“Attention, in sixty seconds, I will open the hatch. We can’t wait any longer than that,” the administrator warned.
Whoever didn’t have their helmet closed by that point would die. The two spacesuits were no longer hanging on the wall. The young programmer was wearing one of them, while a middle-aged man and woman were fighting over the other one. The administrator pulled a device out of his pocket and aimed it at the man.
“Sorry about this,” Summers said as he pushed a button. The device hummed and shot several needles at the man, who fell to the ground twitching.
“Thank you, administrator,” the woman said.
“Forty-five seconds,” Summers replied coldly.
The woman yanked the suit out of the man’s fingers. Maggie hurried over to her to help her get dressed. It was almost impossible to get a suit on correctly in less than a minute.
The administrator stepped over to the hatch. The rover didn’t have an airlock. When Summers opened the hatch, all the breathable air would instantly escape. Maggie was tending to the technician. Theo frantically tried to figure out how to keep the unconscious man from dying, but there were no options. Even if he found a replacement mask through which he could share his air, it wouldn’t be enough. The air pressure outside was too low, and the temperature was ice cold.
There was only one course of action. He must prevent the administrator from opening the hatch.
Theo turned toward Summers, who raised his weapon.
“I know what you’re thinking, Kowalski. But that would be foolish. I understand that you don’t want the poor man to die, but if we don’t leave the cabin, we will all die. Think about Sam in the other rover.”
“We don’t know what has happened to Sam. He might still be alive.”
Summers laughed. “How naive are you really? If that was the case, the man would have radioed in a long time ago and come out of the vehicle. The hatch can be mechanically opened from the inside. Nobody could prevent that. No, we have to get out of here.”
The administrator was an asshole, but the worst part was that he was probably right. They needed to leave the cabin as quickly as possible. Theo could guess what was coming next, and he had hardly concluded this thought when the suspicion became a reality. The rover started moving.
“Maggie?” Theo called.
The former pilot turned around. “We’re ready,” she said.
The other woman had just closed her helmet. The visor was beaded up with moisture. She was obviously sweating heavily.
Then he felt a force that wanted to drag him out of the rover. Theo shut his helmet.
Summers had opened the hatch. The administrator was the first one to abandon the slowly accelerating rover. Theo watched as he deftly rolled away in the sand. The young programmer followed him.
Theo waved at Maggie and the other technician. “Go, go!” he urged over his helmet radio.
Maggie let the other woman go first, then jumped out herself. The technician landed clumsily on her knees. That must have been painful. Maggie did several somersaults before flopping out on her back.
It’s time! The rover had just reached about 15 km/h and was picking up speed. What would his hip say to this? Theo jumped. He landed on his right leg, a throbbing pain, then he rolled to the side and finally came to a stop, sprawled out and breathing heavily, in the red sand.
Someone grabbed his arm. “Come on, I’ll help you.” It was the administrator. Theo recognized Summers’ face behind the transparent visor. He let the other man help him to his feet. The amplifiers in the legs of his suit really did work great.
“Are we going after it?” he asked.
Summers shook his head. “We won’t be able to catch it. The security team from the city will take care of it.”
“They’ll have to shoot it down,” Theo said. “Whatever has taken over the navigation can’t be allowed to reach the city.”
“Did you honestly believe we had antitank missiles on board? The UN never would have approved us for those.” Summers chuckled quietly.
Theo felt a sudden urge to slap himself. Yes, he had believed him. Who would ever think that a threat like that was a bluff? “At this point, I wish you really had missiles,” Theo said.
“Sorry about that, but keep your chin up, young man. The security team will take care of the rover.”
“And what will happen to us?”
“I’m in contact with the bridge. Someone will pick us up as soon as the problem has been resolved.”
“We could just walk,” Theo said. He attempted to take a few steps. The pain was stronger than before. Something was wrong with his right hip. Three hours through the desert didn’t exactly sound all that appealing.
“It is a fairly long hike,” Summers declared. “And I have a much better idea. Let’s investigate the crashed rover.”
Swell. It would be better to keep our distance from that thing.
“Maggie, could you come here please?” the administrator asked via his helmet radio.
The pilot waved and trudged down the hill with the technician and the programmer in tow.
“So, my plan is simple. We will open the rover’s hatch and see what happened in there,” the administrator said.
“Who do you mean by we?” Maggie asked.
“We need a programmer who can check out the computer. What is your name, young man?”
“Ahmed.”
“Oh, I had no idea you had Arabic roots. In that case, Ahmed, you need to figure out what happened to the computer. My friend Theo here,” he placed a hand on Theo’s shoulder, “would be glad to help you with that.”
Theo took a step to the side, causing the administrator’s hand to slip off of him. However, the suggestion was a good one because he had a problem that Summers didn’t know about. In his hurry to get off the other rover, Theo had left his LCVG behind. This meant he was at risk of freezing to death in the Mars chill. His suit’s life support system was already running at its max. It wasn’t designed to do all the work. If he could stay in the cab of the other rover, the wait would go a little easier.
“Alright, then let’s get to work,” he said.
“I’m going, too,” Maggie interjected.
“No, that isn’t necessary,” the administrator said.
“I’m going,” the pilot repeated.
Summers sighed. “Okay, then go. I can’t prevent you anyway.”
“I’m going, too,” the technician spoke up.
Theo smiled. Obviously, nobody was anxious to spend time alone with the administrator. Facing potentially life-threatening danger and several mysteriously deceased people inside the rover was clearly the lesser of two evils.
“I’ll wait here,” the administrator declared.
It must be equally clear to him how little people enjoy his company, Theo thought. He felt a pang of regret, but remembered how coldly the man had dispatched the male technician. Or had it been a completely logical action? Only one of them could have survived, either the man or the woman. Nonetheless, Theo still wouldn’t have been able to make the decision about their fates.
Maggie was the first one to reach the crashed rover. “There’s a small problem,” she announced over the radio.
Theo saw what she meant when he reached the rim of the crater. The rover’s nose was pointing downhill, and its chassis was facing toward him, turned on its side. If they wanted to reach the hatch, they would have to set the vehicle right side up again. But then, it might set off again, and his entire effort would be in vain. Or was everything pointless, since the other rover would soon reach Mars City?
“We have to lift it up,” said the programmer, Ahmed.
“But in such a way that it won’t just get back up on its wheels and drive off,” the technician added.
Of course, Theo thought, if it drives off, they won’t be able to inspect it. It makes total sense. Had his brain been addled more than he had thought?
“There are four of us,” Maggie said. “And we’re
wearing amplified suits. It should be easier than you think.”
“Three of us,” Theo revised. “The person who boards the rover won’t be able to help lift.”
“Right.”
Theo limped down the crater wall and arrived at the rover last.
“And who’s going in?” Ahmed asked.
“The one who asks,” Theo replied.
“It would make sense for you to go, Theo,” Maggie said. “Your hip. You won’t be able to lift as well as the three of us.”
Perfect. He clenched his hands into fists, but said nothing. He was mainly annoyed because Maggie was right. To lift the rover, they all had to lean down. He tried to bend forward a little, but a pain instantly shot through his hip. “Alright,” he said. “Just clear the way for me.”
“At my command,” Maggie said.
All three of them leaned down.
“One... two... three.”
Theo heard three voices groan over his radio link. These were the only sounds. How heavy is the rover? Was it three tons? Five? He could no longer recall the exact statistics. Regardless, the vehicle was slowly lifted upward.
“Theo, you’re up,” Maggie said.
The rover was now almost horizontal. There was enough room for Theo to reach the hatch. He crawled underneath it, ignoring his painful hip.
“Hurry up and open it,” Ahmed croaked.
Smart ass. Theo spun the wheel as quickly as he could. The hatch door was already falling toward him. He waited for a second to see if anything else was going to plunge his way. A black hole gaped above him. What might be hiding up there? He expected at least three corpses, maybe four if Sam had also suffocated. What were the other men’s names? All he could remember was José, the man who had carried one of the women’s bodies from the spaceship to the rover. And what if the rover tried to kill him, too?
“Theo, get in!” Maggie called.
He climbed inside. “I’m in,” he reported.
“Thanks. Watch out!”
Theo heard a few snuffling sounds, then the floor beneath him tipped away. His three colleagues had lowered the rover back to the surface. Theo tilted to the side. He reached into the space around him and encountered something soft. It didn’t provide him with a stable handhold, so he ended up pulling it with him and falling half a meter until he crashed into the outer wall
The soft object fell on top of him. Theo was glad that he hadn’t had time to switch on his helmet lamp. His sense of touch told him that a dead person was lying on top of him. He took a deep breath and steeled himself for what he was about to see. He then turned on his light.
It wasn’t quite as bad as he was expecting. Was that because of the spacesuit? Theo knew that he was crouched next to a dead body. Encased in the suit’s silvery material, it looked more like some technical object, almost like a large doll. He just needed to avoid looking into the visor, which was fortunately turned away from him. It had to be either Sam or José.
“Are you still there, Theo?”
Thank goodness the radio link was still up. Theo had been afraid that something inside the rover might block the connection. But then he realized that this was bad news for Sam. If there weren’t any technical obstacles in terms of the communication system, then Sam hadn’t been physically able to radio in.
“Sam has to be dead,” he said.
“Have you checked out the body?” Maggie asked.
“No, but it’s logical. He could have radioed in at any time.”
“Maggie’s right,” the administrator cut in. “We need more data. We have to know why this happened.”
“I’m supposed to get the body out of its suit?”
“Yes, Theo. Examine it.”
Theo sighed. Why had he agreed to any of this? Back when he and Ewa had examined the damaged dragon module, he had been glad when she volunteered to check out the bodies. He didn’t have the stomach to deal with corpses like that. The images of them haunted him.
He stood up and flashed his light across the space. On its side, the interior of the rover cabin looked strange, almost like an extraterrestrial spaceship. He was just waiting for a slimy monster to spring down on him from the ceiling. Why was it so dark, and where was the light switch? Theo glanced around. There should be a switch close to the hatch. He pulled himself up a short distance and pressed the one he found there. The lights below him flickered on. The scene looked spooky, but nothing seemed unusual. The ceiling was below him, the floor above him—he had to keep that in mind.
But why had the light been turned off? The simplest explanation was that during the race across the surface, something had flown against the switch. Easy explanations were good explanations. He didn’t think much of vehicles that started driving themselves for no apparent reason. Perhaps it had been a chain of unfortunate events. The sudden failure of the life support system, then one of the dead crew members had perhaps collapsed onto the computer panel and activated an automatic course adjustment toward home. Who knew? It was possible. The computer panel should provide more information about this.
“Any findings yet?”
Summers was getting on his nerves. Fine, the computer would have to wait. He pulled the suit with the dead astronaut inside to a spot where it was well lit. It was Sam, at least that was the name on the lapel. Theo opened the helmet and forced himself to look inside it. The man’s eyes were wide open. His skin was hard. He seemed to have frozen solid. Theo was glad that he was wearing a suit himself. The material in his gloves shielded his hands.
He glanced at his universal device. It was minus 25 degrees. The heating system in here must have turned off quite a while ago. Theo had an idea. He reached for Sam’s right arm. His universal device was turned off. Theo restarted it by pressing on three corners of the small screen. It took almost a minute, but then he saw that the suit still had sufficient energy and resources in it. Someone must have shut it down, deliberately that is. This was what had killed Sam. But who had done that?
“Sam’s suit was shut down completely. That was why he suffocated,” Theo explained.
“But why didn’t he restart it? That wouldn’t have taken long,” Ahmed replied.
“Yes, I just did that. No problems there,” Theo said.
He gazed into Sam’s face. Incomprehension was the primary sentiment being expressed by the latter’s broken gaze. The man hadn’t understood what was happening to him. Or was that a projection? Theo patted his cheeks. Sam’s skin was now warming up, but it was too late. He should turn the suit back off again. Theo repeated the gesture on the universal device, and the suit shut down again.
He felt cold. It wasn’t much warmer in here than it was outside. He was definitely missing his LCVG. If push came to shove, he could always try to remove Sam’s warming subsuit. No. Hopefully, he wouldn’t reach the point of having to put on a corpse’s underwear.
“Thanks, Theo, but Sam isn’t the only one in there who died a bizarre death.”
“Yes, Administrator.”
He pushed the suit holding Sam aside. José, the third member of the recovery crew, and the dead female Chinese astronaut. This was his death roll. He just needed to get through it. After this, he would hopefully never need to examine another dead body as long as he lived.
The second bullet point on his list was quickly checked off. The unknown man was standing on his head on the floor, which was actually the ceiling, forming a bridge of sorts. At the moment of his death, the man must have been sitting in a corner of the space and been frozen in this position. Theo tipped him over, and the body slowly fell to the side. His eyes were also open, and he gazed forward in astonishment, his mouth wide open. Was that typical when someone died of suffocation?
“I found the man from the recovery team,” Theo said. “He would have suffocated. Looks completely normal otherwise. He isn’t wearing a suit. Do you know his name, Administrator?”
“I don’t. He must have been caught unawares when the life support system shut down. Keep going, Theo.�
�
“His name was Nigel,” Maggie said. “That was the man who had to vomit. He threw up in his suit, which was why he took it off. All of you heard what happened!”
Theo remembered that now. Yet another argument for keeping his helmet closed. He stood back up. The pain was now reaching from his hip to his back. Strangely enough though, he no longer felt cold.
Good. Where was José? Theo carefully balanced his weight on both legs. The contents of the rover had been shaken up with great force. Some of the equipment had even been tossed off its shelves, where it would have been securely fastened down. The navigational console must be located in the nose of the vehicle, but that would come later.
Theo took a few steps forward. There was the body of the Chinese woman José had removed from the spaceship. She was small, hardly taller than one and a half meters. She was wearing an athletic suit that hung slack on her body. It must have fit her in the past.
Theo knelt down beside her head. Her face still looked relatively natural. She must have been beautiful once. Her dark, open eyes were still very expressive. Her skin was as white as porcelain, and her mouth was perfectly shaped. However, her cheeks were hollowed out. Theo cautiously pulled up one of her sleeves. Her arm consisted of skin and bones. The body was extremely dehydrated. That couldn’t happen overnight. The six passengers had presumably died shortly after their launch, after which they were preserved in a dry, not very cold environment in which normal decomposition could not occur.
He described his impressions over the radio.
“So, you aren’t convinced there was an illness?” the administrator asked.
“I’m not a pathologist, not even a doctor, but I don’t see any signs of a dangerous infection. The Chinese must have died from something, of course, but only an expert will be able to give you the precise cause.”
“Naturally,” Summers said. “The woman won’t be going anywhere. Your assessment is reassuring. Now to the navigational area.”
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