“Yes. Five all told, including our commander, Chuck Manners.”
“My deepest sympathies.” Lance reached for the back of Mike’s seat as his knees went weak. Five people had just died fairly close by. When you found yourself so far away from humanity, several million kilometers felt like a stone’s throw away. “Have you figured out what happened?” he asked. In situations like this, he preferred to focus on the technical discussions.
“Since everyone who was there is dead, we don’t know. Right before the depressurization, our sensors indicated a strong negative acceleration. However, the modules’ systems are independent, which is why we don’t have access to the engine data. We’re planning an EVA for tomorrow.”
“Are you sure you want to go out and see all that in person?”
“We have to. Like I already told Mike, the command module’s engine was supposed to slow us down and bring us into orbit.”
“But it’s destroyed anyway, right?”
“There’s a second module at the other end. We’re now turning the ship with its vernier thruster. We need to know what happened so we don’t make the same mistake again.”
“And if it works, will everything be all right?”
“Not quite. The second module propelled our ship after launch out of Earth’s orbit. It only has enough fuel to land on Mars.”
“In other words, if you use it to decelerate, you will reach orbit but won’t make it to the surface.”
“Even if we could land, we’d be unable to.”
“What do you mean?”
“There are still fifteen people and a few animals up here. We can’t all fit in the one module. It had just barely worked with both modules, although it was a really tight fit.”
“A Dragon module, right?” Lance asked.
“Yes, exactly,” Ewa said.
In recent years, the price of those things had dropped drastically. Their manufacturers were producing them on assembly lines like Henry Ford manufactured his Model-T a century ago. Dependable and affordable enough that a privately funded organization could manage the cost. Well-used modules were practically given away. If the new owners forgot to arrange for a thorough refurbishment, then what? Lance thought.
Lance tried to imagine ten people stuffed into a landing module. He recalled seeing photos of five people jammed into an Indian motorcycle rickshaw. That’s what it would be like. But with fifteen people? Impossible.
“Hmm,” he said.
“Hmm?” Ewa echoed.
“I don’t know if you’ve already discussed it with Mike, but there might be one other possibility.”
He glanced at Mike, who was simply shaking his head. What does that mean? Shouldn’t we try to help these people?
“We could pick you up,” Lance said.
“You would do that?” The woman he had never met in person scooted very close to the camera, though she seemed strangely neutral. It seemed as if she had drawn a boundary between words and emotions. It had to be the shock.
“The Endeavour is tanked up in case of an emergency return to Earth. We could fly up to you, transfer enough fuel for the deceleration, and then bring part of your crew down to the surface.”
“That would be cutting it damned close,” Mike said. Lance suspected he didn’t like the idea. At any rate, he didn’t appear pleased with this solution.
“We cleaned it out yesterday,” Lance added. “Even if we only take an additional five people on board, that will only be about one-third of its normal landing weight.”
“We have to be sure about the calculations,” Mike muttered through clenched teeth.
“Of course, we’ll be careful,” Lance said.
“The Endeavour won’t be so easy to steer with them on board,” Mike remarked.
“Sharon will take care of that, right?” Lance looked over at his Brazilian colleague.
“Absolutely,” she said with a confident smile.
“You should keep the majority of the fuel, which you’ll need for your own landing,” Ewa cut in. “Even if we can’t make it with the one module, we can save at least five of our people.”
Lance nodded. They couldn’t withhold this assistance. Doing so would have legal ramifications.
“Good. Check into what went wrong with the defective engine. The plan will only work if you can manage to slow down the second module. We will run our calculations in the meantime. Mike out.”
Ewa’s face vanished. The monitor once again displayed its standard background, a snow-covered mountain on Earth. Mike tapped it with his finger.
“If we run into any problems,” he said, “you’ve just given away our ticket home. Are you clear on that, Lance? Those crazies might feel otherwise, but I want to get back to Earth. There’s no way I want to waste the rest of my days on this godforsaken planet.”
Lance had never seen Mike so upset or this determined.
“You won’t have to,” Lance replied. “It’ll take another eight weeks for us to produce enough hydrogen and oxygen from our supplies for the return trip. We could fill the Endeavour’s tanks three times over and still keep to schedule.”
“Then all I can do is hope you’re right, Lance.”
May 24, 2042, Santa Maria
Ewa looked around panic-stricken. She had just woken up but had no idea who she was or where she was located. How had she ended up in this chaos? Her eyes fell on a yellow slip of paper that was taped to the wall on a level with her head.
‘Wait 30 seconds’ was written on it in her own handwriting. She took a deep breath and released it. Then everything fell back into place. She had experienced another of those strange fugue states. They never lasted longer than a minute. And they were terrifying because her mind felt completely blank during them. She had suffered from epileptic seizures since puberty. Her parents, both in the military, had arranged for her to have surgery in a military hospital when she was seventeen. They said it was a brand-new kind of therapy. Since then, she hadn’t had a single seizure. However, the blackouts had started three years ago, and recently they had become more frequent. Did it have something to do with her epilepsy?
Ewa shook the thoughts away. She had things to do.
“Theo, I’d like you to come with me.”
Ewa pointed at the dark-haired, shirtless man sitting across from her. She knew that Theo was German, but he had the same surname she did and came from Berlin. He was tattooed, wore earrings, and was sitting at the center of the thirteen remaining crew members. Ewa had no idea why it happened, but right after the catastrophe, suddenly everyone started doing what she suggested. It had been her idea to contact the NASA crew at the Mars base for help. But it had also been the logical next step considering that before his death, Chuck had told her about the request for assistance he had sent down there. She had decided not to tell the others about Chuck’s unauthorized contact. It didn’t matter anymore, as it were. The commander was dead, and they were out of options when it came to entering the orbit around Mars. Everyone had agreed that she should contact the base.
The result had been that the others were now sitting across from her as if she had some special status. It actually made her feel uncomfortable. She didn’t want anyone to hang on her every word. Ellen and Nancy, the two youngest crew members, seemed to look up to her as a big sister. She scanned the faces one more time to evaluate her decision. Five men were floating there in various positions. Andy wasn’t there because Gabriella, the doctor, had sent him to bed due to circulatory problems. In addition, there were eight women. What had been the ideal gender balance when they had launched was now obviously skewed. The women had the upper hand. Would this change the character of the journey? Ewa didn’t know.
“When do we go over?” Theo asked.
Yes, he had been a good choice, even if it had been a fairly intuitive one. The German seemed quite resourceful. Before now she hadn’t paid him much attention, even though he was hard to ignore in light of the numerous tattoos that he enjoyed displaying.
Did she really have to be the one to go out right now? Probably, as otherwise it wouldn’t feel like the natural next step. Ewa remembered the moment she left the command module through the hatch. What was the last thing she had seen and heard? Chuck had been explaining something, and she had said something like, ‘See you later.’ She would honor this promise, even if it frightened her. She felt a lump rise in her throat as she thought about Chuck. She had never imagined him dying. And what was all this for anyway?
“I’m sorry, Gabriella, but we need Andy,” Ewa said.
Andy—Andrej—was the best information engineer on the crew. If anyone would know how they could collect the data, he was the one.
“I’ll get him,” the Italian doctor replied, floating toward the wall. Her flowing hair fanned out behind her.
Ewa watched her. The doctor opened one of the sleeping bags. Ewa hadn’t even suspected that someone was inside it, considering how flat it looked. Gabriella cautiously unwrapped the occupant, removed his earphones, and woke him.
“Don’t be worried, Andy,” she said as she gently patted his cheeks.
“What’s going on?”
“We need you right now. I’m sorry. You can rest some more later.”
“Uh, I’m feeling better already. What do you need?” he asked.
“Ewa will explain it to you.”
The two of them rejoined the group.
“Here we go,” Gabriella said.
“We need to get the data from the engine, Andy,” Ewa said. “I hope we’ll be able to find that in the damaged module.”
“That would be the only place, if at all. The two modules are on autonomous systems—as is the belly of the ship,” Andy replied. He looked exhausted and pale. This was the way Ewa imagined most hackers looked. His sharp nose cast a shadow across his face.
“If at all?”
“The computers might’ve been destroyed during the incident. I wouldn’t be surprised if that was the case.”
“And what does that mean for us?”
“You could try to start them up. If that doesn’t work, you’ll have to bring me the memory boards.”
“Which ones?”
“All of them, ideally. It will be a while before we get any new supplies, so we can definitely use any functional replacement parts we can get.”
“Good to know, thanks. We’ll pack up everything we can get our hands on.”
“Can I go lay back down now?”
“For an hour, until we’re done with the pre-breathing process. Then you’ll have to be ready to help us boot the computer. Maybe we’ll get lucky and it’ll start.”
“Sure. See you later.”
Andy turned around and headed back to his sleeping bag. How could anyone be so skinny? And yet, he had passed the athletic examinations with flying colors, better than the majority of the other ten thousand applicants. She shouldn’t be fooled by his appearance.
Ewa climbed down from the bike, drenched in sweat. Ellen held out the lower section of the spacesuit so Ewa could climb inside it more easily.
“The two of you should actually rest a while,” the doctor said.
“I know, but everything will just take longer then. We need to know now what caused the accident.”
“That’s why I’m allowing you to stop the pre-breathing process early.”
As ship’s doctor, the Italian was now the highest-ranking officer. That reminded Ewa that they still needed to resolve the commander problem, but not until she had paid her last respects to Chuck. She stretched out her arms as the Hard Upper Torso, known as the HUT, was lowered on top of her. The other Mars expeditions were using more modern suits, but the MfE organization had been forced to take the more economical route.
The old Russian models had the advantage that they could be repaired with supplies they had on board. However, the suits were quite awkward to move around in. Ewa checked the instruments in her tech pack. Everything was running. She pulled on her helmet and began to breathe the air being supplied by the life support system.
It smelled surprisingly good inside. Since she was now enclosed in a suit that had been sweated up numerous times—and probably also been thrown up in at least two or three times—the air right outside the suit would have smelled abominable to a newcomer. However, they had been living like this for months. It was astonishing how quickly a person could get used to such things.
“Doing alright, Theo?” she asked over the radio.
The German turned around and smiled. He had obviously heard every word she said. Theo was about twenty centimeters taller than she was. He floated in front of her toward the airlock. Although he was quite slim, he now looked more like the Michelin Man balloon they recalled from old photos.
The airlock was located in the second Dragon module on the lower end of the ship. Actually, it would have been more convenient to exit right out of the ship’s belly. However, it hadn’t proven feasible to slice a pressure-tight airlock into it.
“It’s just the two of us,” Ewa said soothingly.
She didn’t want to startle the animals, which was why she let Theo take the lead while she closed the hatch between the module and the ship. Theo was already unlatching the airlock.
“Want to go first, or should I?” he asked.
“We’ll go at the same time. It’ll be easier on the animals.”
“Whatever you say.”
Ewa blocked the airlock door so that none of the animals could slip inside. Theo crawled ahead, and she crept after him, pulling the door shut behind her.
“All clear?” Theo asked.
She glanced around. There were no animal stowaways in the chamber, which was very tight. She could hardly move without brushing against Theo.
“Go ahead,” she said.
The chamber was filled with a whooshing noise. As Theo released the air, Ewa checked the readings on her suit. Everything was in order.
“Ready,” Theo said.
“Then let’s go take a look.”
At her prompt, he opened the outer door with the help of a crank handle. “It’s a little stiff,” he said. “I bet it’s been a long time since someone used this back access.”
The door swung open into the darkness beyond it. Ewa thought she could feel a slight draft, but that was impossible. Something inside her felt drawn to where the disaster had transpired. Shouldn’t she be scared?
“I’ll go first,” Theo said.
“That was always a given,” she assured him.
The German swung his legs outside and then hooked himself to the guideline that ran around the Dragon module. After that, he lowered the rest of his body out of the lock. Ewa followed him, hooking her safety line right away, too. She was about to push herself out of the airlock when Mars appeared in her line of vision. She didn’t move as the image seared itself into her memory. She could still remember what Earth had looked like when they had left its orbit. Mars was completely different. It looked about as large as the moon in the night sky. Only one half of it was illuminated by the sun, and that half was covered in reddish-brown spots. The other side was dark, but not completely black. It was quite apparent that this was a sphere in front of her and not a disc. This wasn’t a stage set, no, it was stark reality. They would soon reach a new planet.
“Do you see it?” she asked.
“Yes, amazing. We’ve almost made it.”
Ewa glanced up, then down at her feet. She needed to generate an artificial horizon, a line against which she could orient herself. Otherwise she would lose her balance. Theo stood next to her, two steps away. It looked as if he was leaning to the side, about to tip over. This effect was the result of the module’s round shape.
“We have to get over there,” Ewa said as she pointed at the hill that rose before them. This was the Santa Maria’s balloon-shaped center connector. The bow was located on the other side of it, and this was where they would find the damaged module.
“The lead rope has to be around here somewhere,�
� Theo said.
During the construction phase, the builders had suspected that someone would need to make their way along here eventually, so they had attached a rope between the bow and the stern along which the astronauts could pull themselves hand over hand.
“You go to the left, I’ll go right,” Ewa said.
They went their separate ways and searched for the rope with their helmet lamps.
“Found it,” Theo called.
Ewa moved down the module to his position. The magnetic boots were really very practical. Walking down the module’s metal surface almost felt like walking on Earth.
“I’m hooking on,” he said.
He leaned down, released the carabiner of his safety line from the module’s guideline, and connected it to the lead rope. He then pushed off and slowly floated up the incline. Ewa did the same thing. However, she didn’t want to float to the top. She tried to walk along the balloon’s hull, shortening the length of her safety line to stay close against the ship. Her feet brushed against material that looked like an anorak shell. But there was nothing soft about it. She should have expected that, but she was still a little disappointed because she had imagined this would feel something like wading through a ball pit. At least she was covering the distance quickly.
It only took her a minute to crest the hill. Ewa adjusted her lamp to shine on the damaged module situated beneath her. She could only make out a few vague shadows. Was that the silhouette of a person? She felt cold, but shook off the feeling. It couldn’t be a person. The shadow was too large for that. They had to get closer. Ewa inched forward, holding her line in tension. At least she had something to hold onto.
She came to a stop two meters away from the module. Theo joined her. The porthole glittered in the beams of her lamp. It looked like a tear had welled up in it. Ewa was suddenly overcome by a wave of sorrow, as if there were an injured animal in front of her. That had to be the stress talking. She shook her head and took a step forward.
They couldn’t see the true extent of the damage to the module until they were standing right in front of it. The module was shaped like a flattened can, and its base looked as if a giant had pushed its finger into it from the back. Ewa felt like it looked as if something had tried to rape the ship. Tears pooled in her eyes. No. She didn’t have time for that now.
Mars Nation: The Complete Trilogy Page 3
