Mars Crossing

by Geoffrey A. Landis

  “Do it tonight. None of us are going anywhere until we know what’s happened and can be sure it won’t happen again.”

  Ryan winced slightly again, but nodded his head. “You’re right. Okay, tonight.”

  Tana called through the opening, “I’m done here. Come on in.”

  Commander Radkowski came into the bubble-segment, then Trevor, and finally Estrela, Estrela managing to be graceful even when she was hunched over like a caveman. With five in the segment, it was extremely crowded.

  Now Ryan was the center of attention, and he fidgeted.

  “Something you said,” Tana remarked casually. “Right at the end. Do you remember it?”

  “It’s kind of hazy,” Ryan said, but when Tana gave him a sharp glance, he added, “Yes, I think so.”

  Tana looked over to Commander Radkowski, hoping he would help, but he didn’t seem ready to take over the questioning. “Only three of us can fit on the ship, was that what you said?”

  Ryan nodded, and when everybody was silent, looking at him, he cleared his throat. “Well, it’s a small ship.” Nobody said anything. “I did tell the commander.”

  Tana turned and looked at Commander Radkowski. “You knew this, and you kept it from us?”

  “I—well, it seemed a good idea at the time.”

  “You’re saying, if we do make it all the way to the pole, only three of us can go home? And you didn’t tell us?” She turned to Estrela. “And you?”

  Estrela looked away. “It is our ship. I know the specifications.”

  Tana looked at Trevor. He shook his head mutely. “So, the only ones who didn’t know that two of us have to die were the nigger and the kid, is that right?”

  She’d used the word hoping for some shock value, and it seemed to work. Radkowski spread his hands out, and turned them palms up. “It’s not like that—”

  “Really.” She crossed her arms. “Okay, explain it to me.”

  “All I was thinking was, we get to the ship, anything can happen. We need to work as a team. We can’t have everybody worrying. And, besides, who knows? It’s a tough trek anyway, I can’t be sure everybody is going to make it. If two of us die—”

  Tana widened her eyes dramatically. “You’re saying that you were actually planning for two of us to die on the road?”

  “No! Not that at all! I just meant—” Radkowski lowered his head. “I just thought that if we went, at least three of us could be saved.”

  “Or maybe we could fix the ship so it could launch four,” Ryan added. “I don’t know for sure that it can’t.”

  “Okay,” Tana said, and looked back at Commander Radkowski. “Now, tell me another thing. What were you and Estrela doing in the rockhopper an hour ago?”

  Tana didn’t think that Radkowski could blush, but he did. He looked down at his feet. “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?” She looked at Estrela as she said it. Estrela looked back imperturbably, her head cocked slightly to the side. “You must have been doing something.”

  “She wanted to talk to me.”

  “Really? In private? About what?” She was still looking at Estrela, and Estrela’s slight hint of a smile told her more than she wanted to know.

  Radkowski said, almost mumbling, “I should have realized she would know how big the ship was.” He looked up at her. “Nothing happened. She just wanted to talk to me.”

  When Trevor’s broadcast had gone out, it had taken almost ten minutes for Radkowski to get to Ryan. It shouldn’t have taken him two.

  They must have been doing something. Tana had a very good guess as to what.

  15

  ONWARD

  The mood the next morning was subdued. Commander Radkowski told Trevor Whitman that it was time for him to practice driving the dirt-rovers, and sent Estrela to supervise him. Apparently Trevor’s reaction to the episode of anoxia had met some threshold of the commander’s approval. Or perhaps Ryan’s encounter with anoxia had impressed the commander with the fact that a crew member could be incapacitated at any time, and he might need the help of any of the crew, even Trevor.

  Ryan, meanwhile, had finished analyzing the failure of the zirconia electrolysis unit in his suit. It was a replication, in miniature, of the same problem that had attacked the Dulcinea. The oxygen partial-pressure sensors had been suffused by sulfur radicals, and both the primary and backup sensor gave a false reading of oxygen overpressure. As a result, the feedback mechanism in the suit had turned down the oxygen production rate, until the gas mixture that Ryan had been breathing was nearly depleted of oxygen.

  An overnight thermal bake-out of each of the sensors should be sufficient to clear away the accumulation before it reached a dangerous threshold. It would be best to do it every night. To be safe, Ryan changed the parameters in the oxygen control software so that if an apparent excess of oxygen occurred, the suit’s computer would keep oxygen production going, rather than cut it to zero. Finally, he suggested that when they were on the surface, everybody should run a manual oxygen level check on their suits twice a day—the manual system used a different sensor that should be immune from the problem—and they should swap out sensor elements if they saw any sign of trouble.

  That would give them three layers of fail-safe against a recurrence of the failure. Nobody was happy about trusting their lives to a sensor that they knew could be faulty, but with the changes Ryan suggested, it should be as safe as anyone could make it. And he could see no alternative.

  “What do we do now?” Tana asked.

  “We continue north.” Commander Radkowski looked at her steadily. “We still have no other choice.”

  Estrela and Trevor took the dirt-rovers ahead on pathfinder duty.

  Ryan had worked most of the night on the problem, and Commander Radkowski assigned him to the first shift riding as passenger in the rock-hopper. Radkowski piloted the rockhopper himself, and Tana once again took up her position perched on top of the vehicle. The commander gave her a disapproving look. If he had been the pilot of the rockhopper on the previous day, he would have forbidden her to ride outside in the first place, but now that it was established, he didn’t bother to try to stop her. And, besides, it did make the rockhopper’s tiny cabin a little less crowded.

  The morning sky was the color of adobe, streaked with feathery clouds, tiny crystals of carbon dioxide ice in the Martian stratosphere. The terrain was rockier, and Tana’s ride was quite a bit bumpier. Still, once she fit herself into the rhythm of it, it wasn’t a problem to keep her balance.

  “Hey, Estrela, wait up!” Tana could hear everything that Trevor said over the communications link. “Hey, you’re going too fast! Slow up, okay? Wait for me!”

  Estrela didn’t answer, but Tana could see that she was staying ahead much less than she had the previous day, probably in deference to Trevor’s inexperience.

  16

  JOÃO’S SECRET

  One day, for no reason that Estrela could say, she realized what had been really quite obvious all along.

  João had his crowd, and despite the fact that he had almost no money, he was every evening at bars. He spent the nights drinking in the company of boys dressed in elaborately casual attire, bright primary colors adorned with sporting logos like Nike and Polo. They seemed an odd crowd for the João she knew, a João who was moody and studious and intently focused. But he hid this side of him well when he was with his American friends, assuming a mask of frivolity. Estrela assumed that he was social climbing.

  She was herself climbing as high and as fast as she could, erasing her past and inventing a new one, studying the dress and the mannerisms of the North American girls and imitating everything, or at least as much as she could copy without thousands of cruzados to spend on clothes. Her origins in the street were a secret she never talked about, and most of the other girls, who knew only that she was from Brazil and had her tuition and living expenses paid from the charity of the order, assumed that she must be the daughter of a maid or a shop worker, po
or but unexceptional.

  But one day she was waiting in João’s dingy apartment, and João came by with one of his impeccably high-class friends. The boy gave her a look that dismissed her utterly, as if she was of less interest than the furniture. And when he bid farewell to João, his fingers lingered a little too long on João’s arm, and his glance lingered a little too long on João’s eyes, and she thought, Why, he is looking at João just like a lover would. And then, never even having articulated it to herself until that moment, she thought, But of course, why shouldn’t he? He must be João’s lover.

  Until then it had never struck her as odd that João had no girlfriends. He was handsome enough; he could have had any of Estrela’s friends if he had but once called their name in his gentle, commanding voice, but she had only thought that he was too good for them.

  Why, João is a veador, she thought, and suddenly all that had been opaque to her became clear.

  João, when she mentioned it, shrugged. “I can’t believe that you didn’t know,” he said.

  “Aren’t you afraid of diseases?”

  João looked at her.

  “You know. The homosexual disease. The—you know!”

  “Say it.”

  “You know! AIDS!”

  “I am far more cautious than you are, my little orchid,” João said. “You have, what, a dozen male friends who skewer you like a barbecued goat on a spit? Are you not yourself afraid?”

  “I take precautions,” she said, indignantly tossing her hair.

  “What precautions?”

  “I make them all wear—” She made a gesture with her hand, like unrolling a tiny inner tube. “You know. The tiny shirt. Camisinhas.”

  “Ah, so you do make your knights wear their rubber armor,” João said. “As well you should. I am glad to hear it. And so do I.” He lowered his eyes. “Am I afraid?” He raised his eyes and looked directly at her, his dark eyes penetrating through her like fire. “Yes, of course I am afraid. It is a horrible thing, when love is death and death is love. It is my worst fear, and each time I love, I think, is this it? Is this one to be my death? But what can I do? Can I change the stars in their course, or keep the ocean from surrounding the world? No more can I change the way I am. If it is fated that I must die, well, then, every man must die. And I will have lived a little, and have known the love of a few men. I am careful, my love, I am as careful as I can possibly be, but death comes for all men. And for women too, little orchid.”

  Oddly, once she knew his secret, it brought her closer to João. He would now bring her out with his drinking buddies, and after a while they accepted her as just a rather odd friend of João’s. She saw them, at first, as shallow poseurs pretending at an assertive masculinity, unworthy of João’s affection; later as confused young men, uncertain of their sexuality or their identity; and finally she didn’t see them as anything at all, just friends of João’s: Andrew who got drunk and sang, Justin who liked to take her to ancient Hollywood musicals and then discuss the characters and the costumes all night long, Dieter who taught her to ride a dirt bike, Jean-Paul who wrote poetry.

  When João broke up with the two others he had shared his apartment with, it was only natural that he took a new apartment with her. João was in a Ph.D. program at Cleveland State University by then, the rising star of the geology department; she had won an assistantship and would be starting the following autumn. Unlike João, who studied rocks with an intensity that sometimes almost frightened her, she had no particular passion for geology. It was as good a subject as any other, no better, no worse.

  What does he see in those rocks? she sometimes thought. What does he see in those men?

  But it was an excuse to avoid going back to Brazil.

  17

  TREVOR ON WHEELS

  Trevor drove to the theme music of the songs stomping through his head—

  riding on that lonesome road, riding riding riding

  He was being excruciatingly careful. Driving the dirt-rovers had been easy enough in the virtual reality simulation, but he was acutely aware that this was real reality, and smashing up a dirt-rover would mean that none of the crew would ever trust him again.

  hauling down that heavy load, riding riding riding

  He stayed well behind Estrela, following in her tracks, watching where she avoided obstacles. Estrela banked it over casually, sometimes weaving lazy S-curves for no reason he could see other than just for the hell of it. The rocky surface had little traction, though, and he was afraid to follow her. If he leaned the rockhopper over very far, he was afraid it would slide out from under him. So he slowly dropped further behind. It was okay. He was practicing being cautious, and there was no real way he could get lost; the dirt-rover had its own laser-gyro-based inertial navigation system that gave him a readout of his position to within a fraction of an inch. In the very worst case, if he lost track of both Estrela ahead of him and the rock-hopper behind him, he could radio and ask for a position.

  So he didn’t mind that he was slowly dropping behind her.

  He was almost a mile behind when she drove over the cliff.

  18

  MARRIAGE OF CONVENIENCE

  In 2014, when Brazil announced its astronaut program, João had studied the application guidelines—both the ones that were written and the ones that were implied. A Mars mission was in the air; everybody knew it. The Americans had already announced their intention to go to Mars, and João studied the Brazilian space program carefully. They were asking for geologists. Why, he considered, with no oil to drill for in space, no mountains, no ores, why would the Brazilians want geologists for astronauts? Why, then, if not for Mars?

  João had kept his tastes for young men discreet. In America, to be openly homosexual sometimes would invite an attack, and it certainly meant a dead end for advancement, at least for those not in careers friendly to those who were not straight, such as hairdressing or dancing. No, it was wise to keep his private life silent.

  João was already at a disadvantage, being Brazilian in an American-dominated economy. He was working with a petrochemical company now, scouting locations for exploratory wells in the Yucatan. It was work that he enjoyed—of everything, he most liked walking in the field, picking up rocks and examining them and trying to imagine what tectonic conditions had formed them, what their history was, what story they told about the geological conditions deep down under the earth. The rocks of Yucatan were mostly limestone. The core drillings, the seismic tomography, the petrography and magnetometry and analytical chemistry—all of the tools of physical geology he found interesting and was adept at using and interpreting, but at heart what he most liked was just walking in the territory with a hammer and a hand lens, looking at the terrain and picking up rocks.

  Did he want to become an astronaut? Yes, he decided.

  Estrela had not, in all that time, gone back to Brazil.

  Often she stayed with João. His passion was for young men, preferably lean, blond young men with mirror-shades and a taste for suede. But some years lean young blonds were few and far between, and on those evenings when he was between lovers, and bored, Estrela had been available, and so—

  Well, it was of no consequence to him, a physical comfort, a small shared intimacy he could enjoy, even though he might have wished that Estrela were a man. She was his friend, and even if she did not share his soul, she was the one he bared his soul to, the only person on earth who really knew him.

  He had no idea of what those nights had meant to Estrela. She hid her feelings from him very well. He had casually remarked, long ago, that she would never break his heart. It had been an easy remark to make, since he could easily see her beauty, even admire it, but not feel drawn by it. He had, in fact, long forgotten that he had ever made such a remark. He had no real understanding that if she could never break his heart, he was continuously breaking hers.

  So when he decided to apply to be the geologist on the newly formed Brazilian astronaut corps, he asked Estrela
to marry him. It was a decision of little consequence to him, a minor masquerade to fool public decency, one that he knew both of them could ignore in their private lives.

  Estrela looked at the man that she had loved since she had been eleven years old, held back her tears, and said yes. With a casual voice that made it apparent that the matter was only of minor interest to her, she said, yes, of course she would marry him.

  19

  FALLING

  There was almost no shadow, and little contrast. Estrela saw the edge ahead of her, but she had thought it was just a sharper-than-average crevice. Instead, it was a sheer rock face, almost five meters high. Suddenly the perspective opened out, and there was nothing ahead of her front wheel. She slammed on her brakes, but on the hard rock surface there was no traction, and the only result was that the dirt-rover fishtailed around in a skid. Before she could bring it back under control and slow down, the dirt-rover was over the edge and, for a moment, she was weightless.

  She kicked free of the falling dirt-rover, which had started to tumble as it fell, thinking, better to fall clear than to land with a ton of high-energy metal falling with me. In the lower gravity, everything happened more slowly than she expected. She had enough time to watch the dirt-rover hit on its left side and bounce off to the right, and she hit the ground in a sky diver’s roll. The ground was loose rubble, and she hit hard, skidding instead of rolling, and threw out an arm to stop her fall.

  The pain was startling. She didn’t lose consciousness. “Watch out for the cliff, kid!” she said.

  “Where did you go?” his voice on the radio said. “You were ahead of me, and you just vanished.”

  “It’s a cliff,” she said. “Better slow down.”

  “Shit! Are you okay?”