First Landing

by Robert Zubrin

  Luke felt hurt by her attitude. Outwardly still confident, inwardly he was terrified that everyone on the crew blamed him for the failure of the water-prospecting campaign. He needed some support. “Please, Gwen.”

  As if sensing his need, she sighed and gave him the best remnant of her smile. “All right, what the heck? We may be hunting wild geese, but at least we get to see a bit of the country.”

  At this, Luke felt relieved, but only momentarily. A huge dust cloud had begun gathering to the west. “Looks like we’re about to see some foul weather,” he commented.

  The sky grew dark as the rover rattled in the thin wind. Gwen stared in amazement at the storm shadow racing toward them. “Better step on it, Luke,” she said, an edge of fear in her voice. “This is going to be a bad one.”

  But it was far too late. Within seconds, the storm was all around them. Visibility dropped to zero. Luke, who had briefly accelerated the rover at Gwen’s suggestion, was forced to slow to a crawl. But it only took a few moments of driving in the dust blizzard before the engine stalled out.

  “Come on, start. Come on. Come on!” Luke pushed the starter lever again and again, without success. The starter wouldn’t even crank. Then the lights in the rover went out.

  Gwen threw a switch, and dim orange lights came back on, glowing with battery power. In the fading emergency lights, the two explorers looked at each other. Neither had any doubt of their peril. Night was coming, and with it temperatures below minus 90° centigrade.

  “Now what do we do?” An edge of hopelessness crept into Luke’s voice.

  The co-pilot gritted her teeth. “Now we try to restart the engine.” She hit some buttons and projected circuit and plumbing diagrams and data readouts on the rover’s dashboard computer screen.

  Luke tried to interpret the tech readouts, but the schematics were completely incomprehensible. He frowned. “Better make it fast, Gwen. It’s getting cold in here. I’ll see if I can call Triple A.” He picked up the radio and began to recite: “Beagle, this is rover, Beagle this is rover, do you read?”

  The only answer was loud static.

  “Damn! Electrical disturbances in this storm must be blacking out the radio. Find anything?”

  Gwen looked up from her miniscreen. “Yeah. The CO2 intake for the engine coolant loop is jammed with dust. The engine shut off automatically as soon as the line was blocked.”

  “Can you hot-wire it to run anyway?”

  Gwen thought for a moment and then shook her head. “Doubt it. Wouldn’t do much good anyhow. Without that coolant, the engine would overheat and seize up in minutes. The real question is why the filter jammed. There’s a motorized fan that’s supposed to keep it clean.”

  “Is the fan motor broken?”

  “No, it’s reading green. I don’t get it . . .” Gwen looked at her miniscreen, then typed commands to bring up backup screens. Suddenly her expression changed. “Would you look at this! The autocontroller has it shut off.”

  Gwen typed quickly on the keyboard, then stared in disbelief at the dashboard computer screen. With each finger stroke her expression grew increasingly flustered. Finally she stopped and turned to Luke. There was a dark fire in her eyes.

  “Well?” Luke inquired.

  “The damn computer won’t let me turn the fan on!”

  That was supposed to be impossible. Luke was mystified. “It won’t . . . What?”

  Gwen exploded. “Somebody’s been screwing with the rover software, that’s what! And I think I know who it is, too.”

  Suppressing her anger, Gwen ducked down and crawled under the dashboard. On her back, she edged under the engine, which was forward of the driver’s compartment, and examined the mechanisms with her flashlight. Then she squirmed out and faced Luke as he tugged on a sweater. “I think I can fix this. If we can move the lower cooler casing, I can get at the motor leads and short them around the control relay. It’ll make the fan run nonstop. . . but so what?”

  Adrenaline could take the co-pilot only so far. The temperature in the rover was already well below freezing. Even before she finished her report, Gwen started to shiver.

  Luke handed her a sweater. “Here, you better put this on.”

  Gwen pulled the thick woolen garment rapidly over her head; it wasn’t adequate, but better than nothing. “Thanks.”

  Luke glanced at the EVA stowage bin behind the front seats. “Maybe we should put on our Marsuits.”

  Still shivering, Gwen was tempted, but knew she had to reject the idea. “No. We can’t fit under the console wearing them, and if we don’t get that engine started, the suits aren’t warm enough to keep us alive overnight. I’ll need your help. Come on.”

  With that, Gwen put a flashlight headband on, grabbed a screwdriver and wrench, and slid under the engine again. Luke followed and lay down on his back next to her, squirming close.

  With finesse, Gwen rapidly unscrewed the first three nuts from the cold machine casing, but the fourth one stuck. “I can’t move it!”

  “Let me help.” The muscular geologist pressed closer to her, his warm breath next to her face. He added his strength to hers on the wrench, and the nut finally came loose. Their brief sense of triumph was muted by the increasingly frigid atmosphere inside the rover. Despite their sweaters and exertions, they both shivered hard; their breath fogged and formed ice crystals on the nearby plumbing.

  “B-better hurry,” Luke said, his teeth chattering. “Jesus, it’s freezing in here. I think the air is starting to foul too.”

  With shaking fingers, Gwen removed the last nut and placed her hands on the casing to move it. At first touch, her hands recoiled from the bitter cold, then she tried again and pushed hard. . . but remained unable to budge it. “Help, Luke!”

  He put his hands on the metal casing to push, but instantly jerked away from the freezing shock. Clenching his fists, he tried again; ignoring the searing pain, he pushed with all his might. The casing moved off its bolts, rising up about eight inches. “That’s as far as it goes! Go for it.”

  On her back, Gwen put her hands through the gap between the casing and the electrical board. By the light of her headlamp, she tried to unscrew wires from their attachments. Her hands recoiled repeatedly when they accidentally touched ice-cold metal. Grimy with engine soot, her headlamp glowing dimly, she looked just like a miner as she worked. An odd thought came to her. If only Daddy and Grandpa could see me now. They had been miners. Now she was one too.

  But they had both died in the mines. Dying in the fight for life.

  The touch of frigid metal brought her back to the present, and she yanked out her hands. “Too cold!” The job seemed hopeless. It was so cold. She just wanted to pull in her hands close to her body, to somehow huddle and hide from the cold closing in all around her.

  But then, a whisper seared through her mind; it was her father’s voice. You can’t give up Gwen. Never give up.

  Then she started hearing a song. At first she didn’t recognize it; then she knew it. It was the old Welsh battle song Grandpa had sung to her when she was a little girl. Only it wasn’t just Grandpa singing this time, but many voices, as if innumerable souls from the distant past had risen to speak to her. Beginning faintly, their song grew louder. She couldn’t understand the words, but she knew what the song meant.

  Never give up. Never, ever, ever, give up. No matter what, we never give up.

  In the cold darkness of the rover’s sub-engine area, something warm moved through her blood. Moving like a stranger in her own body, she separated her arm from her chest, dredged up the will to reach down and pull her sheath knife out of her boot. Reentering the gap with her blade, she attacked the wire, madly hacking away with her knife.

  “I can’t hold this much longer, Gwen!” Luke’s voice was filled with agony.

  She used her knife to cut through the wire and then strip its insulation. Moving fast, she spliced one wire, then another. Then, bringing together two sets of stripped leads, she twisted them toge
ther with thick, numb fingers. She grabbed the final set and muttered a quick, silent prayer. Then she brought the ends together.

  The engine started with a roar.

  The effect of the revived ventilator fan was immediate. Breathable air flushed through the rover like a wind from heaven.

  Her adrenaline gone, Gwen suddenly shivered violently, sagging against the big geologist. “Oh, I’m cold . . .”

  Shaking with the effort and his misery, Luke lowered the casing back onto its bolts. Flushed with relief, he looked at Gwen with a deeper sense of closeness than he had experienced with her before, the desperate camaraderie of two people who had survived a terrible ordeal. The no-nonsense flight mechanic seemed so helpless there shivering in the cold. Instinct told him to grab her, to hold her close, to warm her with his body heat, even as she warmed him with hers.

  Impulsively, he put his arms around her, telling himself he would hold her only until they recovered, only until they were both warm again. She did not push him away, and in a moment of intense relief, Gwen let herself snuggle close, the bodily contact unleashing a need she had never let herself feel.

  Then another instinct started to grow in Luke. After so many months in intense training on Earth, and on the long trip and habitation on Mars, it had been a long time since he’d felt the warmth of a woman. Far, far too long. Before he knew what he was doing, Luke kissed her.

  And, moved by a natural force that suddenly broke loose inside her, she kissed him back, deeper and closer, as the heater warmed the rover interior.

  They did not speak to each other, did not discuss what they were doing. Gwen and Luke had both just been to the edge of death, and survived it together. Now there was an emotional bond between them, and it dissolved all barriers. He pulled her very close, and two sets of feverish hands worked at the fastenings of their clothing.

  In and among the equipment on the vehicle, near the warm engine compartment, they found plenty of room to make love.

  Shaken and silent, Gwen drove the now-functional vehicle home through the dust storm and into the Martian night.

  Beside her, Luke snored, apparently exhausted by the near-disaster on the rover, their ensuing emotional response to the ordeal, and then the boredom of the dark drive back to base.

  Gwen’s thoughts were wild. She had sinned horribly, and she knew it. She also had no illusions about the Texan geologist. There was no commitment, nothing sacred for him. Just a woman in his time of need, and she had been there. He might have some affection for her, but it was mostly just lust—and she had given her virginity to him! There had been plenty of opportunities in Gwen’s life, but she’d always protected herself, saving her first time for someone special. The right person.

  But she didn’t love Luke. How could she have let this happen? It just had. She herself was as much to blame as the geologist. No excuses.

  Dark dust swirled around the vehicle, and her thoughts wandered back to another nightmare, nearly a decade before. The grinding gears of the rover transformed to the whack-whack-whack of helicopter blades slicing through steady desert wind. The Martian electrical storm sporadically illuminating the horizon now turned into the flashes of shells bursting all over the landscape.

  She was no longer a thirty-one-year-old major, second in command of the first mission to Mars. Instead, she was a terrified girl in her early twenties, with second lieutenant’s bars on her shoulders, flying a chopper filled with screaming, wounded GIs through a desert sandstorm. The dead pilot occupied the seat next to her. She flew low to avoid enemy radar, dodging dunes that became visible at the last second. Something loomed up ahead, and she squinted into the opaque dust, her teeth clenched together and her eyes half shut. Suddenly she saw it—an Iraqi pillbox directly in front of her at point-blank range. A rush of terror surged through her, as she braced for a fatal gunshot—

  Gwen hit the brakes and froze at the rover’s controls, panting like a winded hound. The dust subsided, and her vision cleared. The pillbox became the Beagle. Tears ran down her face. She shook her companion. “Luke, get up. We’re home.”

  The geologist awoke. Without a word, avoiding glances in each other’s direction, the two donned their Marsuits, exited the rover, and entered the Hab.

  The nighttime dust storm drive had seemed like an eternity, but it was actually only about ten P.M., local time. The rest of the crew was still up and about, and came down to the lower deck to greet them.

  After Townsend helped her through the airlock door, Gwen detached her helmet, revealing a dark expression close to madness. Observing the look on her tear-stained face, McGee tried to lighten the mood. “You sure look happy to be home. Tears of joy at the prospect of more greens and Spam, perhaps?”

  Gwen lost control and kicked at him, hard, barely missing his crotch. Astonished, the historian fell back. “What did I say? What did I say, dammit?”

  Townsend stepped forward, adopting a blocking stance to suppress any further violence. “What has gotten into you, Major?”

  Gwen glared in response. She peeled off her gloves and flung them down on the steel honeycomb floor of the Hab’s lower deck. “You jerks have no idea what’s really going on here, do you? The rover was sabotaged! Somebody intended for us to die out in the storm.”

  The wildness of the charge sent the colonel reeling. “Sabotaged? How? And by who?”

  Whether by chance or design, the “how” question was just what was needed to return Gwen to sanity. For her, the world of machines was the world of reason. Her answer was lucid and precise. “How? By derailing the controller system software. Luke and I would have frozen if I hadn’t figured out a quick-enough workaround.”

  Townsend noted how the technical question calmed the flight mechanic. “It could have been a single-point upset to the computer memory caused by cosmic ray impacts.”

  Gwen shook her head. “Not likely. And as far as who could have done this, let’s just say it was probably done by someone who thinks what we have will go further around here if only three of us are eating.” She looked daggers at Rebecca.

  Shocked by the wild hatred blazing in the flight mechanic’s eyes, Rebecca countered self-righteously, “You’re out of your stupid hillbilly mind.”

  Gwen met her look without blinking. “Am I?”

  Rebecca was taken aback, but not intimidated. “If you want to make an accusation like that, be prepared to prove it. You have no evidence whatsoever for your insane charge.”

  Townsend intervened. “That’s enough, both of you. I’ll hear no talk like this among my crew. Major, do you have any proof that implicates Dr. Sherman?” He waited. “I thought not. You will refrain from further outbursts.”

  Gwen turned to him. “Open your eyes, Colonel. She’s evil!”

  That could not be tolerated. The colonel mustered his command tone. “That will be all! Major, go to your quarters.”

  Gwen regarded her commander with insolence. “Sure. Why not? It stinks in here.”

  CHAPTER 19

  OPHIR PLANUM

  OCT. 26, 2012 17:13 MLT

  AS MCGEE AND REBECCA played Scrabble on the galley table, Townsend nursed a cup of dreary instant coffee. In the doctor’s lap sat her pet lab rabbit, Louise, who, along with her rabbit-spouse, Clark, had parented the animals now populating the greenhouse’s sizable array of hutches. These provided the only fresh meat for the crew’s diet, but Louise’s long-standing association with the ship’s doctor protected the mother rabbit from a similar fate.

  Since Luke was not around, and McGee tended not to fight about such things, Rebecca had been free to choose the background music. It was Italian opera, and vaguely familiar. Townsend didn’t care much for opera, and he couldn’t understand a word of Italian, but somehow he found the voices of the current song deeply moving. “What music is that?”

  Concentrating on her tiles, Rebecca barely looked up. “It’s Verdi’s opera Nabucco.”

  That meant nothing to Townsend, but fortunately, the professor prov
ided some additional detail. “What you’re hearing now is a chorus of Israelite slaves in exile in Babylon, bemoaning the fact that they can’t return to their homeland.”

  Townsend nodded. No wonder it had struck home. Even across an incomprehensible language barrier, the powerful longing for home in the voices was readily apparent. “Slaves in exile. Appropriate.” He regarded his drink with distaste. “This coffee is fit for slaves. I wonder what genius at NASA decided to supply us with instant coffee for a two-and-a-half-year mission.”

  That remark brought a sympathetic sigh from Rebecca. “Yes, I’d give a lot for a good cappuccino right now. Ah, Starbucks.” She put down six tiles. “Read ’em and weep, Kevin. ‘Bequeathal,’ with a double letter score for the Q, and a double word score overall, plus a few extra for ‘bid’ on the horizontal. Eighty-six points. You’re going to owe me chore duty for the next week, cutie.” She wrinkled her nose mischievously at her hapless victim.

  McGee stared at the board. “Hmm. Looks grim.”

  Townsend had little interest in the game. “Do either of you know where Luke and the major are?”

  Her tiles down and the game virtually won, Rebecca shrugged. “Can’t say I do. They’ve been acting pretty weird since that rover sortie two weeks ago, mysteriously disappearing all the time.”

  “I think they’re hanging out in the ERV,” McGee said. “They don’t seem to like our company anymore.”

  Townsend rose from his chair and began pacing. “This paranoia has got to stop. We can’t have the crew split in half.”

  McGee’s attention, however, was back on his tiles. “Well, this looks promising.”

  Townsend was uncomprehending. “What does?”

  McGee put down all seven tiles. “‘Ambidextrously.’ That ‘bid’ of yours sure came in handy, Rebecca. Let’s see, triple letter score for the X, triple word score overall, and of course the bonus for getting rid of all seven tiles at once: 204 points. You’ll find my laundry in the red sack in my closet.” He smiled triumphantly.