by Ben Bova
Connors seemed utterly cool, despite his deathgrip on the steering wheel. He slowly maneuvered around a crater looming ahead like a hole punched out by an artillery shell, working the rover between its raised rim and the dangerously close edge of the landslide. In the back of his mind Jamie noted that the slide was old enough to have been hit time and again by sizable meteoroids.
“Where’s these mists you saw?” Connors asked. “Everything looks clear as a bell now. ”
“I don’t know. Maybe they’ll come up later.”
“Funny thing about haze. From one angle everything can look clear, but if you’re coming in from a different angle, with the sun in a different position, the haze can cover up everything, look like a smoke screen.”
But there was no haze at all now. Jamie felt a tendril of fear worming through his mind. Maybe the haze Mikhail and I saw was a rare phenomenon, a once-in-a-lifetime thing. Maybe I’ve dragged us out here to chase a ghost that doesn’t exist.
The slope was strewn with rocks and pebbles, though nothing as big as the boulders they had encountered up on the surface. Jamie could not see any accumulations of dust piled against the bigger rocks. Either the wind doesn’t blow down here, he reasoned, or it blows hard enough to carry away any dust that’s accumulated.
The rover’s cleated metal wheels each had its own independent electric motor driving it, which gave the vehicle the best possible traction. Even so, now and again Jamie felt the ground sliding out from under them, heard a wheel motor whine suddenly before adjusting to the loose gravel beneath it.
Connors was muttering continuously under his breath, so low that even as close as he was Jamie could not tell if the astronaut was cursing or praying. Maybe some of both, he thought.
They passed the one geological probe that had landed on the slide. Its stubby white body stood out against the reddish ground and rocks like a garish advertising sign in the middle of the Sahara. Sure enough, the ground around the probe was firm and easy to drive across, its slope considerably flatter than the area they had just come through.
“Looks easier up ahead,” Connors said.
Jamie saw that the ground was flatter and smoother. No craters in sight.
“Good,” he said through gritted teeth.
A shadow flicked across the cockpit just as Ilona cried out, “Look!”
One of the RPVs flitted past them, low enough for Jamie to make out the glittering eyes of the camera lenses lining its belly. High above, he knew, the other RPV was soaring, watching the entire general area, piloted by Paul Abell. The low one scouted the terrain ahead. Mironov, at its controls, reported what he saw to Connors minute by minute through the earphone clamped to the side of his head.
“Should be getting to the end of it soon,” Connors muttered, whether to Mironov or to the rest of them in the rover Jamie could not tell.
Just then the rover skidded, fishtailing in the inexorable slow motion of a nightmare, the forward section suddenly being dragged almost sideways by the jackknifing of the heavier middle and rear segments. Wheel motors screeched and something made a loud thumping noise. They bounced and jolted, Connors jamming the wheel hard over first one way, then the other.
“Hang on!”
Jamie braced his booted feet and started to reach out his hands to plant them on the control panel. The rover banged into another rock, slewed at a crazy angle, and finally crunched to a stop.
For long moments nothing could be heard inside the cockpit except the frightened gasping of four sweat-soaked people and the creaking and pinging of overheated metal.
Connors swallowed so hard they could all hear it. Then he said, “Must have been an old crater filled in with loose rubble.”
“Or dust,” Jamie heard himself say in a hollow voice.
“Felt more like sand, sort of.”
“Are we stuck?”
Connors shook his head. “Might have to detach this section from the other two, but I think we can make it.”
“Without the fuel tank and the lab?” Ilona asked.
“Lemme try first …”
As gently as a mother caressing her baby Connors touched his toe to the accelerator pedal. The electric motors hummed in a low register. Jamie felt the rover shudder, inch forward ever so slightly.
“Gotta get all three sections straightened out or we’ll start sliding again,” Connors muttered. “Like driving a semi rig …”
Slowly, slowly they crawled. The astronaut’s long, serious face gradually evolved a tentative little smile. The electric motors whined to a higher pitch, the vehicle moved forward more assuredly, and Connors’s smile widened until they were rolling confidently and all his gleaming teeth were showing.
“Gracia a dios, ” came Joanna’s breathless voice from behind them.
Another few bumps, little ones, and Jamie saw that they were on level ground.
“That’s it,” Connors said happily. “We’re on the canyon floor.”
“Good work,” said Jamie.
“Had a bad minute or two back there.”
“Tell me about it!”
Their plan was to stop at the base of the landslide, go outside and take rock and soil samples, then traverse along the north face of the canyon cliffs until nightfall. They would take more samples first thing in the morning, then move forward again until they came to where Jamie had seen his “village.” There they would see if they could climb up to the cleft where the rock formation stood. At the very least they could take more pictures of it and try to get a spectral analysis of the formation remotely, by using a laser to burn off a tiny amount of rock and photographing the spectrum of the cloud of gas that it gave off.
“I will take this first EVA with you,” said Joanna, after they had eaten a quick cold meal.
Jamie was at the airlock hatch at the back end of the rover’s command module. Connors had returned to the cockpit to check all systems and make his report to Vosnesensky.
“Ilona’s on the schedule,” he said.
“She does not feel well,” Joanna replied.
Jamie glanced at Ilona. She was sitting on the edge of the folded-up bunk, pale and visibly trembling.
Jamie’s own guts were still churning and he felt sweaty from the harrowing descent down the landslide. But Ilona looked really sick.
“Okay,” he said to Joanna. “Suit up.”
Making his way back to the midsection, Jamie leaned over Ilona. She looked up at him. Her eyes were watery, her face covered with a sheen of perspiration.
“Why don’t you go up front and ask Pete to let you talk with Tony? I think you need medical attention.”
“I’ll be all right,” she said, her voice weak. “I feel foolish.”
“Call Tony; get his advice.”
She nodded.
Jamie made his way back to the airlock. His own legs felt wobbly, achy. He put it down to the tension of the descent. Christ, I hope we’re not all coming down with something. If any one of us has the flu, we’ll all get it and that’ll be the end of this excursion.
Joanna was halfway into her hard suit. Jamie began the laborious task of getting into his. It seemed to take an hour, but finally they were both suited up, backpacks connected, helmet visors fastened down. Connors came back into the airlock and checked them both. It felt unbearably crowded with three of them in there, even though Connors was in his coveralls.
“Stay within sight of the rover,” the astronaut warned. “I’ll be watching you from the cockpit, once I get my suit on.”
Standard procedure. There must always be a backup person fully suited and ready to go out at an instant’s notice in case of an emergency. It was bending the rules to have scientists go outside without an astronaut with them, but the change in procedure had been okayed by Kaliningrad—for this traverse only.
“We won’t be out long,” Jamie said. “Looks like plenty of rocks strewn all around here. Joanna can do the collecting while I dig a couple of boreholes.”
“Just take it ea
sy and don’t strain yourselves,” Connors said.
It was not until the astronaut had left the airlock that Jamie, realized that Connors, too, had been sweating. As the airlock cycled down and the outer hatch popped open, Jamie wondered how Pete could be so absolutely cool at the wheel of the rover and perspiring now that they were safely on the canyon floor.
“Mikhail Andreivitch, I must speak with you in private.” Mironov said it in Russian, in almost a whisper.
Vosnesensky looked up from the comm monitor where he had been sitting for the past hour, watching Waterman and Brumado working on the canyon floor.
Mironov’s usually cheerful face looked very serious.
“What is it?” Vosnesensky asked, also in Russian.
Pulling up one of the flimsy plastic chairs, the cosmonaut said, “I don’t feel well I feel sick.”
“Have you told Reed?”
“Not yet. I wanted to ask you if I should. It might not look right for one of us to be sick.”
Vosnesensky’s face contracted into a frown. “Then obviously you don’t feel sick enough to see the doctor.”
Mironov looked very unhappy. “I ache all over. I feel weak. It’s as if I’m coming down with the flu.”
“Let Reed examine you. We can’t afford to have an infectious disease spread through the whole group.”
“But what will they say back in Kaliningrad?”
Deliberately softening his voice, Vosnesensky said, “If you are ill it’s not your fault. The worst that can happen is that Kaliningrad will order you to transfer to the orbiting ship while they send Ivshenko down here to replace you.”
Mironov groaned. “That’s what I was afraid of.”
“If it must be done, it must be done. For the good of the mission.” Vosnesensky reached out and patted him on the shoulder, grinning. “Besides, Dr. Yang has a much better bedside manner than the Englishman.”
“You think so?”
“Once during training we had a very interesting discussion of Sino-Soviet relations, horizontally. I can vouch for her sympathy and tender care.”.
Mironov’s hangdog expression brightened considerably. “Probably all I need is some aspirin, I suppose.”
“See what Reed recommends. I know you don’t want to leave the ground team, but if it has to be—well, there are some compensations.”
The cosmonaut pulled himself up from the chair with an obvious effort, sighed deeply, and went off toward the infirmary. Vosnesensky turned his attention back to the comm screen. He ran a finger along the inside of his collar, then called up the environmental control display on his screen. The numbers showed everything inside the dome was normal, except for one of the air circulation fans, which had been turned off for maintenance. The dome’s temperature stood just a hair below its usual twenty-one degrees Celsius. Strange, thought Vosnesensky. It felt warmer than normal.
Jamie felt totally exhausted. He sagged into the cockpit seat and reached for the communication switch.
“God, you look awful,” Connors said.
“I feel lousy. Just about had enough strength to get out of the hard suit.”
“You were outside too long.”
“Maybe.”
“A hot meal and a good night’s sleep are what you need.”
Jamie almost laughed. “You sound like my mother.”
Grinning back at him, Connors said, “Come to think of it, I sound like my mother.”
Jamie flicked on the comm system. Vosnesensky’s dour face filled the tiny screen on the control panel.
“Christ, Mikhail, don’t you ever take a break?”
The Russian grunted. “On our way back home I will be able to rest for nine months.”
“You’ve got a point there,” Jamie admitted. Sucking in a deep breath, he continued, “Okay, here’s our preliminary report from today’s EVA.”
“I am ready. The tape recorder is on.”
“We brought eight rocks aboard for testing. Dr. Malater and Dr. Brumado are sorting them out now in the lab section. Three of them have some sort of orange intrusions on them that we haven’t seen before. There are also similar orange streaks running along the cliff wall here and there. We took scrapings.”
Vosnesensky said, “Schmitt found orange coloration on the moon. Some form of glass, if I remember correctly.”
“This isn’t glass,” Jamie said. “I’m sure of that.”
“Then what is it?”
“I don’t know. Some sort of sulfur compound, maybe. We’ll have to put it through the analysis routine.”
Vosnesensky gestured with one hand to indicate to Jamie to go on with his report.
“I took four borings down to depths of ten meters. There doesn’t seem to be a permafrost layer here on the valley floor, or if there is one, it’s deeper than ten meters.”
“What about deeper borings?”
“We decided to do one deep boring on tomorrow’s EVA, after we move to the second site. A deep bore takes more time, what with the heavier equipment and all; we just didn’t have the time for it today. We won’t travel so far that the two sites aren’t geologically equivalent, so a single deep bore should do.”
The Russian blinked slowly and nodded.
“Ilona and Joanna will send you videos of the rock samples. We took soil samples too, of course. Plenty of sandy regolith out here, a deep layer, more than two meters at this location. I set up a remote sensing beacon. The preliminary data we’re getting from it show that the heat flow from below ground is significantly higher here on the canyon floor than it is up on the plain.”
“Higher heat flow? Why is that?”
“Don’t know. Not yet.” Jamie forgot his fatigue as he spoke. “Everything we’ve seen so far indicates that Mars is cold inside; if it has a molten core the way the Earth does, it’s very small and very deep. The core must’ve been bigger and hotter at one time, of course. Those Tharsis volcanoes can’t be more than half a billion years old, at most. But the core seems to have cooled down almost completely. No evidence of continental drift … nothing that even looks like continents.”
“Yet there is heat coming up from the canyon floor?”
“More than anywhere else we’ve investigated,” Jamie confirmed. “Something under this canyon is warm. That’s why there are mists and water vapor down here.”
“What else?”
“Air density and temperature are consistent with what the remote probes have found. This whole canyon complex seems to have its own microclimate, warmer and with higher air pressure than the rest of the planet. Maybe the Hellas depression exhibits the same phenomena. We’ll have to check that out.”
“Not on this mission!”
“I know that. We’ll need to come back. This is like exploring Africa, Mikhail. It’s going to take decades, maybe a century or more, before we’ve got it all down.”
Vosnesensky broke into one of his rare smiles. “One thing you do not lack, Jamie, is ambition.”
Jamie felt startled. “Ambition? Me?”
But Vosnesensky was already framing his next question. “How do you feel? Do you want to speak with Tony? Is your health status good?”
Jamie hesitated. “I’m tired but otherwise okay. Ilona’s under the weather a bit, but I don’t think anybody else has any complaints. I’ll ask each one individually; if there are any problems we’ll call back.”
“Be certain that you do.”
Jamie signed off and cut the connection. Odd that Mikhail should ask about our health. The damned guy must be telepathic. Then he realized that Ilona must have spoken with Tony while they were outside. And Mikhail saw that Joanna took the EVA with me instead of Ilona. He’s a suspicious cuss. Typical Russian.
MARS ORBIT
Li Chengdu frowned at the display screen. He was in the command module of the Mars 2 spacecraft, sitting at the monitoring station behind the two pilots’ seats. Tolbukhin and the American astronaut, Burt Klein, had turned their seats around to make a little conference circle.
Dr. Yang sat next to Li, pointing at the two lists displayed side by side on the screen.
“You see? Waterman and Brumado accomplished only half their scheduled tasks for the EVA.”
Yang’s fingernail was long and red and carefully manicured. Li wondered why the physician bothered to lacquer her nails. She was not an especially good-looking woman, he thought, rather plain in fact, with a pug nose and overly thick lips. Her figure was nondescript. Yet she adorned her tan coveralls with a bright gold-mesh belt and she wore a necklace and several bracelets that clashed together like miniature cymbals whenever she moved her hands. Her mouse-brown hair had been recently clipped; she wore it in bangs that came down almost to her eyebrows. And her face was made up with lipstick and eye shadow, no less.
Has she decked herself out for me? Li wondered. Or is she trying to impress our dashing cosmonaut and astronaut? Li sighed to himself. As long as she doesn’t make any problems for me I won’t interfere. But he found himself wondering if her toenails were lacquered, also.
“Their performance seems to be seriously degraded,” Yang said, softly but insistently.
Li roused himself from his conjectures about her sex life.
“They had a strenuous journey down to the canyon floor. Perhaps they need more rest.”
Burt Klein agreed. “You can’t expect them to stick to that schedule Waterman set up. It’s too crowded; there’s not enough time to do everything he wants done.”
“Perhaps,” said Dr. Yang. She leaned close enough to Li to work the computer keyboard. She was wearing perfume. Jasmine blossoms?
A set of colored curves sprang up on the display screen.
“These represent the performance parameters of all the surface personnel, based on their own reports of tasks accomplished,” Yang said. “You can see that everyone’s performance is degrading.”
Li fingered his moustache. “Yes, I see.”