Boundary 1: Boundary (45 page)

"Gah!" said Madeline.

"Hey, look, I'm sorry," Joe apologized, defensively. "I didn't know he was dead then."

"'S'okay," Rich grunted. "I shouldn't have yelled at you. I'd have found it funny, any other time. I suppose it will be someday."

A.J. emitted a harsh little laugh, as he attached another cable to the support beam for their attempt to remove Ryu Sakai's body. "I will say that Madeline's face was worth seeing, when you opened up
that
can of worms."

Madeline didn't quite glare at him. She did glare at Joe. "You have absolutely no idea of the headaches this may cause, if your people insist on it."

Joe knew the dialogue focused on his unexpected claiming of Mars because none of them wanted to really think about the gruesome task ahead of them. He was still stuck in his seat, looking at
John Carter
's red-dusted, ominous, shattered-looking hulk from fifty meters away. He had discovered upon attempting to get up that his leg was apparently broken, and Madeline had insisted he stay there until someone could get out and examine it.

The advice had become more serious when A.J.'s sensor analysis through the suit's onboard biometric monitors indicated that Joe might have a concussion also. He did feel rather detached, his head hurt, and he wanted to take a nap, which were not encouraging symptoms.

"I have some idea, yeah. But I don't know exactly how the legal ins and outs work, so I figured I'd play it safe. Let's face it, we're still a private concern and someday we'll be cut loose. If I'd fumbled this ball, everyone at Ares could've been completely screwed."

A.J.'s little laugh came again. "Have I mentioned that the two of you are redefining the expression 'odd couple'?"

"I can reach you, Mr. Baker."

"Enough. Pull, everyone," Rich said, straining at the beam.

There was a grating in Joe's earphones, then several grunts and a faint clanging noise. "That's got it. Poor Ryu."

"Has anyone tried raising
Nike
?"

"We will as soon as we get out of the wreck. Most of the systems are shut down right now."

Joe saw the others slowly emerge from the hole he'd made on his impromptu exit. Once more he was astonished that he was still alive. Either his suit had taken the impact with amazing resilience; or, more likely, the chair had spun as he went through the air and broken the window in front of him. He had no memory himself of the sequence of events involved. And then—which he also did not remember at all—the seat must have twisted around and absorbed most of the impact of his final Marsfall. However it had happened, he'd been incredibly lucky not only to survive, but with no injuries worse than a broken leg.

The five distant figures lowered a limp sixth to the dusty soil. "Rich, I know it doesn't mean much. But I think Ryu wouldn't mind being the first person buried on Mars."

Skibow was silent for so long that Joe was afraid he'd angered the other man again. Rich and Dr. Sakai had been very close friends.

Then he heard a sigh. "Yeah. You're right. If he were alive, he'd probably be tickled pink."

Bruce's voice broke in. "I've got the radio working again."

For a moment all four people on the
Nike
's bridge stared in disbelief. Then Jackie answered, her voice cracking with disbelieving joy. "Bruce?
You're all right!
"

"Well, yeah, it would seem so."

"Is everyone okay?" Ken Hathaway asked.

"I am afraid not, Captain," Madeline Fathom's voice responded. "Dr. Sakai did not survive the crash."

Jane, who had brightened immeasurably upon hearing Irwin's voice, closed her eyes and swallowed. She'd also been a good friend of the Japanese areologist.

Hathaway sighed. "Understood. I'll see to it his next of kin is informed, back on Earth. How is everyone else?"

"Joe Buckley has a broken leg—how bad we will determine shortly. He may also have a concussion. The rest of us seem to be healthy. But given that all of us apparently lost consciousness on impact, we must be alert for concussion as well."

"No 'apparently' about it, Madeline, unless you people have been awake for almost two hours."

"Not that long, no, although we have been active for some time. External links were being sent through
John Carter'
s systems and, as those were no longer active, we had to get out of the shuttle before we attempted contact again. Before doing so, we extricated Dr. Sakai from where he had been pinned. Perhaps we should have attempted contact earlier, but . . . We just couldn't leave him there."

"Yes, I understand. What condition is
John Carter
in? And the supplies and equipment on board?"

"The lander is . . . a wreck. I'm not even sure it could be repaired in a real dry dock. We certainly can't. As for the other, we simply don't know yet. We'll need a few hours, I think, before we can give you a solid assessment of the state of our equipment."

"All right. The main thing is that most of you are still alive. I can't tell you how relieved we are."

"Yes. Fathom out."

Jackie sagged back into the chair.
Alive. They're alive!

Then she stood up so suddenly she almost separated from the deck again. "Okay. So they're alive. But now we have to figure out how to
keep
them that way."

Satya Gupta nodded. "Indeed, Ms. Secord,
indeed
that is our next order of business. They will need supplies, beyond any doubt. It is our job to devise some method to get those supplies to them."

Hathaway frowned. "
Can
you get anything to them? We don't have any other atmosphere capable vehicles. In fact, we have damn few things worth calling vehicles at all, except
Nike
—which certainly can't make a trip down."

"
Can
we?" Gupta's voice sounded almost offended. "Of course it can be done! We have almost limitless energy, we have all the equipment of
Nike
, and we have the knowledge with which to do it. It can be done. It will be done, for it
must
be done."

Jackie nodded. "There's got to be a way, Captain. Our only real enemy is time. It depends on how long they can hold out. When Madeline reports back . . . Well, if they're so bad off all they have is their suit resources, I don't know. But if they can manage even a week or two . . . We'll find a way to send them what they need if we have to get out there and
push
it to Mars!"

Madeline, a tiny figure against the hulking backdrop of
John Carter
, began moving towards Joe. "I'll check Joe. Helen, give me a hand, would you? You're the only one here besides myself who has much experience with field medicine. Then we have to assess our resources. Our prospects are chancy, I'm afraid."

Joe understood what she meant.
John Carter
was the expedition's only surface-to-space vehicle. If they couldn't survive on the surface of Mars for quite a while, there wasn't a thing anyone on
Nike
could do to save them. "We may all join Ryu Sakai soon enough," he muttered.

"Not if I can help it," Madeline said briskly. "I said 'chancy,' not 'dim.' On the positive side, only one of us is injured, our suits are all in working order, and the filters and rebreathers will give us considerable functioning time before we have to worry about running out of air. So we're not in immediate danger. The key thing is the rover. If we can just get the rover out of the wreck, I think we'll have an excellent chance."

She knelt beside Joe and probed his leg through the suit. "A.J., can you verify a fracture using the sensors we have?"

"No problem, with both your sensors and his." After a moment he said: "Yep. Clean break, but it's not lined up right. The suit can be forced into rigid mode in that area, though, so if you can manage to set the bone, I can trigger a splint."

"That means she's going to hurt me, right?"

Helen had arrived by then, and smiled down at him. "Look at it this way, Joe. We only hurt the ones we love."

"Listen, mates, keep the foreplay private."

Madeline ignored the byplay, as she considered the situation. "I need to make sure you're still when I do this, Joe. The low gravity may make that . . . interesting."

She glanced around. "Okay. Since you're still in the seat and still strapped down, we may as well use that as a harness. Hold tight onto the armrests. Hopefully your weight and the seat's will keep you still long enough. Helen, do your best to keep him steady. I'd suggest grabbing his shoulders."

Helen did so. Joe got his arms locked around the armrests. "Go ahead."

"Ready, A.J.?"

"Say the word."

"Trying . . .
now
."

A blaze of white-hot pain stabbed up from the vicinity of his shin. Joe grunted or screamed, he wasn't sure which, but held on as the tension increased. He felt the chair quiver, and then suddenly felt something clamp firmly down the length of his leg.

"That's got it!" A.J. exclaimed. "Good work, Madeline. It's set and I've locked the splint down."

"How are you feeling, Joe?" There was concern in her voice now, unlike the flat and professional tone in which she'd spoken earlier.

"Be . . . all right, I think. Just let me rest a little, turn up the heat in my suit a bit, and get a drink. Minor shock, probably."

She brought up his biometric display on her suit HUD. "Yes. But you should be okay."

"I'll key an alarm in, just in case." A.J. said. "Joe, you just rest until you're sure you're up to moving."

"Don't worry, I'm not dumb. I'll sit here and admire the view."

A.J. paused. "Yeah. That's a hell of a view."

Sharply defined against the light pink of the horizon sky, only slightly softened by the distance, the five-kilometer-high walls of Valles Marineris reared their impenetrable bulk. It was the greatest canyon in the Solar System, and looked the part. The scalloped, gully-ridged sides demarcated an uncrossable barrier. Between the atmosphere-softened light and traces of dust or sand in the air, the distant surfaces seemed to have a dreamlike patina of lighter shades of rose and pearl.

Other, lesser ridges jutted at intervals like rocky knife edges, barring any direct route across the bottom of the mighty canyon. Dust and sand and rocks covered the floor of Valles Marineris, the latter mostly rounded from tumbling in the long-vanished waters and from millions of years of low-pressure sandblasting. Though the predominant colors were reds and pinks and oranges, there was a profusion of other colors, as well. White splashes on some areas; dark, almost black sands and gray-black rocks; a shocking glint of yellow, flashes of light from feldspar or quartz or mica. It was a wild, utterly untouched view, under an alien sky without a contrail or a cloud or any sign of life other than themselves. Joe felt it finally sinking in that he was actually, truly, and really on Mars, the first human being ever to touch the soil of the Red Planet.

He just hoped he wasn't about to end up the second person buried there.

Helen studied the generated imagery from the Fairy Dust A.J. had managed to insinuate into the stuck cargo hold area. "So the pin's twisted around and in the way?"

"Looks like it," Joe said, from his position now propped up against a boulder near the lander. "If we'd kept trying to slide it, we'd be at this forever. I think if we pull up and out a bit, though, we could get it to pop free, and then we could slide it the rest of the way."

"Once more Peter Pan saves the day," Madeline said.

"I'd object," A.J. said, "but the alternative is to be called Tinkerbell, I suppose. Why do you think I wanted my Fairy Dust with me? Even without a crash we would've had a hell of a lot of poking around to do. Sensor and comm nets are hard to come by out here, unless you can make them—which the Dust can."

"She was only kidding," Helen chided him. "Stop being defensive. I'd tell you to start acting your age, except I'm deathly afraid of the results. Now let's get to work, shall we?"

She and Madeline exchanged a quick grin. A.J. scowled a bit, but went to help Rich and Bruce without saying anything further.

The three men fitted the prybars Madeline had improvised from other parts of the wreck into the indicated locations and pulled. For a moment nothing happened, the weaker gravity of Mars making their pulls less effective than they would have been on Earth. But then a popping jolt told them the twisted lockpin had come loose, and with some more sustained effort the door slid open.

"Please be intact, please be intact, please be intact," A.J. muttered like a mantra as he dropped into the dark cargo bay. His helmet light activated and showed him the tilted bulk of the pressurized rover, still sitting in the middle of the bay.

"Well, first piece of good news. It seems to have stayed locked down. That gives us fair odds on it being intact."

"Take a look and check out the systems."

"I'm getting a response . . . Yeah, the processors are all running. Doing a diagnostic on
Thoat
now."

"Thoat?"

"What else would you call a steed we have to unload from a ship named the
John Carter
?"

"Well," Joe interjected, "Personally I'd rather ride
Dejah Thoris
."

A.J. choked. "Joe, I can't believe you said that."

"I'm trying to pretend he didn't," muttered Madeline. "Come on, Helen, let's get down there. Maybe in the rover we'll be out of junior-high-school-boy joke range."

She and Helen lowered themselves into the bay, with Bruce following. A.J. already had lights starting to glow from the newly-named
Thoat
.

"And since everyone's having to go down to get to it," Joe continued cheerily, "I think you meant
Deep Thoat
."

Rich gave a startled snort. "I think that's quite enough out of you, Joe. Being charitable, I'll ascribe it to the painkillers you took."

"You mean Joe thinks he's funnier when he's on drugs? That makes sense," A.J. said. The telltales came up. "All green! Well, except for fuel, as we weren't shipping her fueled up."