by Ben Bova
They had just started to eat breakfast when Fuchida limped up to the table, looking distressed.
“What’s wrong, Mitsuo?” Jamie asked.
“Am I the only one who wonders why the garden dome began to rip apart?” he asked.
“What do you mean?”
The biologist sat across from Jamie and Vijay and propped his bandaged ankle on an empty chair.
”How can the dust rip the dome fabric?” he asked, like a professor posing a problem for his class.
Dezhurova got up from the table. ‘ ‘I promised Tomas I would bring him juice,” she remembered. “He probably needs it.”
Fuchida did not catch her insinuation. “The dome’s plastic cannot be punctured by sand particles,” he said quietly, firmly. “Yet the fabric was punctured.”
“I thought it ripped along the base where it connects with the flooring,” Jamie said.
“No,” Fuchida replied, raising one finger for emphasis. “There are two small punctures. If not repaired so quickly, they would have grown into a rip that would have torn the entire dome off its foundation.”
“But we did catch it in time,” Vijay said. “Jamie did, that is.”
Fuchida acknowledged the fact with a small dip of his chin. “Still, we must ask how the dome was punctured.”
Jamie suggested, “Small rocks blown by the wind?”
“I doubt it,” the biologist said.
“Then how?”
“I don’t know. But it troubles me. The dome should not have failed. That plastic fabric has been tested under much more severe conditions in wind tunnel simulations. It should not have failed.”
“Yet it did,” Vijay said, almost in a whisper.
“It did indeed.” Fuchida looked like a prosecuting attorney to Jamie. Suspicious, almost angry.
“Well,” Jamie said, “I don’t know how it failed, but we ought to figure out some way of making certain it doesn’t happen again.”
“Hey, buddy,” Craig said cheerfully, “we made it through the night.”
From across the narrow table between their bunks, Dex nodded glumly. He felt exhausted, sleepless eyes gummy, coveralls rumpled and stinking of fear.
The wind was still screeching outside. Particles of iron-cored grit were still grinding against the rover’s thin skin, like an endless army of soldier ants working tirelessly to break through their defenses and come in and devour them.
“Communications’re out, of course,” Craig added.
“Of course,” said Dex Wearily.
“Soon’s the wind dies down to less’n a hundred knots, we’ll go outside and dust off the antennas. Squirt a signal back to base, let ‘em know we’re okay.”
“If they’re okay,” Dex replied gloomily.
“They’ll be all right,” said Craig. “That big dome’s built like the Rock of Gibraltar. Been through dust storms before, y’know, over the six years it’s been settin’ out there.”
“I suppose so,” Dex admitted.
Unbidden, his mind was cataloguing all the things that might not be okay. If the covers had ripped off during the night, the solar cells could be scratched and pitted so badly they’d be useless. The fuel cells were already down to zero; they were living off the batteries. The gritty dust could have worked its way into the wheel bearings, immobilizing them completely. Then we’ll have a choice of starving or suffocating,
Dex thought. Or the dust could have scoured the antennas so badly their eomin systems would he completely shot. Then we couldn’t navigate, couldn’t get positioning data from the satellites, we’d be lost out here forever.
Or the whole frigging base dome might have blown down during the night, he added.
“Hey!” Craig snapped. “You listenin’?”
“Sorry,” Dex said, trying to sit up a little straighter.
“I said we’d better stick to a cold breakfast. No sense drainin’ the batteries by usin’ the microwave.”
“I’ll get breakfast,” Dex said, pushing himself up from his bunk. “You can do the systems check.”
“Already did that. After breakfast we power down. Shut off the freezer, let it coast; food’ll keep cold inside okay. Air fans on low. Lights to minimum. Until we get the solar panels uncovered and work-in’ again.”
“If they’ll work again,” Dex muttered as he went back to the compact stand of racks that served as the rover’s galley.
“Didn’t get much sleep last night, huh?”
“How’d you guess?” Dex pulled out the first two cereal packages he could reach.
“Listen, kid, the worst is over. We made it through the storm. It’s peterin’ out now. In another couple hours—”
Dex whirled on him. “You listen, pal! You don’t like being called Possum? Well I don’t like being called kid. Got that?”
“Then stop behavin’ like a kid,” Craig shot back, scowling.
Dex started to reply, but found he had no answer for the older man.
“You’re scared, okay. I am too. What th’ hell, we’re stranded out here in the middle of downtown Mars. For all I know we’re covered with sand twelve feet deep and ever’body in the base is dead. Okay! We’ll have to deal with that. You do what you can do. You don’t sit around mopin’ and grumblin’ like some teenager with an acne problem.”
Despite himself, Dex laughed. “Is that what I’ve been doing?”
Still sitting on his bunk, Craig’s leathery face rearranged itself into a small smile. He nodded. “Sort of,” he said.
“I’m scared, Wiley,” he admitted. “I don’t want to die out here.”
“Shit, buddy, I don’t want to die at all.”
As he put both cereal packages on the table, Dex said, “Maybe we ought to go outside and see how bad the damage is.”
“Still blowin’ pretty strong out there. Be better to wait a couple hours.”
“I’ll go nuts sitting in here with nothing to do but listen to that wind.”
Craig nodded. “H’m. Yeah, me too.”
“So?”
“So let’s have us a nice leisurely breakfast and then take our time suitin’ up.”
“Good,” said Dex, feeling some of the fear ease away. Not all of it. But he felt better than he had during the night.
AFTERNOON: SOL 50
“NOT AS BAD AS IT COULD’VE BEEN,” CRAIG PRONOUNCED. BUT HIS VOICE sounded heavy, unhappy, in Dex’s earphones.
The sky was still gray, sullen. The wind was still keening, although nowhere near as loud as it had been. Dex was surprised that inside the hard suit he felt no push from the wind at all. He had expected to have to lean over hard and force himself forward, like a man struggling through a gale. Instead, the thin Martian air might just as well have been totally calm.
On one side the rover was half buried in rust-red sand. From the nose of the cockpit to the tail of the jointed vehicle’s third segment, the sand had piled up as high as the roof on the windward side.
“Good thing the hatch was on the leeward side,” Dex said. “We might’ve had trouble getting it open if it was buried in this stuff.”
“Naw, I don’t think so,” Craig answered, kicking at the pile. Dust flew like ashes, or like dry autumn leaves when a child scuffs at them.
“Maybe.”
“Besides,” Craig added, “I turned her so the hatch’d be on the sheltered side when we stopped for the night.”
Dex blinked inside his helmet, trying to remember if he was driving then or Craig. Wiley’s not above taking credit for good luck, he thought.
“Come on, let’s see what’s happened topside.”
As they trudged around the rover, back to the side that was almost free of the dust, Dex could see that at least part of the makeshift coverings they had taped down over the solar panels had been blown loose. One sheet was flapping fitfully in the wind.
As Craig climbed up the ladder next to the airlock hatch to inspect the solar panels, Dex caught sight of the most beautiful apparition he had seen on Mars
: the dull gray dust-laden clouds thinned enough, for a few moments, for him to see the bright orange sky overhead. His heart leaped inside him. The storm’s breaking up! It’s breaking up at last.
“Worse than I hoped for,” Craig’s voice grated in his earphones, “but better’n I was scared of.”
Craig came down from the ladder. “We got some scratches and pittin’ up there where the tarp came loose. The rest of the panels look okay, though.”
“Good,” said Dex, suddenly enthusiastic. “Listen, Wiley, I’m going to duck back inside and put on the VR rig. Nobody’s ever recorded a Martian dust storm before. This’ll make great viewing back home!”
He heard Craig chuckling inside his helmet. Then the older man said, “Startin’ to get some of your spirit back on-line, huh?”
“I …” Dex stopped, perplexed for a moment. Then he put a gloved hand on the shoulder of Craig’s suit. “Wiley, you really helped me. I was scared shitless back there, and you pulled me through it.”
“You did it for yourself,” Craig said, “but I’ll be glad to take the credit for it.”
Dex felt his insides go hollow.
As if he sensed it, Craig said, “Don’t worry, son. What happened here is between you and me, nobody else.”
“Thanks, Wiley.” The words sounded pitifully weak to Dex, compared to the enormous rush of gratitude and respect that he felt.
“Okay,” Craig said gruffly. “Now before you start doin’ your VR stuff, let’s get the antennas cleaned off so we can tell Jamie and the gang that we’re okay.”
Rodriguez gave a sudden whoop from the comm center.
“Wiley’s calling in!”
Jamie bolted up from the galley table while Vijay stayed to help the limping Fuchida. In the comm center Jamie saw Craig’s scruffy-bearded face on the main screen.
“… solar panel output’s degraded by four-five percent,” Craig was reporting. “Coulda been a lot worse.”
“What about the fuel cells?” Rodriguez asked.
“Dex’s electrolyzing our extra water; gonna feed the hydrogen and oxy to ‘em. That way we can rest the batteries.”
Poking his head into the comm camera’s view, Jamie asked, “Do you have to dig yourselves out?”
Craig looked very pleased. “Nope. The wheels and drive motors are all okay. We just put ‘er in gear and pulled ourselves loose. We’re movin’ now.”
“Wow!” Rodriguez exclaimed.
“That’s great,” said Jamie, feeling genuinely pleased and relieved. “That’s just great, Wiley.”
“Oughtta be at Ares Vallis in another three-four days,” Craig said. Then he added, “If the weather holds up.”
Rodriguez, laughed. “There’s not another storm in sight.”
“Good.”
When Craig signed off, Rodriguez began checking the telemetry from the rover and Jamie went back to the inventory list. The wind was still yowling outside like dead spirits begging to come in out of the cold.
The wind was appreciably softer and sunlight actually lanced below the overhanging clouds as the day drew to a close.
Jamie was tired, physically and emotionally drained, as he made his way back to the comm center for what must have been the hundredth time that day.
As the storm wound down, he had spent most of the day in the greenhouse dome, checking and rechecking the area that had been damaged. He had even suited up and gone outside to inspect the damaged areas without the emergency patches and epoxy covering them. It was hard to say, but the areas seemed to have been punctured, not torn. Of course, once punctured the plastic fabric began to rip along the seam where it connected to the foundation of the dome.
What we need here is a forensic structural engineer, Jamie told himself. If there is such a person. Maybe Wiley could make some sense of it.
He took dozens of photographs of the damaged areas and transmitted them back to Tarawa for their analysis. There was nothing more he could think to do, but he kept feeling that he was missing something. Something important.
What is it, Grandfather? He asked silently. What have I overlooked?
Once in the comm center he slumped down on the little chair and put through another message to Tarawa.
“Pete: The greenhouse dome looks okay now, but I’m worried about what might happen in the next storm. Maybe that won’t be for another year, but it’s a problem we ought to think about now, not when the dust starts blowing again. It’s obvious that we overlooked this problem, but with twenty-twenty hindsight I think we ought to pay attention to it.
“Can you get the world’s assembled experts to figure out how we can protect the greenhouse dome with the materials we have on hand? That includes native Martian materials, of course. What I’m wondering is, can we make glass bricks out of the Martian sand? Build an igloo that’s transparent? Look into it for me, will you?”
The wind died down almost completely after sunset. Jamie was tempted to put on a suit and go out to see if the stars were still in their places, but he felt too tired. The outside cameras showed that the planes were still there, although what condition their solar panels might be in would have to wait for a closer inspection.
The dome was quiet, hack to normal, when Jamie finally went to his quarters. Vijay was already there, in the bunk. He blinked with surprise.
“Tomas is bunking with Trudy,” she said, matter-of-factly.
Nodding, Jamie muttered, “I wonder if Mitsuo and Stacy are going to get it on?”
Vijay giggled softly. “Not bloody likely.”
“Why not?”
“Stacy’s gay.”
Jamie’s eyes popped open. “What?”
“Stacy’s a lesbian.” s
There’s nothing wrong with that, Jamie told himself. Still, he felt shocked.
“Poor Mitsuo,” he heard himself whisper as he got under the covers beside her.
Vijay moved over to make room for him on the narrow bunk. “I don’t know about him. He hasn’t come on to any of the women.”
“Maybe he’s gay, too?”
“I doubt it. I think he’s just got more self-control than you Western ape-men.”
Jamie wanted to debate the point, but instead he closed his eyes and fell instantly asleep.
GLASS BRICKS
PETE CONNORS STARED GLOOMILY AT THE THICK STACK OF PAPERS ON HIS desk. It’s always a mistake asking the experts how to do something, he reminded himself. They snow you under with every detail they’ve ever come across.
Still, he thought, the NASA guys and the university profs provided the material we asked for damned fast. If only there wasn’t so much of it!
He took a deep breath, then booted up his computer and called up the communications program. The tiny red light on the camera atop the display screen winked on.
“Jamie, I’m going to be sending you half a ton of documentation about how to make glass bricks out of in situ materials. It won’t be an easy job, but it can be done.
“I’ll squirt the technical write-ups to you on the other channel. It’s from all sorts of bright thinkers at NASA, MIT, Caltech, places like that. I think maybe some of ‘em are Eskimos.
“First thing you’ll have to do is build a solar reflector. You can scavenge one of the spare dish antennas from stores and coat it with aluminum spray. The reflector will be the heat source for your furnace; you need to produce temperatures of two thousand degrees Celsius to melt the sand particles from the Martian soil. First you’ll have to crush the sand grains down real fine …”
Half an hour later, Connors finished with, “… and then you’ll have glass bricks, buddy. Nothing to it.”
Finally, with a weary sigh, Connors turned to the subject he would have preferred to ignore. But he couldn’t.
“Jamie, old man Trumball is still pushing to get you out as mission director …”
NOON: SOL 03
“I SEE IT!” DEX YELPED.
They had just topped a low bluff, and the rover was nosing down the steep inc
line toward the broad low swale where the Pathfinder and its tiny wheeled Sojourner had been waiting silently for nearly thirty years.
Craig was driving. Both men were shaggy, bearded, their coveralls limp and sweat-stained. They were both grinning from ear to ear.
“Look!” Dex cried, rising halfway out of his seat and pointing at the rocks. “There’s the twin peaks! And Yogi! And Barnacle Bill!”
Craig laughed. “You’re actin’ like you didn’t expect they’d be here.”
Dex plopped back in the chair, his insides fluttering. They’re all here. They’re really here. After all the years of looking at the pictures and watching the videos, it’s all real. It really all happened. They landed the spacecraft here back when they could barely fly a ton of payload to Mars.
This hardware’s worth billions! Dex told himself. A lot more than it cost in the first place. Like a painting by DaVinci or Van Gogh.
He wanted to drive the rover, wanted to stomp on the accelerator and race down there in a swirl of dust. But he knew that Wiley wouldn’t let him, and he realized it was probably a good thing. Christ on a crutch, Dex thought. I’m wound up like a little kid at Christmas.
“Maybe you oughtta call hack to base and tell ‘em we’re here,” Craig suggested.
“Right,” Dex agreed. “And make sure the cameras are getting all this. This is history, y’know!”
Craig chuckled.
They parked a five-minute walk away from the Pathfinder, so they could survey the area carefully and not disturb the site with their rover’s cleated wheel tracks.
The old spacecraft sat there, flat and square, with its shriveled protective shroud pulled up around it like an old lady holding up her skirts. The machine looked strange, alien in the Martian landscape, an angular metal contrivance in the midst of weathered rocks and rust-red sand. Sojourner, so tiny it looked like a wheeled toy some child might have put together from a kit, was still nosed against the rock that had been dubbed Yogi.
Dex was trembling with anticipation as he and Craig got into their hard suits. Once outside, once actually on the ground and standing beside the old hardware, the excitement began to ebb away.