Tales of the Grand Tour

by Ben Bova

  “You’re scared, okay. I am, too. What th’ hell, we’re stranded out here in the middle of downtown Mars. For all I know we’re covered with sand twelve feet deep and ever’body in the base is dead. Okay! We’ll have to deal with that. You do what you can do. You don’t sit around mopin’ and grumblin’ like some teenager with an acne problem.”

  Despite himself, Dex laughed. “Is that what I’ve been doing?”

  Still sitting on his bunk, Craig’s leathery face rearranged itself into a small smile. He nodded. “Sort of,” he said.

  “I’m scared, Wiley,” he admitted. “I don’t want to die out here.”

  “Shit, buddy, I don’t want to die at all.”

  As he put both cereal packages on the table, Dex said, “Maybe we ought to go outside and see how bad the damage is.”

  “Still blowin’ pretty strong out there. Be better to wait a couple hours.”

  “I’ll go nuts sitting in here with nothing to do but listen to that wind.”

  Craig nodded. “Hmm. Yeah, me, too.”

  “So?”

  “So let’s have us a nice leisurely breakfast and then take our time suitin’ up.”

  “Good,” said Dex, feeling some of the fear ease away. Not all of it. But he felt better than he had during the night.

  “Not as bad as it could’ve been,” Craig pronounced. But his voice sounded heavy, unhappy, in Dex’s earphones.

  The sky was still gray, sullen. The wind was still keening, although nowhere near as loud as it had been. Dex was surprised that inside the hard suit he felt no push from the wind at all. He had expected to have to lean over hard and force himself forward, like a man struggling through a gale. Instead, the thin Martian air might just as well have been totally calm.

  On one side the rover was half buried in rust-red sand. From the nose of the cockpit to the tail of the jointed vehicle’s third segment, the sand had piled up as high as the roof on the windward side.

  “Good thing the hatch was on the leeward side,” Dex said. “We might’ve had trouble getting it open if it was buried in this stuff.”

  “Naw, I don’t think so,” Craig answered, kicking at the pile. Dust flew like ashes, or like dry autumn leaves when a child scuffs at them.

  “Maybe.”

  “Besides,” Craig added, “I turned her so the hatch’d be on the sheltered side when we stopped for the night.”

  Dex blinked inside his helmet, trying to remember if he was driving then or Craig. Wiley’s not above taking credit for good luck, he thought.

  “Come on, let’s see what’s happened topside.”

  As they trudged around the rover, back to the side that was almost free of the dust, Dex could see that at least part of the makeshift coverings they had taped down over the solar panels had been blown loose. One sheet was flapping fitfully in the wind.

  As Craig climbed up the ladder next to the airlock hatch to inspect the solar panels, Dex caught sight of the most beautiful apparition he had seen on Mars: The dull gray dust-laden clouds thinned enough, for a few moments, for him to see the bright pink sky overhead. His heart leaped inside him. The storm’s breaking up! It’s breaking up at last.

  “Worse than I hoped for,” Craig’s voice grated in his earphones, “but better’n I was scared of.”

  Craig came down from the ladder. “We got some scratches and pittin’ up there where the tarp came loose. The rest of the panels look okay, though.”

  “Good,” said Dex, suddenly enthusiastic. “Listen, Wiley, I’m going to duck back inside and put on the VR rig. Nobody’s ever recorded a Martian dust storm before. This’ll make great viewing back home!”

  He heard Craig chuckling inside his helmet. Then the older man said, “Startin’ to get some of your spirit back on-line, huh?”

  “I . . .” Dex stopped, perplexed for a moment. Then he put a gloved hand on the shoulder of Craig’s suit. “Wiley, you really helped me. I was scared shitless back there, and you pulled me through it.”

  “You did it for yourself,” Craig said, “but I’ll be glad to take the credit for it.”

  Dex felt his insides go hollow.

  As if he sensed it, Craig said, “Don’t worry, son. What happened here is between you and me, nobody else.”

  “Thanks, Wiley.” The words sounded pitifully weak to Dex, compared to the enormous rush of gratitude and respect that he felt.

  “Okay,” Craig said gruffly. “Now before you start doin’ your VR stuff, let’s get the antennas cleaned off so we can tell Jamie and the gang that we’re okay.”

  Rodriguez gave a sudden whoop from the comm center.

  “Wiley’s calling in!”

  Jamie bolted up from the galley table while Vijay stayed to help the limping Fuchida. In the comm center Jamie saw Craig’s scruffy-bearded face on the main screen.

  “. . . solar panel output’s degraded by four-five percent,” Craig was reporting. “Coulda been a lot worse.”

  “What about the fuel cells?” Rodriguez asked.

  “Dex’s electrolyzing our extra water; gonna feed the hydrogen and oxy to ’em. That way we can rest the batteries.”

  Poking his head into the comm camera’s view, Jamie asked, “Do you have to dig yourselves out?”

  Craig looked very pleased. “Nope. The wheels and drive motors are all okay. We just put ’er in gear and pulled ourselves loose. We’re movin’ now.”

  “Wow!” Rodriguez exclaimed.

  “That’s great,” said Jamie, feeling genuinely pleased and relieved. “That’s just great, Wiley.”

  “Oughtta be at Ares Vallis in another three–four days,” Craig said. Then he added, “If the weather holds up.”

  Rodriguez laughed. “There’s not another storm in sight.”

  “Good.”

  When Craig signed off, Rodriguez began checking the telemetry from the rover and Jamie went back to the inventory list. The wind was still yowling outside like dead spirits begging to come in out of the cold.

  Jamie was tired, physically and emotionally drained, as he made his way back to the comm center for what must have been the hundredth time that day.

  As the storm wound down, he had spent most of the day in the greenhouse bubble, checking and rechecking the area that had been damaged. He had even suited up and gone outside to inspect the damaged areas without the emergency patches and epoxy covering them. It was hard to say, but the areas seemed to have been punctured, not torn. Of course, once punctured the plastic fabric began to rip along the seam where it connected to the foundation of the dome.

  What we need here is a forensic structural engineer, Jamie told himself. If there is such a person. Maybe Wiley could make some sense of it.

  He took dozens of photographs of the damaged areas and transmitted them back to Tarawa for their analysis. There was nothing more he could think to do, but he kept feeling that he was missing something. Something important.

  What is it, Grandfather? he asked silently. What have I overlooked?

  Once in the comm center he slumped down on the little chair and put through another message to Tarawa.

  “Pete: The greenhouse dome looks okay now, but I’m worried about what might happen in the next storm. Maybe that won’t be for another year, but it’s a problem we ought to think about now, not when the dust starts blowing again. It’s obvious that we overlooked this problem, but with twenty-twenty hindsight I think we ought to pay attention to it.

  “Can you get the world’s assembled experts to figure out how we can protect the greenhouse bubble with the materials we have on hand? That includes native Martian materials, of course. What I’m wondering is, can we make glass bricks out of the Martian sand? Build an igloo that’s transparent? Look into it for me, will you?”

  The wind died down almost completely after sunset. Jamie was tempted to put on a suit and go out to see if the stars were still in their places, but he felt too tired. The outside cameras showed that the planes were still there, although what condition their s
olar panels might be in would have to wait for a closer inspection.

  The dome was quiet, back to normal, when Jamie finally went to his quarters. Vijay was already there, in the bunk. He blinked with surprise.

  “Tómas is bunking with Trudy,” she said, matter-of-factly.

  Nodding, Jamie muttered, “I wonder if Mitsuo and Stacy are going to get it on?”

  Vijay giggled softly. “Not bloody likely.”

  “Why not?”

  “Stacy’s gay.”

  Jamie’s eyes popped open. “What?”

  “Stacy’s a lesbian.”

  There’s nothing wrong with that, Jamie told himself. Still, he felt shocked.

  “Poor Mitsuo,” he heard himself whisper as he got under the covers beside her.

  Vijay moved over to make room for him on the narrow bunk. “I don’t know about him. He hasn’t come on to any of the women.”

  “Maybe he’s gay, too?”

  “I doubt it. I think he’s just got more self-control than you western ape-men.”

  Jamie wanted to debate the point, but instead he closed his eyes and fell instantly asleep.

  Meanwhile, back on Earth . . .2

  What would drive the sons and daughters of Earth out into the cold and dangerous depths of interplanetary space? The lure of profit or power or just plain adventure might be enough to draw some daring souls, but for a significant expansion of the human race across the space frontier, there must be some powerful force (or forces) driving people off-planet.

  Shortly after I finished Mars I began work on a novel that featured Dan Randolph, the hard-driving visionary founder of Astro Manufacturing, Inc., a corporation involved in space transportation and manufacturing. In this novel, Empire Builders, I postulated a looming global ecological disaster: the greenhouse cliff.

  Most scientists around the world are convinced that the Earth’s climate is heating up, and that the human race’s outpouring of greenhouse-enhancing gases such as carbon dioxide are a significant factor in the global warming. A small but insistent minority of scientists protest that global warming is largely illusory, or at least its impact has been grossly exaggerated.

  For my Grand Tour novels, I speculated that global warming is not only real, but that its impact will hit suddenly, over a matter of a decade or so, not the gradual, centuries-long effect that most people expect. A greenhouse cliff, with a sudden, drastic rise in sea levels that floods coastal cities worldwide, leading to a collapse of the electrical power grid that is the cornerstone of our industrial society. Together with shifts of climate that wipe out large swaths of farmlands, the greenhouse cliff causes a global catastrophe of unparalleled proportion.

  Visionaries such as Dan Randolph try to develop the resources of energy and raw materials that exist in space to help rebuild the Earth’s shattered society. Others, such as Martin Humphries, want to use those resources to further their own schemes of power and profit.

  But what is happening on Earth? We get a glimpse of this in “Greenhouse Chill.” Incidentally, the possibility that a greenhouse warming can lead to a new ice age is now an accepted concept among many scientists; see William H. Calvin’s A Brain for All Seasons (University of Chicago Press, 2002).

  But I published first!

  2. Homer invented that technique, in the Odyssey, when he switched from Odysseus’s adventures to the plight of his wife, Penelope, by using the phrase, “Meanwhile, back in Ithaca . . .”

  GREENHOUSE CHILL

  Let’s face it, Hawk, we’re lost.”

  Hawk frowned in disappointment at his friend. “You’re lost, maybe. I know right where I am.”

  Squinting in the bright sunshine, Tim turned his head this way and that, searching the horizon. Nothing. Not another sail, not another boat anywhere in sight. Not even a bird. The only sounds he could hear were the soft gusting of the hot breeze and the splash of the gentle waves lapping against their stolen sailboat. The brilliant sky was cloudless, the sea stretched out all around them, and they were alone. Two teenaged runaways out in the middle of the empty sea.

  “Yeah?” Tim challenged. “Then where are we?”

  “Comin’ up to the Ozarks, just about,” said Hawk.

  “How d’you know that?”

  Hawk’s frown evolved into a serious, superior, knowing expression. He was almost a year older than Tim, lean and hard-muscled from back-breaking farm labor. But his round face was animated, with sparkling blue eyes that could convince his younger friend to join him on this wild adventure to escape from their parents, their village, their lives of endless drudgery.

  Tim was almost as tall as Hawk, but pudgier, softer. His father was the village rememberer, and Tim was being groomed to take his place in the due course of time. The work he did was mostly mental, instead of physical, but it was pure drudgery just the same, remembering all the family lines and the history of the village all the way back to the Flood.

  “So,” Tim repeated, “how d’you know where we’re at? I don’t see any signposts stickin’ up outta the water.”

  “How long we been out?” Hawk asked sternly.

  With a glance at the dwindling supply of salt beef and apples in the crate by the mast, Tim replied, “This is the fifth mornin’.”

  “Uh-huh. And where’s the sun?”

  Tim didn’t bother to answer, it was so obvious.

  “So the sun’s behind your left shoulder, same’s it’s been every mornin’. Wind’s still comin’ up from the south, hot and strong. We’re near the Ozarks.”

  “I still don’t see how you figure that.”

  “My dad and my uncle been fishin’ in these waters all their lives,” Hawk said, matter-of-factly. “I learned from them.”

  Tim thought that over for a moment, then asked, “So how long before we get to Colorado?”

  “Oh, that’s weeks away,” Hawk answered.

  “Weeks? We ain’t got enough food for weeks!”

  “I know that. We’ll put in at the Ozark Islands and get us some more grub there.”

  “How?”

  “Huntin’,” said Hawk. “Or trappin’. Or stealin’, if we hafta.”

  Tim’s dark eyes lit up. The thought of becoming robbers excited him.

  The long lazy day wore on. Tim listened to the creak of the ropes and the flap of the heavy gray sail as he lay back in the boat’s prow. He dozed, and when he woke again the sun had crawled halfway down toward the western edge of the sea. Off to the north, though, ominous clouds were building up, gray and threatening.

  “Think it’ll storm?” he asked Hawk.

  “For sure,” Hawk replied.

  They had gone through a thunderstorm their first afternoon out. The booming thunder had scared Tim halfway out of his wits. That and the waves that rose up like mountains, making his stomach turn itself inside out as the boat tossed up and down and sideways and all. And the lightning! Tim had no desire to go through that again.

  “Don’t look so scared,” Hawk said, with a tight smile on his face.

  “I ain’t scared!”

  “Are too.”

  Tim admitted it with a nod. “Ain’t you?”

  “Not anymore.”

  “How come?”

  Hawk pointed off to the left. Turning, Tim saw a smudge on the horizon, something low and dark, with more clouds over it. But these clouds were white and soft-looking.

  “Island,” Hawk said, pulling on the tiller and looping the rope around it to hold it in place. The boat swung around and the sail began flapping noisily.

  Tim got up and helped Hawk swing the boom. The sail bellied out again, neat and taut. They skimmed toward the island while the storm clouds built up higher and darker every second, heading their way.

  They won the race, barely, and pulled the boat up on a stony beach just as the first drops of rain began to spatter down on them, fat and heavy.

  “Get the mast down, quick!” Hawk commanded. It was pouring rain by the time they got that done. Tim wanted to run for
the shelter of the big trees, but Hawk said no, they’d use the boat’s hull for protection.

  “Trees attract lightnin’, just like the mast would if we left it up,” said Hawk.

  Even on dry land the storm was scarifying. And the land didn’t stay dry for long. Tim lay on the ground beneath the curve of the boat’s hull as lightning sizzled all around them and the thunder blasted so loud it hurt his ears. Hawk sprawled beside Tim and both boys pressed themselves flat against the puddled stony ground.

  The world seemed to explode into a white-hot flash and Tim heard a crunching, crashing sound. Peeping over Hawk’s shoulder he saw one of the big trees slowly toppling over, split in half and smoking from a lightning bolt. For a moment he thought the tree would smash down on them, but it hit the ground a fair distance away with an enormous shattering smash.

  At last the storm ended. The boys were soaking wet and Tim’s legs felt too weak to hold him up, but he got to his feet anyway, trembling with cold and the memory of fear.

  Slowly they explored the rocky, pebbly beach and poked in among the trees. Squirrels and birds chattered and scolded at them. Tim saw a snake, a beautiful blue racer, slither through the brush. Without a word between them, the boys went back to the boat. Hawk pulled his bow and a handful of arrows from the box where he had stored them while Tim collected a couple of pocketfuls of throwing stones.

  By the time the sun was setting they were roasting a young rabbit over their campfire.

  Burping contentedly, Hawk leaned back on one elbow as he wiped his greasy chin. “Now this is the way to live, ain’t it?”

  “You bet,” Tim agreed. He had seen some blackberry bushes back among the trees and decided that in the morning he’d pick as many as he could carry before they started out again. No sense leaving them to the birds.

  “Hello there!”

  The deep voice froze both boys for an instant. Then Hawk dived for his bow while Tim scrambled to his feet.

  “Don’t be frightened,” called the voice. It came from the shadowy bushes in among the trees, sounding ragged and scratchy, like it was going to cough any minute.