Mars Crossing

by Geoffrey A. Landis

  “Hundreds of miles?”

  It was not of great interest to him. Radkowski was more worried about getting the crew down the cliff to the rockhopper, and making sure it was secure for the long traverse to the bottom of the canyon.

  He thought about reprimanding Ryan Martin for slowing down the expedition by stopping to explore the cave, but decided that it was understandable. They had, after all, come to Mars to explore. He would talk to Ryan privately later, caution him that regardless of what they found, getting north as fast as possible had to remain their first priority.

  Before descending from the cave level, he checked his rappelling line and safety line attachments again. Both good. He pulled at the superfiber. “On belay,” he said.

  His anchor points, for both the rappelling line and the safety line, were still up at the top. From his radio, Trevor’s voice said, “On belay.”

  He looked down—it was a long drop, still most of a vertical mile of drop—and then stepped backward off the edge. The superfiber held him, and then, without warning, it gave, and he was in freefall.

  Shit. “Falling,” he called. “Tension!”

  The safety line caught, and he swung out from the cliff, twisted around awkwardly.

  And then the safety line broke.

  He started to tumble, and instinctively he assumed the skydiver’s position, arms spread, legs in a V. “Tension,” he shouted, but he knew that it wasn’t going to do him any good. The line had snapped, and there was nothing between him and the ground but two thousand feet of thin Martian air.

  It took him a long time to fall.

  13

  ON STATION

  Tana Jackson’s selection for the medical position on the Mars mission pushed her to the top of the priority list for assignment to the space station. Her name would not be publicly announced for the Mars billet until after she had been tested in orbit. None of the crew had been announced yet. They wanted to see how she worked out in microgravity, how well she got along with the station crew when she was confined in a tin can, with no new faces to see, with nowhere to go to get away. Her nomination to fly on the Mars mission was a recommendation, not a right; at any time she could be reassigned if they decided she might not work out.

  The orders for her to start training for a ninety-day shift on the space station arrived the next day. At the same time, she was directed to take refresher courses in epidemiology, most importantly to memorize the medical details of the reports of the three independent review panels that had evaluated the Agamemnon disaster. She was also expected to become an expert on the hypothetical biology of Martian life. And, in addition to all of this, she was to appear cheerful and knowledgeable whenever the press needed a warm body to interview.

  She began to train with the microgravity emergency medical kit, until she could unerringly find each piece upside-down and blindfolded: tracheotomy tubes, laryngoscope, oxygen mask, miniature oxygen tank, compresses, syringes, dressings, adhesives, scalpel, stethoscope, blood oximeter.

  She had never worked harder in her life. The launch to the space station, when it came, seemed almost like a vacation. She was so excited that she barely noticed the launch, and only when she saw her notepad floating out of her pocket did she realize, I’m really here; I’m in zero gravity. I made it.

  Tana’s billet was to be the blue-shift medical officer, and in her spare time, a biology research technician and an experimental subject. The bio labs always needed both technicians and subjects.

  She liked being on space station. Ft was crowded and noisy and confusing. It was remarkably easy to get confused, and even—despite its small size—momentarily lost. The familiar route from one module to another that you’ve memorized as a left turn would, if you happen to be flipped, mutate into a right turn, or even an up or down turn. Compartments that she thought she knew completely suddenly became completely unfamiliar when she came in with a different orientation, and the floor had become the ceiling. In a way, it was as if the space station were far larger on the inside than its mere volume, when every floor was also a wall and a ceiling.

  On her arrival at the space station, Brittany and Jasmine, two crew members who were already old hands on the station, were detailed to give her the orientation. Brittany was big-boned, tall and square and blonde; Jasmine was small and dark, with a round face. They acted as smoothly as if they had been working with one another since they had been born.

  “It’s big and ugly and smelly,” Brittany said, waving her hand at the station.

  “Isn’t it just,” Jasmine said. “God, don’t you love it here?”

  “Yeah,” Brittany said. She looked at Tana. “Girl, you may not know it, but the moment you get back down, let me warn you, you’re going to start scheming how to get back up here.”

  “Home,” Jasmine said. “Come on. I think there’s nobody in the number two biology lab.” She contorted her body, jackknifed, and with a sudden jerk, was facing the opposite direction. Tana had no idea how she had accomplished it without touching a wall. “Let’s go over there, and we can”—she winked at Tana—“give you a briefing in private.”

  Tana already knew about the zero-gravity rite of passage, or at least the outline of it. The grapevine at the center had been pretty explicit. She didn’t bother to try Jasmine’s maneuver, but instead pushed off the wall to follow.

  As the newcomer, Brittany explained, a tradition as old as the space station itself gave her the jus primae noctis, the right to choose who she wanted for the first night, any one of the seasoned crew.

  “And it doesn’t have to be one of the men, either,” Jasmine said, and winked. “If you go that way.”

  Tana wasn’t sure if that was a proposition or not. She could feel her ears heating up. “Does it have to be the first night?” she asked.

  “Nah, that’s just a phrase,” Jasmine said.

  “There isn’t any night up here anyway,” Brittany said.

  “Sure there is—a new one every ninety-three minutes,” Jasmine said. “Great if you like sunsets.”

  “If you’re feeling nauseous, you might want to wait a bit,” Brittany said. “Don’t want to spoil it.”

  “Nah, you don’t want to wait,” Jasmine said. “The first couple of days they still have you on an easy work schedule.”

  “Yeah, it’ll be hard to find some free time,” Brittany said.

  “Nah,” Jasmine said, and laughed. “You can find time. I mean, you don’t want to wait.”

  She didn’t know why she picked John Radkowski. He was certainly good looking, clean-cut, and athletic, but not much more so than most of the others. He was the commander of the station, but somehow, it seemed to her, he had more depth than the other flying jocks, a core of sadness. She waited until she momentarily brushed against him in a node, and none of the others were close by. She looked at him, and he looked back at her with a long, unwavering gaze, his gray eyes almost disconcertingly direct. And then he said softly, “Would you like to accompany me to the equipment module airlock?”

  She nodded, and he pushed off without a word, expecting her to follow.

  The airlock, she discovered, was one of the very few places on the space station that had a door that could be firmly and securely shut. Inside it, two space suits were stored. There was a small space, barely larger than a coffin, between the suits. John Radkowski pushed into the space and motioned her to follow.

  “You’re not claustrophobic, are you?” he asked.

  She shook her head.

  “Good.” He pulled the airlock door shut and twisted the wheel a quarter turn. “Too much room is a problem up here.” He smiled. “For some things, anyway. Action and reaction, you know.”

  There was a dim red illumination, emergency lighting, that was never shut off. The space was close; she was pressing against him slightly, but in the absence of gravity, it was comfortable. She could feel his breath, slow and warm. He had a slight odor of sweat, which she found not unpleasant.

  “Nothin
g is required,” he said. He actually seemed slightly embarrassed. “I hope Brittany explained that. You’re free to say no.”

  She answered by pulling him closer to her and kissing him. She had to hold on to keep him from floating away from her. He was more muscular than she’d expected.

  “I wouldn’t want to break tradition,” she said.

  He was wearing a T-shirt and shorts; under the T-shirt, she found, his chest was covered with dark hair. Tana unzippered the front of her shirt and freed her breasts. In microgravity, her breasts had no sag, she was as firm as silicone. A side effect of fluid redistribution, she thought. He reached a hand out tentatively, and cupped one of her breasts; she reached up and stroked the back of his hand. She started to slip her arm out of her sleeve to take off her shirt, and he stopped her.

  “Leave it on,” he said. “One of us has to wear something to hold on to.”

  He stripped out of his shorts and sent them floating away. He floated nude in front of her. There was nothing tentative about him now. She reached down and touched him.

  Sex in microgravity, Tana discovered, was by necessity slow; sudden moves were impossible. She didn’t have to worry that his weight would crush her, or it she put an arm around him her arm would be pinned. Even the climax, when it came, seemed almost in slow motion. She had a desperate urgency, but there was a frustrating lack of any leverage for her to take advantage of. She clasped her legs around his body, arched her back, and her whole body shook.

  He had one fist tangled in her shirt, keeping them from floating apart, and they floated together, silent. At last, he spoke.

  “Welcome to space station,” he said. He pulled her to him and kissed her lightly on the nose. “I now declare you officially a member of the microgravity society, with all the rights and privileges that entails.”

  14

  WAITING FOR ANGELS

  John Radkowski lay on his back, on a slope of broken rock and sand, and marveled. He wasn’t dead.

  That was the surprise. He wasn’t dead.

  The fall had been slow, so slow. But he had been moving awful fast. He tried to calculate how fast he must have been moving when he’d hit, but he couldn’t quite think clearly.

  He didn’t hurt.

  In fact, he couldn’t feel anything, just a comfortable warmth about his body.

  The helmet hadn’t shattered. It really did live up to its marketing, he thought, a technological marvel: light, clear as glass, and damn near unbreakable. He’d have to do a commercial for the company: “I fell off a cliff, half a mile down, hit rocks at the bottom, and the remarkable carbide helmet still held air!”

  He wished he could say the same about the rest of the suit. He could hear the shrill whine of escaping air.

  He was laying at a crazy angle, half tilted toward the sky. The sky was a most remarkable shade of peach, brushed with delicate yellow clouds like feathers. He wished he could move his head, look around. Out of the corner of his eye he could see blood. It seemed to be pooling in the bottom of the helmet, somewhere around his right ear.

  He tried to use the radio to call, but his voice wasn’t working anymore. He doubted the radio was, either.

  The pool of blood in his helmet was getting deeper.

  He felt remarkably peaceful. He owed the universe a death, he knew. One death.

  His.

  There was no possible way that any of the others could get to him in time. And even if they could reach him, what could they possibly do?

  It was getting hard to breathe. The air was getting thin.

  Now one of the others would get a chance. Would that satisfy God? Would that, at last, be enough? It was a nice balance. He’d leave the universe with his debts paid.

  Around John Radkowski’s right ear, the blood in his helmet was a pool six inches deep. It began to softly boil as the suit pressure reached equilibrium with the low atmospheric pressure of Mars.

  John Radkowski waited for angels.

  15

  DEATH IN THE AFTERNOON

  By the time they had reached the spot where Commander Radkowski had hit, Ryan Martin knew that it was far too late. The body was on a dangerous slope of loose rock. Ryan made sure that each of the crew members had a safety line firmly anchored to the solid rock of the cliff face before he let Tana go to examine him.

  Tana’s examination was brief. The impact had killed him instantly, she told them. Even in the light gravity of Mars, nobody could survive a fall like that.

  “He looks peaceful,” Tana said.

  “He looks dead,” Estrela said.

  Radkowski’s body had sealed to the slope by a glue of frozen blood. It took three of them to pry the corpse free, and the moment it came loose, Ryan could not keep his grip on it, and the corpse slid away, spinning slightly as it sledded down the slope in a tiny avalanche.

  It came to rest when one foot jammed in the crack between two enormous boulders a few hundred meters down. This time they did not try to move him. The slope was too rocky to dig a grave into. They left him in the notch between the boulders and brought fist-sized rocks to cover him. It was no problem to find rocks; the slope was covered with loose rocks, of every size from gravel to space-shuttle size.

  There was no funeral. Ryan made sure that everybody kept their safety lines attached as he got them organized. He wanted to get everybody moving, to get them focused on the task of getting down the slope before the reality of the death had time to sink in. It was too late to turn back, and there was nothing at Don Quijote to go back to anyway. There was nothing to do but go on.

  The surface they were on tilted downward at an angle of almost forty degrees. It was a treacherous slope. The smallest motion of loose rock set off a tiny landslide; Ryan had to constantly make sure that none of the crew ever stood downslope from another crew member, and worried that a misstep would result in a twisted ankle, or worse.

  Under the circumstances, he decided that the best bet was to put all four of them into the rockhopper, and have the rockhopper work its way down the slope along a superfiber line solidly anchored in rock at the cliff face. He didn’t want to trust the superfiber for anything except an emergency, and as a result the progress of the rockhopper was excruciatingly slow. It looked to be a good fifteen, maybe twenty kilometers of downward traverse to reach the level bottom of the canyon. The slope couldn’t be this steep all the way to the bottom. Once it flattened out to only thirty degrees or so, they would go off the rope, to keep from depleting their spool of superfiber.

  Fitting four of them in the cabin of the rockhopper made for seriously cramped quarters. He had them keep the doors open and their suits on; it was the only way to get enough room for him to pilot it.

  And so, hanging out of the doors of the overloaded rockhopper like television hillbillies clinging to a dilapidated Model T pickup, at the head of an avalanche of sliding rocks and dirt and gravel, they drove down into the canyon.

  16

  IN THE ABYSS

  Ahead of them, the avalanches of rock that the rockhopper sent down the slope raised an enormous plume of dust, like a pillar of smoke marking the path to the holy land.

  Tana huddled inside her suit, blocking from her consciousness the details of the terrifying descent. Commander Radkowski was dead. She could hardly comprehend it; it was too enormous a concept to get her thoughts around. Commander Radkowski was dead.

  He was the one who had kept the team together, who had told them what to do, and where to go. How could they possibly survive now?

  Some day, long after they returned from Mars, when it was all just a shared experience they could look back on, John Radkowski would come to her apartment, and they would sit and laugh, reminisce, and maybe drink a little wine. Possibly they would get intimate—her dreams were a little fuzzy on this point—and maybe on that day he would tell her what was inside him, what demons of the past made him soft and sweet and innocent and hard and bitter and cynical.

  But that would never happen. John Radkowski
would never leave Mars. She would tell herself that, and come to herself again, huddled inside the cramped cabin of the rover, creeping down the endless descent, a slippery incline of loose and shattered rock. Ryan was glued to the wheel, keeping the descent slow and controlled.

  When they got back home, all this would be something to remember. Perhaps she could invite John Radkowski over to her apartment, and he would—

  But John Radkowski was dead. Jarred free by the wheels of the rock-hopper, boulders broke loose and caromed down the slope, pinballing off other boulders toward a bottom that was so distant it was not even visible. It was not an adventure that someday they would laugh about. It was an adventure that would most likely kill them, as it had killed Radkowski, as it had killed Chamlong.

  17

  ROCK GLOW

  The slope leveled out a bit, and then a bit more, and Ryan cut free of the superfiber cable that served as a safety line for the rockhopper in order to increase their speed. And then the talus slope spilled out onto the canyon bottom. Ryan steered a labyrinthine path through a maze of boulders too large for the rockhopper to climb. And then even the boulder field diminished to scattered boulders, rocks the size of houses, of apartment buildings, but scattered enough that they loomed like alien monuments, no longer a hazard to driving.

  Except for the scattered boulders, the canyon bottom was flat. The ground was hard, like fired clay, brushed lightly with a flourlike dust. The canyon was so wide that from the bottom the far wall was invisible. Only the wall behind them was visible, looming dark and foreboding in the evening shadows. Ryan wanted to move as far from the slope, as far from the site of Radkowski’s death as they could get. Evening was approaching, and he knew that they could not get across the canyon in the remaining sunlight. But still, he felt that they should move as far as they could, and in the waning sun he pushed the rover to its limits, without offering to stop and unload the dirt-rover.