Tales of the Grand Tour

by Ben Bova

  “Yeah,” Dex snapped. “I’m fine.”

  “Kinda noisy out there, ain’t it?”

  “It sure is.”

  “Don’t let it spook you, kid. We’re safe as can be inside here.”

  Dex knew Craig was trying to reassure him, calm him. He knew he should be grateful to Wiley. Instead he felt angry that the older man had called him “kid.” And ashamed to be caught in his terror.

  The wind quieted a bit. The shrieking softened. Maybe it’s over, Dex thought. Maybe it’s winding down.

  He lay back on his sweat-soaked pillow and closed his eyes again. But the instant he did, the wind gusted again with a furious scream. Dex felt the rover rock.

  He bolted up to a sitting position and pounded the mattress with both fists, almost sobbing. Leave me alone! Leave me alone! Go away and leave me alone, please, please, please.

  The wind continued to howl, though. If anything, it got louder.

  Blearily, he shuffled up to the rover’s cockpit and slumped into the right-hand seat. Let’s see what’s happening at the dome. Talk to somebody. Anybody. Take your mind off this mother-humpin’ storm.

  Stacy’s stolid, fleshy face filled the tiny screen on the control panel. The picture was streaked, grainy, but she looked surprised.

  “Dex?”

  “Yeah,” he said softly, not wanting to wake Craig again. “Too noisy out here to sleep. How’s everything there?”

  Dezhurova spoke with Dex for a few seconds, then realized that Trumball merely wanted to chat because he could not sleep in the midst of the storm. Reception was weak; his video kept breaking up. Probably dust is piling up on his antennas, she thought. She kept on talking with him, but turned her real attention to the monitoring screens and continued checking the environmental conditions in the garden bubble.

  Temperature below nominal, she saw. That should not be. Air pressure was falling, too.

  Her breath caught in her throat. Without even thinking about Dex, still jabbering on the main comm screen, Stacy grabbed the loudspeaker mike and bellowed: “Emergency! The garden dome is ripping apart!”

  Dex gaped at the tiny comm screen.

  “Jamie, everyone—the garden dome is ripping apart!” Dezhurova repeated, roaring like the crack of doom. “We need everyone, right now!”

  Then the comm screen went dark.

  Dex sat in the rover’s cockpit, icy sweat trickling down his ribs, staring at the dead comm screen.

  My god almighty, he thought, panting with mounting terror as he sat in the shadows. If the garden bubble goes, the main dome could go, too. Then we’d all be dead.

  Mitsuo Fuchida lay in his bunk, staring up into the darkness, listening to the wind and the accompanying creaks and groans of the dome.

  It’s like being on a ship at sea, he said to himself, except that it doesn’t rock.

  He had considered taking a tranquilizer before going to bed, but decided that he would not need one. He had looked death in the face, back at the lava tube on Olympus Mons. This windstorm held no more terrors for him. Death will come or not, he thought. What cannot be controlled must be accepted.

  Still, he lay awake listening to the storm until he heard Stacy’s shout: “Emergency! The garden dome is ripping apart! We need everyone, right now!”

  Automatically he leaped out of bed, a stab of pain from his injured ankle shooting through his leg. Awkward with the bandaged ankle, Fuchida limped to the comm center. Jamie, Vijay, Rodriguez, and Trudy Hall were also hurrying there, each of them hastily pulling on rumpled coveralls as they ran.

  “The garden dome has been punctured,” Stacy said, jabbing a thick finger at the monitor screen.

  “Camera view,” Jamie snapped, slipping into the wheeled chair beside her.

  He peered at the screen. “Can’t see anything—wait, the dome fabric is rippling.”

  “Pressure and temperature both falling rapidly,” Dezhurova said, an unaccustomed edge of fear in her voice.

  “The plants will die!” Trudy was saying, her voice pitched high, frightened. “The nighttime temperature—”

  “I know, I know,” Jamie snapped. Turning toward Rodriguez, he said, “We have spare cans of epoxy, don’t we? Where are they?”

  Rodriguez bent over one of the unused consoles and punched at its keyboard, then started scrolling through a list so fast it looked like a blur.

  He saw what he wanted and froze the display. “Repair epoxy,” he said, pointing to the screen. “It’s stored in locker seventeen, A shelf.”

  “Go get it,” Jamie commanded. “As much as you can carry.”

  Rodriguez brushed past Fuchida as he raced out of the comm center, staggering the limping biologist. Vijay headed out, too. “I’ll help Tommy,” she called over her shoulder.

  Jamie jumped up from his chair. “Stacy, get suited up. Trudy, you help her. Mitsuo, take over the comm chair.”

  “Where are you going?” Stacy demanded.

  As he rushed out into the dome’s dimly lit central area, Jamie said, “We’ve got to slap some temporary patches on the holes in the dome, if they’re not already too bad.”

  “You can’t go in there!” Trudy yelped.

  “Somebody’s got to stop the leak before it gets worse.”

  “Wait for Tómas,” Dezhurova said. “The epoxy—”

  “No time!” Jamie snapped, sprinting away from them. He headed for the airlock as they yelled after him.

  “Get Stacy suited up!” he yelled back. “Mitsuo! Turn on all the lights in there!”

  The dome flared into daytime brightness as Jamie reached the airlock that connected to the garden. Not in here, Mitsuo, Jamie corrected silently. In the garden, for the sake of Christ!

  The pressure on the other side of the airlock had not fallen so low that the lock automatically sealed, Jamie realized as he pushed through the double hatches. Not yet, he told himself.

  It was cold inside the garden. Jamie shivered involuntarily as he stepped in. The wind shrieked louder and the dome fabric was flapping noisily, like a sail luffing in the breeze. At least the full-spectrum sun-lamps were on. Mitsuo heard me after all.

  The emergency patches were stored in a closed box next to the airlock hatch. Tearing it open and grabbing a double handful of the thin plastic sheets, Jamie thought that they should have learned their lesson from the first expedition and scattered the sheets on the floor around the dome’s perimeter.

  Now he released them and saw them flutter in the air currents, then slap themselves against a pair of puncture holes on the far side of the dome.

  Rodriguez boiled through the hatch, a big spray can of epoxy in each hand. He looked like a two-gun frontier sheriff, grim and determined.

  “I’ll take them,” Jamie said over the shrieking wind. “No sense both of us risking—”

  “You’re not gonna be the only hero tonight,” Rodriguez said, pushing past Jamie and heading for the spots where the temporary patches were fluttering against the side of the dome.

  Vijay stepped through with more cans. Jamie grabbed one from her and they both ran after Rodriguez.

  The plants didn’t look too bad, Jamie thought, glancing at the rows of hydroponics trays. But what the hell do I know? Green leaves, mostly curled tight. Are the ones closest to the rips drooping more than the others? Christ, some of them look gray!

  “I think we got it sealed,” Rodriguez said, after a furious few minutes of spraying.

  Jamie looked around. The dome had stopped flapping. Fuchida must be pumping more air in here, keeping the pressure up. The wind outside sounded just as loud, maybe even louder, but now the dome’s plastic structure seemed rigid, safe.

  “Maybe you’re right,” he said cautiously.

  “It’s cold in here,” Vijay said, hugging herself.

  “Go and tell Mitsuo to goose up the heaters,” Jamie instructed. “Tómas, let’s spray the whole perimeter of the bubble, down here where the fabric joins with the flooring. If there’s going to be any more pr
oblems, that’s where they’ll happen.”

  “Right,” said Rodriguez.

  Just then Dezhurova clomped in, buttoned up in her hard suit.

  “We got it under control,” Rodriguez shouted happily at her.

  She raised her visor and glowered at him. Rodriguez laughed.

  “Stacy,” Jamie said, “I want you and Tómas to check the integrity of the dome. Spray anything that looks like a potential leak.”

  “The epoxy is not transparent. It will cut down on the sunshine the plants receive.”

  “That’s okay. The lamps can make up for lack of sunlight, temporarily. The important thing is to ensure the dome’s integrity.”

  Trudy Hall stepped through the airlock hatch. “Oh, my lord! The tomatoes are ruined!”

  Jamie grabbed her by the arm. “Trudy, you and Mitsuo should check out all the plants, see how much damage has been done. I’ll take over at the comm center.”

  “All right, certainly.” She rushed to the trays of plants at the far side of the dome.

  Jamie was still at the comm console when the sun finally came up and the others began to stir. The wind was still yowling outside, but with the sunrise the visibility outside improved somewhat. In the screens that showed the outside camera views Jamie could see that the planes were all still there, although one of the soarplane’s wings seemed bent oddly. One of the cameras had ceased functioning, but otherwise everything seemed to be in reasonably good shape.

  Red sky at morning, he thought.

  “Want some coffee?”

  It was Vijay, standing at the comm center doorway with a steaming mug in her hands.

  “Good idea,” said Jamie, reaching for it.

  “How is everything?” she asked, sliding into the chair next to his.

  “We’re in reasonably good shape.”

  “How much damage to the garden was there?”

  “Trudy was almost in tears over the tomatoes and some of the soybeans, but most of the plants are all right. We caught the leak in time.”

  “We won’t have to pack up and go home, then?”

  He shook his head slowly. “No. We might have to go without soyburgers for a while, but the garden will still feed us.”

  “That was a very brave thing you did, dashing in there like that.”

  Jamie felt his brows hike up. He didn’t feel very brave. With a shrug he replied, “Seemed like the right thing to do. We had to get those patches in place.”

  “You could have been killed.”

  “I never even thought of that,” he confessed. “It all happened so fast . . .”

  “You’re a bloody hero, Jamie.” She wasn’t joking, he saw. She was in dead earnest.

  Feeling suddenly uncomfortable, Jamie changed the subject. “I haven’t been able to raise Dex and Wiley yet.”

  “You expected that, di’n’t you?”

  He nodded. “Probably a lot of dust on their antennas by now. We’ll just have to be patient.”

  “You’re good at that,” she said, with a smile.

  He caught her implication. “It’s a lot more fun being patient with you than with them,” he said, low and swift, afraid of being overheard.

  Before she could reply, Rodriguez burst in, white teeth gleaming in a huge grin. “Well, we made it through the night,” he said, then burst into hearty laughter.

  Jamie threw a perplexed glance at Vijay, who shrugged her shoulders.

  “You were terrific, boss,” the astronaut said, beaming at Jamie. “Saved our necks, man.”

  Jamie shook his head, but Vijay nodded agreement. “If the garden had gone, we’d have to pack up and leave, wouldn’t we?”

  “Maybe,” Jamie conceded. “Anyway, the garden’s going to be all right. So let’s get on with the program, okay?”

  “Right!” Rodriguez said. “You had breakfast yet, boss? I’m hungry enough to eat a Martian buffalo.”

  From the doorway, Stacy Dezhurova snapped, “You’ll have to find one first, Tómas.”

  “Lemme grab some juice,” Rodriguez said, still grinning buoyantly, “then I’ll spell you at the console while you guys grab breakfast.”

  “I thought you were starving,” Jamie said, getting up from the chair.

  “Yeah, I know, but I can wait. You guys go eat. I’ll hold the fort here.”

  Jamie looked to Dezhurova, who said, “I’ll get your juice, Tómas.”

  “Okay, thanks.”

  Jamie said. “Well, if you’re going to take over, see if you can raise Craig and Dex.”

  “Right.” Rodriguez sat heavily on the little chair, making it roll away from the console a few feet.

  As he went to the galley with Vijay and Dezhurova, Jamie wondered aloud, “Tómas sure is chipper this morning. He must have had a good restful sleep.”

  Dezhurova sputtered into laughter. “Not exactly.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Stacy looked up into Jamie’s face. “Didn’t you hear them? Him and Trudy? They were at it all night long.”

  Inadvertently, Jamie glanced at Vijay, who was trying to suppress a smirk.

  “At least you two are quiet about it,” Stacy went on, matter-of-factly. “My cubicle is next to Trudy’s. Tom was snorting all night like Ferdinand the Bull. He even drowned out the storm.”

  Vijay broke out in laughter.

  They had just started to eat breakfast when Fuchida limped up to the table, looking distressed.

  “What’s wrong, Mitsuo?” Jamie asked.

  “Am I the only one who wonders why the garden dome began to rip apart?” he asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  The biologist sat across from Jamie and Vijay and propped his bandaged ankle on an empty chair.

  “How can the dust rip the bubble fabric?” he asked, like a professor posing a problem for his class.

  Dezhurova got up from the table. “I promised Tómas I would bring him juice,” she remembered. “He probably needs it.”

  Fuchida did not catch her insinuation. “The bubble’s plastic cannot be punctured by dust particles,” he said quietly, firmly. “Yet the fabric was punctured.”

  “I thought it ripped along the base where it connects with the flooring,” Jamie said.

  “No,” Fuchida replied, raising one finger for emphasis. “There are two small punctures. If not repaired so quickly, they would have grown into a rip that would have torn the entire dome off its foundation.”

  “But we did catch it in time,” Vijay said. “Jamie did, that is.”

  Fuchida acknowledged the fact with a small dip of his chin. “Still, we must ask how the dome was punctured.”

  Jamie suggested, “Small rocks blown by the wind?”

  “I doubt it,” the biologist said.

  “Then how?”

  “I don’t know. But it troubles me. The dome should not have failed. That plastic fabric has been tested under much more severe conditions in laboratory simulations. It should not have failed.”

  “Yet it did,” Vijay said, almost in a whisper.

  “It did indeed.” Fuchida looked like a prosecuting attorney to Jamie. Suspicious, almost angry.

  “Well,” Jamie said, “I don’t know how it failed, but we ought to figure out some way of making certain it doesn’t happen again.”

  “Hey buddy,” Craig said cheerfully, “we made it through the night.”

  From across the narrow table between their bunks, Dex nodded glumly. He felt exhausted, sleepless eyes gummy, coveralls rumpled and stinking of fear.

  The wind was still screeching outside. Particles of iron-cored grit were still grinding against the rover’s thin skin, like an endless army of soldier ants working tirelessly to break through their defenses and come in and devour them.

  “Communications’re out, of course,” Craig added.

  “Of course,” said Dex blearily.

  “Soon’s the wind dies down to less’n a hundred knots we’ll go outside and dust off the antennas. Squirt a signal back to base
, let ’em know we’re okay.”

  “If they’re okay,” Dex replied gloomily.

  “They’ll be all right,” said Craig. “That big dome’s built like the Rock of Gibraltar. Been through dust storms before, y’know. Been settin’ out there more’n six years, after all.”

  “I suppose so,” Dex admitted.

  Unbidden, his mind was cataloguing all the things that might not be okay. If the covers had ripped off during the night, the solar cells could be scratched and pitted so badly they’d be useless. The fuel cells were already down to zero; they were living off the batteries. The gritty dust could have worked its way into the wheel bearings, immobilizing them completely. Then we’ll have a choice of starving or suffocating, Dex thought. Or the dust could have scoured the antennas so badly their comm systems would be completely shot. Then we couldn’t navigate, couldn’t get positioning data from the satellites; we’d be lost out here forever.

  Or the whole frigging base dome might have blown down during the night, he added.

  “Hey!” Craig snapped. “You listenin’?”

  “Sorry,” Dex said, trying to sit up a little straighter.

  “I said we’d better stick to a cold breakfast. No sense drainin’ the batteries by usin’ the microwave.”

  “I’ll get breakfast,” Dex said, pushing himself up from his bunk. “You can do the systems check.”

  “Already did that. After breakfast we power down. Shut off the freezer, let it coast; food’ll keep cold inside okay. Air fans on low. Lights to minimum. Until we get the solar panels uncovered and workin’ again.”

  “If they’ll work again,” Dex muttered as he went back to the compact stand of racks that served as the rover’s galley.

  “Didn’t get much sleep last night, huh?”

  “How’d you guess?” Dex pulled out the first two cereal packages he could reach.

  “Listen, kid, the worst is over. Storm’s peterin’ out now. In another couple hours—”

  Dex whirled on him. “You listen, pal! You don’t like being called Possum? Well I don’t like being called kid. Got that?”

  “Then stop behavin’ like a kid,” Craig shot back, scowling.

  Dex started to reply, but found he had no answer for the older man.