That was the way I did it the last time. I hadn’t dived for a week – there had been a big storm, and the sea was too rough – so I was impatient to get going.
I deep-breathed on the surface for about two minutes, until I felt the tingling in my finger tips that told me it was time to stop. Then I jackknifed and slid gently down toward the black rectangle of the open doorway.
It always looked ominous and menacing – that was part of the thrill. And for the first few yards I was almost completely blind; the contrast between the tropical glare above water and the gloom between decks was so great that it took quite a while for my eyes to adjust. Usually, I was halfway along the corridor before I could see anything clearly. Then the illumination would steadily increase as I approached the open hatch, where a shaft of sunlight would paint a dazzling rectangle on the rusty, barnacled metal floor.
I’d almost made it when I realised that, this time, the light wasn’t getting better. There was no slanting column of sunlight ahead of me, leading up to the world of air and life.
I had a second of baffled confusion, wondering if I’d lost my way. Then I knew what had happened – and confusion turned into sheer panic. Sometime during the storm, the hatch must have slammed shut. It weighed at least a quarter of a ton.
I don’t remember making a U turn; the next thing I recall is swimming quite slowly back along the passage and telling myself: Don’t hurry; your air will last longer if you take it easy. I could see very well now, because my eyes had had plenty of time to become dark-adapted. There were lots of details I’d never noticed before, like the red squirrelfish lurking in the shadows, the green fronds and algae growing in the little patches of light around the portholes, and even a single rubber boot, apparently in excellent condition, lying where someone must have kicked it off. And once, out of a side corridor, I noticed a big grouper staring at me with bulbous eyes, his thick lips half parted, as if he was astonished at my intrusion.
The band around my chest was getting tighter and tighter. It was impossible to hold my breath any longer. Yet the stairway still seemed an infinite distance ahead. I let some bubbles of air dribble out of my mouth. That improved matters for a moment, but, once I had exhaled, the ache in my lungs became even more unendurable.
Now there was no point in conserving strength by flippering along with that steady, unhurried stroke. I snatched the ultimate few cubic inches of air from my face mask – feeling it flatten against my nose as I did so – and swallowed them down into my starving lungs. At the same time, I shifted gear and drove forward with every last atom of strength….
And that’s all I remember until I found myself spluttering and coughing in the daylight, clinging to the broken stub of the mast. The water around me was stained with blood, and I wondered why. Then, to my great surprise, I noticed a deep gash in my right calf. I must have banged into some sharp obstruction, but I’d never noticed it and even then felt no pain.
That was the end of my skin diving until I started astronaut training ten years later and went into the underwater zero-gee simulator. Then it was different, because I was using scuba gear. But I had some nasty moments that I was afraid the psychologists would notice, and I always made sure that I got nowhere near emptying my tank. Having nearly suffocated once, I’d no intention of risking it again….
I know exactly what it will feel like to breathe the freezing wisp of near-vacuum that passes for atmosphere on Mars. No thank you.
So what’s wrong with poison? Nothing, I suppose. The stuff we’ve got takes only fifteen seconds, they told us. But all my instincts are against it, even when there’s no sensible alternative.
Did Scott have poison with him? I doubt it. And if he did, I’m sure he never used it.
I’m not going to replay this. I hope it’s been of some use, but I can’t be sure.
The radio has just printed out a message from Earth, reminding me that transit starts in two hours. As if I’m likely to forget – when four men have already died so that I can be the first human being to see it. And the only one, for exactly a hundred years. It isn’t often that Sun, Earth, and Mars line up neatly like this; the last time was in 1905, when poor old Lowell was still writing his beautiful nonsense about the canals and the great dying civilisation that had built them. Too bad it was all delusion.
I’d better check the telescope and the timing equipment.
The Sun is quiet today – as it should be, anyway, near the middle of the cycle. Just a few small spots, and some minor areas of disturbance around them. The solar weather is set calm for months to come. That’s one thing the others won’t have to worry about, on their way home.
I think that was the worst moment, watching Olympus lift off Phobos and head back to Earth. Even though we’d known for weeks that nothing could be done, that was the final closing of the door.
It was night, and we could see everything perfectly. Phobos had come leaping up out of the west a few hours earlier, and was doing its mad backward rush across the sky, growing from a tiny crescent to a half-moon; before it reached the zenith it would disappear as it plunged into the shadow of Mars and became eclipsed.
We’d been listening to the countdown, of course, trying to go about our normal work. It wasn’t easy, accepting at last the fact that fifteen of us had come to Mars and only ten would return. Even then, I suppose there were millions back on Earth who still could not understand. They must have found it impossible to believe that Olympus couldn’t descend a mere four thousand miles to pick us up. The Space Administration had been bombarded with crazy rescue schemes; heaven knows, we’d thought of enough ourselves. But when the permafrost under Landing Pad Three finally gave way and Pegasus toppled, that was that. It still seems a miracle that the ship didn’t blow up when the propellant tank ruptured….
I’m wandering again. Back to Phobos and the countdown.
On the telescope monitor, we could clearly see the fissured plateau where Olympus had touched down after we’d separated and begun our own descent. Though our friends would never land on Mars, at least they’d had a little world of their own to explore; even for a satellite as small as Phobos, it worked out at thirty square miles per man. A lot of territory to search for strange minerals and debris from space – or to carve your name so that future ages would know that you were the first of all men to come this way.
The ship was clearly visible as a stubby, bright cylinder against the dull-grey rocks; from time to time some flat surface would catch the light of the swiftly moving sun, and would flash with mirror brilliance. But about five minutes before lift-off, the picture became suddenly pink, then crimson – then vanished completely as Phobos rushed into eclipse.
The countdown was still at ten seconds when we were startled by a blast of light. For a moment, we wondered if Olympus had also met with catastrophe. Then we realised that someone was filming the take-off, and the external floodlights had been switched on.
During those last few seconds, I think we all forgot our own predicament; we were up there aboard Olympus, willing the thrust to build up smoothly and lift the ship out of the tiny gravitational field of Phobos, and then away from Mars for the long fall sunward. We heard Commander Richmond say ‘Ignition’, there was a brief burst of interference, and the patch of light began to move in the field of the telescope.
That was all. There was no blazing column of fire, because, of course, there’s really no ignition when a nuclear rocket lights up. ‘Lights up’ indeed! That’s another hangover from the old chemical technology. But a hot hydrogen blast is completely invisible; it seems a pity that we’ll never again see anything so spectacular as a Saturn or a Korolov blast-off.
Just before the end of the burn, Olympus left the shadow of Mars and burst out into sunlight again, reappearing almost instantly as a brilliant, swiftly moving star. The blaze of light must have startled them aboard the ship, because we heard someone call out: ‘Cover that window!’ Then, a few seconds later, Richmond announced: ‘Engine cutoff.’ W
hatever happened, Olympus was now irrevocably headed back to Earth.
A voice I didn’t recognise – though it must have been the Commander’s – said ‘Goodbye, Pegasus’, and the radio transmission switched off. There was, of course, no point in saying ‘Good luck’. That had all been settled weeks ago.
I’ve just played this back. Talking of luck, there’s been one compensation, though not for us. With a crew of only ten, Olympus has been able to dump a third of her expendables and lighten herself by several tons. So now she’ll get home a month ahead of schedule.
Plenty of things could have gone wrong in that month; we may yet have saved the expedition. Of course, we’ll never know – but it’s a nice thought.
I’ve been playing a lot of music, full blast – now that there’s no one else to be disturbed. Even if there were any Martians, I don’t suppose this ghost of an atmosphere can carry the sound more than a few yards.
We have a fine collection, but I have to choose carefully. Nothing downbeat and nothing that demands too much concentration. Above all, nothing with human voices. So I restrict myself to the lighter orchestral classics; the ‘New World’ symphony and Grieg’s piano concerto fill the bill perfectly. At the moment I’m listening to Rachmaninoff’s ‘Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini’, but now I must switch off and get down to work.
There are only five minutes to go. All the equipment is in perfect condition. The telescope is tracking the Sun, the video recorder is standing by, the precision timer is running.
These observations will be as accurate as I can make them. I owe it to my lost comrades, whom I’ll soon be joining. They gave me their oxygen, so that I can still be alive at this moment. I hope you remember that, a hundred or a thousand years from now, whenever you crank these figures into the computers….
Only a minute to go; getting down to business. For the record: year, 1984; month, May; day, II, coming up to four hours thirty minutes Ephemeris Time … now.
Half a minute to contact. Switching recorder and timer to high speed. Just rechecked position angle to make sure I’m looking at the right spot on the Sun’s limb. Using power of five hundred – image perfectly steady even at this low elevation.
Four thirty-two. Any moment now …
There it is … there it is! I can hardly believe it! A tiny black dent in the edge of the Sun … growing, growing, growing …
Hello, Earth. Look up at me, the brightest star in your sky, straight overhead at midnight….
Recorder back to slow.
Four thirty-five. It’s as if a thumb is pushing into the Sun’s edge, deeper and deeper…. Fascinating to watch …
Four forty-one. Exactly halfway. The Earth’s a perfect black semicircle – a clean bite out of the Sun. As if some disease is eating it away …
Four forty-eight. Ingress three-quarters complete.
Four hours forty-nine minutes thirty seconds. Recorder on high speed again.
The line of contact with the Sun’s edge is shrinking fast. Now it’s a barely visible black thread. In a few seconds, the whole Earth will be superimposed on the Sun.
Now I can see the effects of the atmosphere. There’s a thin halo of light surrounding that black hole in the Sun. Strange to think that I’m seeing the glow of all the sunsets – and all the sunrises – that are taking place around the whole Earth at this very moment….
Ingress complete – four hours fifty minutes five seconds. The whole world has moved onto the face of the Sun. A perfectly circular black disc silhouetted against that inferno ninety million miles below. It looks bigger than I expected; one could easily mistake it for a fair-sized sunspot.
Nothing more to see now for six hours, when the Moon appears, trailing Earth by half the Sun’s width. I’ll beam the recorder data back to Lunacom, then try to get some sleep.
My very last sleep. Wonder if I’ll need drugs. It seems a pity to waste these last few hours, but I want to conserve my strength – and my oxygen.
I think it was Dr Johnson who said that nothing settles a man’s mind so wonderfully as the knowledge that he’ll be hanged in the morning. How the hell did he know?
Ten hours thirty minutes Ephemeris Time. Dr Johnson was right. I had only one pill, and don’t remember any dreams.
The condemned man also ate a hearty breakfast. Cut that out …
Back at the telescope. Now the Earth’s halfway across the disc, passing well north of centre. In ten minutes, I should see the Moon.
I’ve just switched to the highest power of the telescope – two thousand. The image is slightly fuzzy, but still fairly good; atmospheric halo very distinct. I’m hoping to see the cities on the dark side of Earth….
No luck. Probably too many clouds. A pity; it’s theoretically possible, but we never succeeded. I wish … never mind.
Ten hours forty minutes. Recorder on slow speed. Hope I’m looking at the right spot.
Fifteen seconds to go. Recorder fast.
Damn – missed it. Doesn’t matter – the recorder will have caught the exact moment. There’s a little black notch already in the side of the Sun. First contact must have been about ten hours forty-one minutes twenty seconds ET.
What a long way it is between Earth and Moon; there’s half the width of the Sun between them. You wouldn’t think the two bodies had anything to do with each other. Makes you realise just how big the Sun really is….
Ten hours forty-four minutes. The Moon’s exactly halfway over the edge. A very small, very clear-cut semicircular bite out of the edge of the Sun.
Ten hours forty-seven minutes five seconds. Internal contact. The Moon’s clear of the edge, entirely inside the Sun. Don’t suppose I can see anything on the night side, but I’ll increase the power.
That’s funny.
Well, well. Someone must be trying to talk to me; there’s a tiny light pulsing away there on the darkened face of the moon. Probably the laser at Imbrium Base.
Sorry, everyone. I’ve said all my goodbyes, and don’t want to go through that again. Nothing can be important now.
Still, it’s almost hypnotic – that flickering point of light, coming out of the face of the Sun itself. Hard to believe that, even after it’s travelled all this distance, the beam is only a hundred miles wide. Lunacom’s going to all this trouble to aim it exactly at me, and I suppose I should feel guilty at ignoring it. But I don’t. I’ve nearly finished my work, and the things of Earth are no longer any concern of mine.
Ten hours fifty minutes. Recorder off. That’s it – until the end of Earth transit, two hours from now.
I’ve had a snack and am taking my last look at the view from the observation bubble. The Sun’s still high, so there’s not much contrast, but the light brings out all the colours vividly – the countless varieties of red and pink and crimson, so startling against the deep blue of the sky. How different from the Moon – though that, too, has its own beauty.
It’s strange how surprising the obvious can be. Everyone knew that Mars was red. But we didn’t really expect the red of rust, the red of blood. Like the Painted Desert of Arizona; after a while, the eye longs for green.
To the north, there is one welcome change of colour; the cap of carbon-dioxide snow on Mount Burroughs is a dazzling white pyramid. That’s another surprise. Burroughs is twenty-five thousand feet above Mean Datum; when I was a boy, there weren’t supposed to be any mountains on Mars….
The nearest sand dune is a quarter of a mile away, and it, too, has patches of frost on its shaded slope. During the last storm, we thought it moved a few feet, but we couldn’t be sure. Certainly the dunes are moving, like those on Earth. One day, I suppose, this base will be covered – only to reappear again in a thousand years. Or ten thousand.
That strange group of rocks – the Elephant, the Capitol, the Bishop – still holds its secrets, and teases me with the memory of our first big disappointment. We could have sworn that they were sedimentary; how eagerly we rushed out to look for fossils! Even now, we don’t know what
formed that outcropping. The geology of Mars is still a mass of contradictions and enigmas….
We have passed on enough problems to the future, and those who come after us will find many more. But there’s one mystery we never reported to Earth, or even entered in the log….
The first night after we landed, we took turns keeping watch. Brennan was on duty, and woke me up soon after midnight. I was annoyed – it was ahead of time – and then he told me that he’d seen a light moving around the base of the Capitol.
We watched for at least an hour, until it was my turn to take over. But we saw nothing; whatever that light was, it never reappeared.
Now Brennan was as levelheaded and unimaginative as they come; if he said he saw a light, then he saw one. Maybe it was some kind of electric discharge, or the reflection of Phobos on a piece of sand-polished rock. Anyway, we decided not to mention it to Lunacom, unless we saw it again.
Since I’ve been alone, I’ve often awakened in the night and looked out toward the rocks. In the feeble illumination of Phobos and Deimos, they remind me of the skyline of a darkened city. And it has always remained darkened. No lights have ever appeared for me….
*
Twelve hours forty-nine minutes Ephemeris Time. The last act’s about to begin. Earth has nearly reached the edge of the Sun. The two narrow horns of light that still embrace it are barely touching….
Recorder on fast.
Contact! Twelve hours fifty minutes sixteen seconds. The crescents of light no longer meet. A tiny black spot has appeared at the edge of the Sun, as the Earth begins to cross it. It’s growing longer, longer….
Recorder on slow. Eighteen minutes to wait before Earth finally clears the face of the Sun.
The Moon still has more than halfway to go; it’s not yet reached the midpoint of its transit. It looks like a little round blob of ink, only a quarter the size of Earth. And there’s no light flickering there any more. Lunacom must have given up.
Collected Stories Of Arthur C. Clarke Page 130