by Ben Bova
He heard a humming sound in his earphones, almost rhythmic, droning.
“What’s… that?”
“ ‘The Song of the Volga Boatmen,’ ” Vosnesensky’s voice answered solemnly out of the darkness. “It has been used for ages by men pulling barges up the Volga river. I thought it would help you.”
“Sounds like… a funeral dirge.”
Vosnesensky stopped his humming. “If you do not appreciate my music, then let me hear you speak. I want to hear you.”
“No breath for talking.”
“Make breath! I want to know that you are conscious and making progress.”
“You can hear my gasping, can’t you?”
“Yes, but I—wait! I can see your light! Jamie, you are getting close enough for me to see the light from your helmet lamp! Where are those binoculars? Yes! It is your helmet lamp! You are getting closer!”
Vosnesensky was being ridiculous. What other light could he possibly see out on this frozen empty slope?
“Keep moving, Jamie.” Tony Reed’s voice. “Don’t stop now.”
“Don’t stop now,” repeated Vosnesensky, with even more fervor in his voice.
“What’re you… going to do… if I stop? Come out… after me?”
“If both my legs worked,” Ivshenko said, “I would gladly come out to greet you.”
Jamie shook his head, knowing that they could not see his gesture even if they were standing beside him in the full warm light of noon. Ivshenko can’t walk and Mikhail can’t even stand up, from what he had heard.
“Jamie,” Joanna called, “talk to me, please. Tell me about your home in New Mexico. I have never been there.”
“Not my home. I don’t have… any home. Not in New Mexico… not anywhere. Except here. Maybe here. Mars is my home.”
“Tell me what we will do once we return to Earth, then,” she said.
“I’ll tell you about Coyote.”
“Coyote?”
“The trickster. Always causing trouble.”
“Yes,” Joanna said. “Tell me.”
“You know… the patterns of the stars? The constellations?”
No answer. Jamie kept plodding forward, panting, until he heard Joanna in his earphones. “Go on.”
“First Man and First Woman… put the stars in their places,” he said. “They had… all the stars… in a blanket. Wanted to put them… in the right places… in the sky. Harmony is beauty. Order and… harmony.”
The cable was sticking again; it was harder to pull it along. Jamie leaned all his weight into the harness.
“What happened then?” Joanna asked.
“Old Coyote came by… saw what they were doing. He grabbed… the blanket… swung it around and around… then he hurled the whole blanket… full of stars… into the sky. That’s… what made… the Milky Way.”
“Oh!” said Joanna.
“Coyote ruined… the harmony of the sky. He’s always… messing things up.”
“A cosmological myth,” Vosnesensky said.
“Kind of.” Jamie wondered how Coyote had tricked Man Maker into making Mars so cold. So utterly damnably cold. Then he realized that Coyote had tricked him, had tricked all of them, into coming to this dead world. This world of death.
But it’s not dead, a voice in his mind said. You found life here.
Jamie blinked sweat from his eyes. Strange to find life on a world where we’re all going to die, he thought. Strange to be sweating while you’re freezing to death.
He staggered forward another few steps, then sank to his knees. His legs refused to move any farther. His arms felt as if encased in ice. Far in the distance he could see the tiny running lights of Vosnesensky’s rover. Close enough to see. Close enough to reach.
Jamie tried to push himself to his feet, but he hadn’t the strength to do it. Cold freezing numb. He crawled on his hands and knees, hearing the voice of his first mission instructor warning, “Even the smallest tear in your gloves, the tiniest leak in a seal or a joint, will kill you within minutes out on the surface of Mars.”
Totally spent, he sprawled on the hard rocky ground. With a last supreme effort he managed to turn himself on his side and tried to struggle up into a sitting position.
He failed.
Lying on his side, half propped up by the bulky backpack and harness, Jamie looked up at the cold solemn stars glittering in the darkness. He thought he saw Coyote up there, laughing next to the Hunter.
“I’m sorry,” he gasped. “I can’t go… any farther. I’m done…”
“Jamie!” Joanna shrieked. “You must go on! You must! For me! For all of us! Please!”
“I tried…” The pain was ebbing away. His entire body was becoming numb, floating in nothingness like the Buddhist nirvana.
He heard Joanna sobbing and the muttering of voices in his earphones.
“Listen…,” he said, his voice sounding weak, far away, even to himself. “Tell them… it doesn’t matter. Doesn’t matter… that I died. That all of us die. Everyone dies. Not important. We’ve learned so much… and there’s so much more… to find out.”
“You must not die, Jamie! You must not!”
He felt no pain. A profound sense of acceptance spread over him, as if he had always been meant to be at this place. He remembered his grandfather telling him of Chief Seattle, who had said long ago that the Earth does not belong to man, but man belongs to the Earth. We belong to Mars, too, Jamie realized. Now we do. Now we do. And to the sun and all the worlds, all the stars. That’s why we want to see it all, explore it all. It’s our heritage. Our birthright. It’s worth dying for.
I understand, he said silently, marveling at the clarity of his vision. Finally I understand who I am.
The whole universe of stars hung up in the darkly glittering night sky and gazed down at the small frail figure of a man lying helpless and alone on the frozen windswept slope of an ancient avalanche on Mars.
From far, far away he heard voices, but they meant nothing to him. They faded into the silence of eternity.
He understood now that Man Maker and Life Taker are one and the same, just two different aspects of the single creator. I’m ready, Jamie said silently. I’ve done the best I could. Now I’m ready for you. He heard Coyote laughing in the crystal darkness of the frozen night.
SOL 40: MIDNIGHT
Something was droning faintly in his ears. It was all dark, he could see nothing. His body felt numb, encased in ice. But there was that soft humming sound coming from somewhere.
His eyes were gummy. Too tired even to try raising his head or moving his arms, Jamie used every atom of his willpower to force his eyes open. A blurred confusion of grays swam before him. He blinked several times. It was the curved ceiling of the rover. The hum was the steady background throb of electrical power. He was lying on his back on one of the bunks. A bottom bunk, he saw, still blinking, focusing. The top bunk was pulled up and locked into its stowed position.
Vosnesensky appeared over him, his beefy face strangely gentle, tender. His wrinkled green coveralls looked too big for him, as if he had lost weight.
Jamie tried to say something but his throat was too dry. All that came out was a cracked groan.
“Rest, my friend,” Vosnesensky whispered. “Do not try to exert yourself. Here…”
The Russian lifted Jamie’s head and brought a steaming mug to his lips. “Easy… just a sip.”
It felt scalding hot on Jamie’s tongue. And good. Hot tea, heavily laced with lemon concentrate. He took several sips. It felt warm all the way down.
Vosnesensky laid Jamie’s head back down softly on the bunk, then looked at him silently with dark solemn eyes. Jamie realized the Russian was sitting on the opposite bunk, not standing. From up in the cockpit he heard Ivshenko’s voice speaking in English: reporting to the dome, or maybe straight to Dr. Li.
“You went out,” Jamie croaked. “You went out and got me.”
The Russian shook his head. “Reed went out.”
“Tony? Tony brought me in?”
Vosnesensky nodded.
Jamie lay there, realizing that they had pulled him out of his hard suit. He wormed a hand into the pocket where the bear fetish was; it felt solid, warm, comforting. Tony went out and got me, he said to himself. Tony’s not trained for EVA, but he went outside in the dark and dragged me in.
He heard the clumping thumps of boots and then Reed came into his vision, still encased in his yellow hard suit, except for the helmet. He looked like a man at an amusement arcade posing behind a cardboard cutout figure.
“You’re very lucky, James,” the Englishman said softly. “No frostbite. We got you in time.”
“You saved my life.”
Reed’s face flushed slightly. “Couldn’t let you freeze out there, could we?”
“Our physician has become a hero,” Vosnesensky said. But he did not smile.
“It took a lot of guts to go out into the night,” said Jamie. “Mars has given you courage.”
Reed glanced at Vosnesensky. “No heroics. Mikhail Andreivitch would have strangled me if I hadn’t gone out,” he said. “I was saving my own life, actually.”
“I don’t believe that. It took a lot of courage. A coward would have stayed in here no matter how Mikhail threatened.”
“You were practically here,” Reed said. “You collapsed less than a couple of hundred meters from the rover. We couldn’t sit here and let you die. That would have killed the other three in your group, as well, wouldn’t it?”
“But still…”
Vosnesensky scowled down at Jamie. “After what you did, in your condition, our physician’s little journey is insignificant.”
Jamie smiled back at him. “Except for one small detail—without that little journey everything I did would have meant nothing at all.”
Reed suddenly looked terribly uncomfortable. Vosnesensky shrugged and slowly pulled himself to his feet, leaning heavily on the metal supports of the upper bunk.
“You should try to sleep,” Vosnesensky said.
“Yes,” Reed agreed swiftly. “Rest. You’ve earned it.”
“Dmitri is in contact with Connors and the women. Once the sun comes up I will ride the cable to their vehicle and help them into their suits. Then we will winch them across to us.”
Jamie nodded, his eyes already closing.
“Good,” he said. “Good.”
His last conscious thought was that Reed seemed a reluctant hero. God knows what Mikhail threatened him with. But Tony came through. That’s the important thing. Tony came through when it counted.
* * *
The chief controller sat behind his desk, alone in his Kaliningrad office except for the head of the British contingent. Outside the room’s one window a cold, dreary rain was spattering, the first taste of autumn and grim winter.
The display screen built into the paneled wall had just turned off. For the past fifteen minutes the two men had watched and listened to the tape of the latest report from Dr. Li. The expedition commander had read from a prepared script and kept his face an immobile mask that revealed no emotion whatever.
Now the screen had gone blank. Li’s tape was finished. The snow outside blanketed the usual noises from the street. The office was absolutely silent.
The chief controller tugged absently at his ragged Vandyke. “Well,” he said in English, “what do you think?”
The head of the British team for the Mars Project was a Scottish engineer who had risen through the technical ranks to become an administrator. He was a slightly built man with graying dark hair and a crafty look in his eyes even when he was relaxing socially.
“It’s a serious blow,” he said. “The physician should have caught the symptoms earlier and taken steps to avert the problem.”
“He found the answer, finally,” said the chief controller.
“Aye, but he came close to killing them all.”
The chief controller muttered, “How can we keep the media from finding out about this?”
“You cannot,” the Scot said flatly. “Not with Brumado talking to all those reporters in Houston.”
“Then we will have to keep this information from Brumado.”
“Are you prepared to keep the entire team incommunicado for the rest of the mission? Be reasonable, man. It cannot be done.”
The chief controller shook his head. “We’d have to keep them all quiet for the rest of their lives, wouldn’t we?” He tangled his fingers in the abused Vandyke again.
“I know what you’re thinking. It’s one thing if the politicians learn of this in private. We can explain it to them reasonably and make them see that it was an unavoidable accident. But if the media get hold of it and ballyhoo it, the politicians will have to react to what the media is saying, not what we tell them.”
“Exactly. That will mean the end of the Mars Project. There will be no return mission.”
“ ’Tis a thorny problem.”
The chief controller stared out the window at the falling snow. “It’s too bad we can’t keep them all on Mars permanently.”
The Scotsman smiled grimly.
By the time Jamie awoke it was fully light. Ivshenko was up in the cockpit; Vosnesensky had already suited up and gone through the airlock to winch himself across the treacherous lake of sand to the mired rover. It was the grating buzz of the winch motor that had pulled Jamie up from his sleep.
Once he realized Jamie was awake, Reed brought him a tray of hot breakfast with six gelatinous capsules resting beside a plastic cup filled with orange juice.
“Reed’s recipe for recovering your health,” the Englishman said when Jamie looked up at him questioningly. “Enough vitamins to lift a horse into orbit.”
Jamie still felt weak and aching, but better than the day before. He realized that it was not his physical symptoms that had eased; rather, the terrible fear he had kept bottled up within him was gone. The body will heal, he knew, once the mind has been convinced that healing is possible. The real agony is in the mind, always.
He took a deep breath. The pain in his chest was gone. The turmoil in his mind had cleared away, too. Everything looked different, clearer than he had ever seen it before. As if he had looked at the world through a veil. Until now.
For the first time in his life Jamie felt an inner serenity, a certainty. He felt as sure and solid as the ancient mountains. This is what Grandfather Al told me about. I’ve found my balance, my place in the scheme of things. I know who I am now. I know where I belong. What I went through out there in the darkness has changed everything. Once you accept death nothing else can harm you. I can face anything now. Anything. He smiled inwardly. Not this time, Life Taker. Not yet.
“I want to thank you again, Tony…”
Reed’s brows knit together. “There’s been enough of that. I’d prefer that you drop the subject, if you don’t mind.”
Jamie sat up and accepted the tray from Reed’s hands. “Where’s Mikhail?” he asked.
“Off to help your stranded comrades.”
“By himself? Is he strong enough?”
“He got seven solid hours of sleep,” said Reed. “He feels much better this morning. The vitamins are taking effect in him.”
Ivshenko called back to them from the cockpit, “Mikhail has made it to their rover. He is helping Connors into his suit.”
“I’d better get into mine,” Reed muttered. “I’m assigned to greeting our guests at the airlock hatch.”
“I’ll help,” said Jamie.
“You rest,” Reed said firmly. “You’ve done enough. We can handle the remainder.”
Reed went back to the airlock. Jamie gulped down his reconstituted eggs and lemon-laced tea, then made his way forward. Ivshenko grinned at him as he ducked into the cockpit. The cosmonaut’s left leg was encased in a rigid plastic cast that stuck out awkwardly. Jamie was careful not to bang it as he slipped into the left-hand seat.
Through the bulbous canopy Jamie could see t
he winch line stretching tautly to the mired rover, on the far side of the dust-drowned crater.
“Connors is fully suited up,” Ivshenko said.
“What about Joanna and Ilona?” Jamie asked as he clamped on a headphone set.
“Dr. Malater is apparently too sick to get out of her bunk without help. Dr. Brumado seems somewhat better than that, but not much.”
“Maybe I ought to go back there and help them.”
“You stay here,” Ivshenko said firmly. “Mikhail Andreivitch gave strict orders. He will get the job done.”
Jamie felt his body tense with something between frustration and guilt. He wanted to be helping, to be active, not sitting like a spectator. But a part of his mind told him, You’re in no shape to go outside again. You’ve done your share. You can’t do it all. Let the others help. The tension eased away.
Reluctantly, he accepted the situation and sat there in the cockpit, listening to the chatter among the people in the other rover. Joanna refused to go without her sample cases, the boxes that contained the precious specimens of Martian lichen. Jamie listened to their argument over the intercom radio link. Joanna’s voice was weak, exhausted, breathless. Yet her will was stronger than the toughest steel. She absolutely refused to leave the rover without the sample cases.
Vosnesensky abruptly dumped the problem in Jamie’s lap. “Waterman, you are the scientific leader. What do you recommend?”
Ivshenko glanced across the cramped cockpit to Jamie.
“The reason we came all this way was to see if life exists here,” Jamie said. “Can’t you attach the cases to the cable and send them here along with the people?”
A long pause, then Vosnesensky muttered, “Very well.”
“Thank you,” Joanna’s voice said, as if from a great distance away.
The rover’s exterior camera was aimed forward, along the taut cable that stretched between the two vehicles, and cranked up to maximum magnification. In the display screen set into the center of the control panel Jamie saw the half-buried rover’s airlock hatch swing open. There stood Joanna, encased in her dayglo orange hard suit, with Vosnesensky’s blaring red suit beside her. The cosmonaut helped her into the climbing harness, then attached it to the winch line.