Johnny Winger and the Hellas Enigma

by Philip Bosshardt

  Lane studied the histo-plots of objects around the inner Solar System. Every single orbiting object—even the planets—had seen its path altered by the massive pulse emanating from Mars.

  “It was the strongest pulse yet,” Bright said. “Like they were trying to compensate for the missing transmitter in India. This one really jerked the whole Solar System around.”

  Lane shook his head. “Whoever they are…where the hell does someone get such technology? To move entire planets around by tugging on the underlying string structure of space-time…the last I heard, that was just theory. I just hope nobody got hurt.”

  “That’s what I wanted to show you…look at this—“ Bright changed displays, bringing up a polar plot of objects in orbit around Mars. “Cycler ship Da Vinci just disembarked a lander about five minutes before that pulse went off. Here’s the nominal and actuals. We’re skin tracking her by radar now…but this data’s about twenty two minutes old.”

  “So what’s the problem…the trajectory looks good.”

  “Lander was nudged well off course by that pulse. We don’t show any corrective maneuvers since then…at least, none we can detect. You know how small those landers are…it’s just possible the delta-vee caused by the pulse exceeded the maneuvering capacity of the ship.”

  “So where is she now?”

  “Unknown at this time but I can extrapolate from the last radar contact—“ Bright tickled his keyboard and ran some calculations.

  “And--?”

  Bright shook his head, ran fingers through his gray crewcut. “It’s just an extrapolation but based on the most recent track, I’d say the lander’s headed for the Valles Marineris…there’s no landing zone anywhere in that canyon that I know of. They may have been knocked or pulled too deeply into the atmosphere to maneuver properly…maybe even a free fall descent to the surface if their engines were damaged.”

  Bright looked up at Lane, who had turned as pale as the crater walls of Korolev outside the control room portholes.

  “Get on the phone…better let Frontier Corps know what we’ve got here…if they’ve got a lander damaged or out of control—“ he didn’t have to finish the thought.

  Adam Bright was already ringing up UNISPACE headquarters in Paris.

  Aboard Pinocchio

  Lieutenant Mendez felt his throat go dry. Only twice before in his career with UNISPACE had every single drop of mucous in his throat evaporated. Both times had been bad.

  Mendez saw that the burn had been no good. “I can’t pull us out of the atmosphere high enough to get to a stable orbit. We’ve gained altitude…but not enough.”

  “What’s going to happen now?” Winger asked. He leaned forward to see better out the windscreen.

  “We’ll loop around Mars, maybe…I don’t know…half way, losing speed the whole time. Then we head down for good…without enough speed to maneuver very much. Pretty much a straight ballistic descent.”

  Tallant bit her lip. “Where will we come down, Lieutenant?”

  Mendez studied his energy management plot. “Best guess is somewhere here—“ he tapped the moving map display “—if we’re lucky…maybe somewhere in Solis Planum. We’re headed down on a bearing that takes us right over Tharsis and all those volcanoes: Olympus Mons, Arsia, Ascreus, and Pavonis.”

  “We will clear those uplands, won’t we?”

  “Probably,” Mendez stated matter-of-factly. “If I can keep our speed up. Trouble is we’re on a heading right for the Valley—Valles Marineris. If I do nothing, we may well fall into those canyonlands. There’s no place to set down in there, no place good, anyway. So I’m hoping to bank a little to starboard once we clear the volcanoes…if we clear them…once we get deeper into the atmosphere and Pinocchio has a little bite with her aero controls.” Mendez took a deep breath and flexed his fingers. “We’ll only get one shot with this. I’ve got enough lift to glide several hundred kilometers either side of our ground track. And we’ve still got landing thrusters. But I’ve got to get Pinocchio on the ground on this pass, before anything else tugs us off course.”

  “Hopefully in one piece,” muttered Dana Tallant.

  Through the windscreens, the tan desert of Arcada Planitia seemed to be rushing up fast, as Pinocchio plunged deeper into the atmosphere. In seconds, the friction of her slowing descent had heated the lander’s hull to a bright incandescent cherry red. Soon, the ship was enveloped in a glowing halo of plasma. Across darkened early morning skies, a white hot meteor streaked from one horizon to another, heading southeast toward the massive shield volcanoes of the Tharsis bulge and beyond that, the black gouge of the great Valley of Mariner, bigger than a thousand Grand Canyons.

  Mendez called out their descent milestones.

  “Seventy thousand feet, through sixteen hundred feet per second…Mariner City Approach…this is UNISPACE lander Pinocchio , do you read, over?”

  Only static came through their headsets.

  “Nothing…the plasma sheath’s still blocking our comms…I’m executing my first turn in three…two…one…NOW!”

  Mendez gently banked Pinocchio to starboard, biting deeper into the thin cold air. Below the ship, the peak of Pavonis Mons poked above wispy translucent pink clouds, sliding off to their left as the ship pulled harder into her turn, pulling three, three and a half, now four g’s.

  Johnny Winger felt like a herd of elephants were standing on his chest. He forced out short breaths and fought the gray-out that was closing down his vision. After several weeks in and out of microgravity aboard Da Vinci, the lander’s descent was a physical ordeal for all the crew. Only one crewmember seemed unaffected by the deceleration. Gathered along a far aft bulkhead in the main compartment, directly behind the head of Deeno D’Nunzio, the faintly twinkling fog of the ANAD swarm seemed completely unaffected by Pinocchio’s descent. The swarm hovered expectantly at the back of the compartment through all of the lander’s twists and turns, maintaining config one, its natural swarm state.

  ***ANAD to Base…how are you handling the descent, so far, Major Winger? Anything ANAD can do to assist?***

  Winger barely picked up the signal on his coupler circuit. ANAD…I must weigh a thousand…tons…he grunted out. I’d be…better off…if I was…a swarm myself—

  ***ANAD maintaining config state one…not affected by extreme maneuvers or forces…detecting residual decoherence waves…there must have been another pulse nearby***

  Try to localize it…ANAD…when we get…on the ground…if we get down…we’ll have a …head start…on finding that second generator….

  ***ANAD acknowledges***

  Winger strained to move his eyes and see through Pinocchio’s windows. The g forces seemed to be lessening as he lifted his head, drawing in a huge breath of welcome air.

  Pinocchio made a series of hypersonic S-turns to bleed off speed as she plowed deeper into the atmosphere.

  The last of the great Tharsis volcanic peaks was behind them now, their dim cones poking above morning clouds, as the lander straightened out her descent and settled onto one heading.

  Ahead of them, still in darkness and shadow, was the yawning chasm of the Valles Marineris canyonlands.

  “I’ve got three choices…none of them good,” announced Mendez. The Lieutenant tweaked and twisted his controls, trying to get a feel for the lander’s trim. The ship rocked slightly back and forth as she clawed for purchase in the thin dawn air of Mars.

  “What are we looking at, Lieutenant?” Winger asked.

  “I may be able to bank far enough north to reach Lunae Planum. It’s fairly flat but covered with ejecta and boulders the size of houses. That’s choice number one. If I bank too much more, we’ll lose speed fast and once we drop below about ten thousand feet, Pinocchio’s going down for sure, into whatever terrain is below us.”

  “And the other choices?”

  “Same scenario for a starboard bank. That could put us down in Sinai Planum—
maybe, but again…if I make the maneuver, we lose of a lot of energy and may not have enough to pull out or divert if our impact site…excuse me, our landing site…looks rough.”

  “You said there were three choices,” Tallant said. “What’s the third?”

  Mendez swallowed audibly. “Keep on this heading and keep our energy—our speed and altitude—up as long as we can. That puts over the Valles Marineris. Not many places to put Pinocchio down in those canyons but we might get lucky. Keeping our speed up gives us more choices.”

  “Make the call,” Winger said. “You’re the pilot.”

  Mendez nodded grimly. He had already decided that banking left or right anymore was too risky. Pinocchio was still sluggish, not responding quite right. It was as if some giant hand were pulling the lander off her heading.

  “Our best bet is to stay on this course…and take our chances in the Valley.”

  Johnny Winger looked over at Dana Tallant. Second Nano’s commanding officer had a determined set to her face, as if she were going to will them down to a safe landing. Their eyes met for a moment and volumes of memories passed between them. You didn’t need a coupler circuit or quantum channel when you knew someone that well.

  We’ve been through worse, her eyes seemed to say.

  Lieutenant Mendez tried every comm channel on Pinocchio’s board. “Any station…any station…this is UNISPACE landing ship Pinocchio…registry UN15752…on emergency descent to Mars surface…speed two five five zero feet per second, heading now one zero zero degrees…we are going down in the Valles Marineris…any station…any station—“

  Mendez gave up on comms for a moment as he righted the little ship and held his control stick steady. “Passing through one eight zero thousand…picked up a little buffet over the edge of that chasm…sometimes this place has unexpected thermals…I’m shutting down thrusters to save fuel…we may need one final kick before touchdown—“

  Winger unstrapped himself and crawled forward into the first officer’s right hand seat; although UNISPACE landers normally operated at Mars with only one pilot, a second seat was still there.

  “Anything I can do, Lieutenant?”

  Mendez seemed grateful for the help. “Yeah…I’ve got to keep my eyes outside, looking for some place we can put down.” He patted a small console in the middle, studded with levers and buttons, which he proceeded to quickly explain: “These controls are for Pinocchio’s aero surfaces…flaps here…spoilers here…speed brakes here…the dials show percent deflection. When I give the word, you set whatever I call out to these red detents first…then keep listening as we get closer. I’ll be calling our more and more deflection…pretty much as I feel it with this stick. Winds and currents can be tricky even in a normal landing at Mariner City. Inside these canyons—“ he shrugged. “Not something we practice very often. We’ll have to do this one by feel.”

  “Got it,” Winger said.

  “Okay, Major, get ready…that’s Tithonium Chasm up ahead, according to my map.”

  Winger saw a yawning black gouge, shrouded in mist and darkness on the edge of the horizon. As Pinocchio passed overhead, thirty miles above the steep slopes of the canyon, the true scale of the great Valley of Mariner lay fully revealed ahead of them…a planet-wide canyon engulfing the entire horizon, her bottomlands black and impenetrable, as if the surface was a sheet of paper, crumpled and wadded up by some giant hand.

  The dim hazy escarpments of Tithonium passed directly below the lander as Mendez called for twenty percent deflection. Johnny Winger complied and immediately, Pinocchio shuddered as her spoilers and speed brakes bit into the thin Martian air. The lander nosed downward, losing thousands of feet in altitude over the next several minutes.

  Mendez was all concentration, switching from eyeballs out the window to a moving map display scrolling on his head-up screen. As Pinocchio plummeted downward, the Lieutenant flexed his fingers around the control stick, caressing the controls to slow their descent, extending the ship’s glide.

  “Altitude one two zero k, rate is now two thousand feet per minute…passing over Tithonium…I’m gonna make a slight heading change now—“

  The lander banked gently to port, shaking a little, as he plowed through early morning thermals rising from the great valley below. Ahead, dimly visible in the dawn shadows, was the sharp promontory marking the entrance to an even deeper system of canyonlands, Melas Chasma.

  “That formation…the one that looks like a ship’s bow…that’s Melas. The Valley goes real deep there…but sat imagery seems to show a few narrow ledges near the bottom. I remember discussing that over a few beers once at the Overlook Bar at Mariner City…pilot talk about how we’d put a lander or glider down inside the Valley.”

  “If ‘pilot talk’ is anything like atomgrabber talk,” Winger said, “you can safely discount about ninety per cent of it.”

  Mendez nodded. “True enough but the ledges are real…kind of like rock shelves hanging off a wall. That’s where I’m headed now…I don’t know where else to go…if I can find them.”

  Winger strained to see any detail through wispy morning fog and shadow, catching only occasional glimpses of the crushed and crumpled slopes of the chasm. At the very bottom of the slopes, great piles of talus, rock slides and avalanche debris made sizeable hills that just caught pink shafts of morning sunlight.

  It was a fractured, tortured and smashed landscape that passed below the speeding lander.

  And they were falling steadily toward it, aiming right for the center of the vast maw that yawned wide and deep below them.

  Moments later, Pinocchio had descended below the level of the surrounding plains, below Candor plateau itself and fell into shadow as she was swallowed up by the vast canyon.

  Mendez gritted his teeth. “I hope there’s enough light down there, for me to find those ledges…on the map, they’re just a few hundred miles ahead…if my heading’s right.”

  The deep shadows of the canyon quickly engulfed them.

  “—passing through four thousand, speed three five five…picking up a little buffet now…these crosswinds are tricky.”

  Indeed, the lander rocked like a skittish colt as air currents swirled about the upper reaches of Tithonium and Melas chasms. Below, barely visible in the gray dawn light, glimpses of frost-covered slopes flashed by. Fantastic tortured mountain sides, riven with deep ravines and rock falls, continent-sized side canyons thick with cold fog. Pinocchio plunged deeper and deeper into the great gouge of the Valles Marineris.

  Mendez switched on the landing radar and studied the display intently. He was looking for the telltale “finger and hand” signature of a system of ledges and promontories along the southern boundary of Melas and Coprates chasms. For years, among Mars rocket pilots and aviators, the “Big Hand” had been identified as a possible emergency landing site. Aerial, satellite and robotic ground surveys had confirmed the stability of the ground there…a stairstep series of kilometer long shelves hewn right out of the side of the south canyon walls.

  “The geos say it’s just built-up rock fall from centuries of slides and avalanches,” Mendez muttered. “Whatever the cause, it’s our only hope now. Pinocchio’s toast if we can’t locate one of those ledges.”

  Johnny Winger peered out of the lander’s side porthole. The ground fog was thickening below them as they descended, like tufts of cotton balls dropped from the sky. “Lieutenant, how can you find anything in this crap?”

  “Instruments, Major. All us lander pilots have been well briefed on emergency landing sites along the entry track. I know what the radar signature looks like. I’ve flown over the site in hoppers and gliders…seen it with my own eyes. You just have to trust your instruments.”

  “It’s like that in the nanoworld too,” Winger replied. “You can’t see something that’s a billionth of a meter tall. You have to rely on acoustics and atomic force microscopes. Instruments, just like you say.”


  Pinocchio was now fully engulfed in fog, falling rapidly toward a tiny island of flat land in an ocean of rock and steep slopes.

  Unseen by anyone in the crew compartment, the ANAD swarm had begun to flow forward onto the flight deck, drifting like invisible dust motes among the crew. The swarm made its way forward, eventually taking up station near the aft bulkhead of the flight deck, gathering once more into a faint phosphorescent mist that clung to the interior of Pinocchio’s command center.

  “Now passing through twenty five thousand,” Mendez announced. His eyes were riveted to the head-up display on the windscreen, a faint radar-supplied outline of the terrain below flickering next to reams of numbers. “Three hundred and fifty knots…that’s what I’m aiming for…there’s the Hand—“

  Johnny Winger saw the distinctive shape on the display and realized just how small the ledge seemed. Pinocchio was falling like a rock and Mendez was trying desperately to manage their speed and altitude, putting them right on top of a narrow promontory with finger-like abutments despite their great speed. He shook his head in disbelief.

  There’s no way we’re gonna stick this ship on that little strip of land.

  “Fifty percent,” Mendez called out.

  Winger pulled the lever, ramming Pinocchio’s speed brakes out to half their full deflection. The lander shuddered and shook from the sudden deceleration.

  Mendez studied his energy plot and sucked in his breath through clenched teeth.

  “It’s not enough—spoilers out full…I’m going to light off my thrusters now…we’re going to overshoot the hand if we can’t slow down some more.”

  Winger complied, cycling Pinocchio’s remaining spoilers to their full deflection. The ship shimmied and vibrated, groaning against the thickening airstream.

  “Hold on…I’m pulling up and lighting off descent thrusters…hope to hell this works—“