Marooned!

by Brad Strickland

  “Ready?” Sean asked. “On three. One, two, three!”

  They both shoved, and finally the cap began to rotate. They got it off and let it fall, then hooked on the pulley and the line. “Brake on?” Alex asked.

  “Check.”

  Sean took the bolts nearest him, and Alex worked on the three on his side. They removed the last two at the same time. Sean was leaning far out, his arm hooked around the broken-off stub of the top blade.

  Then it happened. The assembly swung free—and dragged Sean with it. Too late, he remembered that he had not refastened his safety line.

  He desperately clutched the hub and upper blade. The pulley brake was not meant to hold his weight along with the blades. He felt it giving, the line screeching through the pulley. Now he was dangling three hundred meters above the surface, clutching the blade, feeling himself beginning to slip. His head reeled, and pure terror made him hold on with a death grip.

  “Hang on!” Alex shouted. He had ducked past the nacelle and was grabbing for the line.

  The blade swung to the side, threatening to dump Sean off. Below him, the lower blade, weakened where it had bent through the framework, was crumpling.

  Alex was grunting, hauling on the line, dragging the blades and Sean back toward the tower. Sean realized that he was just close enough to the framework to grab it—if he could overcome his panic and force his hands to let go of the blade.

  “Now!”

  For a sickening second, Sean felt himself falling, but his flailing hand grabbed a cross strut. He thudded against the tower, hooked a leg through the maze of struts, and hung there gasping. Alex let go of the line. It fed through the pulley, the brake weakened, and the windmill blades fell outward. There was a shuddering snap. Somewhere below them the lower blade had broken off short. The rest of the assembly plunged down to the surface.

  “Give me your safety line,” Alex commanded.

  It took every bit of nerve that Sean could summon, but he pulled the line out of its reel and passed it up. Alex fastened it into the track with a click. “Now give me your hand.”

  In a few seconds, Sean was back atop the tower, his head spinning. “I owe you big, man.”

  “Ice,” Alex said with a sickly grin. “Man, look back there.” He pointed.

  In the far distance Sean could see the writhing form of a dust devil, far south of Marsport. “They’re starting early today.”

  “Better get down.”

  The descent was hard. Sean’s knees kept wanting to give way. By the time they reached the bottom of the ladder they could see the transport speeding up the rutted road toward them.

  “Jenny was right,” Sean said. “I could’ve killed myself up there.”

  “Could’ve but didn’t,” Alex said. “Could’ve been me just as well. But stay sharp. Be better tomorrow.”

  “You want to partner me again?” Sean asked, surprised.

  “Yeah, sure. You just forgot for a second, that’s all. You won’t do it again. I know from now on you’re going to remember.”

  “What, to latch my safety line?”

  “No,” Alex said. “That Mars has a million ways to kill you. That’s all.”

  CHAPTER 6

  6.1

  To Sean’s relief, in the days that followed Alex never so much as mentioned the accident. It took them another two days to finish the repairs, and then some of it had to be done over again when another dust devil took out six more of the windmills. On the third morning of the repair mission, Sean had doubted that he would be able to make the long, frightening climb again, but once he had gotten started he had found the ascents were actually a little easier. At least his achy muscles were in better shape. And Alex had been right about one thing: Sean did not forget his safety line again.

  With full power restored at last, lessons began again. Dr. Ellman leaned hard on them all to make up for lost time in their physical science sessions, and he was quick to threaten Sean with a forced return to Earth if he fell behind.

  Fortunately Nickie Mikhailova seemed to take pity on Sean and tutored him in math and chemistry. It wasn’t really her fiel; she was a computer specialist, and she had even built her own personal computer—a tiny voice-activated thing the size of a paperback book—from scratch. Still, she knew a lot about science, and with her drilling him and Jenny Laslo prodding him, Sean began to make some sense of the equations and the strange symbols. He even began to pull off experiments with no virtual explosions, something that he welcomed even if the development seemed to disappoint Mickey Goldberg, who complained more than once that the fireworks display had been postponed again.

  Sean fell more and more into the rhythm of life in Marsport. After more than a full month on Mars, he began to sleep better. All the Martian clocks automatically compensated for the difference between an Earth day and a Martian one. Each Martian hour was a little more than a minute and a half longer than an Earth hour, and there were twenty-four hours in a Martian day, just as in an Earth day. Still, for someone newly arrived from Earth, the extra minute and a half added up. It was as if each day went on a little too long. For the first few weeks, newcomers to Mars felt constantly jet-lagged, as if they were out of synch and out of step with everyone else. And they were, because their biological clocks were slow to adjust.

  But gradually the human body was able to get used to the new “day,” and finally Sean began to feel like his old self. He was no longer waking up tired, anyway. The sessions in the gym gradually became easier to bear as he built up muscle and endurance. The dreary sameness of the food became more tolerable, and the occasions when fresh, greenhouse-grown vegetables hit the tables were times for celebration. Sean even began to feel at home in the low gravity, no longer reeling and tripping at unexpected moments, but adopting the same kind of loose-limbed walk as the long-time colonists.

  But though he still felt like an outsider—Mickey Goldberg in particular was still hounding him about settling on an area of specialization—Sean found that he was indeed fitting in, after a fashion. Like the rest of the colonists, he found himself pausing every evening at 19:35 hours to watch the news transmission from Earth, the narrow-beam cast that gave the colonists a one-hour glimpse of home.

  It was seldom good news. More wars, more terrorist attacks, more disease and destruction. Politicians complaining and posturing, but little evidence of anything being done. “I don’t believe it’s that bad,” Alex said one evening after a particularly depressing news program. “I think this must be Earth’s way of making us happy to be away from it all. Keeps us from getting homesick and wanting to go back.”

  Sean started to tell him that he doubted the governments of Earth would hold together for even one more year, but he stopped himself. He didn’t know how to explain his inner certainty, and he didn’t want to try. He just said, “I’ll never go back.”

  “You wish,” Mickey Goldberg said from across the common room. “You’ll be out of here before you know it, Doe. You’ve got to pass every course to stay eligible as a colonist, and you’re right on the borderline with a couple. Last week I heard Ellman saying he can’t wait to ship you out when the Argosy leaves orbit in a month and a half.”

  Sean glowered at him. “I don’t care what Ellman says. Amanda—I mean, Dr. Simak—won’t send me back.”

  “Maybe, maybe not,” Mickey said with a grin. “She doesn’t have the final word, you know. It’s a committee decision, and Dr. Ellman is on that committee. But I really can see her point about bringing you to Mars. I guess maybe it helps to have a celebrity here. You know something, though? I haven’t seen your name on the newscasts, so you’re not worth much in that department, either.”

  “Shut it down, Goldberg,” Alex said. “You’re just flapping your mouth to make a breeze. Hey, you going to take the Bradbury run in two weeks?”

  Mickey rolled his eyes. “Is Jupiter a planet?”

  Sean looked at Alex. “What’s the Bradbury run?”

  “Chance to fly, man,” Alex
said with a broad smile. “A pilot trainee like me wouldn’t miss it. Hey, why don’t you sign up to come along? There’ll be room. Maybe we can take the same plane.”

  “Where do we fly?” Sean asked.

  Mickey laughed and leaned forward in his chair, spreading his hands theatrically. “Now, see, that’s what I’m talking about. Didn’t they tell you about the ice meteorites on the trip out?”

  Sean responded from memory. “Sure, the ones that hit around the south pole. They come in from Ganymede.”

  “The Bradbury Project,” Mickey said. “Know what that is?”

  Sean did. “The plan to enrich the atmosphere of Mars with the liquids and gases from the meteors. After ten or twelve more years, the air will be thick enough to create a strong greenhouse effect. The climate all over Mars will warm up. Then all the ice at the south polar region will melt during the southern summer and create liquid water—it won’t just sublime directly to vapor. Eventually well even get rain, maybe rivers and lakes.”

  “The boy can be taught,” Mickey said. “Okay, right so far. Now, here’s the news flash that you didn’t get, Doe. The mass driver on Ganymede is like a big gun. It uses magnetic acceleration instead of gunpowder, but it basically shoots huge bullets of ice into space. The bullets loop around Jupiter, then spiral inward toward the sun and toward Mars. After a long time, they crash near the Martian south pole. But what happens if the gun isn’t aimed right?”

  “Then the meteors miss Mars, I guess,” Sean said.

  “Yeah, or they come smashing right into the middle of Marsport. So twice a year we do a Bradbury run to the South Pole. We take readings on the trajectories of incoming meteorites. If we have to adjust the mass driver, the signal has to be sent right now—it takes years for those meteorites to get to us, and if they start to creep north of where they’re supposed to land, we have to correct that right away. Otherwise, the meteorites miss us altogether, which is bad, or they hit us, which could be a little bit worse.”

  “It’s a lot of fun, flying to the pole. So what do you say, Sean? You coming with us?” Alex asked.

  “What do I have to do?”

  Mickey gave a triumphant squawk of laughter, leaned back in his chair, and clapped his hands. “Not much, Doe. Just pull out a 3.75 or better!”

  Sean groaned. That was an A average on schoolwork. Exams were coming up. At the moment, Sean had a 3.9 in English and history, but only a 3.5 in life sciences. Even worse, Mickey was right about Sean’s two borderline subjects. His math grade was only a 2.4 and his physical science score a barely passing 2.0. “I’ll never make it!”

  “You don’t have to have an overall average of 3.75,” Alex said, shooting a look at Mickey. “You just have to average that high on the exams. With a little intensive cramming, you can do it. Look, Sean, you probably have like a 3.2 right now. You’ll just have to study extra hard for the math and the science, and you’ve got it.”

  “Give it up, Benford,” Mickey said. “A slow-brain like Doe? He’ll never do it.”

  And right then and there, Sean determined that he would do it, if only to prove Mickey wrong.

  That started several days of exhaustive studying, drilling, and memorization. Jenny helped a lot, going over and over his life sciences assignments with him until he had the basics down cold. And Nickie, who was very good in math, was glad to step up her tutoring. Sean began to feel as if he was just a learning machine, packing facts, equations, theories, definitions, and more into his brain. But it wasn’t easy, not at all, and Sean never felt truly confident. Despite the extra work he put in, he still struggled with math, and he doubted that he’d ever really understand chemistry and physics. But now and then a little light glimmered.

  6.2

  Exam week arrived. A tired but triumphant Sean breezed through English with a perfect 4.0, and came close in history, missing only one item on a long and exhausting test for a 3.99. Jenny had drummed more biology into his head than he thought it could hold, and he didn’t do badly on his life sciences exam, winding up with a respectable 3.74. Through the three-hour math test, Sean sweated almost as much as he had climbing the windmill towers, and learned at last that Nickie’s tutoring had paid off: He scored a 3.66. That left only natural sciences, Ellman’s exam.

  Jenny whispered, “You’ve just got to get a 3.36. You can doit!”

  Dr. Ellman had made out twenty different exams, one for each of his students. He sat at the central desk and gave them all the signal to begin.

  Sean turned on his computer and felt his heart sink. The exam was heavily weighted toward chemistry—his worst subject. But he waded in, trying desperately to remember the chart of the elements, ionic potentials, and what a mole was. Some of it came floating back to his consciousness as he worked through the test. He had to skip some of the more difficult problems, rushing ahead to answer the easier questions, then going back to concentrate on the puzzlers.

  An hour left. Then thirty minutes. Sean feverishly worked to solve chemical equations, tried to come up with definitions for terms that he was shaky on, took a few guesses when he just didn’t know the answer for certain. Fifteen minutes left, then ten.

  Finally the screen froze in the middle of Sean’s entering an answer. “Time’s up,” Ellman announced. “I’ll score your examinations now.”

  Sean took a deep breath. He hadn’t even begun on three of the postponed problems, and he wasn’t sure how well he’d performed on the ones he did answer. At least he didn’t have to suffer a prolonged period of waiting.

  The exam had taken three hours. It took only one second for Sean’s hopes to be dashed. His score showed up in bright, glowing yellow figures: 3.34. It was a decent B. It would even pull his shaky average in physical sciences up to a fairly steady C.

  But it wasn’t quite enough.

  Sean slapped the desk in annoyance.

  “I can dock a few points for misbehavior,” Ellman said sharply. He glanced at his own monitor, which gave him a readout of all the grades in the class. “Well, look at that. Mr. Doe, I don’t understand your impatience. You did very well. Congratulations.”

  Sean clamped his jaws shut. All the other students filed out, except for him and Alex. Sean sat slumped in his chair and stared sullenly at the stupid numbers, two one-hundredths of a point too low. Alex came up behind him, bent over his shoulder, and said, “My man!”

  “I needed a 3.36,” Sean growled.

  “Oh, really? Move over.”

  Alex called up a calculator program and fed in Scan’s scores. The result was 3.746.

  “I’m still short,” Sean pointed out.

  “Well, you’re lucky that the grading program goes two decimal places and rounds up, aren’t you?” Alex asked. The display flickered to round the figures up, and there it was, a big, beautiful 3.75.

  6.3

  “I’m going, Goldberg!” Sean crowed that afternoon at dinner. “3.75! Read it and weep!”

  Mickey shrugged. “Lucked out, did you? Well, I got a 3.88, for your information, so don’t get too full of yourself. But I guess I’d be scrambling too if I was afraid of being shipped out.” He paused. “Good going, Doe.” His tone was grudging.

  “Thanks,” Sean said.

  And then Mickey added, “If you’re taking the Bradbury run, see if you can fly with Alex. I don’t want you getting airsick in any cabin with me.”

  Jenny came in, and Sean jumped up from his table, momentarily forgetting the low gravity. He recovered his balance and carried his tray over to her table, beaming from ear to ear as he sat down next to her. “Thanks for everything. I did it!” he said. “Skin of my teeth, but I squeaked it out! I’m going with you.”

  “Going with me?” Jenny asked with a frown. “Where do you think I’m going?”

  “The Bradbury run,” Sean said. “You know—” He broke off in confusion as Jenny’s face turned bright red. “What’s wrong?”

  “I’m not going on the Bradbury run,” Jenny said. “I don’t qualify. I though
t you knew. I’m lousy at history. I’ve only got a 3.70 on the exams.”

  “What? But if it’s just history—I thought—you’re so smart!” Sean spluttered.

  She gave him an angry look, and he saw tears in her eyes. “In biology! But I’m scrambling to keep up in everything else. If you weren’t so wrapped up in yourself, you might—oh, never mind.”

  “What’s wrong?” Sean asked. “I didn’t mean to—”

  Jenny was looking down. Tears fell into her lap. “I’m so scared,” she whispered. “Everyone else here is so smart, and I’m so dumb. I feel like a fake. Every time we take an exam, I’m sure I’m going to wash out and be sent back to Earth.”

  “That’s just how—” Sean broke off. “Hey, you don’t have to worry. You’re brilliant at biology. They’d never—anyway, all the teachers like you.”

  Jenny still wouldn’t meet his gaze. “I don’t care what happens. I’m not going back to the orphanage.”

  “What?” Sean asked. “You didn’t have a—”

  “A family? I’m a Skinner kid,” she said bitterly. “They never let us be adopted.”

  “I don’t understand,” Sean said. “What’s that mean?”

  She wiped her eyes, looked around guiltily, and then said, “You really don’t know? Okay, put it this way: My mother was a criminal. She died in prison when I was five years old. The government takes kids like me and puts them in Skinner orphanages. They experiment on us.”

  Sean felt cold. “Do you mean—”

  Jenny waved a hand. “Not Frankenstein stuff. No medical experiments. Social ones, education, that kind of thing. We can’t transfer out of the orphanage system until we’re eighteen. We’re like … like lab rats or something.”

  “But you got out. You were selected to come to Marsport,” Sean said.

  “Charity case,” she said bitterly. “I qualified so well in science that they put my name in the lottery for the first round of Asimov Project selections, and I won. Now I have to scramble all the time, but I’m not going back to that. I’m not!”