Oxygen Series Box Set: A Science Fiction Suspense Box Set

by John Olson

  Valkerie wasn’t afraid anymore. She hadn’t gotten a chance to tell Bob how much she loved him, but she had been able to demonstrate that love in a way that words could never equal. She didn’t have proof that a loving God existed, but she knew it in her heart in a deeper way than she could ever understand.

  * * *

  Thursday, July 3, Year Three, Noon

  Bob

  Bob leaned against the wall of the airlock. She had kissed him. He still couldn’t believe it. He had told her he loved her, and she had given him a kiss. His pulse pounded in his ears. Adrenaline rushed through his veins. He had to hurry. Valkerie was depending on him. Valkerie and Lex. He couldn’t let them down.

  Bob checked his watch to baseline his time. They only had twenty-nine minutes of oxygen, and they had already wasted two. What was taking the airlock so long?

  He turned to Kennedy. “Hey, Ken—” He froze. His comm link was busted. He had meant to trade Snoopy caps with Valkerie, but in all the excitement he had forgotten. He shoved Kennedy’s shoulder. Kennedy was staring back through the glass plate of the hatch. The other side was completely dark.

  Kennedy turned and pointed to the airlock light and slashed his pointer finger across his neck.

  Bob nodded. The fuel cells were dead. The airlock pumps were dead. The ship was completely without power. Bob released the lock. The pressure differential popped the hatch open like a New Year’s Eve cork, yanking Bob out with it. He staggered forward, tripped, and landed hard. A cloud of ultrafine regolith flew up around him.

  Dizzy and bruised, he pushed himself up onto his hands and knees. Even the weak Martian gravity was exhausting after five months in zero-g.

  Gloved hands grabbed him by the shoulders and hoisted him to his feet.

  Bob gave Kennedy the thumbs-up sign and they took off toward the base camp as fast as they could lumber. Six hundred yards to life.

  Step, step. Rest. Step, step. Rest.

  They staggered across the tan-colored plain, lurching over bowling-ball-sized rocks, kicking up spurts of dust. The sun looked small and anemic in a washed-out peach sky. The horizon seemed absurdly close. Bob felt disoriented, dizzy. All the proportions were wrong. He veered to the right when he meant to go straight. He ran into Kennedy when he thought he was standing still.

  Bob looked at his watch. They had covered a couple of hundred yards in ... ten minutes. Not fast enough! He motioned to Kennedy to walk faster. Kennedy nodded.

  Step, step, step. Rest. Step, step, step. Rest.

  Kennedy began lagging behind. Bob looked at his watch again. Twenty-two minutes gone. They’d never make it. A bolt of panic knifed through his body. Valkerie! He couldn’t wait for Kennedy.

  Bob picked up the pace to a slow walk. Then to a shuffling jog. His breath rasped in his ears, echoing through his helmet in a ragged scream of unorchestrated agony.

  At last, base camp. The rover was parked just outside, a six-ton behemoth with eight wheels and plenty of room for four people. It had been waiting here for two years, and it was long since fully loaded up with methane and LOX. Bob yanked open the doors to the airlock, reached up, grabbed the handle, and pulled.

  He raised his body a few inches, then fell back. Exhaustion shivered through his body. He didn’t have the strength to pull himself up. Where was the Hampster?

  Bob looked back. Kennedy was shuffling along in slow motion, ten yards behind. Hurry! Bob risked a glance at his watch.

  No! Thirty-nine minutes had elapsed. His air should have run out ten minutes ago. How ... ?

  Kennedy reached him and pressed his helmet against Bob’s. “We’re too late!”

  “No!” Bob shouted. “They gave us a little extra air. That’s all. In the rover, quick, before we run out!”

  He grabbed the handle and pulled.

  Kennedy got underneath him and pushed upward.

  Slowly, Bob clawed his way into the airlock. He turned and grabbed Kennedy’s right hand. Thank God, Kennedy was lighter. They pulled together. Up, up, up ...

  Kennedy lost his grip on the handle and fell backward.

  Bob hung on to his other hand. Hurry!

  Kennedy grabbed the handle again.

  Bob anchored his feet. Pull!

  The Hampster slowly battled up into the airlock.

  Bob pulled him in all the way and yanked the hatch shut. He jabbed the pressurization controls. The gauge quickly rose to 950 millibars. He checked the temperature. Fourteen degrees Celsius and climbing.

  Bob popped open the inner door and stepped forward into the rover, unlocking his helmet and unsnapping his gloves. He stumbled forward blindly to the driver’s seat and checked his watch. They’d been gone forty-five minutes, and their tanks still weren’t empty. The realization hit him like a charging linebacker. Valkerie hadn’t done the transfer. She hadn’t taken any of their oxygen.

  “Come on, come on, Hampster!” Bob punched the starter button and the engine roared to life.

  Kennedy staggered forward and fell into a seat. “We’re too late. Bob, I’m sorry, I should have landed closer to—”

  “No!” Bob jammed the gearshift into drive and punched the accelerator.

  The rover’s tires spun madly in the dust, then took hold. The rover jerked forward.

  “Get out of your suit!” Bob shouted to Kennedy. “We’ll need to bring the girls in as soon as we get there, and you need to be mobile!”

  He pounded on the steering wheel. The rover had maxed out at its top speed, fifteen kilometers per hour. The beast lumbered and creaked over the rocky plain. At this rate, it would take two or three minutes to reach the women. Which was as good as forever.

  Kennedy detached his suit at the beltline. “They gave us all their air.” He leaned far forward and let gravity pull the upper half of his EVA suit off, then yanked off the pants.

  Bob felt numbness creeping over his body and into his mind. His hands were blocks of wood, his heart a cold mass of dry ice. Kennedy was right. They’d been gone almost fifty minutes, and the girls had only the dregs from their oxygen bottles to breathe. If they lay really still ... No, that wouldn’t work. The only hope was that he had miscalculated. Maybe they had more air than he thought.

  His body was running on autopilot now. God, you can’t let them die now, not when you’ve brought us so far.

  But God hadn’t let them die. They had chosen to sacrifice themselves. Just as Bob himself would have chosen. Had already chosen.

  I should have let Valkerie go. I should have insisted. I should have been the one to die. Not her. God, please, don’t let her die. I couldn’t bear it.

  They were almost on top of the Hab. Bob angled in close, then skidded to a stop just outside the airlock. He set the brake and punched the button to deploy the rover-to-Hab connector. Good thing NASA had made the rover speed-dockable.

  Kennedy stood waiting by the airlock doors with a flashlight, drumming his fingers on the door. “Hurry, hurry!” he shouted at the gauge.

  The needle swung slowly up to full pressure. Bob yanked open the airlock door.

  Kennedy raced ahead, now wearing nothing but his Liquid-Cooled Garment.

  Bob lumbered after him in his EVA suit, pawing frantically at the tears that would not stop gushing from his eyes.

  The air in the Hab was close and stale, heavy with the smell of ... death. An irrational dread surged through him. A cold sweat prickled down his arms and back. He felt nauseous. “Valkerie? Lex?”

  He pushed forward into the gloom, running blindly after Kennedy’s wavering light. “Valkerie?” He turned a corner and stopped. Valkerie and Lex lay huddled together on Lex’s seat. Neither one was wearing a breather.

  Kennedy fell on his knees next to Lex and started tearing at the flight harness that bound her to the seat.

  “No!” Bob rushed forward and scooped Valkerie’s limp form into his arms. “No. God, please no!” He carried her back to the rover, collapsing onto his knees to place her in the rear bay on the floor. He grabbed an
oxygen mask and pressed it to her face, then felt her wrist for a pulse.

  Nothing.

  Kennedy raced in a moment later with Lex and gently lowered her to the floor near Valkerie. “I’ll close the airlock.”

  Bob nodded and released Valkerie’s wrist. Her skin was still warm. Soft. She had to be alive. He bent down over her, pressing his lips to hers, pinching her nose shut with his fingers. He blew into her lungs, watching her chest rise and fall with each breath.

  He felt for her xiphoid and placed the heels of his hands on her sternum. Push, push, push ... Please. Push, push, breathe, breathe. The world dissolved around him. He was alone in a blurry haze, pushing to the rhythm of his own pounding heart. Breathing into lips that stole all warmth from his own.

  God, if you do work miracles, if you do interact with this world, please, I’m praying for a miracle. I’d give my life for hers, any day. Please!

  Bob worked steadily, ignoring the chill numbness that seeped into his bones. At last, he stopped. A life had already been given. No other would be required.

  A hand rested on Bob’s shoulder. Bob turned, wiping his eyes on a bulky synthetic sleeve. Kennedy’s eyes glistened, red, swollen. Tears streamed down his cheeks. He shook his head slowly and swallowed. “It’s too late, Bob. We did our best.”

  Bob sighed deeply and admitted the truth he’d been fighting to change. “You’re ... right.”

  Kennedy took his hand and pulled him up. “Let’s get back to base camp. And we have to call Houston. We have to tell the world”—his voice choked off with a sob—“about the sacrifice they made.”

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Thursday, July 3, Year Three, 11:50 A.M.

  Nate

  “OKAY, JOSH, GET BACK TO your post and see what else you can find out,” Nate said. “NBS is milking this one for the bucks. They’ve got a show lined up on our brave boys and girls. Should take about an hour and a half. Then Perez and I are going to take the fall.” Nate shook Josh’s hand. “Take care of yourself.” He turned and headed back onstage. Perez was now speaking.

  Nate figured there couldn’t be a dry eye in the whole place. He dabbed at his own with a Kleenex. Well, okay, there were two. What kind of an emotionless Vulcan was he? His eyes were arid, his heart cold.

  A giant screen behind Perez showed exactly what the rest of the world was seeing on TV—a picture of the Ares 10 team. Smiling and in their flight suits, coming out of the Astrovan back in January, on their way to the launch.

  Perez sat down and the show began.

  Nate looked at his watch. Almost noon. In an hour and a half, I’ll be free of this job forever. But I’ll never be free of my conscience, will I? If I’d just told them the truth ...

  The screen switched to a video that some TV whiz kids had done, showing the history of the Ares 10 mission. The early Ares program. Selection of ASCANs. Training. A tour of JSC. The Hab, the ERV, and all that. The base camp on Mars, with that juiced-up SUV rover. Then the Ares 10 crew, the launch, and repeated close-ups of the stabilizer fin nicking the tower. An interview with Nate, in which he gabbled something about “justifiable risk” and “calculated gamble.”

  Did I really believe that? What a moron.

  Finally, the segment wound down.

  Nate checked the time again—1:30 P.M., right on the button. TV people were good at that. And now, showtime ...

  The screen switched back to live TV, broadcast from right here in the Teague Auditorium. Steven Perez stepped to the podium.

  “This is a sad day in the history of NASA. Four brave astronauts lost their lives, only miles short of their goal. When they entered the Martian atmosphere, we know that they had no functioning aerobrake-deployment system. We believe their deaths would have been very rapid.”

  That was a lie—but a kindhearted one—strictly for the families’ sake. In reality, it would have taken several tens of seconds for the crew to die, while the Hab boiled hotter and hotter as it blazed down through the thin atmosphere.

  Perez swallowed hard and wiped his eyes. “As Director of the Johnson Space Center, the deaths of these four men and women are my responsibility, and mine alone. We tried for too much with too few resources. I believe it was my own pride that was responsible, and ... I beg forgiveness of both my nation and the families of the astronauts. Effective tomorrow at noon, I am resigning as—”

  “Nooooooo!” Josh Bennett came flying down the left aisle of Teague Auditorium, holding something in his hand and screaming like a scalded cat. He leaped to the podium and whispered something to Perez. Perez stepped back. Josh held his phone to the microphone. He clicked it and hissing static filled the room.

  And then ...

  “Houston, this is Commander Kennedy Hampton, calling from the rover on the surface of Mars. Do you copy?”

  There was a moment of stunned silence.

  Then the room exploded. Screaming. Dancing. Papers thrown in the air. Hooting. Shrieking. Cathe Willison jumped up on stage, threw her arms around Nate, and kissed him. The Times science reporter, Hank Russell, was right behind her, shoving a microphone in Nate’s face, sweating and bellowing something. Cameras flashed like solar flares. The whole place had gone nuts, just nuts.

  The celebration went on for several minutes, then slowly began wearing down. Somebody began tapping hard on the microphone. Josh Bennett still stood at the podium, holding the phone aloft, tears glistening on his cheeks.

  Icy fingers closed around Nate’s gut. He could see by the look on Josh’s face that those were not tears of joy.

  * * *

  Thursday, July 3, Year Three, 1:10 P.M.

  Bob

  Bob cradled Valkerie’s head in his lap as the rover jolted and lurched over the rocky terrain. Kennedy had told Houston. It was final. Valkerie was dead. Gone forever. There was no going back. He stroked the hair back from her face and felt for her pulse one more time. Nothing. A huge lump formed in his throat. Tears streamed down his cheeks, splashing onto Valkerie’s upturned face.

  It was all so pointless. So unfair. NASA had traded two human lives for a dry, barren planet. Space exploration. What did it matter? There was more to Valkerie than a whole universe of planets. More to explore. More to appreciate. More to learn. He would have gladly dedicated his life to her exploration. He would have given all he owned. All he was. All he ever hoped to be.

  Why didn’t I see it before? He had squandered two years. His self-doubt, his pride, his fears. What were they compared to the opportunity he had wasted?

  The rover rattled to a stop. Kennedy’s voice sounded from the front of the rover. Another transmission to Houston. How could he do it? How could he endure talking to ... them? Kennedy positioned the airlock for docking with the base module. The docking port locked in place. The hatch popped open with a swish.

  Bob didn’t move. All he could look at was Valkerie’s face, peaceful now in death.

  He felt Kennedy’s hand on his shoulder. “She loved you, you know.”

  “She loved all of us.” Bob looked up.

  Pain creased Kennedy’s face in deep lines that seemed to touch his very soul. “We need to go in now,” he said in a soft voice. “This is our home for the next year and a half. We have a lot of work to do to get this place rigged for full life support, and not a lot of time to do it.”

  Bob sighed and a strange calm stole over him. He would be alone with Kennedy for two years. Another human being. A friend who needed his help. This time he would use those two years well.

  * * *

  Thursday, July 3, Year Three, 1:40 P.M.

  Nate

  “Please sit down!” Josh shouted. “Friends, people, please sit down.”

  Teague Auditorium slowly quieted. The look on Josh’s face made it clear that something was very wrong.

  “Please ...” Josh’s voice cracked. “When we first heard from Ares 10, we responded right away. Seventeen minutes later, they sent back this reply.”

  A funereal hush settled over the au
ditorium.

  Nate sat down. He had known it was too good to be true.

  Josh tapped something on his phone and held it up to the mike.

  “Houston, it is my sad duty to inform you that two of our crew, Dr. Alexis Ohta and Dr. Valkerie Jansen, gave their lives to save their fellow crew members, Bob Kaganovski and myself. Unknown to us, the women took no oxygen for themselves when ...” Kennedy’s voice broke completely. His sobs filled the auditorium. “ ... when Bob and I went to get the rescue vehicle. They gave it all to us. Because of the courageous sacrifice by Lex and Valkerie, Bob and I are still alive. We are returning to base camp with their bodies now. Over.”

  * * *

  The amazing thing was how fast NBS reacted to it. Within thirty seconds, they were running a video clip eulogizing the two dead astronauts. Nate felt sick to his marrow at their ghoulish efficiency. When had they put these together? Last week? Last month? Before the launch?

  Lex got the electronic embalming treatment first. A photo of her playing volleyball in high school, spiking the ball. Incredible—she must have had a three-foot vertical leap. The caption said Alexis Ohta, Ph.D.

  They showed a long interview with Lex’s mother, a cute little Japanese woman who must be about fifty, but didn’t look much older than Lex. There was the usual TV song-and-dance about what a brave single mom she had been, how she’d overcome all obstacles, blah, blah, blah. Conveniently overlooked was the fact that the missing father was some rich kid from back East who didn’t want to take responsibility. Nate hated people like that.

  Finally the segment moved on to Lex at the Air Force Academy. Lex in graduate school at Stanford. Lex passing up a chance for the Olympic Volleyball Team so she could finish her Ph.D. work. Lex in ASCAN training, breaking Scott Carpenter’s 1960s-era record for some fitness test. Lex in the Ares program. Lex waving as she strode into the launch vehicle. The whole thing ended, again, with the still of Lex and her last words, broadcast just before aeroentry.