by Ben Bova
“I can tap some from the jumper’s propellant tank.”
“But that’s crazy! You’ll get yourself stranded!”
“Maybe.” It’s an Air Force secret. No discharge; just transferred to the space agency. If they find out about it now I’ll be finished. Everybody’ll know. No place to hide . . . newspapers, TV, everybody!
“You’re going to kill yourself over that priest. And you’ll be killing me, too!”
“He’s probably dead by now,” Kinsman said. “I’ll just put a marker beacon there so another crew can get him when the time comes. I won’t be long.”
“But the regulations!”
“They were written Earthside. The brass never planned on something like this. I’ve got to go back, just to make sure.”
He flew the jumper back down the crater’s terraced inner slope, leaning over the platform railing to look for his marker beacons as well as listening to their tinny radio beeping. His radio link with Bok was cut off now that he was inside the crater. In a few minutes he was easing the spraddle-legged platform down on the last terrace before the helpless priest.
“Father Lemoyne.”
Kinsman stepped off the jumper and made it to the edge of the fissure in four lunar strides. The white shell was inert, the lone arm unmoving.
“Father Lemoyne!”
Kinsman held his breath and listened. Nothing . . . wait . . . the faintest, faintest breathing noise. More like gasping. Quick, shallow, desperate.
“You’re dead,” Kinsman heard himself mutter. “Give it up. You’re finished. Even if I could get you out of there, you’d be dead before I could get you back to the base.”
The plastic dome atop the suit was opaque to him; he only saw the reflected spot of his own helmet lamp. But his mind filled with the shocked face he once saw in another visor, a face that had just realized it was dead.
He looked away, out to the too-close horizon and the uncompromising stars beyond. Then he remembered the rest of it.
They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
Between stars—on stars where no human race is.
I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places.
Like an automaton Kinsman turned back to the jumper. His mind was blank now. Without thought, without even feeling, he rigged a line from the jumper’s tiny winch to the metal lugs protruding from the canister-suit’s chest. Then he took apart the platform railing and wedged three rejoined sections into the fissure above the fallen man, to form a hoisting angle. Looping the line over the projecting arm, he started the winch.
He climbed down into the fissure and set himself as solidly as he could on the scoured-smooth rock. He grabbed the priest’s armored shoulders and guided the oversized canister up from the crevice while the winch strained silently.
The railing arm gave way when the priest was only partway up and Kinsman felt the full weight of the monstrous suit crush down on him. He sank to his knees, gritting his teeth to keep from crying out.
Then the winch took up the slack. Grunting, fumbling, pushing, Kinsman scrabbled up the rocky slope with his arms wrapped halfway around the big canister’s middle. He let the winch drag them both to the jumper’s edge, then reached out an arm almost numb from exertion and shut the motor.
With only a hard breath’s pause, Kinsman snapped down the suit’s supporting legs so the priest could stay upright even though unconscious. Then he clambered onto the platform and took the oxygen line from the rocket engine’s tankage. Kneeling at the bulbous suit’s shoulders, he plugged the line into the priest’s emergency air tank.
The older man coughed once. That was all.
Kinsman leaned back on his heels. His faceplate was fogging over again, or was it fatigue blurring his sight?
The regenerator was hopelessly smashed, he saw. The old bird must’ve been breathing his own juices. When the emergency tank registered full, he disconnected the oxygen line and plugged into the special fitting below the regenerator.
“If you’re dead, this is probably going to kill me, too,” Kinsman said. He purged the entire suit, forcing the contaminated fumes out and replacing them with oxygen that the jumper’s rocket needed to get them back to the base.
He was close enough now to see through the canister’s tinted dome. The priest’s face was grizzled, eyes closed. Its usual smile was gone; the mouth hung open limply.
Kinsman hauled him up onto the railless platform and strapped him down onto the deck. Then he went to the control podium and inched the throttle forward just enough to give them the barest minimum of life.
The jumper almost made it to the crest before its rocket engine died and bumped them gently on one of the terraces. There was a small emergency tank of oxygen that could have carried them a little farther, Kinsman knew. But he and the priest would need it for breathing.
“Wonder how many Jesuits have been carried home on their shields?” he asked himself as he unbolted the section of decking that the priest was lying on. By threading the winch line through the bolt holes he made a sort of sled, which he carefully lowered to the ground. Then he took down the emergency oxygen tank and strapped it to the deck section, too.
Kinsman wrapped the line around his fists and leaned against the burden. Even in the moon’s light gravity it was like trying to haul a truck.
“Down to less than one horsepower,” he grunted, straining forward.
For once he was glad that the rocks had been scoured smooth by micrometeors. He would climb a few steps, wedge himself as firmly as he could, then drag the sled up to him. It took a painful half-hour to reach the ringwall crest.
He could see the base again, tiny and remote as a dream. “All downhill from here,” he mumbled.
He thought he heard a groan.
“That’s it,” he said, pushing the sled over the crest, down the gentle outward slope. “That’s it. Stay with it. Don’t you die on me. Don’t you put me through this for nothing.”
“Kinsman!” Bok’s voice. “Are you all right?”
The sled skidded against a yard-high rock. Scrambling after it, Kinsman answered, “I’m bringing him in. Just shut up and leave us alone. I think he’s alive. Now stop wasting my breath.”
Pull it free. Push to get it started downhill again. Strain to hold it back . . . don’t let it get away from you. Haul it out of craterlets. Watch your step, don’t fall.
“Too damned much uphill in this downhill.”
Once he sprawled flat and knocked his helmet against the edge of the improvised sled. He must have blacked out for a moment. Weakly, he dragged himself up to the oxygen tank and refilled his suit’s supply. Then he checked the priest’s suit and topped off his tank.
“Can’t do that again,” he said to the silent priest. “Don’t know if we’ll make it. Maybe we can. If neither one of us has sprung a leak. Maybe . . .”
Time slid away from him. The past and future dissolved into an endless now, a forever of pain and struggle, with the heat of his toil welling up in Kinsman drenchingly.
“Why don’t you say something?” Kinsman panted at the priest. “You can’t die. Understand me? You can’t die! I’ve got to explain it to you. . . . I didn’t mean to kill her. I didn’t even know she was a woman. You can’t tell, can’t even see a face until you’re too close. She must’ve been just as scared as I was. She tried to kill me. I was inspecting their satellite . . . how’d I know their cosmonaut was just a scared kid? I could’ve pushed her off, didn’t have to kill her. But the first thing I knew I was ripping her air line open. I didn’t know she was a woman, not until it was too late. It doesn’t make any difference, but I didn’t know. I didn’t know.”
They reached the foot of the ringwall and Kinsman dropped to his knees. “Couple more miles now . . . straightaway . . . only a couple more . . . miles.” His vision blurred and something in his head was buzzing angrily.
Staggering to his feet, he lifted the line over his shoulder and slo
gged ahead. He could just make out the lighted tip of the base’s radio mast.
“Leave him, Chet,” Bok’s voice pleaded from somewhere. “You can’t make it unless you leave him.”
“Shut . . . up.”
One step after another. Don’t think, don’t count. Blank your mind. Be a mindless plow horse. Plod along. One step at a time. Steer for the radio mast. . . . Just a few . . . more . . . miles.
“Don’t die on me. Don’t you . . . die on me. You’re my ticket back. Don’t die on me, priest . . . don’t die . . .”
It all went dark. First in spots, then totally. Kinsman caught a glimpse of the barren landscape tilting weirdly, then the grave stars slid across his field of view, then darkness.
“I tried,” he heard himself say in a far, far distant voice. “I tried.”
For a heartbeat or two he felt himself falling, dropping effortlessly into blackness. Then even that sensation died and he felt nothing at all.
A faint vibration buzzed at him. The darkness started to shift, turn gray at the edges. Kinsman opened his eyes and saw the low, curved ceiling of the underground base. The noise was the electrical machinery that lit and warmed and pumped good air through the tight little shelter.
“You okay?” Bok leaned over him, his chubby face frowning with worry.
Kinsman weakly nodded.
“Father Lemoyne’s going to pull through,” Bok said, stepping out of the cramped space between bunks. The priest was awake but unmoving, his eyes staring blankly upward. His canister suit had been removed and one arm was covered with a plastic cast.
Bok explained, “I’ve been getting instructions from the medics Earthside. They’re sending a team up on a high-g burn, should be here in another thirty hours. He’s in shock, and his arm’s broken. Otherwise he seems pretty good . . . exhausted, but no permanent damage.”
Kinsman pulled himself up to a sitting position on the bunk and leaned his back against the curving metal wall. His helmet and boots were off, but he was still wearing the rest of his space suit.
“You went out and got us,” he realized.
Bok nodded. “You were less than a mile away. I could hear you on the radio. Then you stopped talking. I had to go out.”
“You saved my life.”
“And you saved the priest’s.”
Kinsman stopped a moment, remembering. “I did a lot of raving out there, didn’t I?”
“Uh . . . yeah.”
“Any of it intelligible?”
Bok wormed his shoulders uncomfortably. “Sort of. It’s, uh . . . it all went back to Houston, you know. All radio conversations. It’s automatic. Nothing I could do about it.”
That’s it. Now everybody knows.
“You haven’t heard the best of it,” Bok said, trying to brighten up. He went to the shelf at the end of the priest’s bunk and took a little plastic container. “Look at this.”
Kinsman took the container in both his hands. Inside was a tiny fragment of ice, half melted into water.
“It was stuck in the cleats of one of his boots. It’s really water! Tests out okay. I even snuck a taste of it. It’s water all right.”
“He found it after all,” Kinsman said. “He’ll get into the history books now.” And he’ll have to watch his pride even more.
Bok sank into the shelter’s only chair. “Chet, about what you said out there . . .”
Kinsman expected tension, but instead felt only numb. “I know. They heard it Earthside.”
“There’ve been rumors about an Air Force guy killing a cosmonaut during one of the military missions, but I never thought . . . I mean . . .”
“The priest figured it out,” said Kinsman. “Or at least he guessed it.”
“It must’ve been rough on you.”
“Not as rough as what happened to her.”
“What’ll they do about you?”
Kinsman shrugged. “I don’t know. It might get out to the media. Somebody’ll leak it. Probably I’ll be grounded. Unstable. It could get nasty.”
“I’m . . . sorry.” Bok’s voice trailed off helplessly.
“It doesn’t matter.”
Surprised, Kinsman realized that he meant it. He sat up straight. “It doesn’t matter anymore. They can do whatever they want to. I can handle it. Even if they ground me and throw me to the news media . . . I think I can deal with it. I did it, and it’s over with, and I can take whatever I have to take.”
Father Lemoyne’s free arm moved slightly. “It’s all right,” he whispered hoarsely. “It’s all right. I thought we were in hell, but it was only purgatory.”
The priest turned his face toward Kinsman. His gaze moved from the astronaut’s eyes to the plastic container still in Kinsman’s hands. “It’s all right,” he repeated, smiling. Then he closed his eyes and relaxed into sleep. But the smile remained, strangely gentle in that bearded, haggard face, ready to meet the world or eternity.
This excerpt from my novel Mars was originally written as an independent short story. Its protagonist is Jamie Waterman, the Navaho-Yankee geologist who is striving to be picked for the first human expedition to the red planet.
It’s an incredibly tough competition, trying to be the one person out of all the geologists on Earth to win that coveted appointment. Jamie—and all the other Mars hopefuls—must face all kinds of physical and psychological tests, from desert survival trials to stints in Antarctica to mandatory appendectomies.
Even after he’s on the inside track for the Mars expedition there are hurdles he must overcome. As here, in the search for Muzhestvo.
MUZHESTVO
As they drove along the river, Yuri Zavgorodny gestured with his free hand.
“Like your New Mexico, no?” he asked in his hesitant English.
Jamie Waterman unconsciously rubbed his side. They had taken the stitches out only yesterday and the incision still felt sore.
“New Mexico,” Zavgorodny repeated. “Like this? Yes?”
Jamie almost answered, “No.” But the mission administrators had warned them all to be as diplomatic as possible with the Russians—and everyone else.
“Sort of,” Jamie murmured.
“Yes?” asked Zavgorodny over the rush of the searing wind blowing through the car windows.
“Yes,” said Jamie.
The flat brown countryside stretching out beyond the river looked nothing like New Mexico. The sky was a washed-out pale blue, the desert bleak and empty in every direction. This is an old, tired land, Jamie said to himself as he squinted against the baking hot wind. Used up. Dried out. Nothing like the vivid mountains and bold skies of his home. New Mexico was a new land, raw and magic and mystical. This dull dusty desert out here is ancient; it’s been worn flat by too many armies marching across it.
“Like Mars,” said one of the other Russians. His voice was a deep rumble, where Zavgorodny’s was reedy, like a snake-charmer’s flute. Jamie had been quickly introduced to all four of them but the only name that stuck was Zavgorodny’s.
Christ, I hope Mars isn’t this dull, Jamie said to himself.
Yesterday Jamie had been at Bethesda Naval Hospital, having the stitches from his appendectomy removed. All the Mars mission trainees had their appendixes taken out. Mission regulations. No sense risking an attack of appendicitis twenty million miles from the nearest hospital. Even though the decisions about who would actually go to Mars had not been made yet, everyone lost his or her appendix.
“Where are we going?” Jamie asked. “Where are you taking me?”
It was Sunday, supposedly a day of rest even for the men and women who were training to fly to Mars. Especially for a new arrival, jet-lagged and bearing a fresh scar on his belly. But the four cosmonauts had roused Jamie from his bed at the hotel and insisted that he come with them.
“Airport,” said the deep-voiced cosmonaut on Jamie’s left. He was jammed into the backseat, sandwiched between two of the Russians, sweaty, body odor pungent despite the sharp scent of strong soap
. Two more rode up front, Zavgorodny at the wheel.
Like a gang of Mafia hit men taking me for a ride, Jamie thought. The Russians smiled at one another a lot, grinning as they talked among themselves and hiking their eyebrows significantly. Something was up. And they were not going to tell the American geologist about it until they were damned good and ready.
They were solidly built men, all four of them. Short and thickset. Like Jamie himself, although the Russians were much lighter in complexion than Jamie’s half-Navaho skin.
“Is this official business?” he had asked them when they pounded on his hotel door at the crack of dawn.
“No business,” Zavgorodny had replied while the other three grinned broadly. “Pleasure. Fun.”
Fun for them, maybe, Jamie grumbled to himself as the car hummed along the concrete of the empty highway. The river curved off to their left. The wind carried the smell of sun-baked dust. The old town of Tyuratam and Leninsk, the new city built for the space engineers and cosmonauts, was miles behind them now.
“Why are we going to the airport?” Jamie asked.
The one on his right side laughed aloud. “For fun. You will see.”
“Yes,” said the one on his left. “For much fun.”
Jamie had been a Mars trainee for little more than six months. This was his first trip to Russia—to Kazakhstan, really—although his schedule had already whisked him to Australia, Alaska, French Guiana, and Spain. There had been endless physical examinations, tests of his reflexes, his strength, his eyesight, his judgment. They had probed his teeth and pronounced them in excellent shape, then sliced his appendix out of him.
And now a quartet of cosmonauts he’d never met before was taking him in the early morning hours of a quiet Sunday for a drive to Outer Nowhere, Kazakhstan.
For much fun.
There had been precious little fun in the training for Mars. A lot of competition among the scientists, since only sixteen would eventually make the flight: sixteen out of more than two hundred trainees. Jamie realized that the competition must be equally fierce among the cosmonauts and astronauts.