Losing Mars

by Peter Cawdron

  The sideways motion of the Redstone, caught in the gravity well of the moon, is rapidly approaching its forward momentum, dragging me in closer. Scratches line the entrance to Stickney Crater, deep grooves where the rocks have been stressed by tidal forces. I’m tracing fault lines. I could reach out and touch them. My gloved hand rests on the edge of the darkened command console, ready to flick the switch and bring it back to life. The counter on my wrist pad is rapidly racing toward zero.

  “Entering the crater.”

  Who the hell am I talking to? Nothing’s being recorded beyond the main external camera. The craft rotates slowly, just as Lisa predicted it would, shifting in accordance with its mass and center of gravity. I don’t have an altimeter. It feels as though I’m a helluva lot lower than five hundred meters. Boulders sit proud on the surface of Phobos, unmoved after billions of years. The crater wall is shallow. Dust streaks line the rocky surface. Various avalanches within the crater reveal light minerals catching the sunlight. White ejecta surrounds smaller craters, exposing how each impact has thrown regolith across the moon.

  I’m inside the crater, below the walls, sailing horizontally above the surface, slowly descending, drifting, falling. Thirty seconds ‘til perigee on my hockey stick maneuver. Twenty. Ten. My finger is poised, itching to kick off the restart sequence. Five. Four. Three. Two.

  Electrical supply nominal. 12V clean.

  Seconds pass.

  Unlike the aftermath of the EMP blast, I’m undertaking a controlled restart. There’s no need to reset fuses and kick off each process manually. Instead, the Redstone is undergoing a standard reboot. I’d feel a little more comfortable if it was quicker. This is the longest ten seconds of my life.

  OS operational.

  Skipping life-support.

  Starting navigation.

  “Come on. Come on.”

  Phobos is looking pretty damn big outside my window. There’s no sky. No space. No Mars. Just a massive, empty, desolate moon.

  Navigation online.

  Reaction controls online.

  “Yes!”

  The counter on my wrist pad reads fourteen seconds. Longer than I’d hoped for, but still well clear of Lisa’s upper limit of thirty.

  A familiar screen comes up, showing me my altitude above Phobos and rate of descent.

  “Shit.”

  I’m low. Far too low. A hundred and twenty meters above the surface and accelerating at fifteen meters per second. Even though the gravitational field of Phobos is minuscule, as there’s no atmospheric drag, objects continue to accelerate, and my velocity is compounding.

  There’s no abort option. The computer has rebooted into a default mode.

  “Not good.”

  I bring up the flight control panel, hunting for the docking abort system. Nothing. As the system is still rebooting, it takes control back from me, trying to be helpful as it notifies me.

  Communications online.

  I clear that panel, trying to get back to the flight controls only to be dragged back to the reboot sequence.

  Life-Support is Offline.

  Would you like to enable life-support?

  Yes/No.

  “Fuck.”

  I try to wave the panel away, wanting to get back to the flight systems, but it won’t move until I respond. Frustrated, I punch the ‘No’ button, only to be greeted by…

  Are you sure?

  Yes/No.

  Yes, I’m fucking sure! I get that this seems like an obvious question to an engineer sitting in a design session on the outer suburbs of Houston at a remote NASA research office, but plummeting toward the surface of a goddamn moon, it’s a disaster.

  I punch ‘Yes,’ and swipe for the flight controls. Phobos rushes toward me. The horizon is on a steep angle. The craft is off kilter, leaning to one side and beginning to tumble.

  I grab the joystick with one hand, bringing up the override control panel with the other.

  “Firing.”

  My seatbelt goes taut as the engine fights the pull of gravity. I’m slowing, but not quick enough. My relative velocity is dropping but so is my altitude. The spacecraft veers to one side. Rocks race past the window.

  “Shepard, this is Redstone. This is Redstone. I’m going down. Repeat. I’m losing altitude.”

  The Redstone slides sideways through the vacuum, racing toward the slope of the crater wall. I’m trying to arrest the fall, slowly gaining height, wanting to change direction and altitude at once. I get the difference down to a few feet per second in all three dimensions. As I’m strapped in, I instinctively flex, pushing against the structure of the craft as though somehow I was riding a bronco and able to determine the craft’s motion with the mere strength of my muscles.

  Boulders pass by outside my window. Rocks and dirt fill the glass. The trailing edge of the Redstone clips the slope, sending the craft tumbling. Immediately, I cut power to the engines least I send the craft rocketing into the crater wall.

  The capsule twists, hitting rocks and kicking up dust.

  “I’m down. Redstone is down.”

  The cabin rolls around me, flipping upside down and skidding along the crater wall, caught in a landslide, bouncing around like a pinball. It seems as though everything is happening in slow motion, and in reality, it is. Gravity on the small moon is slight, capable of escalating quickly, but from a resting position it’s barely noticeable. My momentum, though, is another story. It takes more than a minute before the Redstone comes to a rest and the hull sinks into the soft soil. The spacecraft has come to a stop near the bottom of the crater wall. Outside, it’s dark as the dust slowly settles. Stickney Crater is in shadow. Sunlight reflecting off Mars shrouds Phobos in an eerie twilight. Rather than swirling around me, the cloud of dirt and dust either races away or falls straight down, depending on how it was kicked up.

  “C—Cory—Stone—Redstone—You—Over.”

  “Shepard, you’re breaking up.”

  The Redstone is still on the move, sliding slowly toward the bottom of the crater with fine rocks shifting beneath her frame. I’m hanging not quite upside down, twisting as the craft moves with the rockslide. Slowly, the spacecraft rights itself as gravity orients it base-first and I end up on a thirty degree angle. Rocks bury one of the windows.

  Even though the craft has come to a rest, I remain strapped in, running diagnostics on the core systems. Everything’s online but I dare not fire the engine. I have no idea what the effect would be. If there’s dust or rocks caught in the engine bell, it could jam and blow the gas lines. If the engine or the fuel lines have been badly damaged, I’m fucked.

  Communication is online, but I’m only getting sporadic words through from Shepard base.

  “Shepard, I am not receiving you. If you can hear me, I’ve come down on the crater wall. From what I can see out the window, I’m low—about twenty meters from the floor. The Redstone is resting on an angle, with one edge buried in debris. All systems are online but I have no idea what damage has been done to the craft or whether the engines are capable of being restarted. I’m going to conduct an EVA to physically assess damage to the reaction jets and the heat shield. Without attempting to pressurize the vessel, I have no idea about hull integrity. Over.”

  There’s a garbled reply, which I hope means they can hear me.

  I peer through a window. Outside, the dust has settled. As there’s no atmosphere, it was just a case of gravity overcoming the momentum imparted by my impact, leaving the ground eerily still.

  “Opening the hatch.”

  Phobos is imposing. Unnerving.

  As a teen, my father took me whitewater rafting in the Grand Canyon. Although Stickney Crater is wider and broader than that canyon, the height is comparable and looking at the massive slope above the craft, I’m reminded of how tiny and insignificant I felt back then. Even on Mars, I don’t think I’ve been in any rock formation this deep. The height alone is intimidating.

  I swing my legs over the edge of the hatch a
nd slide down the side of the craft. My motion is so slow and the gravity’s weak. I have to push with my hands to make any progress. The drop from the rim of the craft to the rocky ground on this side of the Redstone is about three feet, but I float rather than fall, drifting slowly to the surface. My boots sink into the soft dust. Carefully, I wade forward. I start my EVA video log, which contains a twelve hour high-definition memory stick. If I die down here, at least there will be a record of my final acts.

  “It’s like a fluid. The dust.” I reach down, scooping dirt up in my hand, watching as it runs between my gloved fingers. “It feels like powdered snow. So fine.”

  Each step has me sliding slightly, threatening to send me toppling to the base of the crater. I rest my hand on the edge of the heat shield as I work around the craft. While I’m within fifty meters, the camera on my helmet will transmit automatically to the Redstone, where the signal will hopefully be relayed to Shepard and passed on to Earth.

  “No visible damage.” If I make it off Phobos alive, I doubt NASA will risk putting the Redstone through reentry because even hairline cracks could be disastrous. They’ll send up another craft to greet me in orbit around Earth. Orbit around Earth? Hah. That’s wishful thinking.

  I crouch, looking at the orbital engine. The Redstone is a modified Orion. The orbital engine is attached on the outside of the heat shield, much like the Mercury and Gemini designs, with metal straps holding it in place, but that means the fuel lines are external and don’t run through the craft and could be easily damaged. As wonderful as this marvel of engineering is, she wasn’t designed to set down on a moon. The spotlights on my helmet reflect off the polished surface, rippling over the pipes.

  “No damage to the engine bell. Shape looks good. Not seeing any fuel leaks.”

  I crouch, trying to get beneath the craft. I’d like to check to make sure nothing’s inside the bell housing, blocking the exhaust, but I can’t reach. My life-support pack bumps against the underside of the craft, along with my helmet. The Redstone rocks gently. In low gravity, its relative weight is minuscule. I could probably lift one edge if I needed to. Eleven tons of spacecraft on Earth is roughly a hundred pounds on Phobos. The danger is the craft could continue to slide down the slope, further damaging the engine and fuel lines.

  “Can’t get any closer.”

  I retreat, slipping downhill as the dust shifts around me. Wading uphill is difficult as I sink slowly into the soft soil, struggling to find anything to push against. I work my way to the far side of the craft and clear debris from the hull, digging with my hands. It’s painstakingly slow work since most of what I drag away is replaced by more debris tumbling in from above. I end up using rocks to form a dam to hold back the fluid-like dust.

  I’m not sure what else I can do. I’m in no rush to fire up the engine because if it fails, I’m screwed. The way I see it, there are three options.

  One: that dented engine gets me off this goddamn rock.

  Two: it fizzes like a wet firecracker and leaves me stranded.

  Three: there’s a brief flash as ruptured fuel lines ignite and I become yet another scorch mark on Phobos.

  Great.

  For a moment, I just sit there beside the Redstone, taking in the sights, looking out across the open base of the crater. There’s something utterly surreal about the view. It is alien in every sense of the word. Above me, Mars appears upside down, blotting out the sky. In between, the pitch black of space is unsettling. No stars. There are stars out there, of course, but my eyes can’t make them out in the glare coming off Mars, reflecting sunlight back at Phobos. I’m in the shade, but it’s slight, like an overcast day. The top of the crater, though, catches direct sunlight, glowing as though it was made from gold or somehow caught on fire.

  Within the vast Stickney basin, there are craters piled on top of craters, overlapping even more craters, some of them huge, spanning hundreds of yards. Others are small and look like they were made by tennis balls dropped in sand. Depending on where I look, the color varies from dark soot to red clay. Some of the larger craters have exposed subsurface white rock, sending fine lines spreading out across the scarred surface of the moon. Phobos is a coke can at a shooting range, having been hit by dozens of shotgun blasts. In the midst of the chaos, something catches my eye, something artificial. Not a boulder. It’s round, half buried in the dust not more than five hundred meters from me.

  I get to my feet.

  “Shepard, I can see the Chinese lander. It’s maybe quarter of a mile away out in the middle of the plain.”

  The reply is cryptic at best.

  “Zzzt Phhhtz Redstone on the grrrr hitzzzzz.”

  With gallows humor, I reply, “Copy that,” laughing to myself.

  Stepping forward, I float between footsteps. My motion is strangely reminiscent of being in the neutral buoyancy tank back in Houston. There’s no water resistance up here, but there is gravity, gently pulling me back to the moon. It’s as though I’m in a swimming pool and can’t quite reach the bottom. My feet graze rather than step on the surface, with my outstretched toes skimming between steps. I forget the exact gravitational acceleration rate Lisa described on Phobos, but I’m pretty sure it’s negligible. If anything, low gravity increases my chances of getting off this rock in the Redstone because there’s so little gravitational pull. If I had a baseball and a bat, I could hit a home run that would soar over the outfield, never to fall to the ground. What a sight that would be!

  “And the crowd goes wild.”

  Oh, damn. If they are receiving me back at Shepard, they’re going to be utterly confused by that one. With the lightest of touches, I descend to the crater floor. Once I’m off the incline, I reach firm regolith. Scratches line the surface as though some mythical beast has sharpened its claws on the rocky ground. Rather than walking, I skip, only each movement, regardless of how gentle, propels me rapidly across the surface, often at a height of over ten feet, so I slow my motion.

  I pick up a rock and hold it at arm’s length, dropping it. I’m like a child playing in a sandpit. Rather than fall, the rock tumbles slowly toward the surface of the moon. It’s as though I’m watching a film unfold in super-slow-mo.

  The ground is frozen, but not icy. Even so, I slip, falling backwards. I have plenty of time to brace myself. It’s several seconds before I find my backpack bumping gently against solid rock. Just the slightest push and I’m back on my feet and in danger of toppling forward, having over compensated. In generations to come, Martian parents are going to hold their kid’s birthday parties on Phobos. It’ll be the inflatable bouncy castle of the 22nd century.

  The Chinese module struck the side of a small crater, sending crushed regolith spraying out on all sides, covering the ground in a fine white powder not unlike flour or perhaps salt. The casing on the craft has cracked open, splitting along a metal seam, tearing rivets apart.

  “Shepard, if you’re receiving this, they hit hard. Damn hard. There’s no way anyone walked away from this.”

  After what happened within the Huŏxīng Wu, I’m in no hurry to examine the wreckage. Instead, I skirt the edge of the crash site, dancing around the outside until I meet up with my own footprints. There are no other imprints in the light scattering of dust, confirming my suspicion.

  “No one escaped.”

  Cautiously, I approach the hatch, climbing over the crumpled legs of the lander. Even though I’m barely exerting any effort, my heart is racing, beating out of my chest.

  The hatch swings open with the lightest touch. Why? It should have been secure. Perhaps it popped off its rails, but it doesn’t appear damaged or distorted by the impact. It’s as though it was never closed, but that’s not possible. It would be impossible to pressurize the craft without sealing the hatch.

  I switch on the spotlights set on both sides of my helmet. The crack in the fuselage allows sunlight reflecting off Mars to filter in, but I want a good look. If there’s another one of those damn artifacts in there, I’m
backing the hell out.

  My lights ripple across the interior of the craft as I turn my shoulders, panning, hoping the Shepard is receiving me but doubting it as I’m too far from the Redstone. My EVA recorder is running, so I want to get some good footage.

  There are two bucket seats, a crushed control board, broken panels, scattered supplies, oxygen cylinders. I’m tempted to see what’s salvageable but decide against it. Why bother squeezing a few more hours of life waiting for a rescue that can never come? As it is, the life-support system within the Redstone can sustain me for at least four or five days without the Schiaparelli, but if that engine fails, I’m screwed regardless.

  A red LED glows on a control panel. A green LED flickers occasionally as the failing electronics fight for life. I look around for any sign of the taikonauts.

  “Where the hell are they?”

  Somewhat counterintuitively, the longer I spend on the surface of Phobos, the more my fear fades. This celestial rock quarry is growing on me. The splash of earthy tones is strangely comforting. This isn’t Earth’s moon, with dull grays and washed-out sun-baked rocks. The colors here are rich and vibrant.

  Buzz Aldrin described the lunar surface as ‘magnificent desolation,’ and I understand why. There’s a beauty that’s indescribable, rugged and unkept. It’s impervious, existing regardless of an intelligent ape from a nearby rock trampling over the surface. There’s a sense of majesty and defiance. With Mars drifting slowly by overhead, Phobos is serene.

  Looking up, I can see shadows stretching across the open highlands of the Nochis Terra on Mars. Night is coming. Given each day in orbit is barely four to five hours in length, I’ve probably only got around fifteen minutes of daylight. I need to get back to the Redstone before darkness falls.

  As I make my way across the plateau, I spot something out of the corner of my eye, a glint of light reflecting off something silver. At this distance, I can’t make it out, but there’s a brilliant red streak beside it—the striking red of a chili pepper. My guess would be it’s maybe five hundred yards further within the crater. I make a mental note about where I am in relation to the Chinese wreckage. If the Redstone’s engine fails to ignite, it’s something I’d like to investigate on the next day here in orbit. If I’m going to die down here, it won’t be from boredom or idly lounging around. If I’m clocking out on Phobos, it’ll be on my terms. Exploring to my last breath. I might even try to scale the two kilometer high basin. Standing on top of the ridge, looking out across Mars, dreaming about that tiny blue speck close to the Sun. Yeah, that’s how I’d like to go out.