Mars Crossing

by Geoffrey Landis

  And then: It must be difficult for him, I guess.

  "Come on, Estrela," she said under her breath. "Warm up. Start to shiver. Come on, you idiot, you fool, you mad goose. Don't die on us. Come on!"

  She was still muttering it when she fell asleep.

  18

  DEATH AT THE POLE

  After a full day powered up, the habitat was slightly warmer, but their breath still was visible in the air. Tana had spent the entire day inside, tending to Estrela. Ryan had spent it melting ice away from the rocket. Jesus do Sul now protruded vertically upward through the center of a deep shaft through the ice.

  "I checked the rocket the best I can," he said. "It's in pretty remarkable shape for something that's been sitting on the surface for so long. If there's something wrong with it, it's beyond my ability to diagnose."

  "Don't tell me about the rocket," Estrela said. She had mostly recovered from her episode of hypothermia, but she still looked pale. Spent. "I don't care about the rocket. I want to know about João. What happened to João?"

  Ryan shrugged. "Does it really matter?"

  "It does matter!" she shouted. Her voice was hoarse, and it came out as a harsh whisper. "Tell me how João died!"

  Ryan looked away. "They were poisoned."

  "What?" Estrela whispered hoarsely. "Tell me."

  Ryan sighed. "It was a simple mistake. Their fuel manufacturing plant made methane out of hydrogen, and it released carbon monoxide. No big deal; carbon monoxide is a natural component of the Martian atmosphere anyway. Do you remember that I had an episode of anoxia? The same thing happened to them. The sensors on their breathing electrolyzers were poisoned with sulfur contamination. But they were making fuel on the spot, so there was an excess of carbon monoxide. When their oxygen sensors failed, what got through was carbon monoxide. It poisoned them."

  "How do you know this?" Tana asked.

  "Whose fault was it?" Estrela asked.

  Ryan shrugged. "Once I knew what to look for, it wasn't hard to see the evidence."

  "But whose fault was it?" Estrela insisted.

  Ryan shrugged. "Nobody's fault, really. It was an oversight."

  "An accident? It was just an accident?" She sat clown and looked away. "That's all?"

  "It was an accident. The same thing almost happened to us." He looked up at her and saw that she was crying. "I'm sorry."

  Tana patted her on the back and echoed what Ryan said. "I'm sorry."

  19

  THE FINAL CHOICE

  "It's time," Ryan said. "We have to choose."

  Everyone was silent.

  Ryan held out his fist. The ends of three strips of paper protruded. "Pick a strip. One of the strips is shorter than the rest. The two long ones go home."

  Estrela shook her head. "It doesn't matter," she said. "I've made my decision already. It doesn't matter who draws which slip of paper. I'm staying."

  "What?" Ryan and Tana said, at almost exactly the same time.

  Estrela smiled, a wan smile. "I surprised you, didn't I?"

  Ryan was gripped by a contradiction of emotions. His heart was telling him, let her stay here, let her stay, I'm going home. But his conscience told him that they couldn't let her kill herself, not after all this; they were in here together. He said cautiously, "It's a surprise, yes." Then added, "But it wouldn't be fair to have you make the sacrifice. We'll all take the same chance."

  Estrela shook her head. "It doesn't matter whether you go back or not. I'm staying here."

  "How would you survive?" Tana said.

  Estrela tossed her hair, and for a moment a spark of her stubborn vitality showed through. "I can survive. I'll go back to the American base; plenty of food and water there, plenty of supplies for the expedition that did not stay. Even a greenhouse."

  Ryan was startled. Yes, he thought, it might be possible. Maybe. "You can't count on a rescue," he said.

  "In two more years they will send a ship," she said. "Or maybe four. They will send the fourth expedition, and it will rescue me."

  She sounded so perfectly confident that for a moment Ryan believed it. Of course they would rescue her. Why had he ever thought they wouldn't? And then common sense took over. "You can't count on that," he repeated.

  Estrela shrugged. "Or six years. Or, maybe I won't even wait for a ship. I'll live here."

  "But, why?"

  "I like it here," Estrela said. "I've decided to stay." She looked at them, looked at their surprised expressions, and laughed. "I know. You thought that I was a survivor, that I would do anything to get on the return trip. I thought that too. That's why I killed Trevor, to take his spot."

  Tana looked up in surprise. "You—"

  Estrela had a distant smile. She nodded. "Yes. That's right. I killed him."

  Ah, Ryan thought. That should have been obvious. His death was too convenient. "Why?" he asked.

  "Why do you think?" she snapped back. "Because only two of us could return. Because he was one more person who might make it back in what should have been my place. And because he was a liability to the expedition. That's why."

  "What did you do?" Ryan asked.

  Estrela looked him right in the eyes. "I stole the battery out of his emergency beacon," she said, "and then I made sure his gyro compass was miscalibrated. And a couple of other little things like that. I wanted to make sure that if he got lost, he would stay lost. He was always sloppy in checking his equipment; I figured it would only be a matter of time before he got lost."

  "But why?" Tana said. "Are you sorry?"

  "I told you. Somebody had to die. I decided it would be him."

  "I thought it was an accident," Ryan said.

  "Call it an accident, then," she said. She shrugged. "I didn't force him to wander around and get lost, I guess. You can call it an accident, if it makes you feel better."

  "And Commander Radkowski, too," Ryan said, suddenly realizing. "You thought he wouldn't pick you. So you killed him. It wasn't Brandon at all; it was you!"

  Estrela shook her head. "That was an accident. Sure, of course I wanted to kill Radkowski, didn't you? But I'm not stupid. I was frantic when he died; I didn't think we could make the pole without a leader."

  "An accident," Ryan said slowly.

  Estrela nodded. "He switched ropes at the last moment. He took the rope Trevor was supposed to use, and rappelled off the cliff before I could think of an excuse to stop him."

  "Shit," Ryan said. "So what the hell are we supposed to do now?" He paused for a moment, and then asked, "and why are you telling us this? You were home free now. Why didn't you just kill one of us? We never would have known."

  Estrela smiled. "I changed my mind."

  20

  THE LAST CHANCE

  Tana used the day to continue her inventory of the supplies left at the Brazilian base, and Ryan checked out the snow rovers left behind by the Brazilian expedition. Regardless of what had happened on the long road since they had left Felis Dorsa, or who would stay behind on Mars, Estrela's idea to return to the American base at Agamemnon was clearly a sound plan. And the one who stayed behind, whoever it would be, would need supplies and a working snow rover.

  Since that night they had not talked about Estrela's confession. Ryan was working alone in the tiny hangar that held the snow rovers when Tana came to him. She stood there, silent, watching him work. At last she called his name, and he looked up.

  "Do you believe her?" Tana said. "I need to know." She bit her lower lip. "Do you think she really did—?"

  Ryan had the fuel cell of a snow rover taken apart. He was carefully checking the seals, making sure that the sulfur poisoning had not penetrated and embrittled the power system. It was his way of avoiding thinking about it. He put the fuel cell down and looked at Tana, thinking. "Yes," he said.

  "But are you sure, really sure?" Tana asked, and when Ryan nodded, she said, "So what should we do?"

  Ryan considered for a moment. "What do you suggest? The death penalty?"

>   "No, no," Tana said. "But we could—" she stopped. "I don't know."

  "What more do you want from her? We can't take her home and put her on trial. And even if we could, we don't have any actual evidence of a crime, do we?"

  "But, we have to tell somebody."

  Ryan shook his head. "Who would we tell? What would we say?" He waved his hand to indicate the planet around them. "She says she's going to stay behind on Mars. Think of it this way. Mars is a prison more secure than Alcatraz could ever be, a prison with walls that cannot be climbed. Are you really worried that this isn't penance enough?"

  "But what do we do!? How can we just leave her here?"

  "Ah." Ryan sighed. Yes, that was it. Despite what Estrela had told them, leaving her behind still seemed a betrayal. After all the distance they had traveled together, how could they just leave her behind? But was there an alternative? "I don't know," he said. "I don't know."

  He bent back to his inspection. After a while Tana was gone.

  At last the night came, and the three of them ate in silence. After eating, they gathered in the pressurized module. The habitat was still cold, but not as cold as it had been. Ryan sat down and looked at Estrela with a long, steady gaze.

  She looked back. "Well?" she said.

  "No more holding back," Ryan said. "I need to know. Tell me, why do you want to stay behind?"

  "Do you really care?" she said. "I'm telling you that you get to go home. Take it, it's your life, and I'm giving it to you free. Do you care why?"

  "Ah, but I do care," Ryan said. "We have been together too long for me to just leave you behind without ever knowing why. It's too late for deception now. Tell me."

  "I did tell you. I changed my mind."

  Ryan shook his head. "That's not enough. You said that you killed two people to get back home ... and now that you're here, you decided you don't want to go. I'm not going to judge you, but I need to understand. Why?"

  Estrela leaned back and closed her eyes. "All my life," she said, "all my life I've been surrounded by people. In the city where I grew up. In the school. When they sent me north. Always, people all around me. Boys wanting to be with me to pull down my pants, reporters interviewing, even João, wanting to sit with me and drink coffee and talk, and talk.

  "Even on Mars, we were never alone—here on Mars, we were more crowded than anywhere. Crowded in the habitats, crowded in the rovers. Always together. Even when I thought I was going off by myself, there were the voices in my earphones, telling me that I would never be alone.

  "Did you know that this place terrified me at first? These huge, empty distances. But then, when we kept on walking, when the airplane crashed and you told us that we had to keep on walking, something changed. In that long walk, we were each of us alone, truly alone, and I found, yes, I can be alone. I can be just me. The snow doesn't care who I am. The rocks don't care who I am. The sky doesn't care who I am.

  "I tell you this. Always, all my life, I have been pretending to be somebody I'm not. For so long that I don't think I even know who I really am.

  "I'm done with that.

  "I decided, I don't care if I go back. I don't need it. There's nothing for me back there. I changed my mind. I like it here. "I want to be alone."

  21

  LEAVING MARS

  The sun on the horizon was almost blue, surrounded by a luminous golden orb of light and a double halo. The day was still; the snow reflected only the pale yellow sky.

  And then the snow began to glow.

  The snow erupted, cascading outward in a tidal wave of sudden incandescence, raising a billowing cloud that was lit brilliant red by a light from inside. The glow, a flame almost too bright to look at, rose slowly and silently, shrouded in the roiling cloud.

  Jesus do Sul broke out of the cloud, and the light of its exhaust, a second and brighter dawn, set the icescape aglow. Gathering speed, it headed skyward. It was almost out of sight when the booster stage fell away. The Earth-return stage, only a tiny pinprick of light, sped off, like a fallen star rising again to return to its home, into space.

  Below, an insignificant figure sat on a small ridge of ice. She continued to stare into the sky for long after the tiny speck of light had vanished.

  And then she turned back to return to the habitat. There was no use continuing to watch; it would be nine months before their journey would finish. There was a lot for her to do before then.

  Estrela Carolina Conselheiro was, at last, home.

  Geoffrey A. Landis is widely acknowledged as one of the finest science fiction writers working today. A NASA scientist who played an important role in the Mars Pathfinder mission, he is also a winner of the Hugo and Nebula Awards for acclaimed stories such as "Ripples in the Dirac Sea" and "A Walk in the Sun," and has earned high praise from readers and critics alike for his skillful fusion of compelling storytelling and state-of-the-art science.

  Geoffrey A. Landis lives with his wife, author Mary Turzillo, near Cleveland, Ohio, where he works on advanced concepts for the NASA John Glenn Research Center.