Olympus Mons (20 page)

Franklin: “Drilling for subsurface water ice is our sole hope of survival, sir.”

Jesperson: “Drilling for ice where? Drilling with what, sir?”

Franklin: “Why, where ice pockets are, uh . . . known to exist.”

Jesperson: “And where might that be, sir?”

Franklin: “Well, extensive exploration may be necessary to —”

Jesperson: “Are you telling us we have the leisure to
explore
for these mysterious ice deposits?”

Franklin: “We have no choice, Mr. Jesperson.”

Jesperson: “Doc-tor Frank-lin, if a whole mountain of water ice were to be discovered beneath Burroughs, how could we hope to recover the aqueous treasure?”

Franklin, hotly: “I suppose you have a better suggestion, Mr Jesperson.”

Jesperson: “I certainly do.”

Oh my! Did he ever!

***

My partner left off trying to out-shout Franklin and stepped up to the podium uninvited. Refusing to acknowledge the presence of Scheiermann, Yokie, Franklin or anyone else, he faced the audience and at full volume began to replay his volcano-climbing scenario in broad strokes, filling in no details.

“Really, Mr. Jesperson!” Franklin dared to interrupt, “what you insist upon advocating amounts to an out-and-out
impossibility!
It simply cannot be done, sir. As I have pointed out more than once, the escarpment alone forms an utterly conclusive, prohibitive obstacle to accomplishing the task you, uh . . . your committee's proposed venture. Mounting an expedition to the heights is something an accomplished alpinist like you should be
first
to realize simply cannot be done”

Franklin had no way of knowing it, but he'd just provided the topic Jesperson was dying to hear. He pounced, showing no mercy. “Dr. Franklin, ascending the Olympus Rupes escarpment will be the easiest, least arduous and stressful part of our venture.”

“Abject nonsense!”

Scheiermann had heard enough. He again tried to reclaim control of the meeting, but Jesperson would have none of it. Gaining everyone's full attention, my partner drew a brief word-picture of the proposed excursion, describing the better-than-hoped-for condition of the hoist equipment, a fact corroborated by the maintenance chief who in very few words related how simple it had been to divert power to the hoist system control console. Item by item and step by step, Jesperson recited his recipe for taming the escarpment as the first, relatively simple goal to achieving a successful climb.

By then forty or fifty additional Marsrats had heard about the emergency council session and drifted into the meeting area in twos, threes and small groups. Jesperson retrenched for the newcomers' benefit, re-plowed some of the ground he had just covered, and then launched his full-blown lecture with a vengeance. In not many minutes he had a goodly portion of the silent, attentive audience eating out of his hand. He led the Marsrats through the gently sloping terrain above the escarpment in much the same way he'd done privately for my benefit, except now his material was more fully formed in his head, and better organized. He used a marker pen to draw a whiteboard sketch of the volcano's southeastern face, penciling in the pipeline's approximate route, not holding back on the tough-as-nails difficulties to be overcome. Truth be told, I thought he exaggerated some.

When he finally ran out of words, Gimpy's straw boss, Red, and another pair of maintenance grunts jumped up and made it known that they were ready to pull on long johns, don their vacuum gear and tackle the volcano then and there.

By this time the director was looking drawn and unsure of himself. Forced to shut up and listen to my partner's recital, he made a token show of lightly tapping his gavel and calling for order, but his manner said loud and clear that while he understood the essentials of Jesperson's augmented proposal, he
—
meaning the council
—
did not agree with a single syllable.

No so Doc Yokomizo. Apparently hooked by Jesperson's preachment, Yokie posed a purely hypothetical question after things quieted down some. He asked how many Marsrats the committee planned to suit-up for the theoretical climb, if and when the council were to sanction such an effort.

At which point Franklin tried to object, claiming he still had the floor. Yokie didn't argue, he directed a meaningful look at Black-like-me, who stalked the areographer and pinned him with a glare that should've turned him into a salt pillar.

By now, Jesperson's mainspring was wound up tight, and he was winging, running with the wind at full throttle by casually tossing a slice of live bait to Yokie, and then trolling with it like a veteran angler. “Doctor, have you ever read an account of a wolf chase?”

Yokie blinked and allowed as how he never had.

Easing back on the throttle, my partner began to sound like what you might hear from a scholarly naturalist.“It's an interesting wildlife phenomenon,” he began slowly. “A pack of twenty or thirty timberwolves will take out after a deer, elk, what have you. Several wolves will run hard to harry the stag, while the rest of the pack lopes along easily to conserve energy, often falling a mile or more behind the point. When the lead wolves tire, they drop to the rear and lope along, resting to regain energy, while two or three others drive hard after the prey. In the end, the quarry either runs itself to death, or is cut down.”

Yokie's nod, while sagacious, also indicated a degree of puzzlement.

“What the action committee proposes,” Jess declared boldly, “is hoisting twenty-six well-conditioned volunteers to the crest of Olympus Rupes
—
two dozen qualified climbers, and a pair of alternates. Once the climbing team is assembled, the designated men will begin pulling the bulk of the load throughout the first day's climb.”

“Pulling . . . the load?” questioned Yokie.

“An absolute necessity, Doctor. The team will be packing far too much in the way of gear and supplies for portage. A pair of lightweight sledges will be used instead. During the first day's climb, each two-man sledge team will exhaust themselves up to the limit of their endurance in an all-out effort, holding back nothing in reserve to pull their sledges uphill, while the other climbers hike unencumbered, all the while keeping a sharp lookout for pipeline breakage or damage. Caches of supplies, pressure-suit-and-pack-batteries, food and water bladders, will be dropped off at specific intervals for use by the men slated to descend later.

“At first light on the second day,” he continued, “the four spent sledgemen will trek back downhill and descend the scarp via the hoist system, while four others
—
relatively fresh after climbing unburdened throughout the first day
—
will do the second day's hauling, and in turn descend on the morning of the third day, consuming supplies from the logistic caches dropped off on the upward trek. So it will go, march after march, day after day.

“At the end of the final day's climb,” he told the audience, “assuming no pipeline break has yet been discovered, the remaining pair, seeded beforehand as the team's strongest climbers, will take whatever repair materiel, batteries, air flasks and so forth they're able to carry and hike on to the absolute limit of their endurance. At first light on the final morning, they will press on uphill in what must by necessity be a last push, and hopefully reach the base of the manifold system. This ultimate effort, I admit, could easily become a suicide leg.”

Jesperson paused for dramatic effect. “The scenario I've outlined means not merely climbing hundreds of meters in altitude each day, but also traversing many kilometers in an exhausting, tedious uphill trek over unbelievably rugged terrain. Yet reaching the base of the manifold system, where it feeds into the main pipeline, is not an unreasonable goal now, in summer, when fourteen-plus daylight hours are available.

“With any luck,” he concluded, “the committee believes a likelihood exists that the objective will be found and repairs effected at a much lower altitude, ideally within a few kilometers of the escarpment's crest.”

A thick, gravid silence greeted Jesperson's summation, broken shortly by scattered murmurs of endorsement that slowly and gradually swelled into a chorus of enthusiastic cries.

Intimidated by the glassblower's persistent glower, Doc Franklin hadn't found the courage to interrupt Jesperson's spiel, although his head had been wagging steadily, a negative reaction unnoticed by almost no one except yours truly and Black-like-me, whose glare had signaled how eagerly he would've stomped the areographer if he'd even breathed too loudly.

The director's expression was a dead giveaway. His sagging features made him look like a poster child of stubborn resistance to our action committee's proposed venture.

Yokie had apparently followed Jesperson's every word. “Ingenious, Mr. Jesperson,” he complimented. “I'm not aware of the knotty problems and staggering difficulties standing in the way of your proposed endeavor, yet your proposal sounds not merely practical, but perhaps feasible as well. Let me express the council's gratitude for your earnest efforts, diligence and especially your dedicated search for a solution. You've given us new hope.”

***

I collared Jess the minute he finished shaking hands and absorbing the good words of a quadruple handful of Marsrats ready to jump at the chance and volunteer to dog his bootprints climbing Big Oly.

“Bwana,” I said once we were alone, “if there's enough to go around can I borrow some of that new hope Yokie talked about?”

Eyeing me keenly, he said in the manner of a wise Dutch uncle, “You don't need extra hope, Barney. You were born with high hopes.”

“C'mon, knock off the sales pitch! What sticks in my craw is . . . Well, I've a sneaky hunch who you've got in mind as those last two high-climbing ‘suicide' jokers.”

Pokerfaced, he said, “Thee and me, of course.”

“Yeah, of course! What a double-barreled surprise. ‘Scuse me for being inquisitive, but vast projects hardly ever get off the ground when half-vast plans're all they have going for ‘em. Tell me, does your grand scheme now include a way to get us
down
off that humongous volcano?”

“Of course,” he said, trying to wear out the term. “We'll use parachutes.”

“Para . . .
Parachutes!”

“Heard of them, haven't you?”

“Jesperson, you aren't some ordinary, off-the-shelf, everyday consumer-brand crazy bastard. You're a total fucking
nut case!”

Five minutes later, after forcing me to suffer through a fast-shuffle, overeager description of the parachute drill he had in mind, I told him I'd as soon, or maybe rather, die of thirst.

He went on fast-talking like he'd never heard a word I said, and took me through the whole harebrained enchilada he'd cooked up
—
the huge, gossamer-thin glasscloth chute he said he'd already half-designed; how Mars' lower terminal velocity would lessen our rate of descent; how the perpetual winds would be a benefit, not a curse, making it a snap to get swept off the volcano's middle slopes, and so on.

“Hold it, f'Chrissake!” I folded my arms across my chest in self-defense. “What's this, uh . . . ‘lower terminal velocity' gimmick?”

“It's no gimmick,” he denied. “Here, there, everywhere, the metric of gravity is a resultant of the weak force, acceleration, which in the homeworld is about ten meters per second squared, and varies with atmospheric drag. Here it's considerably less; can't quote the number off the top of my head, but the drag coefficient's just about negligible in our thin atmosphere, so descent will be
—
”

“Hold it some more! You're trying to dazzle me with fancy footwork,” I accused hoarsely. “Come on! Forget the carny pitch, and talk straight.”

“It's not a snow job, dammit!
You
stop talking and listen for a change. Earthside military paratroop commands learned long ago that chuting down at twenty-feet-per-second or less keeps injuries to a minimum. The catch,” he added earnestly, “is that the mass-momentum numbers stay the same here despite Mars' lower gravitational constant. With a large enough diameter chute, I calculate we'll still hit the ground fairly hard, and what's worse maybe zipping along faster laterally than descending. Depending on wind velocity, it should be no more than —”

“How
hard?” I demanded.
“How
fast?”

He blinked. “Maybe with enough force and lateral velocity to bust us up in small to medium pieces.”

“Hey, that is just
terrific!”

“What the hell!” he said. “Would you really rather die of thirst? Planning for failure is a zero sum solution. Instead, let's plan for success, for getting the job done. I won't try and kid you. We'll hit the ground at more than twenty-feet-per-second, which could easily —”

“Damn you, Jesperson! You're doing it again, mixing feet and meters just to keep me from worrying about what matters, what counts. What the hell do we do about the damn wind?” I was thinking of the stiff downslope zephyrs that stir dust almost every afternoon. “A slowed-down fall won't help us any if we're scooting along at a hundred knots or more?”

“It's a concern,” he admitted, adding, “There are ways to reduce lateral velocity,” but his usual ironclad, no-doubt-about-it assurance was missing.

“Great! Name some.”

“Well, we can always —”

“Bwana, listen to me! Knock off the salesmanship. What the hell do you know about designing parachutes?”

“I once did some skydiving.”

“So what. . ? You rode to Mars in a whirligig ship same as me, but could you design and
build
one of the damn things?”