Mars Life (18 page)

Itzak Rosenberg stared at the fireball billowing up from the hopper. It quickly dissipated into the thin Martian atmosphere. He felt as if all the air had been sucked out of his lungs.

“Our supplies,” he said weakly.

“Blown to hell,” Hasdrubal muttered.

“What could have caused it?”

Hasdrubal was already on the comm link. “Base, this is Excursion Three. We got troubles.”

The excursion controller was one of the astronauts. Her slim lace, framed with short dark hair, looked puzzled. “The readouts here look screwy,” she said.

“Damned hopper blew up!” Hasdrubal snapped.

“Blew up?”

“Exploded! There’s nothin’ left out there except some smokin’ wreckage.”

“That’s why the readouts cut off,” said the controller. In the tiny screen on the control panel she looked almost relieved.

“What the hell happened?” Hasdrubal demanded.

“Are you two okay?”

“Yeah. No damage to the camper.”

“None that we can see from inside the cockpit,” Rosenberg corrected.

Hasdrubal shot a glare at him.

“You’ll have to go outside and look your vehicle over for possible damage,” the controller instructed.

Nodding, Hasdrubal muttered, “Guess so.”

“It’s going to be dark in another hour,” said Rosenberg.

The controller nodded back. “Then you’ll have to make your damage inspection right away.”

“Okay, we’ll go out right away. But what the hell happened? Why’d that bird blow up?”

“We’ll have to go over the diagnostics and get back to you on that. Meanwhile, you check out all your systems and do the exterior inspection.”           

“Right,” Hasdrubal agreed.

“Keep this link open,” said Rosenberg, with some urgency.

“Will do,” promised the controller.

Rosenberg blurted, “Did the seismometers record the blast?” It was an idiotic question and he knew it but it just popped out of his mouth.

“I’ll ask the monitors,” the controller said. “Call me back when you complete your inspection.”

“Don’t shut down this link,” Rosenberg repeated.

“Right. I’ll keep it open.”

Hasdrubal got up from his seat and headed back toward the airlock. Over his shoulder he called, “C’mon, get into your suit.”

“I’m staying inside,” Rosenberg said, his voice quavering slightly. “I’ll check all our systems while you do a visual inspection outside.”

Hasdrubal stopped at the narrow closet where their nanosuits hung. For a moment he said nothing. Then, “Go faster if the two of us look her over.”

“I. . . I’ll stay inside,” Rosenberg said. “I need to, Sal.” He felt as if he were glued to the cockpit seat. He thought he couldn’t get up even if he wanted to. His legs were too weak to support him. He couldn’t even turn around to look at his partner.

“Okay,” Hasdrubal said, his voice sounding strange, suspicious, almost accusing. “You stay in.”

Jamie was poring over the latest communications from Selene, reports on their underground farms and the amount of electrical power they needed to keep the crops growing. We’ll have to devote a lot of acreage to solar panels, he thought. The maintenance is going to be tough, keeping them clean of dust. Maybe we can automate that, something like windshield wipers. Then he thought about the monstrous dust storms that swept across the planet. He remembered the storm that nearly buried the camper on his first excursion to Tithonium Chasma. With a shake of his head Jamie realized that maintaining a solar-energy farm was going to be a lot more difficult on Mars than on the airless, weatherless Moon.

“Uh, Dr. Waterman?” A soft voice interrupted his musing.

Looking up, Jamie saw that it was Billy Graycloud standing at the entrance to his cubbyhole of an office.

“Come in, Billy,” he said.

The youngster didn’t move. “There’s been an accident.”

“Accident?” Jamie shot up from his chair.

“Nobody hurt,” Graycloud said quickly. “It’s the excursion team, you know, the two guys tracing the old riverbed. Their resupply rocket blew up.”

Jamie could see a small crowd gathered around the entrance to the communications center halfway across the dome.

“They’re okay?” he asked, coming around his makeshift desk.

“Seem to be,” Graycloud replied. Then he added, “So far.”

Hasdrubal was holding a blackened chunk of metal in his hands as he sank his lanky frame into the padded cockpit seat. Rosenberg stared at it.

“Found this in the ground about a meter and a half from our left front wheels.”

“What is it?”

Turning the scorched fragment in his hands, Hasdrubal answered, “What it 
was 
was a piece of a storage container. I think. Hard to tell.”

“A meter and a half?”

“Give or take a skosh.”

“If it had hit us. . .”

“Would’ve gone through the skin of this bus like an antitank missile.”

Rosenberg shuddered visibly.

“Everything okay in here?” Hasdrubal asked.

“All the systems are on line. No internal damage.”

“Are 
you 
okay?” Hasdrubal stared at his partner.

Rosenberg took a deep, deliberate breath. “I’m ... rather shaken, you know.”

“I can see that.”

“Control says the hopper’s oxygen line must have been leaking. It touched off the methane. That’s what caused the explosion.”

“They think.”

“That’s what the diagnostics indicate.” Rosenberg felt somewhat better, stronger, as he talked about the impersonal data from the controller’s monitoring systems. Yet he still saw in his mind’s eye that white-hot explosion. We could have been killed, his inner voice kept repeating. We came within a meter and a half of death.

“Dripped oxy on the hot methane pump, prob’ly,” Hasdrubal was saying.

Rosenberg nodded. “Yes, that’s their explanation.”

“How old was that hopper? Some of ‘em date back to the first expeditions, don’t they?”

“I believe so.”

Holding the fragment of debris in one hand, Hasdrubal pointed to the comm screen, which was a blank gray. “Comm link still open?”

“It should be.”

“Okay. I’ll show this to the geniuses back at base. You go back and heat up some dinner.”

Rosenberg hesitated. “Why don’t we start back to the base?”

“Now? It’ll be dark in another few minutes.” The biologist jerked a thumb toward the scenery outside. The pale shrunken sun was almost touching the jagged horizon. The sky was already turning deep violet.

“I know, but. . . we’ll have to head back before we run out of supplies.”

“Tomorrow, after the sun comes up.”

“We can run at night.”

“And run down the fuel cells? No way. We’re not goin’ anyplace until the sun comes up,” Hasdrubal insisted. “That’s final.”

Hasdrubal and Rosenberg ate a warmed-up prepackaged meal in tense silence, broken only by the controller calling from the base to ask about their condition.

Rosenberg went to the cockpit and spoke to the controller. The thermal shutters covered the bug-eye windows up there, preventing the camper’s internal warmth from leaking out into the bitter Martian night. When Rosenberg returned he slid into the folded-out bunk that now served as a bench. Across the narrow table sat Hasdrubal, his dark face watching Rosenberg thoughtfully.

“You’re scared, huh?”

“It’s . . . I’m not frightened, really.”

“Not much.”

“It’s just that. . . it’s unsettling. Hoppers shouldn’t blow up. We shouldn’t be stranded out here without supplies. It’s not right!”

A slow, patient smile eased across Hasdrubal’s face. “Now look, Izzy. We’re not stranded. We got plenty of food and water for the trip back to base. We’ll be fine.”

“The batteries are down.”

“We’ll recharge ‘em tomorrow soon’s the sun comes up.”

“Hurry sunrise,” Rosenberg muttered.

They finished their meal, scraped the crumbs into the recycler and placed their plates and cups into the microwave for cleaning. Hasdrubal put a fingertip on the power button, then thought better of it. Save it for daytime, he told himself. Rosenberg folded the table and slid it into its place beneath his bunk.

“I’ll hit the John,” Hasdrubal said.

“If you don’t mind . . .” Rosenberg pushed past him and hurried into the lavatory.

Poor bastard’s scared shitless, Hasdrubal thought. Then he amended, But his bladder’s full.

Once they had peeled down to their skivvies and arranged the blankets over their bunks, Rosenberg said, “I’ve never liked the cold. That’s what’s bothering me, actually. The night and the dark and cold.”

“We’ll get through it.”

They climbed into their bunks and clicked off the lights. The camper’s interior was completely dark except for the faint ghostly greenish glow from the instrument panel up in the cockpit.

Rosenberg murmured into the darkness, “When I was a child in Cambridge, once my sister was born I had to sleep up in the attic. It was always cold up there. Even in the summertime. And drafty. I could feel the wind coming through chinks in the window frames. I could never get warm up there. Never.”

“Hey, you wanna talk about cold, you oughtta live in Chicago. Wind that can knock you off your friggin’ feet. And cold! Freeze your balls off.”

Rosenberg said nothing.

Chuckling, Hasdrubal said, “I remember one winter we had so much snow the whole friggin’ city stopped. Nothin’ was moving. Took two days before the damn snowplows cleared the streets in our neighborhood. Left snowbanks higher’n my head.”

“Higher than your head? Really?”

“I was just a kid then. A lot shorter.”

“Oh.”

“We’ll be okay. Get some sleep. You’ll feel better when the sun comes up.”

“Yes, I suppose so,” Rosenberg said. He closed his eyes. And heard the thin moan of the wind outside. He touched the curving skin of the camper. It felt ice cold. Just a few millimeters of metal between us and death, he thought. It’s down to a hundred below zero out there.

He shuddered beneath his two blankets.

Jamie heard the wind sighing, too. He lay next to Vijay, warm and sweaty after making love. She seemed to be drowsing now, but Jamie wasn’t ready for sleep yet. He listened to the wind and remembered his first night on Mars, when the soft wind seemed to he stroking the dome they had just erected, touching it with questioning fingers, wondering at this alien construct on the lonely plains of the red world.

Mars is a gentle world, he told himself, listening to the wind. It means us no harm. They’ll be all right buttoned up in their camper. There’s nothing to worry about, really.

Yet he thought of the two men more than a hundred kilometers from the safety of the base. And he heard Dr. Chang’s flat refusal ringing in his memory.

“No. I will not permit it,” Chang had said.

Jamie had rushed to the mission director’s office as soon as he’d heard of the hopper’s explosion and volunteered to drive a camper out to the excursion team.

Chang sat stubbornly behind his desk, his face set in a determined scowl.

“I could carry supplies to them,” Jamie had said, “so they could continue their excursion instead of coming back here.”

“No,” Chang repeated.

“But-”

Chang seemed to puff up, like a toad that feels threatened. “Dr. Waterman,” he said slowly, stiffly. “You are the scientific director of the program. I am the mission director. My authority rules over everyone on this base. You may remove me, send me back to China, but you cannot overrule my decisions here. Is that understood?”

Jamie replied softly, “I only wanted to be of help.”

“The excursion team does not need your help. Or anyone else’s. There are protocols in place, procedures to follow. They will return to the base tomorrow under their own power. They do not need to be rescued.”

Jamie started to answer back, thought better of it and merely nodded.

Holding up one stubby finger, Chang went on, “Your presence here creates some difficulties in lines of authority. Many personnel here look to you for leadership and not to me.”

That’s what this is all about, Jamie said to himself. I should have been sensitive to it.

Chang added, “Everyone is well aware how you took control of First Expedition from Dr. Li Chengdu when you were nothing more than a substitute geologist.”

“I’m not trying to take control of this operation from you, Dr. Chang,” Jamie said, with real conviction. “I’m only trying to help you.”

As if he hadn’t heard a word Jamie said, Chang closed his eyes and murmured, “If you desire to take command I will offer my resignation at once.”

“That’s not necessary. Not at all.”

Chang’s dark eyes slowly opened. Jamie saw that they were bloodshot. “Very well. Please do not interfere with my responsibilities.”

“I’m sorry,” Jamie said, getting to his feet. “Please excuse me.”

Chang made a single, curt nod.

Now Jamie lay awake in his bed, wondering what he could do without setting off Chang’s sensitivities, how to tell him that DiNardo was coming to the base. The man’s planted a minefield around himself, Jamie realized. Sooner or later something’s going to explode.

Your priest’s in fine condition, Dex. No physical reason why he can’t make the flight to Mars.”

Dr. Paul Nickerson was walking with Dex Trumball along the crowded corridor that ran from the CAT scan laboratory back to the Lahey Clinic’s suites of offices for senior medical staff.

“He’s okay to go, then,” Dex said.

“Physically, there’s no problem,” said Nickerson. He was slightly shorter than Dex, lean and loose-limbed. Even in his white lab coat he coasted along like an ice skater. Nickerson’s face was thin and long-jawed, his walnut brown hair cropped so close to his scalp it looked like fuzz.

Dex was in his usual dark blue three-piece suit. “That’s the second time you said ‘physically,’ Paul. Is there a mental problem? Emotional, I mean.”

Nickerson didn’t reply for several paces. Patients shuffled past, many of them in the pathetic bile-green paper gowns that the staff made them wear. Just to humiliate them, Dex had always thought. A hefty black nurse hurried past, looking stern and determined.

“Well?” Dex prodded.

Nickerson opened a door and gestured. “Come on in here, Dex.”

It was a small conference room, Dex saw. Oval table, eight padded chairs, smart screens on the walls, all of them blank gray.

“So?” he asked as Nickerson shut the door and leaned against it.

Raising his brows, the physician replied, “This might be my prejudice more than anything else, but. . . well, haven’t you wondered why a man pushing sixty would want to travel out to Mars?”

Dex sat one hip on the edge of the mahogany table and relaxed, grinning. “He’s a geologist. He was selected for the First Expedition but had a gall bladder attack.”

“And he’s waited twenty-some years to get what he lost?”

“He wants to help us. He’s going to do a video documentary for us to counter all that New Morality crap about the Martians being a fake.”

Nickerson shook his head. “I think there’s an emotional problem here.”

“You’re wrong. He’s passed all the psych exams with no sweat.”

“Still. . .”

“Look, Paul, I’ve been to Mars. I wouldn’t want to go back but I know what’s going through DiNardo’s mind. He’s a scientist, for chrissake! Mars is like a golden carrot. He wants to get there before he dies.”

Nickerson aimed a finger at Dex like a pistol. “Ahah! Before he dies.”

Frowning, Dex said, “You want him to take more psych exams?”

“It wouldn’t hurt. We have some very good people here at the clinic. At the very least, they should have a few conversations with him.”

Dex grumbled, “You’re just trying to run up the bill.”

Monsignor DiNardo listened to Dex’s halting explanation in the examination room as he put on his street clothes.

“They want me to undergo a mental examination?” he asked, his voice soft as always, but with a hint of genuine displeasure behind it.

“He’s a flatlander,” Dex said, waggling one hand horizontally. “He thinks anybody who wants to go into space must be nuts.”

DiNardo chuckled appreciatively as he pulled on his trousers. “Sometimes I myself wonder.”

“He just wants you to talk to one of their staff psychiatrists.”

“You know,” the priest said, “one could make the case that all scientists are slightly insane. Monomaniacal.”

“Come on, now . . .”

“No. Really,” DiNardo said. “Most scientists could make much more money in other professions. But they are fixated on science, on learning, on discovering.” He shook his head in wonderment.

Dex asked impatiently, “Will you talk to the shrink? We’ve got to put this thing to bed.”

“Of course,” said DiNardo. He wormed his arms into his black jacket, then felt for the bottle of pills in the left pocket. Still there. No one had disturbed them. No one knew about them. The medication had not shown up in the blood tests the doctors had performed. Good.