Holly, Dante and Viola all easily remembered the route they’d taken from the Karrier back to the lander the previous evening and led Rusev and Grav to the cliff-edge with no complications.
Looking down at the grassy valley, Rusev and Grav both expressed their surprise at the Karrier’s relatively good condition; Holly hadn’t deliberately focused on the worst of the damage in her photos, but she had focused on it nonetheless.
“So where’s the quickest route down?” Rusev asked.
“That way,” Viola said, pointing to the path.
Rusev clapped her hands together. “Let’s get going, then,” she said. “We’ve got a radio to fix.”
thirty-six
After almost four hours inside the Karrier, Rusev and Dante told the others that the problem with the power in the control room was decidedly worse than they’d feared.
“It looks like there was a surge in the radio console itself,” Dante said. “The damage is physical, and we don’t have all the parts we need to fix it.”
“What about the two landers?” Holly asked, trying to grasp at some faint hope while Viola put her head in her hands and Grav maintained a laudably stoic front in the face of this terrible news. “Surely you can rip everything out of the one we don’t need? It has short-range radio to communicate with the EVA suits. There must be a way.”
“We hope so,” Rusev said, answering Holly but glaring at Dante. “What Dante should have been clearer about is that we don’t have the parts we need here. We should certainly be able to return power to the control room with parts from the other lander, and there is a chance — admittedly slight — that we can use components from the lander’s communications system to restore full radio function.”
“How slight?” Viola asked.
Rusev inhaled deeply. “If it’s possible, we’ll do it. We’ll start by taking what we need from the lander tomorrow. The distances involved mean it will be the next day before we can come back here to get to work, but this is going to be our sole focus. For now, we should probably make a move back to the others; they’ll be worrying about us.”
“Can we at least lift the algae machine and see if it works?” Viola said. “I haven’t eaten anything that’s not powder for days.”
“Good idea,” Rusev said. She took heart from the condition of the machine, which — just like the Karrier — was in better shape than she’d expected. Without having to open anything up, she affirmed that five of the six tanks remained intact and fully operational and that the digital readings on the side of the machine — unannotated numbers which meant nothing to anyone else — were all within the correct operating ranges.
When they knew that the machine was worth lifting, the group left the how to Grav.
After judging the weight by inching the machine from the ground with his fingers, Grav secured a strong rope around its upper section. He then handed one end to Holly before asking her to stand in the corner of the room against the wall from which the machine had been torn.
“This one is for you,” Grav said, holding the other end of the rope out for Dante. “Viola, you go with him. With all of you pulling as tightly as you can when I start lifting from the front, it should not be difficult.”
“I can assist,” Rusev said.
“It is okay,” Grav said. “Holly can take care of that side and these two should just about match her for strength.”
Dante didn’t say anything but was visibly irked by this slight, however true it might have been.
Within two minutes, the machine stood upright.
It was the kind of task Grav was built for, all shoulders and thighs, and the sight of him gradually moving his hands up the machine’s front panel as it straightened wasn’t a million miles from the strongman contests Holly had watched as a child, in which the competitors tried to flip heavy logs.
Grav high-fived Viola but was left hanging by Dante. He laughed it off and turned to his other lifting assistant. “Good job, Hollywood.”
“Let’s just check that it still works,” she replied, stepping towards the front of the machine.
“I want to press the button,” Viola said. She typed the three-digit code for her usual order of redundantly vegetarian lasagne and waited excitedly for it to appear on the tray. Holly didn’t know exactly how much of the girl’s excitement was related to the novelty of the machine and how much came from her desperate longing for something resembling food, but she confidently imagined it was mainly down to the latter.
The order appeared, perfectly shaped but utterly green.
“The colouring tray must have been knocked out of place,” Rusev said. She then tasted a tiny piece and nodded in relief. “Flavouring and texture are perfect.”
Viola began eating without delay.
The utility room’s table was soon covered with trays filled by Grav’s green steak, Holly’s green chickpeas, and Rusev’s green potatoes. Dante insisted he was content to stick with the nutrition powder since “it all comes from the same stuff, anyway.”
A warm meal wasn’t enough to lift everyone’s spirits to the hopeful levels of their morning departure from the lander, but Holly voiced her view that the day’s developments weren’t all that bad. Rusev seemed utterly confident that power would be restored to the control room with minimal fuss — a vast improvement on Dante’s ‘60 percent’ outlook — and it was certainly better to have identified a surge in the radio console as the source of the problem than it would have been to have found no hints at all. However difficult the problem was, Holly insisted that it was better to know what it was. She said all of this largely for Viola’s benefit, and the girl’s body language suggested that it worked; a little, at least.
As the group headed to the lander with their remaining luggage in tow, Viola raised the possibility that Dante and Rusev could return to the other lander instead, so that they would be able to go straight from there to the Karrier the next day. It was a good idea, but unfortunately there weren’t enough hours left in the day for anyone to reach that distant lander before dark.
“Neither of us know where that lander is, anyway,” Dante said. “To be safe, either Holly or Grav will have to lead the way tomorrow.”
When Holly passed the extension and approached the lander, she was surprised that Bo and Robert didn’t come out to greet her returning group. She paid attention to Yury’s dot on her wristband and discerned from his vital signs that he was almost certainly asleep. With that in mind, she briefly looked inside the extension to see if Robert and Bo were also in their own beds.
They weren’t.
“They must just be sitting in the lander,” Viola said.
They weren’t.
thirty-seven
“Yury,” Rusev snapped, shaking him awake. “Where are they?”
“Hmm?” he groaned, stretching and rubbing his eyes. “Who?”
“My dad and my brother,” Viola jumped in.
Yury looked around the lander, clearly surprised that they weren’t still there. “Uh, probably the extension.”
Holly hurried to the windows, checking one side and then the other. They were no where to be seen.
“How long have you been asleep?” Rusev asked, now flat-out angry at Yury.
He looked at his wristband. “Can’t have been much more than an hour; you had just set off on your way back. They were still here then, so they can’t have gone too far.”
“Did they mention anything about going outside?” Holly asked, masking her concern with a casual tone.
“They already went outside earlier on,” Yury said. “Playing catch with the ball for ten, maybe twenty minutes. They’ll have drifted a little bit without realising it. Robert’s a smart man; he wouldn’t do anything foolish. Not with the boy. He knows it will be dark soon, so he’ll be back in time.”
Holly cursed not having given Dante’s wristband to Robert or Bo; if she had, they would all know exactly how far away they were and could have located them with ease. As it was, they ha
d no idea.
Grav put his hand on Viola’s shoulder and told her they would be back any minute. The girl nodded slowly, but her concern was there for all to see.
Dante sat down next to Yury and relayed the situation regarding the radio. Yury was encouragingly optimistic about the prospect of using components from the other lander’s communications system to fix the Karrier’s fried radio.
Grav stood at one window and Holly at the other. A few minutes into their lookout, Grav breathed an extremely audible sigh of relief. “Here they come.”
Holly and Viola hurried over. “Is my dad carrying him?” Viola asked, straining her eyes to see them in the distance.
“Looks like it,” Holly said. “Bo has walked a lot over the last few days. That’s why it was better that he stayed behind today.”
Viola nodded, just glad that they were okay.
Grav lifted a tiny pair of powerful binoculars from his pocket and held them to his eyes.
“Anything?” Viola asked.
“Oh shit,” he cursed, immediately running to the door. “Bo is hurt! Bad!”
thirty-eight
“Extension,” Holly barked at Dante. “Open the door and get the lights on.”
She then left the lander as quickly as she could and joined Viola and Grav in sprinting towards Robert. In his arms, Bo lay like an infant; a horribly pained expression was etched on his face.
The boy wore only one shoe.
“What happened?” Viola asked, almost hysterical.
Grav lifted Bo from Robert’s exhausted arms and rushed the boy towards the extension’s open door.
“Something stung him,” Robert yelled.
Grav stopped dead on the spot. “Animal?”
“Plant.”
Grav continued forward.
Robert was now panting, doubled over in exhaustion after carrying the boy for so long. He inhaled huge breaths between his words to Holly and Viola. “A thorn… a huge, huge, thorn. More like… a talon. I think… it might be… toxic.”
Holly carefully took the thorn from Robert’s hand as he lifted it from his pocket. Without doubt, talon was a fitting word.
Viola ran after Grav to join Dante in the extension, which had already been chosen as the best and obvious choice of where to treat Bo.
“We were playing with his ball,” Robert said, his voice etched with guilt. “He thought he saw footsteps heading in a direction no one is supposed to have walked yet, and it did look like there were some under the fresh dust. We followed them for longer than I realised and we came to an area with a patch of ground completely covered in plants. The ball had rolled to the edge of the patch. Bo picked it up but tripped, and that’s when the thorn pierced his skin — right through his trouser leg.”
“What were the immediate symptoms?” Holly asked. She took care to sound as relaxed as she could but put a firm hand on Robert’s back and guided him towards the extension, where Grav would have to hear all of this if he was to have any chance of helping Bo through it.
“His whole leg seized up,” Robert said. “Instantly, like a switch had been flipped. Fortunately his body fell away from the plants, at least. He was screaming like I’ve never heard. He lost consciousness through the pain and he’s been coming and going since. He didn’t feel too hot or too cold. His pulse felt fine. Holly… just tell me he’s going to be okay.”
“He’s going to be okay,” Holly said. It was the only thing she could say.
In the seconds before Holly and Robert reached the extension, Viola had already run back out.
“Where are you going?” Robert asked weakly.
“Grav asked me to get the painkillers and antiseptic stuff,” the girl yelled on her way past.
Rusev then passed Viola in the opposite direction, following Robert and Holly into the extension.
Inside, Grav and Dante stood over Grav’s bed, where Bo was lying with his eyes tightly closed and his cheeks flinching in pain. If he was conscious, his lungs had given up on screaming. Dante carefully removed his wristband and placed it around Bo’s wrist to reliably measure the boy’s vital signs. Though far from ideal, the stats were at least stable.
Dante, who lacked both formal first-aid training and Grav’s field experience, nevertheless seemed to be taking the lead. He removed the superhero-print sock from Bo’s shoeless right foot then turned away instinctively at the sight. Grav, who normally had the stomach for anything, did the same.
Holly felt a reflux-like sensation in her throat as she looked at the area affected by the sting. Below the pierce-mark, which lay just above Bo’s ankle, his skin was tinged with a horrible grey hue spider-webbing its way down and around the foot. His toes were in a horrendous state; to Holly’s untrained eye, this looked less like some kind of allergic reaction than it did something between impossibly fast-acting gangrene and impossibly fast-acting frostbite.
“I have never seen anything like it,” Grav said, forcing his eyes back to the foot.
Dante, wearing no gloves, put his hand under Bo’s heel and rotated his ankle slightly. As he did so, he noticed a protruding series of bulbous growths on the sole of Bo’s foot. “Look at this,” he said, directing everyone to one particularly large growth where the skin had passed the point of greying and was now flat-out black.
“I am not going to bullshit anyone,” Grav said, “but I strongly believe the whole thing has to come off now, before whatever this is starts spreading upwards.”
“The whole growth?” Holly said.
Grav shook his head and reluctantly met her gaze. “The whole foot.”
thirty-nine
Viola arrived with the requested painkillers and antiseptic too late to hear Grav’s idea, but the room was so quiet that she knew things had gone from bad to worse even before she was close enough to see the condition of Bo’s foot. When she saw it, she immediately closed her eyes and held a clenched fist to her mouth.
Yury arrived just after her, having come to check on the boy in contravention of the usual safeguard of someone staying in the lander at all times. His reaction to the sight was firm and immediate: “No one wants to hear this, but that foot has to come off.”
“What?” Viola shrieked, opening her eyes. “Are you crazy?”
“How would we even do it?” Rusev asked, her own misgivings apparently more technical than absolute.
“I have done it before,” Grav said. “In the field, with less equipment than we have here.”
The fact that Bo said nothing nor even groaned during this discussion more or less confirmed that he was not conscious.
“Holly?” Grav said. He, Yury and Rusev had already expressed their reluctant belief of the need to proceed in this direction, and Holly’s opinion was next in line.
Holly looked at Robert, who had turned around to face the opposite wall and stood with his fingers interlocked behind his neck and his arms squeezed tightly inwards. She then turned to Viola, who met her gaze with teary eyes and a desperate shake of the head.
“Wait,” Dante interjected. He had everyone’s attention. “I have seen something like this. Not exactly the same, but worse than anything you could have imagined before you saw this. When I was working in Peru, I saw a guy in a medical centre with growths like that. He’d been bitten by a scorpion and it was an allergic reaction. The skin was grey, like this. One of the doctors had seen it before and treated it with a topical antihistamine. Trust me: the growths went down quicker than you would ever believe. Please… at least let me try.”
“We do not have antihistamines, you fucking idiot,” Grav snapped. The moment was too hot for the usual dialling down of his disdain for Dante.
“I do,” Dante replied, ignoring Grav’s insult. “I’m massively allergic to insect bites. They’re in my bag at the Karrier… powerful black market generics. And believe me: they work.”
“The Karrier is almost two hours away,” Rusev said.
“I’ll be back here in less than an hour,” Dante insisted. “Look, if
it gets worse when I’m gone then you can all do whatever you feel like you have to do. What I’m telling you is that it won’t spread too far before I get back. This is as bad as it’s going to get until circulation in his foot is seriously affected in a few hours. So give him the painkillers and keep an eye on his vitals, but please give him a chance. Give me a chance to give him a chance.”
“Go,” Holly said. “Now.”
“Hollywood…” Grav said.
“I said go!” she yelled at Dante.
Dante quickly promised Viola and Robert that he wouldn’t let them down, then sprinted away. Holly knew how keen a runner Dante was and had little doubt that he would meet his target of returning within an hour. He had let her down before and no doubt would again, but the look in his eyes had told her that this wouldn’t be one of those times.
“He’s going to get caught in the dark,” Yury said, suddenly and belatedly considering this point.
“He always has a mini-flashlight in his pocket,” Viola replied. Her tone and expression had both been lifted by the firmness of Dante’s promise; he’d spoken with such authority about the similar symptoms he’d seen in Peru, Viola had total faith that he would come through and be proven correct.
Rusev and Grav then applied a painkilling patch to Bo’s shin, in the current safe zone between his knee and his ankle. Bo woke up after only a few minutes. Though drowsy, he soon understood where he was and what was happening. Robert made sure that he didn’t see his foot.
During the longest hour of Holly’s life, Bo’s condition did not markedly deteriorate. Some of the growths under his foot darkened in tone, but none grew noticeably larger and no new ones appeared.
Yury walked outside every few minutes to check on the fading light in the hope that Dante would somehow appear before his return could be reasonably expected. His fiftieth-minute update informed the rest of the group that it was now fully dark.
Terradox Quadrilogy Page 18
