Mars

by Ben Bova

  Like a caged cheetah he paced back and forth, seeking a way out and finding none. Finally, in an agony of reluctance, he sat at his little desk and began pecking on the computer keyboard with his long manicured fingers.

  • • •

  Dmitri Iosifovitch Ivshenko had the physique and the personality of the typical cosmonaut. Slight of build, lightning-fast reflexes, and enough youth to have survived being a fighter pilot and then a test pilot. Drinking all night, sobering up on oxygen in the morning, breakfasting on a cigarette and then throwing up behind the hangar before climbing into the cockpit of some supersonic jet. Yet once in the cockpit he became cool and calculating, capable of sizing up a situation in an instant and doing the right thing at precisely the right moment on a combination of instinct, training, and blindingly fast thought processes. He did not consider himself to be a bold pilot; the bold ones died young. Ivshenko was a cautious pilot who flew dangerous aircraft. When he transferred to the cosmonaut corps he was almost bored with the Newtonian predictability of each space mission.

  He was not bored now. He was not particularly worried, either. Merely careful. No need to rush, he reminded himself as he cautiously poked his pole into the sandy ripples a meter in front of his boots. We are here to rescue those four wretches, not to get stuck alongside them.

  Dust stirred up where he prodded the ground. The pole sank in a few centimeters, then seemed to hit firm soil. Ivshenko nodded inside his helmet and took a step forward, dragging his safety tether behind him.

  “How is it?” Vosnesensky’s voice rasped in his earphones.

  “Soft, like sand. Not good traction.”

  “Be very careful.”

  “I am always very careful, Mikhail Andreivitch.”

  “Then be doubly careful.”

  “Yes, sir, comrade group commander.” Ivshenko chuckled to himself and took another step forward.

  His foot slid out from under him. His body half turned as he grabbed at the pole with both hands but it too was sinking into the sand, suddenly the consistency of talcum. Clouds of pink dust billowed softly as Ivshenko felt himself slipping, sliding forward, his boots suddenly without purchase, sinking into a sea of soft red sand.

  He did not call out. Even as he sank down into the clinging dust he let go of the useless pole and tried to twist his body around and reach back toward the last bit of firm ground. But inside the cumbersome hard suit he could barely turn a few degrees as he floundered, arms flailing, legs kicking. It was like sinking into gooey mud. Ivshenko imagined himself being sucked down into quicksand.

  With those rapid reflexes and his ability to size up a situation quickly, Ivshenko stopped his struggling even as he heard Vosnesensky bellowing in his earphones: “What’s wrong? What’s happening?”

  He felt something firm beneath the heel of his left boot and tried to balance all his weight on it. But the boot slipped off it and he continued to sink slowly, inexorably, into the fine red dust. It rose up to his chest, up to his armpits, to the lip of his helmet.

  “I am sinking,” he reported glumly. The visor of his helmet was spattered with rust-colored dust. His arms were spread across the surface of the sand like a swimmer trying to float. He was afraid to move them for fear of sinking faster.

  Vosnesensky swore in Russian.

  “I’m sinking!” Ivshenko repeated, louder, his voice pitched higher. The talcumlike sand was crawling up the faceplate of his helmet.

  Vosnesensky hesitated only a moment. It would be dangerous to try to back up on this slope, he knew, but Ivshenko’s tether was attached to a simple ring fastener on the nose of the vehicle. There was no winch to pull him up.

  “Sit down,” he snapped at Reed as he punched the control panel buttons that put all the wheel motors into reverse.

  Reed slipped into the right-hand seat, his eyes goggling at the scene in front of them. Ivshenko’s helmet had disappeared into the sand almost entirely. He was yelling something in Russian, but his radio voice was breaking up, garbled with static.

  “Pull me up, dammit!” Ivshenko shouted into his helmet microphone. He was completely drowned in the red dust now. And still sinking. It was bottomless.

  Then he felt the tether take hold. Like a parachute blossoming over his head. Ivshenko felt the same rush of gratitude and joy.

  “Good! Good! Pull me back.”

  He knew Vosnesensky would inch the rover backward with infinite care, infinite caution. That’s fine, Ivshenko said to himself. I have twelve hours of air, maybe more. Take your time, Mikhail Andreivitch. Take all the time you want, but keep pulling me up.

  His head rose above the sand and almost instantly he could hear a babble of voices: Reed, Vosnesensky, the four in the other rover, all talking at once.

  “I’m fine,” he said to them all. “Keep pulling.”

  His shoulders came free of the dust. He could wave his arms at them all. Then his left boot seemed to catch on the same projection of underlying rock that had almost stopped him when he was sinking.

  “Wait, I’m caught …”

  But the tether kept pulling him. His left leg was pinned somehow. He tried to twist it free as he called on Vosnesensky to stop for a moment.

  The tether was made of the same lightweight, high-strength carbon fiber composites as those that linked the spacecraft together. The underground rock was as hard and durable as granite. The rover continued to grind slowly backward despite Ivshenko’s yowls, stretching him as if he were being racked.

  It only took a few seconds. Ivshenko felt his knee pop, a searing bolt of pain stabbing the length of his leg. He screamed a curse at the universe as the tether suddenly went slack.

  Vosnesensky bellowed into the cockpit radio, “What’s the matter with you?”

  “You’ve just broken my leg, that’s all,” Ivshenko answered in a voice sharp with misery.

  “How …?”

  “Never mind! Pull! I’m starting to sink again.”

  It cost him excruciating pain, but Ivshenko dislodged his leg from the projection of rock while he snarled at Vosnesensky. He felt the tether tighten again. His leg throbbing terribly, he lapsed into a gritted-teeth silence as the rover pulled him out of the sand pit.

  For long-minutes he lay on the firm ground, panting, squeezing his eyes shut against the pain.

  In the cockpit, Tony Reed stared at the prone red-suited figure, his heart pounding in his ears. “What’s happened to him?”

  “He said his leg became caught on something,” Vosnesensky answered dourly. “When we pulled him, the leg snapped.”

  “What are we going to do?”

  “We’ve got to go out and get him!”

  “Go out? You can’t!”

  “I will suit up,” Vosnesensky said.

  “You’re in no condition to go outside,” Reed insisted. “You haven’t had more than two hours’ sleep since we left the dome.”

  “I must.” But his first try at getting up from the cockpit seat was a failure. His legs were too weak to support him. The Russian tried again; the best he could do was to stand shakily for a moment and then collapse back onto the seat.

  “Don’t look at me!” Reed said, near panic. “I can’t go out! I … I’m not trained for EVA work.”

  “Stop arguing,” Ivshenko’s voice came over the radio speaker, weak, gasping. “I can make it to the hatch … I think.”

  The cosmonaut began crawling along the ground, pulling himself with his hands, dragging his useless left leg.

  “If his suit ruptures …” Vosnesensky let the thought hang. Turning, sweaty-faced, to Reed he commanded, “Get into your hard suit, doctor. Now.”

  “But I …”

  “You need not go EVA,” Vosnesensky said, his voice heavy with distaste. “But our comrade will need someone to help him into the airlock. You can do that much, can’t you?”

  Reed’s insides were fluttering, his hands trembling. “Yes, of course,” he said, desperately trying to calm himself. “Naturally. I can help hi
m out of his suit and tend to his leg.”

  “An angel of mercy,” Vosnesensky snarled.

  From the cockpit of the stranded rover, Jamie and the three others had watched and listened to Ivshenko’s ordeal. With growing horror they saw their would-be rescuer sink into the sand, heard his shouts for help, watched the second rover carefully back up and pull the cosmonaut free, flinched at his scream when his leg went.

  Now Jamie watched grimly as Ivshenko crawled painfully toward the rover’s airlock hatch. And he knew there was nothing left, no hope of their being rescued. Unless he did it himself.

  SOL 40: AFTERNOON

  It took almost two hours for Jamie to struggle into his hard suit, Exhausted and weak from his illness, he knew that he had to make the trek to the second rover carrying a lifeline that would at last bring his three companions across the ghost crater of treacherous sand to the safety of the rescuing vehicle.

  Vosnesensky had objected strenuously.

  “You are too sick to do it!” the Russian had insisted. “I am the only one remaining who has even half his normal strength …”

  Jamie shut him down with an upraised hand. “Mikhail,” he said softly to the cosmonaut’s image on the comm screen, “if you get stuck out there too, then we’re all dead. If I get stuck, we still have Pete or even one of the women to try to get to you.”

  “They are all in worse condition than you are!”

  “You’ve got to stay with your vehicle,” Jamie said flatly, unemotionally, as if he were reading instructions from a printed form. “That is self-evident. The regulations are perfectly clear, and they’re entirely right, too.”

  Vosnesensky scowled. But he no longer argued.

  “I’m strong enough to make it around the perimeter of the crater,” Jamie said. “I’ll carry a line that we can use to bring the others across the lake.”

  “Lake?”

  “The crater full of sand.”

  “It is more like a bog than a lake,” Vosnesensky grumbled.

  “Whatever. That’s how we’ll do it,” said Jamie.

  Vosnesensky muttered something in Russian.

  “How’s Ivshenko?” Jamie asked.

  The cosmonaut’s face went even darker. “Reed is taking care of his leg. Apparently it is not broken, but the knee is badly dislocated. He cannot walk. He can’t even stand up without support.”

  “So it’s up to me.”

  Now, after two hours of sweaty struggle, Jamie dogged down his helmet on the neck ring of his suit, trying to keep his doubts at bay. A couple of kilometers, he told himself. Two-three klicks, at most. I can do that. Yet his arms felt almost too heavy to lift; his legs were rubbery.

  Connors had wanted to help him into the hard suit, but he was too weak to stand for more than a few minutes at a time. Joanna and Ilona assisted him, tight-lipped and silent, while Connors read off the checklist.

  “Not bad,” the astronaut quipped, “having two gorgeous women help you dress.”

  He was sitting on the edge of his own bunk, the checklist trembling in his hand, trying to keep a smile on his sweaty, weary face. Through the open hatch of the airlock Jamie could see that Connors was having trouble breathing; his chest heaved painfully, his mouth hung open.

  The two women were not much better off. They moved slowly, listlessly. Their faces were drawn and pale. How many mistakes are they making? Jamie wondered. Are they killing me because they’re too weak to know what they’re doing?

  The climbing harness, its tripod stand and winch mechanism, and its massive drum of cable was set against the airlock’s side bulkhead. As he slid the harness over his shoulders and fastened it across his chest Jamie thought ruefully, We won’t be using this to climb the cliffs and see my village. I’ll never get to see whether it’s a real village or not.

  Finally he was fully suited, his backpack cinched tight and checked out, his harness ready to be connected with the cable. All systems working, unless they had overlooked something.

  “Okay,” Jamie said, already feeling the enormous weight of the suit, the backpack, the responsibility on his wobbly legs. “Clear the airlock.”

  Joanna reached up and touched his cheek. “Shut your visor first,” she said tenderly. “And may god go with you.”

  God? Jamie thought. He remembered that his fetish was still in his coverall pocket. Buttoned up inside the hard suit he could not reach the pocket to touch it. It’s there, he told himself. I’m not going without it. It’s there where it should be.

  Ilona cast him a wan smile as she and Joanna backed out of the airlock compartment. Jamie pulled the hatch shut after a desultory wave to Connors. Once the hatch was sealed he reached out a finger to push the control button that started pumping the air out of the chamber.

  And saw that he had not put on his gloves.

  His stomach lurched. Four of us checking out everything and the damned gloves are still tucked in my belt pouch. What the hell else have we screwed up?

  He pulled the gloves on and sealed them to the suit cuffs. Then he started the pumps. In what seemed like mere seconds the light on the little square-control panel went red. Jamie unconsciously drew in a deep breath. His chest felt strange, rasping, the way it did sometimes in the chill mountain air of winter.

  The outer hatch popped open a few inches, then stopped. A trickle of reddish sand seeped into the airlock chamber.

  It’s going to be a battle every step of the way, Jamie realized. Just be careful. Be damned careful.

  He pushed the hatch all the way open, leaning against it with his weight to force it back against the sand. The powdery rust-colored stuff poured in around his boots, billowing up into feather-light clouds of dust as he moved. Despite the low gravity the climbing rig’s stand and reel of cable felt as if they weighed tons. The cable reel especially. It was meant to be rolled along the ground, not lifted.

  There’s no way to carry it in one hand, he told himself. I’m going to have to make a couple of trips.

  Grasping the folded tripod stand, Jamie reached with his free hand for the ladder rungs studding the rover’s flank just outside the hatch. Methodically he made his way up to the roof of the forward module and set the tripod down there.

  “Jamie, are you all right?” Joanna’s voice asked.

  “I’m up on top of the cab,” he reported. “I’ve got to figure out how to get that damned reel up here. It weighs a ton.”

  He heard a mutter of voices, indistinct. Then Connors came on, weak, almost breathless. “Connect the cable to the winch motor … latch it so it won’t turn … then you can … power it up to you,” the astronaut said.

  Jamie grimaced inside his helmet. “I guess I would have thought of that eventually. Thanks, Pete.”

  “Nothing to it.”

  Everything seemed to go so slowly. Jamie spent half a lifetime winching the reel up to the rover’s roof, then clomping down to the tail end of the vehicle and carefully climbing down onto the firm ground back there. Fumbling, sweating, cursing to himself, he set up the tripod stand and bolted it to the equipment attachment points built into the side of each of the rover’s modules. Then he once again hooked the cable to the winch motor built into the stand. This time he unlatched the reel so that it could turn freely.

  “Okay,” he panted, breathless now himself. “I’m ready to start my little walk.”

  “Good luck, man,” said Connors.

  “Vai com deus,” Joanna replied.

  Again with god, Jamie thought. Which god? The nasty old man of the Hebrews? The pacifist Christ? Or Coyote, the trickster? He’s the one who’s been working against us here on Mars. The old trickster. He must be howling with laughter at us, stuck in a stupid dry mud hole.

  Vosnesensky’s voice cut into his thoughts. “Did you say you are starting toward us?”

  “Yes, Mikhail. I’ll be moving to your right, around the perimeter of the crater’s edge.”

  “I don’t see you.”

  “You will in a few minutes…. I’
ll be there in an hour or so,” Jamie said, knowing he was being wildly optimistic. Even with the cable drum resting firmly on the ground now and unreeling easily, he felt as if he were dragging the entire rover and all its contents with each step he took.

  “It would be good if you got here before the sun went down,” Vosnesensky said.

  The thought startled Jamie. He turned halfway around and saw that the tiny, wan sun was already nearing the distant rocky horizon.

  “I’ll try,” he said into his helmet microphone. “I sure don’t want to be out in the dark if I can avoid it.”

  • • •

  Dr. Li had started to write his report to Kaliningrad. He had wanted to be precise in his words, exact in the information he gave to the mission controllers. Knowing that the news that the ground team had contracted scurvy would hit like a thunderbolt and immediately be relayed up the chain of command to various national directors and then to the politicians, Li knew he had to be extremely careful in whatever he decided to say.

  Hours later he still sat in his private quarters staring at the glowing computer screen. It was empty. He had not written a single word. The only news from the ground was that Ivshenko had crippled his knee.

  With a sigh of exasperation, more at his own failure of nerve than anything else, he tapped at the keyboard to get a status report from the ground team. Seiji Toshima’s round face appeared on the screen.

  After a few Japanese bows and hisses, the meteorologist explained that he had the comm watch for the moment. Zieman was manning the link with Vosnesensky, in the second rover.

  Li wanted to inquire about Vosnesensky’s rescue attempt, but instead he heard himself say, “Can you put me through to Dr. Reed, please?”

  The only indication of surprise from Toshima was the barest instant of hesitation before he replied, “Yes, sir. Of course.”

  It took a few minutes but at last Reed’s face appeared on his screen. The Englishman was sitting in the rover cockpit, the expression on his face wary, guarded.

  “I would like to have a medical report,” Li said.

  Reed ran a finger across his moustache. “Well—Ivshenko’s knee will need to be drained once we get back to the dome and I have the proper facilities for it. Vosnesensky is progressing well enough, but he’s exhausted and quite weak. It takes several days to recover from scurvy, even with high doses of vitamin C.”