stay here. Otherwise you better get used to the idea that you're going back to Earth, because that's where this ship is going."

  Jane looked to her crewmates for support. DeSante shrugged in resignation, Lauren and Karla looked away. Jane rolled her eyes and moved back to her seat. "You're wrong," she hissed, "you’ve been wrong all along and now you’re going to get us all killed for it."

  "Maybe," Birch replied bitterly, "but who knows what’s right. We’ve taken on a lot with this mission and in space you get a real perspective for what we really are. Look around, it’s big out here, big and mean and looking to crush any puny attempt we might make to try and tame it. Maybe this is a punishment for our arrogance, for feeling that we could control this. Maybe we're already dead- we just don't know it yet. When we get to Earth, then we'll know if we're dead or not. Then we'll know the answer." He looked at Jane and the others. Soon they would all know.

  THREE

  From silent solitude the ship returned. The offspring, battered by its experience, come home for comfort and healing. The familiar blue and green of water and earth glinted a welcome to the weary traveler as its engines slowly decelerated. The craft paused for a moment, as though reacquainting itself with family, before slipping into orbit and maintaining a position above its mother world.

  The graceful movement of the ship belied the activity within, where each crew member was busy at their own task. Birch knew he had made the right decision, this was their chance to live and even now he could see in the faces of his crew that they, too, saw the truth in this. Now everyone busily worked at their stations to overcome whatever fate or providence might have planned for them. Despair had settled over them at Mars, but now being here and seeing home so close had made hope real again. Mars had looked dead with its barren,
lifeless rock. Earth looked alive. From here nothing had changed.

  Lieutenant DeSante again began the ritual he had performed at Mars. This was it, the first attempt to communicate with their last hope. An uneasy stillness fell on the room as everyone remained engaged in their own work, and yet distracted and listening for any response.

  "Base One this is Hypnos III, code 4-1-9-9-3 Alpha Phase, respond, over." A faint hiss was the only answer. Birch shifted uneasily in his chair and, trying to ignore DeSante's droning voice, squinted at the screen before him. The readouts for the ship were pretty bad. Jane had been right about one thing, it looked like the only thing that could save them would be some kind of outside response. The heat shield was pretty badly compromised. It didn’t look like it was even close to being able to sustain a reentry attempt; they would burn up in seconds. They needed an answer from earth or an answer to prayer, if there was any difference between the two.

  “Hypnos III calling Base One, code 4-1-9-3-3 Alpha Phase, respond please.” The hiss of dead radio waves remained the only answer. DeSante shrugged dejectedly, adjusted a few knobs and began again. The others had now stopped all pretense of work and watched intently as the process continued. The tension in the command module weighed like ballast as their hope sank. “Base One, respond please.” DeSante pleaded. His voice had more than a hint of desperation. He turned to his commander.

  “Have you tried all possible frequencies?” Birch barked. He knew the answer before the young man nodded his assent.

  “Jane,” he turned to her and was met with the scornful look he had expected, but there was also something deeper, more striking; a look of blind dejection and despair. It was plain that Jane knew she was right, that she had finally been proven in her view of him, but even she had realized that this one victory had only come at the final and utter defeat of everything, even their own lives.

  “Jane,” he repeated, “send out another probe. We need some idea of what we’re working with down there. I want you and Lauren both to monitor it, pay particular attention to life sustainability. We may need Lauren’s expertise yet. See what’s happened to atmospheric and bio support systems. I want a contingency plan for whatever situation you find. Who knows what they’ve done to themselves.”

  He turned his attention again to DeSante, “Suit up. We’ve got some work to do outside.”

  Birch and the Lieutenant walked toward the airlock as the sound of the launching probe echoed through the ship. These were all desperation measures. Birch wasn’t really sure how much of it was intelligent thought put to finding a solution, and how much was just keeping them all busy until the inevitable end. It wasn’t a thought he liked to contemplate. He had always believed there were answers, however impossible they were. Whatever happened he couldn’t imagine himself sitting on the deck listening to hymns while the ship went down. He was going to fight this, kicking, and screaming, and clawing all the way to the very bottom.

  Birch and DeSante had reached the airlock. Silently they went through the routine of putting on their suits. They stood for a moment, pausing before pushing the button, raising the door to the icy chill of space. The door slowly ascended. The sunlight from without streamed through, rising with the level of the door like a tide of hope flooding the gray compartment. The only sound was that of their own breathing, confirming their tenuous existence. Finally the door was open. Birch squinted as he looked out and then back to DeSante, gesturing for him to follow as he left the ship.

  For the next few minutes the two men struggled awkwardly with their own weightless bodies to reach their objective. Even the advantages of propulsion packs and hours of training hadn’t made this more than a tolerable experience, and by the time they had reached the underside of the ship both Birch and DeSante’s faces were wet with perspiration. Birch struggled to see through stinging eyes.

  DeSante let out a low whistle, breaking the silence. “That’s not good,” he murmured.

  Birch blinked his eyes clear and saw that DeSante had understated it. It was terrible. The heat shield was a mess! Some parts were missing in great clumps, other areas had perhaps only fractions of tiles missing here and there but even these smallest of breeches represented certain disaster.

  “What can we do?” The young Lieutenant’s voice cracked, almost pleading for hope.

  Birch sighed as he surveyed the damage. “So farewell hope, and with hope farewell fear,” he muttered softly before turning again to DeSante. “Pass me a spot joiner and some chewing gum. We’ve got to make this the mother of all fix up jobs. It’s not going to be easy but there’s still a chance we can do it. We’ll have to fix and rearrange any tiles we can and then coat the rest in an emittance wash and see if that’ll be enough to hold it together. From there it’ll all be down to the flying, if I can take us in a perfect trajectory and hit that sweet spot just right, then we might make it.”

  DeSante looked dubiously at his commander, “That doesn’t sound much of a chance. That wash was never made for this kind of repair. It’s too big! Even if we can piece together some kind of shield I doubt it’ll hold. There wouldn’t be any room for error on the reentry either, it would take a perfect flight to even have any hope at all, and even then it probably still won’t work.”

  Birch nodded. He was right. “I didn’t say it was much of a chance,” he muttered, “just a chance. I like that a whole lot better than no chance at all. Pass me that spot joiner and let’s see what we can do.”

  The two men began their painstaking task, searching for flaws, repairing some, moving the remnants of some tiles to other locations, and coating everything in a thin layer of heat resistant wash. It seemed a hopeless task, seeking to withstand the fiery judgment of reentry with such a flimsy layer of protection. It was suicide. Any faults would be exposed and punished in the final destruction of them all. And so they worked, aware that no mistake could be made.

  “Major,” Jane’s voice crackled through Birch’s headset, “we have something to report on the probe.”

  “Good,” Birch continued to inspect the tiles, “go ahead.”

  “Initial reports came back to indicate improved atmospheric content from when we left.” Birch paused, lifting his head in surprise. “Air quality at low levels for foreign agents and good reports on water vapor purity. That’s all we got though, the probe cut off suddenly with some kind of malfunction. Do we send out another one?”

  “Yes,” Birch started looking at the tiles again, “try another location though. We need to get a good idea of what the surface conditions are. That can help us pick a good area to land. It sounds good so far but we need to know more. Keep me informed.”

  “Okay,” Jane’s radio clicked off. Birch thought for a moment about what he had heard. The news was good but he tried not to hope again. He knew the return of hope meant the return of fear and as all of this was built on an impossible reentry it was a poor exchange. There was no real reason for hope. Earth might still be habitable, but if they couldn’t get there it all meant nothing. Better to work in reality, there was a chance and that was what he worked toward, but there was no hope.

  Their task continued tediously for a time until finally Birch looked at his oxygen gage. “We’re a little on the low side, DeSante, let’s head back. It’ll take a few days to finish this and I want to run some simulations on what we’re working with here.” DeSante nodded and the two men started back to the airlock. As they were returning Jane’s voice crackled again in Birch’s headset.

  “We’ve lost the second probe Major, same cause. We sent it to another area, but we got pretty much the same information as last time. It cut out at the same point as the last one. Do we send another?”

  Birch grunted, “No, you don’t just lose two probes like that. It looks like there’s more to this planet than we first thought.”

  FOUR

  The work had been slow, but then they had to be sure. After checks and rechecks Birch was confident that the heat shield was as secure as it could ever be.
He was far less confident that it was as secure as it needed to be. In continued simulations he had been unable to complete a single successful reentry; it was just too small a target to get it right. If he had thought it would make any difference he would have stayed longer to try and get at least one successful run-through, but somehow he didn’t think that it would change the outcome. After so many practices he just wanted to do it. Perhaps the true chance of reality would outweigh the calculations of a computer. Anything could happen in reality and it was time to find out.

  For a moment the command center was still, sitting in quiet reflection. Birch took one last look at Earth in its distant beauty; soon it would either embrace and accept them, or fling them away as a spurned child to burn up in its atmosphere.

  Birch shifted in his seat and looked around. They were ready.

  "Good, let’s go. Okay everybody prepare for landing procedure, we're going home!" Birch strapped himself into his seat; the others hurriedly followed his example, reaching for their own belts and strapping themselves in. Jane hesitated for a moment, looking pointedly at Birch before snapping her own belt together. She turned and stared intently at the screen in front of her.

  This part of the reentry process wasn’t easy. Years of space exploration and satellite technology had left the Earth surrounded by a floating junkyard of metal fragments that posed a significant danger to any returning spacecraft. This legacy of early technologies had been a significant factor in the early development of Base Two on Mars as a launch pad for deep space missions before it became a fully-fledged colony. Now Jane was plotting a course through this dangerous hazard.

  "We have a window of opportunity in seven minutes Major", she announced, "though it will be tight".

  Birch punched a button in front of him and brought Jane's display up on his own screen. The red course line through the debris confirmed her conclusion. It would be tight, very tight, but then in his experience that had always been the case with Earth landings. Whatever had caused the improvement in the quality of Earth's atmosphere clearly hadn't gotten out this far since this was just as bad as he remembered it, maybe worse. Now he sighed quietly, steeling himself for the task ahead.