Mars Crossing

by Geoffrey A. Landis

Well, if there had been a problem, Ryan or Tana would have contacted him by an emergency page, which would get to him wherever he was. Still, it was a breach of discipline.

  While he started his sponge bath, he reached toward the radio to listen to what the rest of the crew was doing. And, as if in response—he hadn’t even yet turned on the radio—the emergency page lit up. Somebody had hit the panic button.

  He hoped that it was nothing, but John Radkowski’s instinct for trouble was already giving him warning signals. He had the sudden sinking feeling that they were in deep trouble.

  13

  CHAMLONG

  When Chamlong Limpigomolchai had been a small child, perhaps five or six, his parents took him to a temple. The golden Buddha had seemed uninteresting to him, but he vividly remembered the Nagas, the huge, brightly painted, seven-headed serpentine monsters who guarded the stairs. After the temple, his mother had taken him to have his fortune told. The fortune-telling woman had seemed more like a clerk than a wizard; she had taken his mother’s money, barely glancing at the number written on the lucky stick he had shaken from the fortune tube, and pulled a sheet of tightly rolled paper out of a pigeonhole and handed it to her without a word of comment.

  YOU WILL TRAVEL FAR, the fortune said, BUT WILL ALWAYS RETURN HOME.

  Later, when he went to Japan for schooling, he thought, yes, I am traveling far, but I will always return home. The thought gave him comfort; he knew that he would not die while abroad. And later, when he went to study for a doctorate in an American university by the name of Stanford, he thought, yes, this is it, this is what the old woman meant when she said I will travel far. But I will return home.

  And he traveled further yet. His fellow astronauts had always marveled at the calm way that he faced danger. He had been on extravehicular activity once—a spacewalk—and an incorrectly programmed robotic arm had moved unexpectedly, severed his tether, and tossed him spinning into space. He had turned on his emergency locator beacon—his radio had been smashed in the same accident, so he had no idea if his beacon was being heard, or even if anybody had seen the accident. He turned down his oxygen partial pressure to the minimum to extend his breathing time and calmly closed his eyes to meditate. Two hours later, when he was picked up, he opened his eyes, nodded once, and said, “Ah, there you are.”

  And now he was on Mars. But I will return home to die. As it had been all his life, he knew that, no matter how bad things might get, he would make it home.

  The fortune-teller had been right about his traveling, far more right than she could possibly have known.

  But she was wrong about his returning home. Chamlong Limpigomolchai, the farthest-traveling Thai in the history of his country, would never leave Mars.

  14

  A FUNERAL ON MARS

  Chamlong Limpigomolchai had been a quiet man. John Radkowski had always respected Chamlong—he had thought that of them all, he had been the best among the crew—but he had never really understood his motivations. He did his job, never complained, never did less than his best, and never talked about his personal life. Now he would never know him better.

  Radkowski had seen people die before; death was an old familiar feeling. First was the shocked feeling. Why? Then, following hard on after the first shock, was the awful feeling of relief. He had known that the mission was going to be dangerous, and that there was a good chance that one or all of them would die. And now it had happened—and he was still alive. He damned himself for what he felt, but he couldn’t help feeling it.

  And, following the relief, the guilt.

  The Mars soil was harder to dig in than he had expected. There was a slight breeze, which helped carry the dust of digging away, but by the time they had dug a grave for him, all of their suits were painted a dull yellowish orange. Tana and Estrela carried his body. After Tana had done the autopsy, they had put him back in his suit for burial. Radkowski had looked over Chamlong’s meager personal effects, trying to find something that would have meaning for him. He had no photos, no letters from home. He knew that Chamlong hadn’t been married—that had been one of the criteria for crew selection—but surely he had some person at home to share his life with. But if so, he left no trace of it. The only personal item Radkowski found was a tiny yellow and red dollhouse, something that seemed almost ridiculous among his other utilitarian possessions. Radkowski carefully placed it in with the body.

  “Ashes to ashes,” he intoned. “Dust to dust.” Back in the Air Force, they had their own second verse to this reading: “And if the Lord won’t take you, why, the devil, he must.” But it was one thing to say that when getting drunk over a dead friend, and quite another to say it aloud at a funeral, so instead he said, “A moment of silence, please.”

  And Estrela, Ryan, Trevor, and then Tana, one at a time, put a shovelful of Martian dirt into the grave, and then silently piled a cairn of rocks over it.

  John Radkowski stood watching, silent with his thoughts. It’s not a disaster, he told himself. One dead, a stupid accident, we can deal with it. Thank the Lord the rest of us are okay. If this is as bad as it gets, we’re lucky.

  He could never admit it to his crew, but John Radkowski was scared.

  The expedition is fine, John Radkowski told himself. The expedition is fine.

  15

  MAPPING THE DISASTER

  The expedition was not fine. Ryan consulted by video-link with support engineers on Earth until the Earth had set below the horizon. It was annoying that the communications relay satellite that Agamemnon had left in orbit had failed; after working perfectly for seven years, it was just bad luck for it to fail when it did. Without a communications relay, they could consult Earth only during the Martian day, when the Earth was visible in the sky.

  Without mission support, Ryan worked alone, late into the night.

  He answered questions from the other crew members in monosyllables or not at all.

  Fiber-optic probes lowered through the piping and into each of the tanks confirmed what Ryan knew: The Dulcinea’s fuel tanks were dry.

  While Ryan Martin and John Radkowski worked, Tana and Estrela cooperated in leveling a patch of ground with shovels and then anchoring and inflating the habitat bubble. There was no way they could help with Dulcinea, and, regardless of the decisions made regarding their future, the habitat was needed. Once it had been inflated and the interior fittings checked out, they had a comfortable living area with, for the first time in seven months, actual privacy for sleeping and other bodily functions.

  There were no firm conclusions from Earth by the time Earth had set the next day and they went to sleep. Between Ryan’s testing and that of the engineers on Earth, though, they had the beginnings of an understanding of what had happened.

  Mars is a sulfur-rich planet. Without an ozone layer, far-ultraviolet radiation from the sun reaches all the way to the surface. A consequence of this is the presence of a small amount—less than a few parts per million—of highly reactive, UV-energized sulfur radicals near the surface. Over the seven years that the Dulcinea had been making rocket fuel on Mars, contamination by sulfur radicals had crept into all of the parts of the system, including the microelectromechanical sensors that measured the fuel capacity and the pipes and seals of the propellant manufacturing. The pressure sensors on the tanks had been fooled by the contamination, and the microprocessor control system, following the readings unquestioningly, had allowed the fuel manufacturing to proceed until all of the tanks held a far higher pressure than they had ever been designed for. The backup mechanical gauges, frozen by ice buildup, had failed to report any problems.

  Worse, though, the energetic sulfur radicals had slowly hardened and embrittled the polymer of the seals that had isolated the liquid oxygen tanks from the propellant production system. When Chamlong had tapped on the manifold, the fragile seal ruptured, and the consequent spray of liquid oxygen had caused the seal on the next tank to burst, and in short order all the tanks had ruptured and drained their co
ntents to the sand.

  The first American expedition to Mars, the Agamemnon expedition, had had an entire second ship ready for a backup in 2022. Contingency planning, they called it. That backup ship had been the Dulcinea.

  After Dulcinea, there was no spare return ship.

  The crew of Don Quijote were stranded on Mars.

  16

  THE CAPTAIN AND THE KID

  While Ryan Martin worked on the problems with Dulcinea, Commander Radkowski instructed the rest of the crew to continue with their science activities on the Mars surface. Whatever had gone wrong, he knew, it would only be made worse if the crew was left idle to brood it over. That included his own activities—which at the particular point in the schedule were listed as aiding the other crew members as he saw fit. None of the crew members, at the moment, seemed to need assistance.

  He was getting used to the surface. At first Mars had seemed odd, the horizon too close, the rocks unexpectedly rough, the color of the light too yellow. A speckling of dark rocks gave the ridge face in the distance an oddly dappled appearance, always changing slightly as the shadows moved with the sun. Now it was beginning to seem familiar.

  Trevor came up and walked next to him. Trevor’s suit was a bright lime green, so strongly contrasting against the yellowish-orange Martian terrain that it nearly made his eyes hurt. Trevor had his own list of science activities—a whole schedule of things to observe and look for, from a list contributed by the brightest students at fifty elementary school classes across America. But at the moment, he seemed more interested in Radkowski.

  “Did you ever have a brother?” Trevor asked.

  Commander Radkowski was startled. How could Trevor have known he had just been thinking about his brother? Just making conversation, he expected. Trevor didn’t seem to be very good at making friends and small talk, but give him some credit, at least he was trying. “Sure,” he said cautiously. “Sure, I had a brother.”

  “Just one?”

  “Just one. Karl. Two years older than me.” He paused. “How about you?”

  “The same, an older brother.” Trevor stumbled, and then said, “No, no, younger. Why did I say older?” He laughed. “Younger. A kid brother. Brandon.”

  Radkowski had known that already; he’d read the kid’s dossier. But if the kid was going to ask about his family, he would carry his half of the conversation. It was funny, on all of the seven-month voyage out, they had been bored as hell, but he didn’t recall talking about his family at all. None of the crew had asked him.

  They walked on in silence, and then Trevor asked, “What was he like?”

  “Karl? He was okay, I guess.” Radkowski thought about it. “Kinda bossy, I suppose, now that I think about it.” He paused, and then said, “I guess older brothers are like that.”

  “You said it,” Trevor said.

  “How about your brother?”

  Trevor shrugged. “He’s okay.” He paused for a moment, gathering his breath. The kid was trembling, Radkowski noticed. What was going on? And then he asked, “Did you ever do anything really awful to your brother?”

  Radkowski’s heart stopped for a moment, and then life went on. “Like what?”

  “You ever betray him? Did you ever make him lie for you? That sort of thing—you know.”

  He didn’t want to think about it. Why was the kid asking these questions? He looked around. Estrela was out of sight behind the ship. Tana Jackson was working on a rock, levering it up in order to sample the soil beneath for signs of organic material that might have been protected by the rock from the harsh ultraviolet. “One moment,” he said. “I think Dr. Jackson could use my assistance. Would you excuse me, please?”

  Trevor looked disappointed, but he nodded.

  Radkowski brooded over it. The kid knows, he thought. Somehow he sensed something. God, he’s a lot like I was. Was I really like that? There’s an aura of guilt over me. I wonder if the others can see it?

  17

  RADKOWSKI

  John Radkowski had grown up without ever meeting his father. His mother and an aunt had tried to raise the two boys as best they could, but they had been wild, and paid little attention to adults, or to any authority figures. More than anyone else, it had been his brother Karl that had raised him.

  Karl’s gang was the Skins. The Skins were every bit as tough as the black gangs and the Hispanic gangs and the Vietnamese gangs, and they made sure that everybody knew it. When they moved into an area, resplendent in their purple Dacron jackets, with their skull tattoos and pierced eyebrows and buzz-cut hair, everybody with any sense quietly found another place to go. Even the other gangs mostly steered clear of Skins turf.

  Johnny had done a little boosting, some drugs, but wasn’t in any of the gangs yet. He didn’t really like what drugs did to his head, but it kept him cool with the other high-school kids, and his school was one where it was not wise to stand out.

  Karl disapproved: He wanted Johnny to fly straight and grow up to be somebody, not some punk-ass low-life criminal like him. He was constantly telling Johnny to stay out of trouble. You’ve got some brains, he said. You’ve got something on the ball. You don’t want to end up as just another one of the dead-enders and burned-out crackheads in the projects. But Karl was a hotshot gangbanger himself, and, although he did everything he could to discourage Johnny, he was the only role model that Johnny had.

  Johnny was a sophomore in high school, not flunking out, exactly, but he was careful not to get grades that would get him noticed.

  Weasel was a year older than the rest of Johnny’s buddies; he’d been held back in school. He had a driver’s license already, and a car. On that Thursday night, they had driven into Brooklyn, into a neighborhood where they wouldn’t be recognized. They’d cruised by the storefront three times, checking it out. It closed up at midnight, and the car was idling at the end of the block, the four of them sitting inside smoking and talking, waiting for the cash register to get full.

  “I don’t know,” Johnny said. “I tell you what, you wanna just go back, pick up some girls, maybe get high?”

  “You crazy? No way,” Weasel said. “You gotta do it, man. You ain’t chickening ’cause you’re a fag, are you?”

  Fishface gave him the gun.

  Johnny shoved it in his waistband. He didn’t feel very good. The smoke was beginning to make him light-headed. He didn’t have to use the gun; he could just show it, and the guy would open the register right up. He definitely wasn’t going to use it.

  A simple transaction: Johnny would show him the gun, and the cashier would give him the money in the register. Easy. Anybody could do it.

  “So what’cha waiting for, pussy?” Fishface said.

  He opened the door, took a deep breath, and pulled his T-shirt out over the gun to keep it from being quite so noticeable. The air was a relief from the stale, smoky air in the car, but he barely noticed. He walked the quarter block to the store.

  The store on the corner had bars over the dirty glass window. A glowing orange worm in the window flickered UDWEISER. He stopped at the counter by the cash register. It sold Lotto tickets, cigarette lighters in the shape of buxom women, gum, condoms, and cigarettes.

  After a moment, the cashier—who was also the owner—looked up and said, “You want to buy cigarettes, you better show some ID.”

  He pushed the shirt over the handle of the gun, exposing it. “I don’t—”

  I don’t want anybody to get hurt, is what he’d started to say, but he didn’t get that far.

  The man said, “Shit!” He reached under the counter and pulled out a shotgun.

  Johnny had to shoot, there wasn’t any choice. He didn’t even have time to think, but only to grab the gun and fire. At the same time the shotgun went off with an incredible concussion, and Johnny thought, I’m dead. A rack of Stolichniya behind him blew apart, spraying him with shards of glass and vodka. Johnny’s shot hit the owner and jerked him backward. A small bubble of blood appeared in his chest a
nd popped. He dropped the shotgun, a surprised expression on his face.

  Johnny dropped his gun and ran.

  It wasn’t supposed to be this way. A simple transaction. His buddies were waiting with the car, but even in the confusion of the moment, Johnny realized that going to the car would be stupid; the sounds of the shots had certainly drawn attention, and they could track down Weasel easily enough from the license plate.

  He ran down the street and into an alley, jumped up and caught the lower rung of a fire escape, then across two roofs and then down into a subway and over the turnstile. No train on the platform, so he ran up again and outside. Three Mocks away, and the Pitkin Avenue A train was waiting at the elevated platform. He ran onto it, panting, and changed to the F train at Jay Street. Only when the train had pulled out, when he could see he wasn’t being followed, did his heart stop racing.

  His efforts to avoid being tracked had been useless. A bystander had noticed the car full of a gang of teenage delinquents loitering in front of the convenience store when the shots were heard, and written down the plate number when it had sped off.

  And there had been a security camera.

  When Weasel had returned, police had already been waiting for him. Half of the neighborhood watched as they took him to the station for questioning.

  “You moron,” Karl said. “What the hell kind of trouble are you in this time? Spill it, asshole.”

  Johnny didn’t have any real choice. He’d never been able to keep anything from his older brother anyway. He told him the whole story.

  “Shit,” Karl said. “You sure do know how to pick friends, you. That asshole Weasel’s no friend of yours. The cops push on him, threaten him with a little time if he doesn’t talk, you know he’ll roll over so fast you won’t even see him move.”