by Ben Bova
Leaning his helmet against the astronaut’s, Fuchida answered, “I feel hot. Broiling.”
“You’re lucky. I’m freezing my ass off. I think my suit heater’s in refrigeration mode.”
“I … I don’t know how long I can last without the air fans,” Fuchida said, his voice trembling slightly. “I feel a little lightheaded.”
“No problem,” Rodriguez replied, with a false heartiness. “It’ll get kinda stuffy inside your suit, but you won’t asphyxiate.”
The first cosmonaut to do a spacewalk almost died of heat prostration, Rodriguez remembered. Alexei Leonov said his suit was “up to my knees” in sweat before he could get back into his orbiting capsule. The suit sloshed when he moved. The damned suits hold all your body heat inside; that’s why they make us wear the watercooled longjohns and put heat exchangers in the suits. But if the fans can’t circulate the air, the exchanger’s pretty damned useless.
Rodriguez kept one hand on the tether. In the wan light from his helmet lamp he saw that it led upward, out of this abyss.
“We’ll be back in the plane in half an hour, maybe less. I can fix your backpack then.”
“Good,” said Fuchida. Then he coughed again.
It seemed to take hours before they got out of the tunnel, back onto the ledge in the slope of the giant caldera.
“Come on, grab the tether. We’re goin’ up.”
“Right.”
But Rodriguez’s boot slipped and he fell to his knees with a painful thump.
“Damn,” he muttered. “It’s slick.”
“The ice.”
The astronaut rocked back onto his haunches, both knees throbbing painfully.
“It’s too slippery to climb?” Fuchida’s voice was edging toward panic.
“Yeah. We’re gonna have to haul ourselves up with the winch.” He got down onto his belly and motioned the biologist to do the same.
“Isn’t this dangerous? What if we tear our suits?”
Rodriguez rapped on the shoulder of Fuchida’s suit. “Tough as steel, amigo. They won’t rip.”
“You’re certain?”
“You wanna spend the night down here?”
Fuchida grabbed the tether with both his hands.
Grinning to himself, Rodriguez also grasped the tether and told Fuchida to activate the winch.
But within seconds he felt the tether slacken.
“Stop!”
“What’s wrong?” Fuchida asked.
Rodriguez gave the tether a few light tugs. It felt loose, its original tension gone.
“Holy shit,” he muttered.
“What is it?”
“The weight of both of us on the line is too much for the rig to hold. We’re pulling it out of the ground up there.”
“You mean we’re stuck here?”
NIGHT: SOL 41
“I SEE THAT NONE OF US ARE GOING TO GET ANY SLEEP.”
Stacy Dezhurova was smiling as she spoke, but her bright blue eyes were dead serious. Trudy Hall was still on duty at the comm console. Stacy sat beside her while Jamie paced slowly back and forth behind her. Vijay had pulled in another chair and sat by the doorway, watching them all.
The comm center cubicle felt crowded and hot with all four of them jammed in there. Jamie did not answer Dezhurova’s remark; he just kept on pacing, five strides from one partition to the other, then back again.
“Tommy must have found him by now,” Hall said, swiveling her chair slightly toward Stacy.
“Then why doesn’t he call in?” she demanded, almost angrily.
“They must still be down inside the caldera,” Jamie said.
“It is night,” Stacy pointed out, almost accusingly.
Jamie nodded and kept pacing.
“It’s the waiting that’s the worst,” Vijay offered. “Not knowing what—”
“This is Rodriguez,” the radio speaker crackled. “We got a little problem here.”
Jamie was at the comm console like a shot, leaning between the two women.
“What’s happening, Tomas?”
“Fuchida’s alive. But his backpack’s banged up and his battery’s not functioning. Heater, air fans, nothing in his suit’s working.” Rodriguez’s voice sounded tense but in control, like a pilot whose jet engine had just flamed out: trouble, but nothing that can’t be handled. Until you hit the ground.
Then he added, “We’re stuck on a ledge about thirty meters down and can’t get hack up ‘cause the rock’s coated with dry ice and it’s too slippery to climb.”
As the astronaut went on to describe how the tether winch almost pulled out of its supports when the two of them tried to haul themselves up the slope, Jamie tapped Hall on the shoulder and told her to pull up the specs on the hard suit’s air circulation system.
“Okay,” he said when Rodriguez stopped talking. “Are either of you hurt?”
“I’m bruised a little, Mitsuo’s got a bad ankle. He can’t stand on it.”
One of the screens on the console now showed a diagram of the suit’s air circulation system. Hall was scrolling through a long list on the screen next to it.
“Mitsuo, how do you feel?” Jamie asked, stalling for time, time to think, time to get the information he needed.
“His radio’s down,” Rodriguez said. A hesitation, then, “But he says he’s hot. Sweating.”
Vijay nodded and murmured, “Hypothermia.”
Strangely, Rodriguez chuckled. “Mitsuo also says he discovered siderophiles, inside the caldera! He wants Trudy to know that.”
“I heard it,” Hall said, still scrolling down the suit specs. “Did he get samples?”
Again a wait, then Rodriguez replied, “Yep. There’s water in the rock. Liquid water. Mitsuo says you’ve gotta publish … get it out on the Net.”
“Liquid?” Hall stopped the scrolling. Her eyes went wide. “Are you certain about—”
“Never mind that now,” Jamie said, studying the numbers on Hall’s screen. “According to the suit specs you can get enough breathable air for two hours, at least, even with the fans off.”
“We can’t wait down here until daylight, then,” Rodriguez said.
Jamie said, “Tomas, is Mitsuo’s harness still connected to the winch?”
“Far as I can see, yeah. But if we try to use the winch to haul us up, it’s gonna yank the rig right out of the ground.”
“Then Mitsuo’s got to go up by himself.”
“By himself?”
“Right,” Jamie said. “Let the winch pull Mitsuo up to the top. Then he takes off the harness and sends it back to you so you can get up. Understand?”
In the pale light of the helmet lamps, Fuchida could not see Rodriguez’s face behind his tinted visor. But he knew what the astronaut must be feeling.
Pressing his helmet against Rodriguez’s, he said, “I can’t leave you down here alone, without even the tether.”
Rodriguez’s helmet mike must have picked up his voice, because
Waterman replied, iron hard, “No arguments, Mitsuo. You drag your butt up there and send the harness back down. It shouldn’t take more than a few minutes to get you both up to the top.”
Fuchida started to object, but Rodriguez cut him off. “Okay, Jamie. Sounds good. We’ll call you from the top when we get there.”
Fuchida heard the connection click off.
“I can’t leave you here,” he said, feeling almost desperate.
“That’s what you’ve got to do, man. Otherwise neither one of us will make it.”
“Then you go first and send the harness back down to me.”
“No way,” Rodriguez said. “I can’t leave you down here with that bad ankle. Besides, I’m trained to deal with dangerous situations.”
Fuchida said, “But it’s my fault—”
“Bullshit,” Rodriguez snapped. Then he added, “I’m bigger and meaner than you, Mitsuo. Now get going and stop wasting time!”
“How will you find the harness in the dark?
It could be dangling two meters from your nose and your helmet lamp won’t pick it up.”
Rodriguez made a huffing sound, almost a snort. “Tie one of the beacons to it and turn on the beacon light.”
Fuchida felt mortified. I should have thought of that. It’s so simple. I must be truly rattled; my mind is not functioning as it should.
“Now go on,” Rodriguez said. “Get down on your belly again and start up the winch.”
“Wait,” Fuchida said. “There is something—”
“What?” Rodriguez demanded impatiently.
Fuchida hesitated, then spoke all in a rush. “If … if I don’t make it … if I die … would you contact someone for me when you get back to Earth?”
“You’re not gonna die.”
“Her name is Elizabeth Vernon,” Fuchida went on, afraid that if he stopped he would not be able to resume. “She’s a lab assistant in the biology department of the University of Tokyo. Tell her … that I love her.”
Rodriguez understood the importance of his companion’s words. “Your girlfriend’s not Japanese?”
“My wife,” Fuchida answered.
Rodriguez whistled softly. Then, “Okay, Mitsuo. Sure. I’ll tell her. But you can tell her yourself. You’re not gonna die.”
“Of course. But if …”
“Yeah. I know. Now get going!”
Reluctantly, Fuchida did as he was told. He felt terribly afraid of a thousand possibilities, from tearing his suit to leaving his partner in the dark to freeze to death. But he felt more afraid of remaining there and doing nothing.
Worse, he felt hot. Stifling inside the suit. Gritting his teeth, he held on to the tether with all the pressure the servomotors on his gloves could apply. Then he realized that he needed one hand free to work the winch control on his climbing harness.
He tumbled for the control stud, desperately trying to remember which one started the winch. He found it and pressed. For an instant nothing happened.
Then suddenly he was yanked off the ledge and dragged up the hard rock face of the caldera’s slope, his suit grinding, grating, screeching against the rough rock.
I’ll never make it, Fuchida realized. Even if the suit doesn’t break apart, I’ll suffocate in here before I reach the top.
NEW YORK
IT WAS A FEW MINUTES AFTER SIX IN THE EVENING IN MANHATTAN, A COLD, gusty, rainy gray autumn day in the Big Apple. Crowds scurried past store windows blazing with lights and elaborate Christmas displays, pushing through the hard slanting rain and down into the dank, noisy subway tunnels, heading for home and family and dinner and the evening’s Halloween trick-or-trick jaunts with the kids.
The dark-paneled lounge in the Metropolitan Club was hushed and calm, in contrast. While the wind shook the bare tree limbs of Central Park and rattled the lights on the trees outside the club’s awninged entrance, Darryl C. Trumball eased back in his favorite leather armchair to savor his first Old Fashioned of the evening.
Sitting in the next chair, at his elbow, was Walter Laurence, executive director of the International Consortium of Universities. Unlike the “self-made” Trumball, Laurence had been born to great wealth. Unlike the financier, Laurence had spent his adult life in public service, first in the U.S. Department of State, later in the tangled, often troubled world of academia. Very much like Trumball, Walter Laurence enjoyed wielding power, and appreciated the perquisites of high position.
Now he sat sipping delicately at a tall, chilled glass of vodka and tonic, looking very much like the elder statesman: sleek silver hair, a wisp of a gray mustache, impeccably tailored suit of pearl gray.
“What I don’t understand,” he was saying in his soft, well-mannered voice, “is why you invited that newshound to join us here. He’s such a boor.”
Trumball smiled knowingly, like the toothy grin of a skeleton. “You remember what Ben Franklin said about making love to older women?”
Laurence allowed a tiny frown to crease the space between his brows. “In the dark, all cats are gray?”
“No, no.” Trumball waved a hand impatiently. “He said the main benefit of making love to an older woman is that afterward, they’re so damned grateful!”
“H’mm.”
Trumball leaned closer and lowered his voice. “I want Newell— and his network—on our side.”
“And just which side is that?”
“We’ve got to get rid of this Indian up there: Waterman.”
“Get rid of him? How? The man’s on Mars.”
“I don’t want him directing the expedition. Never did want him, as a matter of fact. I just let the rest of you talk me into it.”
Laurence took a longer sip of his tall drink. Then, “I don’t see how—”
“He’s too much of a dreamer, not the proper man to head the expedition at all,” Trumball said. “And he doesn’t follow orders. He thinks that just because he’s out there on Mars he can do what he wants.”
“Ah,” said Laurence. “Do you have specific instances? I mean, the team seems to be following the schedule we all agreed upon— except for this extra excursion to pick up the old Pathfinder equipment.”
“I specifically gave orders that my son was not to be sent out on that trek!” Trumball hissed, his face paling as he tried to keep his voice down. Still, several people at nearby chairs turned toward him with disapproving frowns.
“Yes, that may be, but there’s not much we can do from this distance, is there?”
“Oh, there certainly is,” Trumball, said. “I want him removed from his position as expedition director. Demoted. Broken.”
Laurence sighed. “But don’t you see, Darryl, that is merely paperwork. He will still be on Mars and still in command there. From all I’ve learned, the other team members hold him in extremely high regard. He’s their hero, really.”
“I want him broken!”
“You’ll make a martyr out of him.”
Trumball glared at the ICU executive. “That’s why I asked Newell to join us. I want to make sure that the news media handle this story the way I want them to.”
Laurence sank back in his armchair. “I think you’re stirring up a tempest in a teapot.”
“Well, I don’t.”
“It won’t make any difference if he’s officially expedition director or not.”
“Yes it will!” Trumball snapped. “He wants to go out to find some mythical village he claims he saw on the first expedition. As director, he can set up an excursion whenever he wants. With somebody else as director, he’ll never get permission to go.”
”Do you think the new director would refuse to grant him permission for such an excursion?”
“Damned right I do!”
“But they all admire the man so much. Who would deny him the chance to see if his village actually exists?”
“The new director will.”
Comprehension lit in Laurence’s mind, but he asked the question anyway, even though he knew what Trumball’s answer would be.
“And who might the new director be?”
“My son Dex, of course.”
“Of course,” Laurence murmured. “Of course.”
IN THE PIT
RODRIGUEZ WATCHED FUCHIDA SLITHER UP AND AWAY FROM HIM, A DIM pool of light that receded slowly but steadily. Through the insulation of his helmet he could not hear the noise of the biologist’s hard suit grating against the ice-rimed rock; he heard nothing but his own breathing, faster than it should have been. Calm down, he ordered himself. Keep calm and everything’ll turn out okay.
Sure, a sardonic voice in his head answered. Nothing to it. Piece of cake.
Then he realized that he was totally, utterly alone in the darkness.
It’s okay, he told himself. Mitsuo’ll send the harness down and then I can winch myself up.
The light cast by his helmet lamp was only a feeble glow against the dark rough rock face. When Rodriguez turned, the light was swallowed by the emptiness of the caldera’s abyss, deep and wi
de and endless.
The darkness surrounded him. It was as if there was no one else in the whole universe, no universe at all, only the all-engulfing darkness of this cold, black pit.
Unhidden, a line from some play he had read years earlier in school came to his mind:
Why, this is hell, nor am I out of it.
Don’t be a goon! He snapped at himself. You’ll be okay. Your suit’s working fine and Mitsuo’s up there by now, taking off the harness and getting ready to send it down to you.
Yeah, sure. He could be unconscious, he could be snagged on a rock or maybe the damned harness broke while the winch was dragging him up the slope. Or the winch pulled loose and he’ll come tumbling back down on top of me, winch and all.
The image of the two of them knocked off the ledge and plunging into the black endless pit of hell curdled his blood.
No fear! Rodriguez told himself. No fear. He put a gloved hand against the solid rock to steady himself. You’ll be out of this soon, he repeated silently. Then he wondered if his lamp’s light was weakening. Are the batteries starting to run down?
Fuchida’s head was banging against the inside of his helmet so hard he tasted blood in his mouth. He squeezed his eyes shut and saw his father’s stern, uncompromising glare. How disappointed he will be when he learns that I died on Mars, like Cousin Konoye.
And Elizabeth. Perhaps it’s better this way. She can go back to Ireland and find a man of her own culture to marry. My death will spare her a lifetime of troubles.
The winch stopped suddenly and Fuchida felt a pang of terror. It’s stuck! He realized at that moment that he was not prepared for death. He did not want to die. Not here on Mars. Not at all.
A baleful red eye was staring at him. Fuchida thought for a moment he might be slipping into unconsciousness, then slowly realized that it was the light atop one of the geo/met beacons they had planted at the lip of the caldera.
Straining his eyes in the starlit darkness, he thought he could make out the form of the winch looming above his exhausted body. He reached out and touched it.
Yes! He had reached the top. But he felt faint, giddy. His body was soaked with perspiration. Heat prostration, he thought. How funny to die of heat prostration when the temperature outside my suit is nearly two hundred degrees below zero.