Marooned on Mars

by Lester Del Rey

  With sudden determination, he dressed quickly and went toward the control room. Technically, he had to get permission to use the radar communications set, but all rules had been dropped in the emergency. He snapped it on, coupling his built-in microphone to the set and began calling his father on Moon City.

  Some of the tension he felt was in the operator’s voice. They must have been as worried as the men on the ship—or perhaps they felt worse, since they were powerless to help. He waited impatiently, until his father’s voice answered.

  It was a calm, quiet voice. There was the strength and understanding in it he had always found. “Hello, Chuck. What’s the trouble, boy?”

  Chuck felt like crying as his muscles relaxed slowly. He choked out the facts, stumbling over the words. Then he waited while the message sped to Earth, his father considered, and the answer came back—they were far enough away that even the speed of radar couldn’t cover the distance in less than minutes.

  “Kid, unless I’m mistaken, you’ve run into the oldest trouble an engineer has,” his father told him. “Take a look to make sure all your power cables are hooked up. I remember I spent two weeks on a job once, and only got the answer when one of the cleaning women pointed out…”

  But Chuck wasn’t listening. He was across the room, staring into the open panel. Lying curled up in one comer, under a maze of wiring, the unattached cable connection stared back at him accusingly!

  He couldn’t remember signing off or thanking his father, though he must have done it. His next memory was of shaking Captain Vance awake, and yelling for Lew. By then, the whole ship was clustered around him, trying to make sense of his words.

  Three hour’s later the meters indicated that the panel was working according to specifications.

  Rothman made a check, and Steele and Vance rechecked. Everything seemed perfect.

  “Looks fine,” Rothman told them. “You boys have done as well as anyone could—better than anyone except the engineer who figured this out in the first place. But until we make an actual landing, we can’t know if it’s perfect. If we’re lucky, well get down in one piece; when we see how it operates we’ll know enough to correct it if it needs it.”

  He moved cautiously to the controls and fed a short burst of power into the jets. He nodded slowly, the frown still on his face. “If the gyroscopes were trustworthy…”

  He let it hang there. Then he grinned. “Anyway, let’s have a celebration. How about it. Captain?”

  Chuck went back to his routine duties, and the regular watches were continued again. Ahead, Mars continued to grow in size, though the spinning of the ship made it impossible to see any detail. The gyroscope wheel was turning over very slowly, cutting the spin down, until they would again be weightless, but Vance was putting no strain on it.

  Chuck waited until the ship ceased spinning before he went back to the control room. Here the planet shone ahead, big and red in the near distance. There was air in the control room again, and he heard his breath whistle out sharply.

  The markings on the surface stood out plainly. Whether they were “canals” or something else, there was no way of knowing. Still, his eyes proved that die Lunar observatory’s photographs had been right They weren’t as straight as the maps had shown them once, but there was nothing like them on either the Moon or Earth.

  It could be intelligence, he told himself. Maybe there had been enough atmosphere for intelligence to develop and to start a civilization. Egypt had built pyramids against a gravity two and a half times as great—and China had erected the Great Wall that still stretched across thousands of miles.

  What would they find: perhaps there would be no life of any intelligence, or perhaps ruins to show that intelligence had lost its battle with the vanishing air and water. Yet he could hope that somehow some of it had survived.

  Steele had come up behind him and was looking out too. The man’s big chest lifted in a slow sigh; he shook his bead at Chuck. “It’s been too long since there was any real atmosphere. Except for a thin, weak dribble of it. Mars couldn’t hold her air. She was too small and light,” he muttered, as if reading Chuck’s mind. “But it’s hard to be scientific when you look at that. I keep thinking of strange people coming out to help us. Maybe I should be writing poetry instead of taking up atomic engineering. Well, we’ll know all about it tomorrow.”

  “And if there are people?” Chuck asked.

  Steele sighed again. “I don’t know. Maybe war. Maybe peace. When I was a kid, I heard tales from my grandmother that didn’t make me think much of people—-stories she’d heard from the days when my race were slaves. But. don’t let anybody tell you that men are rotten, boy; they’ve come a long way. I think it will be up to the Martians. If they’re savages, they’ll hate us, and fear us, maybe. You can’t make friends with people who are afraid of you.”

  Then he grinned, shaking off his mood. “We’re talking nonsense. Chuck. We’ll be lucky if we find anything as advanced as insects down there. Let’s get back to work on the gardens.”

  Chuck was dreaming of fairylike Martians coming out to welcome him with wreaths in one hand and swords in the other when, the next afternoon, the faint motion of the ship turning over to direct its jets at Mars awakened him.

  He gobbled down a hasty breakfast from a ration can and plastic bag, and headed toward the control room. He hesitated outside, and Vance motioned him in. Only the captain, the pilot and Lew were there.

  The screen above the controls showed the surface rushing up to them, growing as they watched. Rothman was busy with his calculator, and there was a trace of sweat on his forehead. Vance sat at the controls, as cool as ever, until Rothman finished and moved for the seat. Then the captain pulled two of the remaining three seats together and motioned Chuck into one.

  The seats swung back to form horizontal shock cushions, while the controls slid out until Lew and Rothman could drop their hands onto them easily. Vance adjusted a throat microphone that was coupled into an overhead speaker. “One minute… thirty seconds… fifteen… ten… five… four… three… two… BLAST!”

  ‘The pressure of acceleration was easier to take in the carefully built seats. It hit at them, but their eyes remained glued to the screens. Chuck felt a groan slip from his lips.

  The ship wasn’t steady. The point of ground at which Rothman was aiming wobbled, and the ship listed from side to side. They could almost feel the control slipping out of the pilot’s hands.

  Rothman tapped the levers again, harder this time, fighting against the slipping of the ship. Then one of his hands reached against the savage pressure to a switch. “The instrument readings!” he gasped. “When we get down well figure out the trouble.”

  Again he increased the acceleration against the speed, until the meter above registered five and a half gravities. Chuck’s eyeballs seemed to burst, and he could barely see the screen. The ship was slowing now.

  “Free fall?” Vance’s hoarse voice asked from the

  speaker.

  Rothman made no answer, but his fingers suddenly cut off the rocket blast. There was a high, thin whistle -from outside to show they were in atmosphere.

  Then they were falling free, trying to correct their motion with the tiny steering-vanes on the stubby wings.

  CHAPTER 8

  Crackup Landing

  Rothman’s fingers hovered over the controls; his eyes glued to the screen. His voice came out as a hoarse croak. “Watch out for the bumps!”

  Surprisingly, Vance laughed, almost casually. Chuck glanced at Lew and saw the same fear in his eyes that he felt seeping through his own body.

  The ship slowly came to true vertical. Rothman hit the buttons again, and another savage thrust drove Chuck back against the cushions. The landscape below began swaying, but Rothman held the buttons down. The surface below had stopped expanding, and Mars was receding.

  They had lost all forward speed and were taking off toward space again. Rothman was fighting against the uncertain blas
t from the slightly unbalanced tubes, and the lack of help from the crippled gyroscopes. He lifted still higher, and cut off the power.

  . “Number six is the worst,” Vance told him. “Can you synchronize number three with it?”

  “No—been trying. Might make it with two and five.” The pilot reached for the controls and played with them delicately. Meters danced on the control board. He hit the buttons for the rockets again. It seemed a little smoother this time—but not much.

  Chuck was trying to read the indicator needles. This was his fault—if he’d known a little more theory to couple with Lew’s there might have been some way to avoid this horrible veering and uncertainty. If they ever got down, he was going to make sure he found out where the trouble lay.

  The blast stopped, and Rothman shot his glance back toward Vance. “Want to try it? Maybe I’m getting rattled.”

  “You’re doing okay,” Vance told him calmly. “I’m a little rattled too Even Foldingchair would be sweating at this. All right, take her down again if you can, Nat.”

  They were falling slowly again, with the very thinnest of air around them—die sound couldn’t be heard, but one needle on the panel swung slightly. They must be at the top of the sixty-mile layer of atmosphere that covered Mars.

  The ship wobbled, and Rothman had to correct their fall with flicks of the controls that produced only momentary series of bursts from the jets. Then they began picking up downward speed and running into a somewhat more dense atmosphere, where the steering-vanes would help to level it off.

  The surface came up closer this time. Rothman waited until they seemed about to crash before he let the rockets blast out. The ship groaned under the force and began to settle to left sharply. He was using more force than was supposed to be safe, but he continued.

  Chuck blacked out for a second; the pressure had gone beyond his limits. When he opened his eyes, the ship was shooting upward, the jets were off, and they were being guided by the steering-vanes. Rothman studied the screen until the right moment came and again cut on the rockets, taking them above the sixty-mile limit.

  He swung fully around when he cut power. “Miles, I don’t have one chance in ten of making it. If you can do any better, take over.”

  Vance shook his head. “You’re the pilot—I can’t do it as well as you. Unless you’re scared. How about it?”

  “Too busy—too many worries. No time to be scared.” He was obviously telling the truth.

  Vance shrugged. “Then she’s your baby. I’d probably go off the deep end if I had her in my hands. Nat, if you have to crash, crash us. It’s getting worse. Don’t worry about killing us—I’ll give you full authorization to do it, if it makes you feel better. But this time get us onto the surface—whole or in pieces.”

  Chuck grimaced, trying to appreciate the hint of humor

  in Vance’s words. But he wasn’t sure it was humor. The captain might mean just what he said—that they had to get down, and might as well get down dead as to keep worrying. Personally, Chuck preferred to go on worrying, but he kept his mouth shut. He knew if he opened it he wouldn’t be able to keep from screaming.

  Rothman looked down, and back at the screen. “I’ve got a couple minutes. Toss me a cigarette, somebody.” From one of his pockets, Vance drew out a package and a book of matches. He lighted the smoke, and flipped it toward Rothman. The pilot caught it deftly between thumb and forefinger, and Chuck realized that the trick could never be done by any man who wasn’t in complete control of himself.

  Rothman drew two deep drags on it, and crushed it out ‘Thanks,” he told Vance. “Okay, boys, here we go. If anyone has a particular spot where he’d like to be buried, let me know.”

  There was the sound of air around them again, wailing and shrieking as the ship picked up speed. Chuck tried closing his eyes, but not seeing the screen only made things worse.

  The pilot was picking up skill with the steering-vanes now. This time they were coming down as straight as an arrow could fall with the little light-colored spot below centered exactly in the indicator cross lines. As their speed increased, his control of the ship grew firmer, and there was no trace of wobble. If the rockets had been evened, Chuck realized, the man would have made a smoother landing than Jeff Foldingchair could ever make. He was good.

  Rothman cut on the jets carefully, but the wobble began at once; it was getting worse each time just as Vance had said. The sixth jet must be half out of control. The rockets stopped firing after a brief trial, and the ship continued on, smoothing out its course as the vanes took over the steering again.

  They were less than ten miles high. Then they were lower. Rothman was calculating under his breath. He held their course down until the ground seemed to surround them. Then his lips tightened. “Here goes!” he shouted.

  Again, the jets went on with their absolute maximum, bringing a screech of tortured metal from the ship. Chuck couldn’t faint—the tension was too great, even against the impossible pressure. His eyes remained glued to the screen that was now only a hazy blur.

  The rockets stuttered and cut on again as Rothman’s fingers moved. Something jarred, jerking the ship. One of the leg-fins had hit ground with the rockets still blasting.

  Once more, the cut-off came with an almost impossible short burst of sound following it.

  But the scene on the screen showed they wouldn’t make it. The last burst had just missed, and they were coming down at an angle. They hit, and bounced, to hit again, with shocks like hammers hitting the pit of Chuck’s stomach.

  For a flickering moment, they teetered on one leg-fin, and almost righted. But luck was against them. The ship tilted back, hesitated, and broke like a tree, to fall on its side.

  Something seemed to explode, and Chuck lost consciousness.

  Chuck was first conscious of a wet cloth against his forehead. Dick Steele stood over him, watching while Doc Sokolsky was running gentle hands over his body. “No broken bones. I guess he’ll be all right.”

  Steele’s face was covered with blood from an ugly wound across his forehead, but he grinned down at Chuck. “We had it easier farther back—you took the worst up here. Can you move?”

  It hurt with every move of a muscle, as Chuck slowly came to his feet, more surprised than pleased. He’d been sure the fall would kill them. Vance and Lew were already standing up, and Rothman came to a minute later.

  “All alive, all sound of limb—by some miracle,” Sokolsky told them. “The nylon cords on the mattresses took up the shock for us. But the ship isn’t in such good condition.”

  From what he could see, none of them were in good condition. Chuck decided. All were limping, bruised, and obviously hurting with every step. But the pleasure at being alive made up for any other troubles. “What about the ship?” Vance asked. Steele answered. “She’s pretty badly cracked up. And we’re leaking air from a big crack in one of the gardens. It’s near the top, hard to get at. The doors won’t close, and we’ve got to fix that at once if we want to live. Chuck, Nat, Miles—you’ve all had machining experience. Let’s get to it.”

  In such an emergency, the man who knew the most was automatically the boss. The others fell in behind him, traveling along the central well. Evidences of the crash were all over. Part of a supply room had been smashed through, and goods bad spilled an over, making it hard to pass.

  “Most of the food is okay, I think,” Steele told them. “We lost one water tank—unless we can mop it up somehow—and the plants have been ripped loose in a few places. But the motors seem to be sound, and I don’t think the rocket tubes were hurt; they’re at the tail, where the fall didn’t amount to much. I haven’t had a chance to look at the fuel, but I haven’t noticed any smell of it in the air, and that stuff’s strong. Here, you can see the damage.”

  He pointed upward, along the “deck” of the gardens toward a gaping rent in the metal above them. One seam bad sprung open as if it were a ripe melon bursting. There was something over it, though.


  “Some of our tent doth,” Steele explained. “I got it up on poles. Stuff holds back most of the air, though it doesn’t seal completely.”

  Vance studied the situation. “Looks as if you’ve been busy, Dick. Well, we’ve got plates enough for a temporary patch—we can use thin stuff for that. But how’ll we get it up there?”

  Take the sheets outside, and climb up the hull we can throw a rope over it and pull a couple of ladders up.” Vance nodded, and they turned into the supply room where the heavy sheets were stored. It would probably take about five of the thinner ones to cover the hole properly. Dick picked up two of them, and each of the others grabbed one, together with equipment that might be needed. They headed for the air lock as rapidly as they could.

  The inner door came open easily enough—apparently it had withstood the shock. The outer one was more trouble. It refused to open until Dick and Vance combined their strength, using their legs across it and heaving up together. Then it groaned and folded inward slowly.

  Underneath it lay reddish sand, packed down firmly into the shape it had taken from the door. Dick groaned.

  Chuck reached for a sheet to shove the sand away, and then he realized what had happened. The air lock lay exactly at the bottom of the ship now—the Eros had fallen over on its side, putting its whole weight on the door.

  “We’ll have to dig out—” he began. But Vance cut him off.

  “We will—but not right now. We’ve probably sunk five feet deep in this soft stuff, and we’d have to dig a tunnel up and around. It isn’t like honest dirt—look how dry it is—and we’d have to build supports as we went, to keep it from drifting back. Sure, we’ll have to dig out—when we’ve got a couple free days to give to the job. How about the door to the gardens?”

  Steele frowned. “All three doors are stuck. If we could shut the outer one only and seal it, we’d still lose most of our air. Anyway, it wouldn’t do any good to save ourselves and let the plants die in the stuff Mars calls atmosphere. We have to have them.”