“How did Walter program the route?” asked Marilou.
“He would have simply transferred his log over to the robot,” Ellen replied. “And then the robot rolled back the same way.”
“Perhaps he’ll be able to explain it to us himself soon,” said Rebecca. “How long did it take him to get out there? You must be able to see that in the log.”
Ellen tapped through a few menus. “Eleven sols,” she said. “He reached the farthest distance from us on Sol 333.”
“Then he ought to be here by Sol 344,” Rebecca calculated. “In four days.”
“We’ll give him a proper welcome,” Ellen promised.
“But what should we do with the robot?” Marilou asked.
“We could send it to our men as a secret messenger,” Germaine suggested.
Rebecca chewed on her lower lip. Maybe she should have spoken to Ellen when they were alone. Gabriella was here. If she really was a spy for the administrator, there was no need for a secret messenger. But how was she supposed to explain that to the others without Gabriella getting wind of it? She looked at Ellen, who seemed to be waiting to make eye contact with her.
Ellen nodded subtly.
Good. Ellen seemed to have understood that she had a concern that had nothing to do with the others.
“Yes, that’s a good idea,” said Rebecca.
“Let’s all take till tomorrow to think of something we could have the robot carry with it,” said Ellen. “Then we can decide on what sounds like the best option. Gabriella, do you think you could put some medical supplies together?”
The doctor nodded.
“What’s its carrying capacity?” asked Rebecca.
“Good question,” Ellen replied. “We don’t have a manual for it. We’ll have to experiment. I would say no more than a kilogram.”
Sweat ran down Rebecca’s back. She’d already gotten enough exercise for the day, but she was bored. Not knowing what else to do, she’d gone back to the stationary bike and was pedaling as hard as she could.
“Everyone to the bridge, please,” came over the loudspeaker.
What is it now? She wiped a few beads of sweat from her forehead. Maybe she had misheard it, or whatever it was would be over quickly.
“Everyone to the bridge.”
It was the voice of the system’s computer and was therefore to be taken seriously. Rebecca got off the bike. There was no time to shower, so she dried herself with a towel. As she left the fitness room, she threw the towel in the laundry basket.
The bridge was full. The room wasn’t very large. Ellen stood at the central computer with her back to it. Two women were struggling to get their suits on. Rebecca couldn’t tell who they were from behind. “What’s going on?” she asked. Ellen turned and pushed her chair to the side so that Rebecca could look at the monitor. A set of headlights showed on the screen. “What is that?” she asked.
“Look more closely,” said Ellen.
Rebecca stepped closer and wiped her eyes. It could have been a vehicle. Their rover? But that was impossible. Walter wasn’t supposed to arrive for four days.
“Looks like a rover,” said Rebecca.
“It is,” confirmed Ellen. “It’s our rover.”
“But Walter can’t be back already?”
“That’s correct. Germaine and Nancy are getting themselves suited up to go out and have a look.”
Have a look? Why was that even necessary? Shouldn’t Walter already be in the airlock by now? He could tell them everything himself.
“Walter?” asked Rebecca.
“We don’t know. The rover’s empty. And it has no cabin. Walter must have tucked himself in one of the side compartments, but why would he do that? Germaine and Nancy will go out and look. anyway.”
“What does the rover’s computer say?”
“The rover set off from Syrtis Major on Sol 334. It was able to drive during the nights, but not as fast as during daylight, for safety reasons,” explained Ellen.
“No human passenger could ever withstand that.”
“No, Rebecca.”
“Maybe Walter fell out somewhere along the way?”
“According to the rover’s computer, it didn’t start for home with a passenger on board.”
Rebecca swallowed hard. “Walter’s not coming back,” she declared.
“No,” said Ellen. “It doesn’t look like he is.”
They watched Germaine and Nancy in their old-fashioned MfE spacesuits as the two inspected the returned rover. The two of them opened each and every compartment, and even unscrewed the panels that covered the motors and generators. They wanted to be 100 percent sure they hadn’t missed anything. But there was no sign of Walter. It was as though the rover had found its way back all by itself. The things the two women did find Ellen compared against the inventory list. They couldn’t have known what Walter had secretly taken with him, but a few things were missing from their standard rover inventory. The most important object was certainly the tent, along with some of the technology that eased their survival on Mars.
“He kept the tent,” said Ellen.
No one made any comment about it. It seemed like good news, but only at first. The tent wasn’t sufficient for surviving out there. It didn’t have a real life support system, and it was nowhere near as good at recycling air as the rover’s closed cabin. It needed a fresh supply of oxygen regularly.
“How much O₂ did he have?” Rebecca asked.
Ellen tapped the screen again. “When the rover left for home, Walter had enough breathable air for three sols,” she then said.
That means he must have died on Sol 337, Rebecca thought. She wiped a tear from the corner of her eye. She wasn’t the only one.
“Germaine, Nancy, would you please come back in? You’ve done a good job,” Ellen radioed to them.
On the screen, Rebecca watched the two of them finish up and turn away from their task, their arms now hanging slack at their sides.
“Tomorrow at nine o’clock we will have a memorial for Walter,” Ellen said, including Nancy and Germaine by radio.
A murmuring spread throughout the bridge, and they all retired to their rooms.
Sol 341, Mars City
It was wonderful to be outside again. Theo hadn’t realized how much he had missed these vast spaces. Despite his height, the suit they had given him fit perfectly. It was expensive Spaceliner technology. He could yank up trees or pile rocks into mountains with it.
Theo was sitting in the driver’s seat of the open rover. The navigational system was intuitive. The first thing he had done was to deactivate the autopilot. He didn’t want to feel like a mere passenger. Behind him sat an armed man he didn’t know, one of the security people. They were waiting as the Chinese spaceship finished its landing procedure. Everyone had calculated on a long drive out to the landing site, but Long Journey 2’s current trajectory revealed that it was going to come down near Mars City.
He hoped they would know soon precisely where that would be. Theo was itching to go. He loved the feeling of the vast Mars desert, of being far away from all civilization. He had already thought about giving the security guy at his back the slip. The guard was acting too self-confident for Theo’s liking. He could steer the rover like a stubborn donkey, and the man would end up crashing quick as lightning to the ground.
However, the pleasure would only last a short time, even if the man believed that what happened had been an accident. No, it would be better to keep his actual role in this game a secret. The fact that the Chinese ship’s landing site was so close to Mars City strengthened the assumption that someone on board was still alive. After all, the Chinese crew couldn’t have known the ultimate location of Mars City at the time of their launch from Earth, and Mars was too large for coincidences.
The crew had yet to make radio contact, but they must have realized that they could get the most assistance from the Spaceliner settlement. It was very likely that they needed help, that more than just their
communications system was failing. Relatively little time had passed since entering orbit and the start of the landing procedure.
“Bridge to field team, can you hear me?”
It was time. Theo slid a little closer to the steering bar. “Rover 2 is ready to start,” he said.
“We have calculated the landing site. It is located approximately fifteen kilometers to the east. We are sending the complete coordinates to your navigational system.”
“Thank you, bridge. We are departing.”
Theo glanced over his shoulder and nodded at the security guard, who nodded back before reaching for the armrest, a finger-thick rod that ran along the right side. Theo pulled up the coordinates on his screen. The computer offered him route guidance, but he declined it. With that, he turned the steering rod to the right and pressed the accelerator. He wanted to reach the landing site as quickly as possible. The second rover, the enclosed model, would be slower.
They tore off through the desert, leaving behind a trail of dust. The speedometer hovered around 22 km/h. Theo didn’t pay any attention to the smaller rocks, though he dodged the larger ones. He didn’t need to spare the tires since the rover would definitely hold together through the 45 minutes it would take them to reach the landing site. He careened down a crater wall as fast as he could. A small rise at the center of the crater caused the rover to sway briefly, but then they tore up the other wall back onto the surface.
The sun suddenly emerged. It had been concealed behind haze until now. It was a glorious sight. Maybe it was curious? After all, Mars was about to receive a few new residents who would soon be gazing at it year after year. If I were the sun, Theo thought, I would want to know who was now landing within my kingdom. Or would it not matter to him if the people watched him from a spaceship or from the planet’s surface?
“Bridge to field team, landing confirmed.”
“Rover 2, copy that,” Theo replied. “The coordinates?”
“No new data,” the voice from the bridge said. “They landed exactly where we calculated that they would.”
“Thank you.” Theo studied his monitor. “We will be there in ten minutes.”
“Confirmed. Rover 1 will probably need an additional ten minutes.
Theo didn’t reply. He made the snap decision to cover the distance in eight minutes instead of ten. The others could eat his dust. It had been ages since he’d had as much fun as he was having today.
A low, black object that didn’t belong in the Mars landscape appeared on the horizon. Theo slowed down.
“Field Team Rover 2 to bridge, we have located the landed ship,” he reported by radio.
“Approach cautiously to make a visual inspection.”
“Gladly,” Theo said.
He nodded at the guard, who understood the gesture and grabbed the armrest tightly once more.
Wise man, Theo thought. But he didn’t resume maximum speed. Something was holding him back. He was reluctant to call it a premonition. That wouldn’t have suited him. Facts counted, not feelings.
Thin wisps of steam curled around the landed spaceship. It was an odd sight. The ice or dry ice on the Mars surface was probably quickly recondensing after having been evaporated by the ship’s high temperatures, Theo thought. The ship itself resembled the NASA spaceship. It was less elegant than Spaceliner and considerably smaller. Several oval modules had been stacked one on top of the other. He could see that corridors ran between them, looking for all the world like the banding on a bee.
The entire structure was externally reinforced with metal struts, and it sat upright on a three-legged landing framework. The bottom module contained an airlock door at a height of about two meters. That was where the visitors should be coming out, any minute now.
Theo parked the rover, but nothing happened. Were they waiting for a little while, until the landing site cooled down? Or had the heat of the deceleration phase ultimately cost them their lives? That would be tragic irony—to have survived for so many months just to be killed during the orbit entry. He decided it was best not to speculate. The actual events would soon be known.
“Rover 2 to bridge, no one has exited yet. Should I knock on the airlock?”
“Negative, Rover 2. The specialists on Rover 1 will undertake a closer investigation. You will stay in reserve as the support team.”
“Understood.”
He turned the steering bar to the left. If he wasn’t being allowed to check out the spaceship more closely, at least he could drive around it. It didn’t look like it was completely symmetrical. The one side was almost black, and there was a metallic shine to the other side. On which of the two sides was the brake shield located?
“Rover 1 to Rover 2, can you see us?”
Theo looked over his shoulder. Yep, the enclosed rover was heading their way. “Confirmed,” he said. “Should we do anything?”
“Thanks, boys, but we’ll be fine. Just keep an eye out.”
For what? Theo wondered. He kept this thought to himself. What could happen? But then he recalled his premonition. “Just my imagination,” he muttered.
“What is?” the guard asked.
“Nothing.”
Theo parked the rover in a location from which he had a good view of the ship. It doesn’t even really look like a ship, he thought. Who had come up with the word spaceship after all? He strongly preferred rocket, but Spaceliner was the only one that could be described as such. The structure in front of them reminded him more of a primitive canoe. You could cross seas with it, but you couldn’t be particularly proud of it.
The other rover approached Long Journey 2. What were they planning? “Rover 2 to Rover 1, please come in,” Theo said.
“Yes, Rover 2?”
“If we should be watching things, wouldn’t it make sense to include us in your radio communication?”
The voice on the other end didn’t answer immediately. The man probably needed to consult with the person running the com system. “Sure,” he said. “Good suggestion.”
“... still no response.”
Oh, they were already online. Theo’s spirits lifted. At least things wouldn’t be quite so boring now that he was in the loop. But, the Chinese crew seemed to still be incommunicado.
“You have authorization to implement the recovery according to Plan C.”
What was Plan C? Plan A and Plan B seemed to have failed already. The enclosed rover came to a stop about two meters from the spaceship. A man in a spacesuit climbed out of it, carrying some kind of extension cord. He connected one end of it to the rover and the other to the ship. Obviously there was some kind of port on the lower part of the airlock. Cheers to international standards!
“Electrical connection now live,” Rover 1 announced. “The voltage level is normal. Data transfer in progress. Starting diagnostics.”
“No errors detected. Continue with Plan C,” a voice replied.
One minute later, a full-height tube extended from Rover 1 and headed straight for the airlock. Aha, they assumed that someone on board was still alive, but unable to move. At least, they didn’t want to run the risk of releasing the air on the ship if there was any chance someone on board was alive.
“Connector tube in place. Stable pressure established and checked.”
“Thank you. Begin recovery operation.”
Shit, now he wouldn’t be able to see what was going on. Should he ask for access to the camera footage?
“Airlock opening. We are in the chamber.”
“How is the air?” the bridge asked.
“Slightly dry, but breathable. The oxygen is at eighteen percent, the carbon dioxide is negligible.”
That was strange. Either the Chinese had an especially efficient recycling system, or the air on board hadn’t been breathed in a long time. That would mean that everyone was dead.
“Everything alright, bridge?”
The recovery team was apparently waiting on a green light. The bridge didn’t reply.
“So
rry, boys. We had to discuss something briefly. What is happening isn’t one hundred percent in line with Plan C. This has made us suspicious.”
“Abort?”
“No. We still don’t see any danger. Just because something isn’t the way we expected doesn’t mean that we have to abort the mission immediately.”
“Understood. We agree with that.”
“So, proceed and open the inner airlock door.”
Theo heard several squeaking sounds over the radio. The inner airlock door was apparently being opened with some force.
“We are inside. It’s dark.”
“Rover 1, can you turn on the light inside the ship?” the voice from the bridge asked.
“One moment, we’ll have to check.”
“Our team says thanks. That was fast!”
“Rover to recovery team, is the light on?”
“Yes, thank you!”
“We didn’t do it.”
“That’s fine, too. We seem to be on their bridge. There’s all sorts of computers in here and seats for three people, but nobody’s here.”
“Bridge to recovery team, there are three levels.”
“Understood. We’ll head upstairs.”
“Good luck! We’re watching via your helmet cameras.”
The ship had landed without anyone sitting in the captain’s chair? Theo shook his head slowly. Of course, the computer could handle the navigation, but it would be doubtful that none of the crew would want to watch! Or were the Chinese crew members simply hiding in one of the other modules? There had been instances of temporary space insanity on long voyages before.
“Okay. There should be some kind of workshop on the second floor, as well as a kitchen. It smells like something burned up here, but everything is clean.”
“Then all that’s left is the upper module.”
“Yes, bridge. We’re standing at the ladder already.”
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