Mars Nation 1

by Brandon Q Morris

  On the other hand, MainEngine.diff contained at least 300 lines. Most of them held terms that Theo didn’t understand, but Andy had added notes to some of them, such as ‘Unnecessary loop’ and ‘Missing break statement.’ The software that had steered the main engine had made several mistakes that had led to the Santa Maria’s first catastrophe. And that was what Andy had speculated the following day when the failed uncoupling process had caused the landing module to almost squash him. That was the day they almost missed the final opportunity to enter Mars’s orbit.

  Theo tried to remember. He had pushed as hard as he could against the crowbar to separate the module from the ship. He recalled that, but everything after that was blurry.

  A software error—isn’t that also what they had discovered from Andy’s suit? Three program errors in a relatively short time that resulted in varying degrees of disasters. They had lost five people the first time, and he had almost been killed the second time. And then Andy’s number came up after he had tracked down the errors, as these documents were showing. Could it all just a be a coincidence?

  And how had Andy used his information? He had obviously not discussed it openly. But had he taken someone into his confidence or even blackmailed them? Only one thing was certain—Andy hadn’t caused the error himself. There wouldn’t have been any reason to track down and document all this if he had.

  Who else was a possible suspect? Theo scrolled on through the files. There had to be other clues! In one text document, Andy had described how the first catastrophe had played out, second by second. Ewa had almost been killed, too, but she had left the module shortly before the accident and had shut the hatch as prescribed by the regulations. That had saved all the rest of them since an open hatch would have meant that the air would have suddenly been released from the entire ship. And yet, Theo recalled clearly that most of the time, the hatch had been left open. The crew had moved so often between the main space and the command module that most of them had been too lazy to continuously open and shut the hatch.

  No one could fault Ewa for setting an example for the others. Unless she had known what was going to happen!

  Theo needed to discuss all this with Rebecca, but not here. He checked the clock. It was already time for their agreed-upon walk. He left his cabin and went to the tiny training room. Twenty minutes of pre-breathing would have to be enough. They had become a little lazy by this point, but that wouldn’t change until somebody got the bends. Rebecca was nowhere in sight. He thought he could smell her scent, but that was probably just his imagination. Theo pedaled the allotted time and then squeezed himself into his spacesuit. If only they had some of the modern NASA suits! But these old ones were still better than not going outside at all.

  The base planners deserved praise for the airlock. Unlike the NASA base, this one was sized to accommodate two individuals in voluminous suits. Since he was the only one here, it felt like he was walking through a palace.

  And then he was outside. The sky was almost clear, grayish-brown as always, but clearer than usual. The sun was still high enough that you couldn’t look at the disc directly. Theo stepped off the roof of the base. He caught sight of a figure about 50 meters away. It had to be Rebecca. He walked slowly toward her. She was holding a piece of paper that she now raised up.

  27, he read.

  Very smart. That wasn’t the general base frequency. The likelihood that someone would be listening in on this band would be fairly low. He switched his helmet radio to Channel 27.

  “Good to see you,” Rebecca said.

  “Exciting times,” he replied.

  “In every way,” she said.

  What did she mean? He decided to ignore the hint. “I have learned some things,” he declared, switching gears, “and I need your advice.”

  “Gladly.”

  He pointed in front of them, and they started to stroll through the desolate landscape. Rebecca tucked her arm through his.

  “Andy obviously figured out what caused the first two so-called accidents, and then he was the target of the third one,” he said after a few minutes.

  “That’s certainly strange, Theo. It could just be dumb luck on his part. But if not?”

  “Do you know who he might’ve shared his information with? Who did he trust the most?”

  Rebecca came to a stop and stared at the ground as if she could find additional clues there. She started to scratch the dust with her boot. “I’m trying to think back,” she explained quietly.

  Theo waited. He tried to recall the situation on the Santa Maria as well. Andy had always seemed to keep to himself, which was why Theo had considered him a kindred spirit of sorts.

  “I only remember two or three situations in which I saw him talking privately with Ewa,” Rebecca finally said. “The two of them seemed to be on the same wavelength.”

  “I didn’t pick up any of that,” Theo admitted.

  “I’m not surprised.”

  Theo nodded. Had Andy confided his suspicions to Ewa and inadvertently fallen into the saboteur’s clutches? “It would be horrifying,” he said, “if our commander, of all people, was the one sabotaging our mission.”

  “It’s possible even if I never would’ve thought Ewa capable of that,” Rebecca replied. “But...”

  “But?”

  “If that’s the case, then we really need to watch out for Andy. Gabriella told her that he might wake up soon. If that happens, Ewa will have a real problem on her hands. She’ll need to try to prevent that from happening.”

  “You think—”

  “—she will try everything within her power to keep Andy from waking up again,” Rebecca said before Theo could say it.

  “Good thing we’ve already laid the groundwork with your illness,” Rebecca declared.

  She kissed Theo on the cheek, then pressed the emergency call button. The doctor responded right away.

  “He’s feeling worse than he was this morning,” Rebecca said.

  “Did he eat something?” asked Gabriella.

  “Not since this morning. We went outside for a little while. Maybe a case of the bends?”

  “I need him in the sickbay immediately. Can you bring him here?”

  “Yes, I can.”

  Rebecca stepped out of the cabin, leaving the door open. “Help me, please!”

  Theo heard her speaking with someone before she returned with Ketut in tow. The two of them picked him up, Rebecca grabbing him underneath his arms and Ketut holding his feet. They then hauled him through the base and down the subterranean passageway into the ship, and from there into the closed Rover that was functioning as the sickbay.

  Theo was glad once they arrived since his back was hurting from the transport. He kept his eyes closed and hyperventilated to seem more convincing. He was tucked into a soft bed.

  “Do you still need me?” Ketut asked.

  “No, but thanks,” the doctor replied.

  Gabriella started her examination. Her cold instruments tickled him, but Theo stopped himself from laughing.

  “I haven’t found anything acute going on,” Gabriella said after a while. “His blood pressure is high, but everything else seems normal. It might be gallstones, but nothing’s showing up on the ultrasound. The stones might still be too small. Are you still in pain, Theo?”

  She touched his lower abdomen, and Theo winced.

  “Okay. I’m going to give you a shot of painkiller. We still have enough of that on hand. I’d like to know how things will look three years from now.”

  Theo didn’t say anything. He clenched his jaw as the needle pierced his upper arm.

  “I’d like for you to spend the night here,” Gabriella declared. “Everything might be different by tomorrow morning. I’ll check up on you from time to time, but if anything comes up, press the emergency bell.”

  Theo acted as if he were trying to nod.

  “Just rest. Rebecca and I will leave the sickbay now, right, Rebecca? The medicine should act quickly, and it
will make you a little sleepy.”

  Shit. He couldn’t fall asleep. That might cost both of them their lives.

  Theo woke up because Ewa was pressing a pillow against his face. He couldn’t see her, but he was absolutely certain that she was the only one it could be. He turned his head back and forth to escape the pillow, but it was much too large. Ewa was smothering him with tremendous strength. She must be sitting on his arms because he couldn’t move them. He sensed that he only had a few seconds before she reached her goal.

  Theo wrenched his head back and forth like crazy, and suddenly, he woke up. He was drenched in sweat and was breathing rapidly. He tried to stand up, but he felt instantly dizzy. Slow down, Theo. He knelt on the floor and felt a soft mat beneath him, one that Gabriella had spread out there. Was this a side effect of the painkiller? What had she shot into him? Theo took a deep breath in and out. The stabbing feeling in his chest slowly faded.

  He steadied himself on Andy’s cot and pulled himself up until he was on his feet. Theo glanced around. Several medical devices were spreading dim light with their colorful little bulbs. He checked Andy’s vitals, but he was breathing as evenly as ever. It must’ve been an actual nightmare, he thought. He had never experienced one that felt so extreme and real.

  Theo sank back onto the mat. Everything seemed to be alright. He wouldn’t go back to sleep, but would keep watch over Andy as they had planned for him to do. As soon as he sat down, he began to struggle to breathe. He jumped back up and his breathing settled back down. Something was wrong, after all. He hadn’t just imagined it!

  There was something close to the floor, a gas that was heavier than the rest of the air. If it was carbon monoxide, he and Andy would already be dead. It must be carbon dioxide. What was more readily accessible on Mars than the gas that was the primary element in its atmosphere? Carbon dioxide was heavier than the air they could breathe. If his nightmare hadn’t woken him up...

  Theo frantically checked on Andy. The gas had presumably been slowly seeping into the Rover cabin for a while already. Its surface would gradually rise, like during a flood. The only difference was that this danger remained invisible. If the gas rose above Andy’s cot, he wouldn’t be able to breathe anymore either.

  The cabin wasn’t large. Theo checked the exit. It was locked. What had Gabriella said about the emergency bell? The button was located at the end of Andy’s cot. Theo pressed it but nothing happened. Whoever had planned this attack had obviously cut off all means of contact with the rest of the base. It wasn’t difficult to disconnect the Rover, since all that took was removing one cable.

  But if the cabin was completely cut off, how was the carbon dioxide getting inside? Theo flipped on the light. It still worked. The Rover had its own life support system that should be filtering out the CO₂. Why wasn’t it doing its job? And where was it located? He didn’t know this NASA model.

  Theo scanned the area close to the ceiling. If he could find the air ventilation openings and follow the channels that connected them, he should be able to figure out where the life support system was situated. He finally located a fan. A pair of scissors sat on a shelf next to it. He jabbed the blades into the seam in the wall cladding and levered one of the panels free. There was a tube. He followed its course, tearing more and more of the wall panels off as he went along.

  The NASA crew would be furious if they ever got the Rover back, but he found what he was looking for. The filtration device looked like the radiator in a refrigerator, a very large refrigerator. It had to contain one component that extracted the CO₂ from the air and another that injected oxygen into the air. ‘Attention! Corrosive material!’ was printed on a rectangular container. Maybe that was where the soda lime that absorbed the CO₂ was located.

  Theo yanked the cover off. But somebody had been thorough! The grainy mass was no longer white but purple. That meant that it was completely used up! Theo could see little water spots inside the holder. The assailant had simply filled it with water. Any contact with moisture made the material unusable.

  Theo heard a wheezing sound behind him. He glanced over at Andy, who was clearly breathing more rapidly than he had earlier. The carbon dioxide must have reached him, but that couldn’t be the result of their breathing alone. There had to be a CO₂ source inside the Rover. Theo picked the scissors back up and continued dismantling the wall panels. And there it was—a metal bottle. It was attached by a hose to the outlet of the life support system. The bottle’s neck was pointing downward, and it was gray. Theo didn’t need to read the label. Gray indicated that the bottle contained carbon dioxide. The bottles containing oxygen had white necks. He reached for the valve on it. It was open, and Theo quickly cranked it shut.

  It wouldn’t be so easy to get the gas out of the cabin. Even if no new gas was being pumped into the space, he still needed to bring Andy to safety. He grabbed his shoulders, but he couldn’t lift the other man despite the low gravitational pull. He finally managed to raise Andy’s head! Theo shoved the cot toward the external door. Andy was breathing heavily. His eyes seemed to be bulging out of his skull. He was probably having a similar nightmare to what Theo had experienced. He had to rescue him from this nightmare.

  Theo elevated the head of the cot so that it angled upward. The external door had a narrow ledge that ran along its lower edge. He just had to jam the cot’s wheels underneath it, and then the Rover would help him keep the cot at an angle. Andy’s head was now close to the height of his own. He slid down the mattress a little until his feet hit the door. Now just one more jolt forward and the cot would be stuck. He just needed to maintain his own pressure against the cot to keep it from sliding back down to the floor.

  He checked on Andy, whose breathing had returned to normal. Had he just rolled his eyes? Theo thought he must be seeing things. He was exhausted, but he gradually felt himself relax. The acute danger was over for now. Somebody would eventually check on them. He would make it until then.

  He just hoped the person who came wasn’t Ewa.

  Sol 62, MfE base

  Theo had just checked the time. It was shortly after three AM when the external door opened. He didn’t react fast enough, and the cot, with Andy still aboard, crashed to the floor. Fortunately, Andy was only jarred, not thrown off. The heavy carbon dioxide rushed out of the Rover. Like water, it flowed downward and dissipated throughout the Endeavour and the base, where the life support system would quickly neutralize it.

  “Who’s there?” he asked.

  “It’s me. I had a bad feeling and wanted to check on you.”

  “Glad you did, Rebecca. I’ve never been happier to see you.”

  “Is everything alright in there? What’s going on?”

  “Everything’s just peachy, Madame Doctor. Only a minor attempt at murder.”

  Someone pushed the cot inside and stepped into the sickbay. It was Gabriella with Rebecca at her heels.

  “It looks like a war zone in here!” the doctor exclaimed.

  “Yes, me against the gas.”

  “Which gas?”

  “Carbon dioxide.” He pointed at the depleted mass in the absorber and the carbon dioxide bottle.

  “How bizarre,” Gabriella said.

  “It looks like an attack to me,” Theo said.

  “Where was there an attack?”

  He went cold at the sound of Ewa’s voice. The woman really was brazen. Or innocent. She now pushed past Rebecca and the doctor.

  “Ah, the absorber. I think Guillermo fixed it before he left.” She ran her fingers along the wall. “See that? A water line runs along here. He must’ve damaged it making the repairs.”

  How convenient that Guillermo and Shashwat were incommunicado at the moment. The man couldn’t defend himself.

  “We probably hadn’t noticed anything because of the constant exchange of air between the Rover and the station. And when the door was shut tonight—”

  “The door was locked from the outside, and all the communication channels
were blocked,” Theo cut in.

  “Yeah, I did that,” Ewa admitted. “I looked in on you right before midnight. Both of you were sleeping so soundly that I didn’t want anyone to bother you. So I shut the door. I had no idea that the absorber was defective.”

  “And the emergency bell?”

  “Oh, does its signal use the cable, too? I didn’t know that. The wakeup alarm was supposed to go off two hours after I stopped by, and I wanted to spare you that. My intentions were good.”

  Ewa shot him an ingenuous smile. Theo shook his head. She really was cunning, but she wouldn’t get off that easily.

  “A bottle of carbon dioxide was attached to the life support system. That couldn’t have anything to do with Guillermo, since otherwise it would’ve been empty a long time ago,” Theo protested.

  “I need to see that myself,” Ewa exclaimed. “Maybe you’re right, and it really was an attack! We shouldn’t dismiss that possibility so quickly.”

  She removed more of the paneling and checked the tube connectors.

  “I think we’ve been lucky in these circumstances. We can forget about the possibility of an attack. Look at this. The gray bottle is hanging from a fire suppression system. The sensors probably detected a CO2 surge and an unusually-high temperature reading, and concluded that there was a smoldering fire in here. It tried to smother the fire with the carbon dioxide.”

  “Without an alarm going off?” Theo asked quietly because he already knew the answer.

  “That was my fault because I had unplugged the cable. I’m really very sorry. I’m prepared to accept the consequences and resign as Commander.”

  “No, Ewa, that won’t be necessary,” Gabriella interjected. “It really looks like a chain of unfortunate events.”

  “Yes, but don’t you see...,” Theo trailed off.

  No, Gabriella hadn’t noticed what was going on here. And he wouldn’t be able to convince the others either. Ewa had already proven that she would fight heroically for this mission. She couldn’t be the bad guy here—that was what they’d say. He was probably lucky that she hadn’t twisted things in such a way that he looked like the sole culprit. But the story Ewa had spun was actually much more plausible with her openly admitting the errors she had made and claiming ignorance about the communication system cable.