“Fuck,” spat Marshall as he impatiently waited for Harrison to finish replacing the screens.
“Almost done,” muttered Harrison. “Just two more.”
The computer-generated view of his hands as they worked at the scrubbers flickered, went out, then fizzled back into view.
“Shit, shit, shit shit!”
“What happened?”
“My A-Vision is cooking up. You might need to lead me back if it goes out completely.”
“Don’t worry about that. Just finish with the filters. We’re at thirty-eight minutes.”
Forcing his shaking hands to steady, Harrison redoubled his concentration as violent gusts of wind threatened to tear the new filters from the conduit like the sails of a ship in stormy seas.
“Harrison,” came Braun’s voice in his helmet speakers. “I’m sure you are aware, but I have detected several problems with your suit’s CPU. I will continue to monitor the situation and inform you if things get any worse. Also, please do not exert yourself. Your vital signs show evidence of strain.”
“Yeah, no shit,” Harrison swore savagely. “Just do what you can to keep my suit online.”
“I will.”
Rushing against the clock, Harrison painstakingly slid the last of the thin screens into its place on the conduit line, wired it, then handed the part back to his eagerly trembling partner.
“Bing, bang boom,” laughed Marshall as he slid the backbone with its eleven new filters back inside the housing tube.
“Thirty-five minutes remaining,” echoed Braun in both of their helmets.
“Step on it, Ralph,” urged Harrison. “My suit is acting up pretty bad.”
Moving with the determination of a man possessed by the magnitude of his situation, Marshall hurriedly reconnected the air-scrubbing unit, then began piecing the adjoining systems back together in reverse order. As Harrison handed him part after part, his Augmented Vision repeatedly crackled out, only to jump back into view again as if some unseen force were flicking a light switch on and off inside his head. He knew the same thing was happening to Marshall, for the astronaut occasionally broke into subdued strings of savage cursing, which, despite their fervency, did not disrupt the pace of his labor. The minutes ticked by faster and faster, matching the driving intensity of the raging storm as it blasted the two men with unrelenting sheets of red sand. Humming nervously as he worked, Marshall screwed, bolted and wrenched the jigsawed life-support station back together with incredible precision.
“Time?” he demanded as Harrison handed him the last section of a crucial ducting line.
“Twelve minutes,” groaned Harrison, feeling an increasing uneasiness building in the pit of his stomach.
Marshall turned back to the life-support station with a nod and set about connecting the duct with a complicated compression line.
“Go grab the cover panel,” he ordered over his shoulder.
Shifting on his heels, Harrison scanned the rippling ground beside him for the vented metal sheet and could not see it. Standing quickly, he spun in a full circle, thinking that perhaps the winds had carried it off on a powerful gust. As he shuffled his feet in search of the lost cover plate, his boot clunked against something metal, partially buried by the driving sands, and he breathed a sigh of relief.
“Harrison,” said Braun in his helmet speakers. “I think you should sit down for a few moments. You need to conserve your energy.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Please, just follow my advice,” pressed the AI.
Ignoring Braun, Harrison leaned forwards to unearth the vented panel. As his hands worked to uncover the corner of the metal sheet, he was suddenly struck by a bout of unannounced nausea. Taking several deep breaths, he straightened up and calmed his rolling stomach. As the clock began blinking the ten-minute warning, a sharp stab in his stomach doubled him over and forced him to stumble back several paces. Grasping his thighs tightly for support, he bit back fruitlessly against an aggressive wave of dizziness, which spread over him like the spray of a tepid rain. Feeling suddenly sapped of energy, he dropped to his knees on the dust-covered ground and coughed violently, tasting the sour sting of bile as it quickly foamed up in the back of his mouth.
“Harrison,” announced Braun urgently. “Your vital signs show evidence of radiation sickness, and your suit is in critical condition. Please sit still to conserve your energy.”
“What?” choked Harrison in horror. “But there’s still time on the clock!”
Before Braun could answer, the view of his surroundings scattered like the static of a television screen. Slamming a hand uselessly against the side of his helmet, Harrison swore loudly and fought to keep his mutinous stomach down.
“Forget the panel!” yelled Marshall, his transmission badly distorted. “I’m done, but my vision is on the fritz. I can’t see you!”
“I’m here,” called Harrison as he waved his arms back and forth. “Braun says my suit is almost finished.”
“What?” crackled Marshall. “I can barely hear you. Stay where you are. I’ll find you. My A-Vision’s out, but I’ll find you!”
With a screech of electricity, Harrison’s Augmented Vision leaped into view, blinked several times, then went out again. In the frozen seconds when his face shield had been illuminated, he saw the figure of Ralph Marshall, hands outstretched, groping like blind man as he walked away from Harrison and towards the open desert.
“Can you hear me?” shouted Marshall above a burst of sharply-spiking feedback. “I’m fucking blind. Where are you?”
“Ralph, I’m here. I’m here! This way. Come back,” pleaded Harrison in a panic, bile dribbling from his lips.
“Harrison,” said Braun, his voice disintegrating rapidly. “I cannot maintain my connection. Your suit is shutting down. I miscalculated. I am sorry.”
As those final words flooded his helmet, Harrison screamed against the ocean of static in his ears, hoping the cry would reach Marshall and draw him back towards the dome. With a whine that grew into a shrill siren, the feedback in his suit speakers fizzled mechanically, then went silent. Deep red shadows filled the inside of his helmet, and the churning sickness within his stomach broke loose. Coughing up hot tendrils of acid and bile, he pitched forwards and felt the cold rough surface of the desert floor rush up to meet his heaving chest. The vomit pooled on the glass of his face shield, and the ragged gasps of his own breathing were the only sounds he could hear.
As though all of the life within his muscles had been drained, he shivered feebly with the effort of movement. The world spun violently as he pushed himself to a kneeling position, trying in vain to see beyond the billowing clouds of sand, which enveloped him like blood red ocean. The condensation and streaks of bile that coated the glass of his face shield abruptly transformed into fragile ice crystals as his suit began to cool down. No longer was his internal CPU powering the life-support systems. No longer could he feel the continuous breath of circulated air. No longer did the warming blood of the chemical heating agents chase away the deadly cold of the Martian atmosphere. Braun’s presence within the suit was gone, and for the first time in his entire life, Harrison was completely alone.
Inside the dome
Sitting in the com room of the stagnant dome, Udo Clunkat absently watched the holographic images of the life-support station as they lit up like a Christmas tree—each system blinking brightly as it came back online. Communications with the two astronauts had been few and far between since they had exited the dome nearly an hour and twenty minutes before. In the storm, radio feedback was increased over longer distances as electromagnetic radiation played havoc with the communications linkages in each suit. Even though, physically, Harrison and Marshall were very close by, most of their brief transmissions to the base had been nearly indecipherable above the blanketed feedback of hisses and pops. Instead, Udo put his trust in Braun’s guidance to see the two through their difficult task.
Lost in his troub
led thoughts, Udo at first didn’t notice when the final section of the coolant line flickered from transparent gray to green. When he did turn his gaze on the blinking emerald light, he suddenly snapped back to the moment and sat up straighter in his chair.
“Everyone, they’re finished!” he called out excitedly.
With the thudding of fast-moving feet, the remaining members of the crew quickly filed into the cubicle, chattering hopefully.
“How long until the air pressure starts to go up?” questioned Viviana, a smile gracing her lips for the first time in two sols.
Braun replied before Udo could calculate an answer.
“The air pressure will likely fall to 9.99 PSI due to the low levels of oxygen and hydrogen in the Martian atmosphere. However, once an equilibrium has been reached between what is needed to supply the dome and what is available, air pressure will hold above the level designated as dangerous.”
The strained look of hope upon Viviana’s face quickly faded.
“But won’t we get sick? 9.99 sounds terribly low!”
“No,” stated Braun calmly. “The gene enhancement you underwent had several very profound effects on your bodies’ systems. You can sustain yourselves in low-pressure environments, which would otherwise be harmful to your human counterparts on Earth. In this way—”
A gasp of terror from Liu interrupted the AI, and she pointed to a command screen just left of the holo-table.
“Oh my God, no!” she shouted.
“What?” jumped Udo, swiveling in his chair to follow the trembling line of her finger.
There, on the screen, were the diagnostic charts for both Marshall’s and Harrison’s suits. In the dim light of the communications room, the red glares cast by the warning signs of each suit were as bright as gasoline explosions. On and off the red indicators blinked, strobing the words CRITICAL MALFUNCTION in bold capital letters above the two suits. Worse yet, the normally gently-sloping lines that represented the vital signs of each astronaut now fluctuated and spiked, possessed by fear and sickness.
“Why didn’t any alarms go off?” said William, his voice rising into an accusing whine. “Braun, what is happening here?”
“I am sorry,” replied the AI woodenly.
“What’s wrong with them?” shrieked Liu, her fingers clawing at her face as it drained of all color.
Peering closely at the readouts, Udo swallowed hard, then turned to face his compatriots.
“They both have signs radiation sickness, and it looks like their suits are shutting down.”
“Braun!” demanded William, his eyes blazing with indignation. “What have you done? Why weren’t we alerted of this sooner?”
From the shadows of the dome’s ceiling, the flat baritone of Braun’s voice drifted down.
“It is in my mission directives that I not allow the ground team to suffer losses greater than 33.3 percent.”
“So you thought you would just hide this from us?” screamed William, slamming his fist down on the holo-table.
“I am sorry, but the risk that one or more of you might attempt a rescue was too great.”
Turning on her heel, Liu sprinted from the room and made for the suit lockers near the entrance of the airlock.
“Liu!” shouted Udo. “What are you doing?”
Tugging at the unmoving latch that secured the door to her locker, Liu cursed and kicked at the thin metal.
“I deplore this situation as much as you do, Dr. Liu,” lamented Braun, his tone reflecting true sadness. “But I cannot allow you to leave the safety of the dome. Above all else, the success of the mission and the well-being of the greatest number of its crew are my highest priorities.”
“Fuck you!” raged Liu as she battered the door of her locker. “Let me go to him!”
“I am truly sorry, but no.”
Rushing to her side, William began to wrench at the lever that held his own locker closed.
“Open the door du hurensohn!” he commanded, his perfect English breaking down into livid torrents of German profanity.
“I cannot,” repeated Braun miserably.
In the communications room, Udo watched with horrified resignation as the flashing red image of Harrison’s pressure suit dimmed, then vanished from the screen. Behind him, Viviana uttered a choked moan as she turned and shuffled away from the glowing readouts towards the safety and seclusion of her own quarters. At the airlock, Udo could hear Liu’s anguished sobs as she attacked the latch of her suit locker with a fire extinguisher, taken from a nearby hanger. Next to her, William smashed his fists against the metal door of his own receptacle, assaulting the reinforced material with little effect. As the status light of Marshall’s suit flickered weakly in its final moments of operation, Udo turned to face the now-empty room.
“Braun?” he whispered weakly.
“Yes, Dr. Konig?”
“Will they suffer?”
“Yes.”
“My God,” he sighed sadly. “My God.”
Outside the dome
The cold penetrated Harrison’s suit like a hypodermic needle, filling his veins with liquid nitrogen. His life-support CPU had only been offline for a minute at the most, and, already, the chemical warming agent that circulated throughout the fabric of his pressure suit was beginning to cool. Wrapping his arms around himself, he struggled to his feet, straining his eyes against the impenetrable curtain of red sand that surrounded him. Blinking back tears as his muscles screamed with the force of fatigue, Harrison coughed harshly inside his frosted helmet. Fighting to stand still amidst the waves of dizziness, he wished for just a second of Augmented Vision.
The world outside his suit was as mysterious and hidden as the distant ocean floor was to a swimmer treading water on the surface. Trembling despite the adrenaline, he felt his knees buckle, and he toppled to his side like a decrepit rotten tree. Groaning with pain and fear, he searched the ground around him with slowly wandering hands, attempting to find anything that would give him a clue as to his bearings. Touching only rough stones and sand, he rolled onto his back, chest heaving with exertion. Attempting to catch his breath, he closed his eyes and gulped at the stale putrid air of his helmet.
A picture of Liu’s face, tears staining her cheeks, swam into his mind and looked down at him through a mess of straight black hair. In her glistening eyes were the untold depths of heartbreak and love as her mouth moved in silence, attempting to speak across the void of time and space. He longed to run his hands through her silky hair, to feel the warmth and curve of her lower back as they embraced. Most of all, he yearned to breath in her scent: delicate, enticing and sweet. But those things were all gone now. Concepts like love and spirit and warmth were as alien to his situation as he himself was to this planet. Unable to maintain her presence in his mind, Liu sank below the waters of his consciousness, and, soon, he too felt himself dip beneath the cold and placid tide.
How did things gone so wrong so fast? he wondered, his inner voice a distant tinkle like the sound of a wind chime.
As the ebb and flow of his own breathing drew farther and farther away, Harrison smiled inwardly. Waves of understanding and enlightenment spilled over him, throwing fire into the darkest corners of his soul. Questions he had not even thought to ask were answered with such simplistic elegance that dying seemed somehow worth the price one paid to learn the truth. Floating up and away from his nearly-frozen body, he looked down with bittersweet regret.
I’ll never get to tell Liu how I really feel, he thought as his mind wandered and his heart slowed. We’ll never have the pleasure of living in the light.
Suddenly, someone shook his shoulders, and Harrison felt himself fall from the sky like a stone down a well, splashing back into his body. Eyes fluttering, he gazed up through the glass of his face shield as a shadow descended from the rusty smoke beyond. The dark mass took form as it drew nearer, changing and shifting until it became the helmet of a pressure suit. A face looked in at him through the frost that caked the glass
of his visor. Blunt hard features and gray listless eyes relaxed into a relieved smile. Ralph Marshall pressed his helmet to Harrison’s, shouting to be heard through the thin atmosphere of Mars.
“Wake up, buddy,” he said, his voice muffled and distant. “My vision could go out again at any second.”
“I can’t,” was all Harrison could manage before frothy bile erupted from the corners of his drawn mouth.
Nodding, Marshall scooped Harrison’s aching body into his strong arms and lifted the dying Egyptian like a child.
“It’s okay,” spoke Marshall though the glass of his helmet. “I’ll get you back.”
With the rise and fall of Marshall’s determined steps, Harrison’s head lulled back and forth as he slipped in and out of consciousness. Briefly, his arm brushed against something firm-yet-yielding as it swayed from his body like a limp pendulum.
The dome, he realized through the fog of death. Marshall’s found the dome.
With a force that pulled its energy from deep within his core, Harrison laughed weakly, his frigid chest shaking with spasms of lunatic delight.
“Almost there!” called Marshall, his face shield bumping against Harrison’s.
Looking up into the astronaut’s grim features, Harrison fought to keep his eyes from rolling back in his head. The cold had become more than he could bear, and, despite the hope that Marshall’s words carried, he could no longer keep himself together. Feeling the icy fingers of the inevitable close around his softly beating heart, Harrison smiled at Marshall’s shadowy face with detached veneration. Drawing one last shuddering breath, he let go of everything and plunged upwards through the aether of true blackness.
In his arms, Ralph sensed the exodus of Harrison’s life force and hastened his pace. Hugging the archaeologist tightly against his own freezing suit, he continued to follow the gentle curve of the dome’s shell by sliding his right foot along the base with every step. His own suit’s life support and CPU had died mere seconds after reaching the skin of the dome, and he was now fully blind. Although the cold bit at him like the needle-toothed jaws of a rabid hyena, Braun’s final garbled transmission still rang in his ears, adding fuel to his drive.
The Ruins of Mars (The Ruins of Mars Trilogy Book 1) Page 19
