“I need you as my sounding board.” April reached again for the keyboard. With Trent and Trevor working the cranks, they had about two-thirds of the control room monitors and CPUs back up, and April pulled up different systems specs on each screen. Long columns of numbers on one screen, and what looked like digital blueprints on another.
April narrowed her gaze. “Sheesh.”
“What is it?” Mark asked.
“It’s like this whole habitat was designed and built by a psychotic toddler. I still can’t get any connection to the outside, so I can’t be sure but . . .” She glanced back at Mark. “Can you have the communications team, whoever’s outside, do a check of the solar panels?”
“We didn’t do that already?”
April shook her head. “I was thinking the blackout was from a short or disconnect somewhere. I mean, in Arizona, and in our extremely controlled environment with The Ranch watching our every move, who would think something would go wrong with the solar panels, right? But then I was thinking about what you said, about treating this situation as though it was all happening for real, on the surface of Mars.”
She gestured at the monitors as though the answer was obvious.
“The only thing that would knock out the solar panels—and I mean, like, all of them—would be some kind of weather event. But, you know, the sky’s been perfectly clear here. It was one of the first things I checked.”
She turned back and looked at Mark expectantly.
“So you think the production team set up some occlusion of the solar panels.”
“Okay, so obviously, knocking out the solar array wouldn’t also take out the backup batteries. I’m still trying to figure out what happened there.” She looked at the monitors and drummed her fingers over her lips. “I’ve been going over this and over this, and it just doesn’t freaking make any sense.”
“Unless we’ve been sabotaged.”
Trent stopped cranking, and he and Trevor looked up from the floor.
“I didn’t want to say it,” April said.
Mark rested back in his chair and felt the heavy plastic give slightly. He was conscious again of the cameras.
April’s voice was small. “Doesn’t this whole thing seem kind of, I don’t know . . .”
“Sloppy.” Mark’s voice was loud enough for even the cameras in the corridor. “Like someone hastily manufactured a potentially life-threatening challenge with no grounding in an actual simulation.”
April’s fingers danced over the keyboard and new panels flashed across the monitors, too fast for Mark to track. She settled on a half-dozen data screens that looked essentially identical to Mark. April gestured toward them in irritation.
“Do you see this? This whole time they’ve been working the cranks, and we can’t get the batteries to hold a lasting charge. All this time, trying to root out the source of, you know, all the blackness and nothing working . . .” Slowly her mouth dropped open. “Are you fucking kidding me?!”
Trent looked up at Mark. “Did she just curse? Is April cursing now?”
April shot out of her chair, grabbed a voltage detector out of Trent’s breast pocket and scrambled beneath the second bank of monitors.
“I can’t believe I didn’t think of this before, but I mean, who would even . . .” She muttered angrily as she crawled to the nearest bank of batteries and pressed the tester’s tip against the battery’s leads. She read the display, her laugh bitter. “What the hell is this third line? Jerry H. Christmas on a flaming pogo stick.” She took readings from the next bank of batteries. “Son of a monkey on a bus to Toledo.”
Trevor laughed. “I’m guessing that’s not good?”
“Nah, monkeys love Toledo,” Trent offered. “It’s great there.”
April slid out from under the desk and moved swiftly across the floor to the utility cabinet. She flung open the metal doors and used the voltage detector to test one mounted battery bank after the next, all the while shaking her head and cursing. After she’d tested the last one, she slammed the cabinet door closed.
“Every single one of them has a third line,” April practically spat. “They’re draining as quickly as we can charge them. Someone’s stealing our power.”
It was a set-up. That was the word from April and Mark. The producers had hit them with another challenge designed for the candidates to fail. At least, that’s what it was looking like.
The dome was still mostly dark, but they were making progress.
By the time Lori returned to the control room, Mark was gone—off to suit up and head outside with Guillermo, Cecilia, Melissa, and Yoshiko. They had limited communications between the control room and the pressure suits, thanks to some improvised systems patching by April.
“So, we just wait?” Leah leaned against the wall just inside the doorway. Their tasks complete, the grow unit and life support teams converged on the control room where April was still in charge. Eight monitors across two desks flickered in and out of full brightness.
“Found another one!” Dina burst in from the corridor with a third hand crank. “It was in the fitness room, way back in a cabinet underneath the—”
“Get it hooked up.” April seemed comfortable in her leadership role, but there was a twitchiness to her movements. Her breath rose too high in her chest, and she was swallowing hard.
Lori took the empty seat next to April’s. “You’re doing great.”
April gave Lori a brief nod of acknowledgement before she turned toward the other candidates loitering in the doorway. “Someone want to spell Trevor and Trent? They’ve been working those cranks for hours.”
Lindsay and Leah stepped forward to take over the hand cranks. Trevor resisted giving up his post, but relented when Lindsay threatened to wrestle the crank out of his hands. Trent gave Leah a friendly pat on the arm as she slid beneath the desk to take over from him.
“Uh, hello?” Guillermo’s voice crackled over the control room speakers. “Is anybody there?”
“Talk to him. He’s scared.” April slid a headset toward Lori. Lori put it on.
“How long have they been outside?”
“About two hours.” April’s gaze never left the flickering monitors as she tracked the tiniest fluctuations in data. “It’s dark out there. They’ve got the lights on their suits, but that’s it.”
Lori clicked on her mic. “Hey, big guy. How’s it going out there?”
She heard a splutter of relieved laughter. “April, is that you?”
“I’m afraid not, Guillermo. It’s Lori. You’ll have to make due with me.”
She could hear the shy smile in his voice. “That’s okay. Even better, I guess.”
April shot Lori a sideways smirk. “I can give you a private channel, if you’d like.”
Lori nearly choked but turned it into a laugh. The hours were dragging on, but they were in the midst of their most serious challenge. Still, April was throwing Lori a bone.
Lori shook her head. “We’ll keep it family-rated.”
“What?” Guillermo’s voice cut in. “I didn’t catch that.”
“Nothing of consequence.”
Lori took a deep breath and relaxed into the molded plastic of the chair. The overhead lights weren’t holding steady, making the control room feel like a particularly lame rave.
Oskar, Govind, and Jacki loitered in the doorway while Dina, Leah, and Lindsay worked the hand cranks. Seema was in the kitchen gathering up snacks and coffee. And Trent and Trevor paced in the corridor, taking a breather.
“Okay. I’m about halfway done clearing the debris from Quadrant 4 of the solar array, but it’s taking a really long time.” Guillermo’s voice sounded tight even over the staticky, low-power connection. His breath came in audible huffs. The thought of sweet, strapping Guillermo Costa reduced to a frightened child made Lori grimace. “I can’t see anybody else. It’s really, really dark out here. I’m not sure how to check if the panels are aligned right, after I’m done cleaning them.”
Lori pulled her knees up into the chair and settled in for some on-air flirting. “It’s okay. I’m right here, Guillermo.” She kept her voice calm and fluid, reaching through the radio to soothe him. “You can hear me, right?”
“Yeah.” He sounded smaller. Lori hoped that was from exertion and not because he’d curled up in a ball on the desert floor.
“As long as you can hear me, then I’m right there with you.” Lori closed her eyes and pictured herself slipping her hand into his, but then she frowned when she looked into her companion’s face and found Mark Lauren served up by her imagination. “Guillermo, you’re doing great. You said you’re about halfway through? That’s pretty fast work there, big boy.”
April gave Lori’s ankle a playful swat. Lori adjusted her headset and bent the mic closer to her mouth.
“I’ll bet you’re getting it done twice as fast as anyone else out there.”
There was a long hiss of static. “You think so?” Guillermo sounded stronger and almost optimistic.
“Mmm, definitely.”
“I just wish it wasn’t so dark.” Guillermo grunted out the last syllables. “This panel was on its side. These things are a lot heavier than they look.”
April watched with eager expectation. Lori clamped her hand over her mic.
“What?” She hissed at April. “Am I supposed to ask if he’s heavier than he looks, too? What does that even mean?”
April went back to studying the monitors. “Just keep him focused. Just because we’re in Arizona and not on Mars doesn’t mean he’s not using up the oxygen inside his suit.”
Lori let go of her mic. “Well, I’m sure you’re more than up to the challenge, Muscles.” She winced as the words left her mouth, then glared at Trent chuckling in the corner. “Shut up.”
“What was that?” Guillermo asked.
“Nothing for you to be concerned about.” Lori smoothed out her voice. “Just handling the peanut gallery here.”
“You guys want to cut the chatter?” Mark broke in over the line. “Some of us are trying to get actual work done out here.”
April punched in a couple of keys and fitted a lightweight headset onto her ear. “Mark, April here. We’ve got Lori, too. Private channel.” Her patter was quick and confident, her voice low. No one else in the control room would be able to hear her over the hand cranks. “Guillermo had some trouble with the airlock challenge. Claustrophobia. Lori’s just keeping him calm.”
There was a long pause before Mark replied. “Okay, but that doesn’t mean I have to like listening to it.”
April winked at Lori. “We all do what we have to do, right?”
Mark sighed loudly. “Fine. But don’t distract him from his work. Okay, Lori?”
“Okay, boss,” Lori replied with an overly chipper tone. She wasn’t surprised when Mark muttered something angry and unintelligible.
April hit a few keys and removed her headset. She glanced at Lori. “You’re back on with everyone.” Then she mouthed, “Nice going,” before turning again to the monitors.
Lori puzzled over April’s friendliness and Mark’s anger. Was he jealous? And what was April’s wink about? But Guillermo came back in Lori’s ear, sounding on the verge of panic.
“Lori? Lori, are you there? Is anybody there? Can you hear me?”
“Guillermo!” Lori sang his name brightly. “I’m right here, sweetheart.”
Guillermo laughed. “Okay, good. Lori, I thought you . . . I though I lost you there.”
His relief made Lori feel almost guilty for playing at flirtation. Almost. She was doing what she had to do to keep him calm, right? She was talking her teammate through a tough spot, for everyone’s benefit. That she was annoying Mark Lauren in the process felt delicious.
“No, no, I’m right here.” Lori leaned back in her chair and twirled a strand of hair though her fingers. “I’m not going anywhere, big guy. Whatever you need. I’m right here.”
Mark stopped checking his air gauge. He already knew what it would tell him: he was burning through his air too quickly. He needed to slow his pace, stop stomping around, and stop breathing so damned hard.
But he couldn’t help it. He’d spent the last forty minutes listening to Lori practically have phone sex over an open channel with Guillermo. Okay, it hadn’t been sexual, exactly. Or at all, really. There was nothing that couldn’t have been dialog in a Disney movie. But she was flirting, right out in the open for everyone to hear. And Guillermo, poor frightened soul that he was, just lapped it up.
And then Govind had come on the line, and Lori flirted with him, too. At least when Oskar and Cecilia tried to join the fun, Lori had shut them down. But the comms sounded like a teenage gabfest of teasing suggestions and provocative humor, and there was nothing Mark could do to shut them up.
So Mark was angry and irritated. And jealous. And more irritated about being jealous. Chagrined about not clearing things up with Lori. Resentful of the way Govind and Guillermo laughed with her over the comms. And deeply annoyed that it was all being piped directly into his ears.
Damned straight he was breathing too hard as he stomped around the desert in the dark.
The communications team—Guillermo, Cecilia, Melissa, and Yoshiko—had cleaned each solar panel section of the caked on combination of Arizona aridisol and what appeared to be spray-on glue, a particularly stubborn grime that had to be scraped off both aggressively and carefully. Piercing the panels with a crowbar-scraper multitool wasn’t going to bring the MHCH’s power back online any faster.
The team had spread out to tackle the dome’s four solar arrays, and Mark circled around to check in with them as they cleared the gunk-encrusted panels. He’d given Guillermo only a cursory visit on his way around to gauge Melissa’s progress. He might have even said something brilliant like, “How’s it going?” as he moved past. With Lori on the comms, it wasn’t like Guillermo was hurting for conversation.
Mark reached Yoshiko just as all four members of the communications team moved the last panels back into position. The solar panels appeared intact and functional. It would be a few hours yet before the sun was up, and then they’d know for sure.
In the meantime, Mark congratulated the team on a job well done and directed them back inside. He kept his grumbling to himself about the continued flirty patter over the comms. It would drop off soon enough, once everyone was inside and out of their suits. He didn’t want to think about what might progress from there.
Mark remained outside and continued circling around. April had given him a rough idea of what to look for. The MHCH schematics on their tablets weren’t accurate. There were mystery lines running from the battery banks to a thick, central cable that wasn’t on any of the plans. The solar arrays and every electrical system in the dome fed into it, too. This central cable ran down through the habitat’s concrete base and into the ground, past the range of any access tunnels or flashlight beams. There was no telling where the thing might emerge again.
“Anything? Mark?” April’s voice crackled over the comms.
“Nothing yet.” He failed to keep his vexation out of his voice. “Sorry.”
“Want a private channel?”
“Just give me the update.”
“There’s nothing really new here. The panels are clean and in position, but you know, no new juice coming in until after the sun’s up. We’ve got three hand cranks going, and that’s providing what little power we do have. We’re taking turns.”
Mark completed his circuit of the biodome’s exterior. He’d scanned pretty much every visible centimeter of the structure, and he hadn’t seen any sign of the enigmatic cable. Where it disappeared beneath the habitat, the cable was about 15 centimeters in diameter. If it broke the surface anywhere in Mark’s vicinity, it would be plainly evident. But if the Mars Ho producers had kept the cable off the habitat plans, chances were good they’d hid it outside the dome, too.
“You want me to send out some more suits?” April asked.
Mark looked to the lightening sky. At this latitude, he estimated about thirty minutes before sunrise.
“Give me another few minutes,” he said. “It’s still dark enough for a mishap, and if we need to start hunting away from the dome, I’d just as soon have us doing it in daylight.”
“So, just a few minutes to sunrise?”
“Maybe half an hour. I forgot you don’t have windows.”
Mark turned his back to the dome to orient himself. The sun was coming up just to the right of center across the expanse of rocks and scrub. The desert was a wasteland of lengthening shadows as the sun teased its appearance. Without the flirty chatter over the comms, his only companion sounds were his own breathing and heartbeat, plus the low, rhythmic sschunk of his suit’s life support.
He didn’t trust his eyes to pick out anything familiar in the landscape. His senses were thick with fatigue and he could still feel his jealousy buzzing through his body. It was also possible that whatever army of interns had mucked up the solar arrays might have done some set redecoration, too, to throw him off their trail.
Counting the Martian sols they’d passed inside the dome, Mark guessed it was still February. In Arizona, that would place the rising sun at an azimuth of close to 100 degrees off of North. He faced the approaching dawn and raised both arms straight in front of him. With his right arm pointed toward the coming dawn, he turned slowly and kept his left arm aligned with the center of his body. He stopped when he’d turned his best approximation of ten degrees, so that he was facing roughly East. Putting his Wild at Home outdoor skills to use at last.
He tried to recall what he’d read in the materials that had been sent to their tablets for the geology challenge that first day. The Ranch is situated 42-degrees to the northeast of the MHCH, with the geological exploration quadrants set up to the northwest . . .
Mark scuffed a line in the dirt, pointing East, then made a quarter turn and drew another line in the general direction of North. He positioned himself on a bearing about halfway between and looked away from the biodome toward the outline of a gently sloping sand dune. A sand dune he was certain hadn’t been there the last time he’d stepped outside the habitat.
Mars Ho! (Mars Adventure Romance Series Book 1) Page 15