Red Desert - Point of No Return (3 page)

As I get closer to the
canyon, the details of its configuration become increasingly clear.
Its naked beauty, devoid of the grace given by life, fascinates me,
leaving me open-mouthed.

Proceeding at maximum
speed, my rover jerks as it hits a boulder. The terrain has become
more rugged. I must slow down.

I move forward with
caution, bringing the vehicle close to the cliff. But I avoid
reaching its edge. I don’t know about the quality of the rock at
that point and I have no idea if it will bear the weight. I stop,
while keeping the engine on, to contemplate the wonder of the
natural show that lies before my eyes. Even if it’s thought that
water flowed on Mars in the past, which was demonstrated by the
presence of dried up river beds scattered across its surface, this
canyon system seems to have had a different origin. The fractures,
created by seismic phenomena, have been modelled over millions of
years by carbon dioxide escaping from underground at high speed,
thus eroding them, just like the perpetual motion of water would
do.

I pull out my camera
and start taking some pictures. But since I’m fixed in this
position, I soon run out of all possible framings. I’m tempted to
put the suit on, get out and take a stroll. Then I realise that,
since my departure, I haven’t checked my air time yet.

I switch off the
engine. I don’t want to waste energy, other than the necessary one
for life support and instrumentation. I free myself from the
seatbelt and go to the back of the rover. The suit indicator is at
80% which means I don’t have ten hours, but only eight. It could be
worse. If I get out for five minutes to take some pictures, it
won’t make much difference.

Without wasting any
more time I prepare, depressurise the vehicle, and step out to take
a little stroll.

The view from my
helmet isn’t actually much better than the one from the windshield.
A weak wind lifts some dust with each step I take. I’ve already
touched that thin sand more than once inside Station Alpha, but now
I wonder how it would feel to lay on it under the sun. I check the
temperature with the augmented reality with which the helmet is
fitted. It projects a set of useful information before my eyes, as
if they are part of the surrounding environment. It reads a little
more than five degrees Celsius. It’s cold, but not so cold.

If only the atmosphere
wasn’t so rarefied.

I give up my reveries.
They are stealing precious seconds that I should use in a more
rational way. Holding my camera, I walk toward the edge of the
canyon, capturing many different images.

I hope the photographs
are coming out well. It’s difficult to say from the small display
on the back of the device. I’ve never been a great photographer. I
can waste even the easiest snapshot. But the light is perfect now
that the sun is high. The various layers of rock seem to shine by
themselves. It’s almost incredible that so much beauty could be
accidental.

I’m still bewitched by
such a view when my foot slips on the terrain. Before I can
counteract the loss of balance, I find myself supine; my back hits
the breathing device and my head is thrown backwards, bending my
neck. My helmet bumps into a stone and the rebounding effect runs
all over my body, dazing me. The light becomes more and more
intense, forcing me to close my eyes, and I have the impression of
hearing remote music, rocking me softly.

My eyes snap open; I’m
breathing heavily. I’m still lying on the ground. The sun is
directly over me. I lift my right arm with caution, to check my
suit indicators. Everything seems alright. There’s no pressure
drop, but I have been reckless. I could have damaged it, and died
in excruciating pain.

I think about Michelle
for a moment. She tried to leave the station without her suit. Her
body swelled up in the airlock, until her more superficial tissues
exploded and spread themselves over the doorway. Her corpse blocked
it. We had to use the exit on the other side of the station to move
away what had remained of her, which had frozen in the meantime. We
tried to clean, but her thickened blood had seeped in
everywhere.

I still cannot believe she decided to kill
herself that way. The thought that someone may have pushed her in
there and activated the door to kill her hasn’t allowed me to have
a decent sleep for many a long night. The fact I’m here now is in
most part due to that doubt.

I try to breathe
deeply and calm down. I must have lost consciousness, but only for
a couple of minutes. I sit up with caution. My camera is tied to my
suit with a lanyard. It seems undamaged. I pick myself up from the
ground and head back to the rover.

No more strolling, for
a while.

Once inside, I get rid
of my equipment and I lie back in my seat. I start downloading the
photographs, which are immediately displayed on the dashboard
screen, and I activate the satellite connection. As I start the
upload, a notification appears.

“Incoming message,”
the cold voice of the computer recites.

At first I think
Hassan is trying to contact me again, by using the satellite
transmission, but then I read on the windshield augmented reality
that it comes from Houston and was recorded five hours earlier.
It’s mission control, attempting to persuade me to go back. I’m
really curious to hear what they have thought up.

I turn on the video
playback and the virtual screen is filled with a person’s face.

“Anna … hi. To tell
the truth I’m not convinced that asking me to talk to you has been
a clever idea. But I’m here now so I must try.”

In disbelief, I put a
hand on my face. “Jan,” I whisper, while watching the image of the
only man I have ever loved in all my life.

I was walking as fast
as my high heels and the paving of the old town allowed. I couldn’t
believe I was about to be late to one of the most important
appointments of my life. To avoid any reliance on public transport
and the risk of being stuck in morning traffic, I had taken a hotel
close by to be sure I could reach the Grand Place on foot without
any hurry.

A woman, Maggie Moore,
who had introduced herself as assistant to Deputy Director Francis
from the Johnson Space Center in Houston, had approached me at the
end of an exobiology conference organised by ESA in Paris. She
asked me, almost casually, if I would like to put my scientific
knowledge into practice in the field. “On Mars, for instance,” she
had said.

When I heard the Red
Planet mentioned my eyes must’ve sparkled, because without me
saying a word that woman had smiled and handed me her business
card. On the back she had written a date, a time, and
La
Chaloupe D’Or
, the name of a restaurant that overlooks the
Grand Place in Brussels.

I was making my way
through hordes of tourists, trying to ignore my stomach, which
reacted with violence every time the scent of hot waffles reached
my nostrils. Normally I would eat as soon as I woke, but I’d left
my bed too late. Now I was counting on that working breakfast to
avoid fainting from hunger, provided that I got there in one
piece.

I felt my coat’s left
sleeve hook into something moving in the opposite direction,
forcing me to spin round. During that clumsy movement my bag
slipped from my shoulder, scattering most of its contents on the
ground.

“Shit!” Dispirited, I
looked at the disaster. There was no doubt I would be late now. I
bent down to collect the myriad objects, while people continued to
move around me without even slowing down.

“Excuse-moi,
mademoiselle, je suis désolé,” a man’s voice said. Its owner
squatted down to help me.

“Don’t bother,” I
replied in a huff, while retrieving my compact, which had opened as
a consequence of its fall, spreading its powder everywhere. The
mirror was broken. “Great, that’s really made my day lucky.”

“Allow me to help you
out,” the man insisted.

He was speaking
English with a weird accent. Even though he had addressed me in
French a moment earlier, that didn’t seem to be his mother tongue.
His voice intrigued me so much that I raised my head to look at him
and was almost blinded. His hair was red and his eyes green. His
face, covered by a few days’ growth of beard, was sprinkled with
freckles. He wasn’t the most gorgeous man I had ever seen, he
didn’t even get anywhere near my aesthetic ideal, yet there was
something penetrating in his stare. He emanated a magnetic charm.
He was crouched at half a metre from me and, despite the cold and
the heavy coat he was wearing, I could swear I picked up the scent
of his skin.

“I do apologise,” I
said, while putting the remaining objects into my handbag. “I
didn’t want to be rude.” I stood up, embarrassed, and he did the
same, then he smiled, amused. I couldn’t help but reciprocate the
smile.

“No worries.” He kept
on staring at me. “I was in a hurry, it was my fault.”

At that moment I
realised that I had almost forgotten about my appointment.

“Blast it! I really
must go.” There was urgency in my words, but for some reason I
wasn’t able to move.

“So do I,” the man
said, indicating with his hand a direction that was opposite to
mine.

I looked at him for
some instants more, hoping something would happen to prolong the
encounter. I would have liked to ask him to come with me. I didn’t
care about NASA or Mars anymore. He opened his mouth and for a
moment I thought he was about to speak, but he didn’t.

“Sorry again,” was all
I could say. I waved him goodbye, before turning and walking
off.

Five minutes later I
was seated at a table inside the restaurant, alone. I checked my
watch nervously. The place was right, and the time was too. The
table had been booked on behalf of Moore, but when I’d arrived she
wasn’t there. I took the opportunity to pull myself together and
rearrange my bag. I had thrown everything into it in a jumble
without paying much attention, and now I had a constant feeling
that something was missing.

“Doctor Anna Persson,”
I heard someone calling me. A man in his forties came closer to the
table and held his hand out to me. “I’m Dennis Francis.”

I had been expecting
to meet Ms Moore; but standing in front of me was the deputy
director of one of the most important departments in NASA. He was
younger than I thought he would be and now that I saw him I
realised his face wasn’t unknown to me. I would have expected that
the deputy director would be just a functionary, but that was a
real astronaut. He had become famous a decade earlier as the
spokesman of the mission for the installation of a permanent base
on the edges of Shackleton Crater, at the Moon’s South Pole; the
only area of our satellite that remains almost always lit by the
sun, without being subjected to extreme thermal excursions.

I leapt to my feet
with surprise and shook his hand with enthusiasm. “It’s really a
pleasure to meet you!” I felt a sincere admiration for him and I
was quite intimidated to be in his presence.

We sat and started
talking about everything and anything, while we were waiting for
our order. He was an affable man and, aware of my tension, he did
all he could to put me at ease. He seemed to be hungrier than me
given that, when his breakfast arrived, he started tucking into it,
causing a pause in our conversation. I swallowed a piece of
croissant and drank a sip of tea, before finding the courage to
speak.

“Ms Moore had
mentioned something about a project concerning Mars …” I suggested.
I waited for him to reply.

He looked at me from
over his coffee mug and, with a sly smile, took his time to set it
down. “Doctor Persson, what would you think about becoming one of
the first colonisers of a new planet?”

I stared at him for a
second, confused and unable to articulate any sound. I wanted to
say
‘Are you kidding?’
but all I managed was a lousy, “I beg
your pardon?”

At that moment I heard
my cell phone ring. I cursed under my breath because I had
forgotten to silence it. I didn’t know whether to ignore it or
not.

“Is that yours?”

“I think … so,” I
babbled.

He gestured for me to
answer the call, so I took my bag and started searching. Not easy
in that confusion. Then I realised I had put it in my coat pocket.
I reached in and grabbed it. An unknown number appeared on the
display. Puzzled, I tapped the answer icon.

“Hello?”

“Anna Persson?” a
vaguely familiar voice spoke on the other side of the line.

“Yes … who’s that?” I
asked, even more intrigued.

“We just met in the
street. The accident with your bag … do you remember?”

I felt a hot sensation
pervading from within. The red-haired man; that was where the voice
came from. I couldn’t believe it was him. It was some sort of
miracle.

“Are you still
there?”

“Oh, yes!” I hurried
to say. “But … how did you get my number?!”

“I’ve found your
planner on the ground. I tried to reach you, but then I lost you in
the crowd.” I pictured him smiling. “I didn’t think I would ever
see you again … and, instead, I found myself in possession of your
name, address, and even your phone number!”

I started laughing
heartily.

“By the way, my name
is Jan-Willem De Wit. But you can call me Jan.”

I kept on throwing up,
even though there was nothing more in my stomach. What the hell had
prompted me to become an astronaut? I was a scientist, a researcher
who worked at the European Space Agency. I was even paid well. I
had never really considered the idea of space travel. It was
something I liked to think I might do, while reading a book or
watching TV, but the reality was no fun at all.