Red Planet Blues

by Robert J. Sawyer

  “The outer door is sealed?”

  “Yes.”

  “Does it swing in or out?”

  “Out.”

  I motioned to Pickover. He walked over and worked the wheel that opened the inner door, which swung in toward him. There was a chamber with curving walls between the inside and outside hulls of the ship, big enough for one person. “Is there a safety interlock that will prevent us from opening the outer door while the inner one is open?” I asked.

  “Yes,” said the computer.

  “Can it be defeated?” I assumed there must be a way to turn it off, since it’d be a pain in the ass to have to cycle through the airlock during testing back on Earth.

  “Yes.”

  “Do so.”

  “Done.”

  “Okay. I propose that you fire the engine to lift the ship up out of the ground so that the airlock is just above the surface. Can do?”

  “Can do,” said the computer.

  “All right,” I said. “Rory, are you ready?”

  “As ready as I’ll ever be.”

  I got out of the chair and moved over to stand behind him. “Nothing personal,” I said, “but if whoever is outside opens fire, you’ve got a better chance of surviving than I do.”

  The paleontologist nodded.

  “Computer,” I said.

  “My name is Mudge,” the machine replied.

  I heard Pickover snort; the name must have meant something to him. “Fine, Mudge,” I said. “We’re ready.”

  “Ten,” said Mudge, and he continued in the predictable sequence.

  There was a wheel set into the outer door, which was also red. Pickover moved over and grabbed it with both hands, ready to start rotating it as soon as it was above the ground. I grabbed onto a handle conveniently set into the wall of the airlock, in case it turned out to be a rough ride.

  “Two,” said Mudge. “One. Zero.”

  The whole ship began to shake, and I heard the roar of the engine beneath my feet and felt it transmitted through the deck plates and the soles of my boots. We did not explode, for which I was grateful. But we didn’t seem to be going anywhere, either.

  “Mudge?” I called.

  The computer divined my question. “The permafrost is melting beneath us and, by conduction, at our sides, as well. Give it a moment.”

  I did just that, and soon did feel us jerking upward. I tried to imagine what the scene looked like outside: perhaps like a cork working its way slowly out of a wine bottle.

  There was a rectangle in front of Pickover, above the wheel, that I’d stupidly taken as decorative, but it was a window in the outer airlock door. Light was now streaming in from the top of it, and the strip of illumination was growing thicker centimeter by centimeter as the ship rose out of its muddy tomb. I couldn’t make out any details through the window, though: it was streaked with reddish brown muck.

  If whoever had locked us in had been standing guard, I hoped—old softy that I am—that he or she realized what was going on, since I imagined the superheated rocket exhaust would spray out in all directions once the cylindrical hull was fully above ground.

  Soon the entire height of the window was admitting light. Our ascent was still slow, though. Pickover was craning to look out the port, presumably to see when the bottom of the door was above ground—

  —which must have been now, because he gave a final twist to the locking wheel and hauled back and kicked the door outward with the leg that had the uninjured ankle.

  Suddenly we popped higher into the air—free now from the sucking wet melted permafrost. Pickover threw himself out the airlock with a cry of “Geronimo!”

  I scrambled to follow suit, but by the time I got to the precipice, we were already dozens of meters above the ground; even in Martian gravity, the jump would surely break my legs and probably my neck, too.

  “Abort!” I yelled over my shoulder. “Mudge, lower us back down!”

  The vibration of the hull plating changed at once, presumably as the computer throttled back the engine. We hung in the air for a moment, like a cartoon character after going off a cliff, and then started to descend.

  Pickover had ended up spread-eagled in the mud, but was now getting to his feet and trying to run, despite his bad ankle. The cylindrical habitat had reduced its altitude by half. Pickover was having a terrible time gaining traction in the mud; I didn’t want to singe him. “Cut the engine!” I called to Mudge. The hull suddenly stopped vibrating, and we began dropping like a rock. I was afraid the ship would fall right back down into the hole it had previously occupied, especially since it was probably widened now by the rocket exhaust. When I figured my chances were at least halfway decent for surviving, I leapt out of the airlock, trying for as much horizontal distance as I could manage.

  When I landed, my legs went like driven piles into the muck. No sooner had they done so than a shock wave went through the melted permafrost as the massive lander impacted the surface behind me. I twisted my neck to see. The lander had hit half-on and half-off the hole, and now was teetering toward me; it looked like it was going to topple over any second. I tried to pull myself up and out of the mess, but it was going to take some doing—and the chances of the ship falling precisely so that I ended up poking safely through the open airlock doors instead of being crushed seemed slim. It was too bad we hadn’t brought along the lasso that Lakshmi had used on Pickover earlier; he could have employed it to haul me out of the quagmire.

  That is, if he himself could get solid footing. Behind me, the tottering ship was making a groaning sound, conveyed through the attenuated atmosphere and picked up by my still-open external helmet microphones.

  I was pushing myself up out of the mess as fast as I could, but a surface suit really wasn’t designed for those sorts of gymnastics. For his part, Pickover was staggering away from me like Karloff fleeing the villagers, the mud still sucking at his every step.

  Suddenly—it was always suddenly, wasn’t it?—a shot rang out, audible because my external mikes were still cranked way up. The bullet whizzed past me and impacted the mud. I swung my head within the fishbowl, trying to make out the assailant. There: about ten o’clock, and maybe thirty meters away—a figure, probably a man, in an Earth-sky-blue surface suit, holding a rifle aimed at me.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Pickover finally reached solid ground, it seemed, but as soon as he did, he threw himself down, presumably to make a harder target for whoever was shooting at us. As proof that he was back on marsa firma, the belly flop sent up not a splash of mud but a cloud of dust.

  I pulled myself a little farther out of the muck, removed the Smith & Wesson from my shoulder holster, then took a bead on Mr. Blue Sky. There was no way to call “Freeze!” to him, so I just squeezed the trigger, setting off the oxygenated gunpowder, and watched with satisfaction as he slumped over.

  But speaking of freezing, I think the mud was starting to do that again. I didn’t want to end up as one of Pickover’s fossils, and so, with a final Herculean effort—as in the Greek hero, not the Agatha Christie detective—I hauled myself out of the thickening sludge.

  And just in time, too! With a dinosaurian groan, the ship came tumbling down. I spun around in time to see it hit, and it splashed me from helmet to boot with filth. I used my gloved hands to wipe the front of my fishbowl clean, although it was still streaked with mud, and looked at the fallen lander. The sealed circular hatchway stared out at me like a cyclopean eye.

  There was no way anyone could enter through the airlock again; it was face down and buried. I hadn’t seen it happen, but I suspected that the outward-opening door had been slammed shut when the curving hull had hit the muck. If we were going to get back inside, we’d have to find a way to unseal the top hatch. But that was a problem for later; for now, I made my way over to Pickover. “It’s safe to get up,” I said once I’d reached him. His bum ankle was making it hard for him to do so, so I gave him a hand. While walking over, I’d scanned around for anyone
else—but Mr. Blue Sky seemed to be alone. We headed over to see him.

  “You okay?” I said to Pickover, as we closed the distance.

  “Yeah, but that jump didn’t do my ankle any favors; it’s worse than before.”

  The sun was high, and there were a few thin clouds overhead. We got those naturally sometimes, although I wondered if they were actually our rocket exhaust or water vapor from the melted permafrost. Phobos is hard to see during the day, and catching sight of Deimos is a good sign that you don’t need your eyes fixed; I managed the former, but not the latter, although who knew if the little terror was up, anyway.

  I still had my gun out. Blue Sky looked like he was slumped over unconscious, but he could just be playing possum, waiting until we were near enough that he couldn’t miss. But as we got closer, he really did seem out of it, and when I knelt next to him, I could see why. “Ooops,” I said.

  Pickover sounded aghast. “You just killed a man, and the best you can manage is ‘Ooops’?”

  “Well, he did try to kill us,” I said. My bullet had gone a little higher than I’d intended and had shattered his helmet, exposing him to the subzero cold and the razor-thin atmosphere. It was an odd sight: the youthful face was clearly dead, the eyes were locked open and staring straight ahead, and a trickle of blood, already frozen, extended down from a corner of his mouth. But the snake tattoo on his left cheek was still animated, the rattle on the tail moving back and forth. It was Dirk.

  “I know him,” I said.

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah. Dumb punk, recently arrived from Earth.” I shrugged a little.

  “Ah,” said Rory, I guess because he needed to say something. But, then, after a moment, he went on. “Hello, what’s this?”

  Lying on the ground nearby was an excimer-powered jackhammer, like the one Joshua Wilkins had used to fake the suicide in the basement of NewYou.

  “He must have used it to push the locking wheel against your strength, Rory.”

  “Ah, right. But what should we do with this poor devil? We can’t just leave him here.”

  “No,” I said softly. “We can’t.”

  For once, Rory was being more mercenary than me. “It’s the color of his surface suit,” he said. “Anyone coming this way is bound to spot him. We don’t want people stopping near the Alpha for any reason.”

  I pointed back the way we’d come. “But even if we bury him, that giant lander lying on its side is bound to attract some attention.”

  “Then we’ve got to move it.”

  “How? Juan’s buggy can’t haul that.”

  “There’s no reason to assume the ship is no longer flightworthy,” Pickover said. “Let’s get Mudge to fly it back to New Klondike.”

  Normally, I’d have had Pickover carry the corpse, since it would have been no hardship for him, but he was still limping. I put Dirk in a fireman’s carry, and we took him back toward the pit left by the lander. We could have used the jackhammer to dig a grave through the permafrost, but the pit, and the area for a bunch of meters around it, was still mushy enough to make it possible, though difficult, to inter him by hand, so we did that instead. When it was done, I stood over the spot for a few minutes, trying to think of something appropriate to say. But, for once, I was at a loss for words.

  I assume it was Dirk who had rescued Lakshmi when we’d abandoned her here. She hadn’t seemed like she expected the cavalry to come charging over the hill—so my guess was that while she and Darren Cheung had followed us, via the tracking chip in the switchblade, he had tailed them, hoping for his own crack at Alpha riches. And, to his credit, when he came upon Darren dead and Lakshmi getting that way, he’d rescued her rather than left her to die. Maybe there was some honor among thieves after all.

  It wouldn’t do to leave Dirk’s buggy here. I knew from the old movies I liked that the terms “manual” and “automatic” used to refer to types of automobile transmissions, but the switch on the buggy’s dashboard labeled with those two words simply selected whether the vehicle drove itself or not. I had Rory help me rotate the buggy so that it was facing northeast—vaguely toward Elysium—and then set it on its way; the buggy’s excimer battery showed a three-quarters charge still, so the damn thing should go thousands of klicks before running out of power.

  We then turned our attention back to the lander—and discovered we had another difficulty. If there was a way to talk to Mudge from the outside, we had no idea what it was. I doubted there was an external microphone; that sort of thing got burned off on entering an atmosphere, even one as thin as Mars’s.

  Still, Pickover could probably manage a decent volume, so I suggested he shout. He called Mudge’s name a few times, but there was no response—although, even if the computer heard, it was also unlikely that there was a loudspeaker on the outside of the ship.

  The cylindrical hull was partially buried in the mud, and the mud was congealing fast. The engine cone and a portion of the lower hull—but not enough to reveal the airlock door—was overhanging the original hole in the ground. The top hatch, now facing outward, was a couple of meters up; somewhat more than half of the ship’s diameter was still above the surface. We moved close, and I boosted Pickover onto my shoulders so he could look at the locking wheel. He was having a hard time perching himself on me since he couldn’t really flex his right ankle.

  “It’s been jammed with a crowbar,” he said—or transmitted; I picked it up over my suit radio rather than the external mike. I felt Pickover’s weight shifting on my shoulders as he struggled with the crowbar, but at last he got it free. He tossed it aside, then struggled a bit more and soon had the hatch open. “Mudge!” he called out.

  My suit mike picked up the faint voice. “Can I be of assistance?”

  “Can you get this ship airborne from its current posture?” Pickover asked.

  “Most likely,” Mudge replied.

  “How much fuel do you have in reserve?”

  “The sensor isn’t designed to operate on its side,” said Mudge, “but I estimate that the tank is about one-fifth full. Not nearly enough to make orbit, let alone escape velocity, I’m afraid.”

  “Can you fly to New Klondike?”

  “Where is New Klondike?”

  Right. The damn computer had spent the last four decades asleep.

  “About 300 kilometers east of here,” said Pickover.

  “I would require a navigator,” replied Mudge, “but the ship is capable of covering that distance.”

  “You fly it back, Rory,” I said, craning my neck upward. “I’ll get Juan’s buggy and use it to tow the two wrecked ones away.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” said Pickover, and he scrambled up into the access hatch; I was glad to have his weight off my shoulders. “Okay,” he said. “I’m inside and—Jesus!”

  “What?”

  “Scared me half to death!”

  “What?” I said again.

  “Old Denny’s corpse got dislodged when the lander toppled. I backed down the access tube right onto it.”

  “Yuck,” I said, because he expected me to say something. I headed back toward Juan’s buggy, following the footprints Pickover and I had left earlier. The buggy was intact, thank God. I’d faced murderous transfers before—but I didn’t want to face an angry Juan Santos ever again. I didn’t pressurize the cabin, though. “Rory?” I said into my headset.

  “Here, Alex.”

  “Buggy’s in good shape. You can take off whenever you’re ready. I want to watch the launch, though. Give me a couple of minutes to get in position.”

  “Copy,” said Pickover, in good astronaut fashion. I tooled around the rim of the crater and headed toward the dark bulk of Syrtis Major Planum. We weren’t far north of the equator, and the sun was now nearly overhead. I did an S-shaped maneuver in the buggy and stopped short before I got to the part of the surface that had been melted; I didn’t know how the springy tires would do on a kind of muck they’d never been designed for. I could now see the de
scent stage from a three-quarters view, favoring the top. “Okay,” I said into the radio.

  “Roger,” replied Pickover, clearly still enjoying the notion of piloting a spaceship. But then he had to turn the reins over to the real pilot. “Mudge? We’re all set.”

  I couldn’t hear Mudge’s reply, but after a moment, Pickover said, “Oh, right. Go ahead.”

  I saw a small hatch open on the side of the ship, and a thruster quad emerged—a cluster of four attitude-control jets. Another cluster emerged ninety degrees farther around the ship’s circumference; I imagined there were two more at the other cardinal points.

  On the quad close to me, the jet that was pointing down came to life, and the corresponding one on the other visible unit, near the top, did so, too. The cylindrical stage vibrated for a bit, and then, slowly at first and then more rapidly, it started to roll. I didn’t want to think about Pickover—let alone the corpse—being rotated around like they were on the spin cycle.

  The upper level of the descent stage was still partially hanging out over the pit, but by pumping the attitude-control jets off and on, and supplementing the rotational force with a little backward oomph from the jets that were facing forward, Mudge managed to at last dislodge the ship and half push and half roll it completely onto muddy ground, so that no part of it was jutting over the pit. After a few more adjustments, the ACS quads stopped firing. I heard Pickover talking again to Mudge. “Yes, I’m holding on. Whenever you’re ready.”

  Apparently Mudge was raring to go, because as soon as Pickover said that, the big engine cone at the rear ignited, shooting out a plume of flame. The massive cylinder pushed forward, sliding at least twice the ship’s length along the ground, digging a furrow as it did so, before it started to angle up toward the butterscotch sky. I watched it lift higher and higher and then streak toward the eastern horizon.

  Once it was gone from view, I spun the Mars buggy around and headed back to that small crater with the two other wrecked buggies. And, of course, Dirk’s excimer jackhammer was waiting for me there. I had no idea which fossils were the most valuable, but I wandered around and used the hammer to remove four choice-looking slabs, which I put in the trunk of Juan’s buggy, along with the jackhammer. If I understood what Pickover had said correctly, it was best to keep the slabs frozen; I’d drop them off at a secret locale of my own on the way back.