Mars Crossing

by Geoffrey Landis

  "Wow," the paramedic said. He was watching the news with half of his attention, while immobilizing Trevor's leg with the other. "I don't know who that Trevor Whitman is, but"—he deftly set an intravenous drip of some clear fluid—"I tell you, he sure is one lucky son of a bitch. Wish I could change places with him." He looked down at Trevor critically. "Hell, bet you wish you could trade places right now, too."

  Trevor's leg was broken in five places. Brandon could still see the jagged ends of white bone sticking through the skin. Trevor wasn't going to Mars. Trevor wasn't going anywhere but to a hospital bed, and to a long, painful recuperation.

  Brandon leaned over and whispered into Trevor's ear. "You're Brandon Weber," he said. "Brandon."

  Trevor's face was white and covered with sweat. His teeth were clenched tightly together. Brandon couldn't tell if he had heard him.

  "Brandon." Trevor's free hand reached out and grabbed him by the shirt. Brandon's heart jumped. "You're going to Mars. Make me proud, little brother. Make me proud."

  A broken rope had given Brandon the chance to go to Mars. So, a year later and a hundred million miles away, when Commander Radkowski's rope broke, Brandon Weber knew what it was like to be the one who watches. Trevor had given his slot to Brandon.

  It was cruel to think of it, but Radkowski had been the commander. Trevor knew that when the final moment came, Radkowski would want to go himself. Putting aside sentimentality (and Brandon had never really liked Radkowski), thinking with nothing but cold calculation, Radkowski's death had opened the door for one of the crew to go back.

  13

  SURVIVAL

  Estrela was in a bleak foul depression—a depression that had followed her around for days, like sandpaper rubbing against her brain.

  Knives tore at her throat with every breath she took. She sucked down the water bottle in her suit within a few minutes of when she put it on, sometimes before she'd even made it outside of the bubble, and it didn't help. She couldn't speak, could barely croak sometimes.

  But the others didn't seem to notice.

  She plodded methodically across the surface, not looking at the landscape, trying not to even think. Oh, that would be the best, if only she did not have to think! If only she didn't know what was happening and could just be mindless, a piece of wood that walked on legs of wood and didn't have a past or a future.

  Sometimes she pretended to herself that she was already dead. But somewhere inside her was a terrified animal, an animal all teeth and claws, a vicious biting thing with beady red eyes that said no, I'm not going to die. Whatever it takes to do it, I am going to survive. Other people die, but not me, never me, never never never me. She wondered that the others didn't see it, that they didn't flee in terror, that they somehow continued thinking her a civilized human being, and not a cornered rat-thing.

  She was going to survive.

  Estrela plodded across the Martian land, not thinking, not feeling, clenching her teeth to keep from paying attention to the pain in her throat and the claws ripping into her heart. All she knew was one thing. She was going to survive.

  14

  THE BROKEN LANDS

  The territory became increasingly rough and broken.

  As they traveled, the wind began to increase. It was very odd. Brandon could hear the wind, could hear a high-pitched whistling, almost (but not quite) too high to hear, but he could feel nothing. There was a gale blowing outside, and there was no force to it. He spread out his arms, and felt ... nothing.

  "The subsolar point is moving north," Ryan said. The northern hemisphere was turning from winter to spring. They were still deep in the Martian tropics, not that far from the equator. On Mars, the tropics still meant weather barely above freezing at noon, and well into the negative numbers during the middle of the night.

  At noon the sun was directly overhead. This made him feel completely disoriented. His sense of direction had gone bonzo, and with no shadows he had no clue which way was which.

  They were walking across sand today. The terrain was flat enough that, had they still been in the rockhopper, Brandon would have thought that it was perfectly level. On foot, he found how deceptive that was. The land had minute slopes to it, up and slowly down. The rims of craters, Ryan explained. The craters had formed, and eroded, and been buried by sand, and all that was left was the faint change in slope at the buried rim.

  It was in the afternoon that Brandon first noticed something moving. At first he caught a glimpse of motion out of the corner of his eye, but when he turned to look, there was nothing there. Your eyes are playing tricks on you, he thought. There's nothing there. Then, later, he saw it again. This time he refused to turn to look. If I'm going crazy, he said, I don't want to know.

  The third one was too close to ignore. At first he saw the movement, and he looked involuntarily. There was nothing to see. But then he noticed that, even with nothing there, there was a shadow moving across the land.

  And then he looked above it, looked at the sky, and saw the twisted rope of sky, a rotating column of a darker shade of yellow curling upward, writhing into the sky. It was—

  "Tornado," he shouted. "Look out!"

  It turned and suddenly darted away across the land. Brandon craned his neck back. There was no top to it, not that he could see. It was hard to tell how far away it was, whether it was right next to them or a mile away.

  It turned again, and darted right toward them. He threw himself on the ground, spreading himself flat. "It's coming!" he shouted. "Look out!"

  Nobody else moved.

  There was no place to take cover. He hugged the ground. A few inches in front of his helmet, two grains of sand started to move. They quivered, danced a few steps to the left, made a tiny circle, and then settled down.

  Brandon looked up. The rest of the group was looking at him. The tornado was retreating, staggering like a drunkard off toward the horizon.

  "It's a dust devil," Ryan said gently. "We've been seeing them for an hour or so."

  "That one came right over us," Tana said. "I could feel it when it passed."

  "They're not dangerous?" Brandon felt incredibly stupid. Dust devils. He had been afraid of a dust devil.

  "Don't think so. Must be a wind of a couple of hundred kilometers an hour, maybe." Ryan shrugged. "But with the thin atmosphere, it's no big deal."

  "They're pretty, though," Tana said. "Break the monotony."

  What had made it hard to see was the fact that the dust devils were precisely the same shade as the sky, only a tiny bit darker. Now that he knew how to look, they were easy to spot. By the afternoon there were two, sometimes even three dust devils visible at any one time. Brandon wondered if this was natural, or if something was wrong. He could remember that the briefings had talked about dust devils, but were there supposed to be this many? But after his embarrassing dive to cover, he didn't want to ask.

  15

  THE LUCKIEST BOY IN THE WORLD

  The radio and the television and the VR stations had all converged at the front of the house. Brandon slipped into the back and quickly changed into Trevor's favorite orange silk shirt, then put on the turquoise bolo that Trevor had gotten as a gift. Checking in the mirror, he was surprised at how much like Trevor he looked.

  "I'm Trevor Whitman," he said, testing it out. "I'm Trevor Whitman. I am Trevor Whitman."

  It was surprisingly easy to step into Trevor's place. The instant that the announcement had been made public, Trevor's life had changed completely, even before he went off to Houston to train. It was a surprise, really, how few people really had to know.

  Brandon had been a virgin when the lottery had selected Trevor Whitman as the boy who won the trip to Mars. Not that he would ever possibly have admitted to it. But being the most famous boy in the world has its advantages, and Brandon took them. He could walk into a coffeehouse or a cabaret and say, "I'm Trevor Whitman, I'm going to Mars," and half a dozen girls would tell him that they found him "fascinating" and wanted to kn
ow him better. He figured that if a girl wanted to know him for no other reason than the fact that he was famous, well, that meant that he had every right to take advantage. And he did. The first one, he was nervous, certain that she was going to tell him, hey, you're too young, you can't be Trevor Whitman. But after the first few, it was easy.

  It was fun to be famous.

  16

  GEOLOGY LESSONS

  Her mind would wander. Sometimes Estrela imagined that her brother was with her. It had been decades since Gilberto had left her. She had not thought about him for years, nor about the streets of Rio. And yet she could bring him forth perfectly in her mind, just as he had been, wiry and street smart and still larger than her. "Hey, moca" he might say. "These North Americans, you're in some rich company, aren't you?" He would give her a sly look, and she knew that he would be thinking, What did they have that he could grab? Yeah, that would be just like Gilberto, always on the lookout. "Better stay alert, moca, they don't care about you. You're fat, you lost your reflexes, haven't you? Don't think you're like them. They look at us, they don't even see us, they just see filth in the street. They'll kill you and not even laugh when you're gone."

  That's not true, she wanted to tell him.

  And sometimes she would imagine João walking beside her. She would call him up in her mind, and she would think of how he might comment on the rocks as they passed.

  "Hold up a moment, look at that one. Look, that's a layer of limestone. See how it weathers differently? There were ocean deposits here, I'm sure of it."

  "I don't care about limestone," she would tell him, but not aloud. Her throat hurt too much for her to say anything aloud. "Go away." It felt bitter and yet also sweet for her to see him again, even if he was dead. Even when she ignored him.

  But for a moment she would be happy, showing off for João, identifying rocks and landforms for him. "That's gabbro," she might say, trying to sound completely confident.

  "Close. Andesite, I'd say. What's that outcrop there?"

  She looked at it. A rounded ridge, with an abrupt scarp at one end. "Anticline?" she imagined saying. "Dip and scarp."

  João shook his head, almost in pity at her ignorance. "Sheepback rock, I'd say," he said. "There was a glacier here once, I'd bet on it."

  But João was gone.

  They stopped for a break, and to Estrela's complete surprise, Tana pulled her over and wanted to talk. They had been walking in silence for so long that it came as a surprise.

  "Say, Estrela, you want to know something?"

  Tana didn't wait for Estrela to answer.

  "Even with the chance that we won't make it home," Tana said, "you know, I'm still glad I came. This is the adventure that most people will never make in a lifetime; if it means my life, this is the price that we always knew we might have to pay. Sometimes I still can't believe how lucky we are. Even with everything that's happened—we're on Mars. Nobody else can say that."

  Tana fell silent, staring off into the distance.

  She is crazy, Estrela thought. She is completely crazy.

  17

  DEVILS IN THE SAND

  The next day they saw the first dust devil at ten in the morning. Brandon watched two of them dance together like mating birds, circling each other, approaching in toward each other warily and then suddenly darting away, finally twisting around each other and then merging together into a single column that marched off over the horizon and vanished.

  More followed. By noon there were a dozen at once.

  When one passed directly over him, Brandon closed his eyes, but nothing happened. He could feel the wind as it passed, but it was a feeble push, barely enough to be noticeable by Earth standards. He was afraid that the scouring sand would sandblast his helmet, but when he mentioned that, Ryan quickly put him straight.

  "What's getting picked up is dust, not sand," he said. "It's fine particles. More like talcum powder than grit. It's harmless. If you want to worry about grit, worry about the stuff we kick up walking, not about the stuff in the air."

  "It's gotten noticeably dimmer," Tana said.

  Ryan looked up. The sky was a deep pale yellow. The sun was, in fact, dimmer. He could almost look directly at it without blinking. "Yeah."

  "Think it's a dust storm?"

  "Wrong season." Ryan thought about it. "Not the season for a planetary dust storm, anyway. Maybe a local storm." He thought about it some more. "That makes sense. We're right about at the subsolar point; we're getting maximum solar heating right about now. The heat is making a lot of thermals. I guess it's not surprising it might pick up some dust. In fact, I bet this is how the dust gets into the atmosphere in the first place."

  "Is it dangerous?"

  "Not that I can see." Ryan pointed forward. "Let's keep moving."

  They had made fifty kilometers the first day of walking; fifty-five the second. Over sixty miles, Brandon calculated. No wonder his legs were aching. But that was sixty miles closer to the abandoned base at Acidalia, where Ryan hoped they could find supplies.

  And then what, Brandon wondered? What it they did find supplies? Would there be enough to get them to the pole?

  As the sun set and their eyes adjusted to the dusk, they noticed an odd phenomenon. The bases of the dust devils were surrounded by pale sheets of blue flame.

  "I don't believe it," Brandon said. "They're on fire."

  All of them stared. The pale fire brightened and flickered. Sometimes it wrapped around and then in a flash coiled all the way up the dust devil, a column of light disappearing into the heavens. For a moment it would vanish, and then flicker back to life, a blue glow dancing at the base of the column of dust.

  "Plasma discharge," Ryan said.

  "What?"

  "Static electricity," he said. "The wind blowing over the dust must generate an electric potential. Like, like rubbing over a carpet on a dry day. Something like lightning, but the pressure is too low for an arc. They're natural fluorescent lights."

  "Is it dangerous?"

  "I don't know." Ryan pointed ahead. "But I think we're about to find out."

  Brandon stepped back involuntarily as the dust devil raced forward. It seemed fixated on Ryan, and enveloped him. For a moment it hovered over him, dust swirling all around. Ryan began to glow, first with blue light from his fingertips, then the blue glow jumping to his helmet, his backpack, and then for a moment he was entirely outlined in blue fire.

  "Ryan!" came Tana's voice over the radio. "Are you okay?"

  For an answer there was only a burst of static. And then, almost reluctantly, the dust devil peeled away. The sheet of pale fire clung to Ryan for an instant and then faded.

  Ryan looked down, then up, and then his voice came across the radio. "Testing, one, two. You hear me?"

  "Coming through fine," Tana said.

  Ryan flexed his fingers, and then laughed. "Well. I guess that answers your question."

  Ryan's suit, a moment ago covered with a film of brick-colored dust, was as clean as if it had been through the laundry.

  "Still," he said. "I think that maybe it's time we should get inside."

  18

  THE STORM

  The next day they were in the middle of a fully developed dust storm. There were no more dust devils; now the dust was all around them.

  The landscape was odd. It was dimmer than before, lit by a soft, indirect light that was easy on the eyes. The sun was a fuzzy bright patch in the yellow sky. It was the exact color of the gravy on the creamed chicken that the high school cafeteria served, Brandon thought. Babyshit yellow, that was what the kids called it.

  Brandon wondered what the kids back at his school were doing right now. He looked at the clock, but then realized that it wouldn't help him; it was set for Martian time, for a twenty-four-hour-and-thirty-nine-minute Martian sol, not for an Earth day. He could ask Ryan—Ryan always seemed to be able to calculate that kind of stuff in his head—but what would be the point?

  The training they ha
d done on Earth before the flight had told him all about Martian dust storms. Mostly they talked about the global dust storms, storms that covered the entire planet for months at a time. But now that he thought about it, he remembered that they had told him about smaller dust storms too. How long did they last, a week?

  "How bad is it going to get?" he asked Ryan.

  Ryan lifted his wrist and made a measurement of the sun. His wrist carried a tiny sensor designed for a spot check of the illumination for virtual reality photography. He looked at the reading and then did some calculation in his head. "I'd say that this is about the peak of it," he said. "Optical depth right now is about as high as it's ever measured."

  "This is it?" Brandon was incredulous. "This is a great Martian sandstorm?"

  "Sand? No." Ryan shook his head. "It's not a sand storm. I don't even know if Mars has sandstorms. I doubt it. It's just dust. And, yes, this is as bad as it gets."

  This wasn't had. Above him, he could see the occasional flicker of blue light across the sky. It flashed in sheets, like an aurora, darting in silent splendor from horizon to horizon. It was like walking on a slightly hazy day, like a Los Angeles smog. The air seemed clear around them, but their shadows were blurred. Rocks far away in the distance were a little less sharp, and the horizon was blurred. Mountains in the distance were indistinct, blending smoothly into the yellow of the sky.

  "This is a dust storm?" he said. "Heck, I've been through worse than this on Earth."

  Ryan shrugged. "Guess they're a bit overrated," he said.

  19

  WALKABOUT

  The morning was Brandon's time alone, the only time, really, that he could be by himself. He had never needed much sleep, and the adults just took too long to get moving in the morning.