Red Planet Run (10 page)

“I knew you’d love her,” Helen said. “Let’s grab a scooter and get up close and personal.”

Up close and personal some of the rivets connecting the two vehicles of this Rube Goldberg nightmare were already beginning to back off. I pointed this out. “Just the wrapping on the package,” Helen said soothingly. “Lock us on to the access hatch on the launcher and I’ll show you around the inside.”

Inside, Helen shucked out of her suit and went down the corridor that circumnavigated the hole of the doughnut, me on her tail. She pulled herself inside a room. “Communications and navigation. CommNav.”

“Oh. So this is the control panel.”

“Yup.”

The high-back chair in front of the panel was still swathed in a packing sheet that crackled when I strapped myself in.

I scanned the gauges. “What the hell is a variometer?”

“Tells you your velocity up and down.”

“Rate of climb.”

“Yes.”

“Then why doesn’t it say so?” I searched further. “There’s no compass.”

“There’s no magnetic field on Mars, or none to speak of.”

“Right,” I said, chagrined. “I remember now. All the better to kill us with ultraviolet radiation. So we’re only going to know where we are at night?”

“Always supposing you have a clear sky,” Helen agreed, “and are close to a geographical landmark you have plotted on the PlanetView.”

I sat back and rubbed my eyes. “Does Mars have a pole star?”

“Deneb, but I think it’s a couple degrees off true.”

“Wonderful.” Math was never my strong point; looking through a scope made me squint and see double, and back at astrogation class in Maria Mitchell I got lost between Hercules and the Pleiades more times than I would ever admit. A navigator, I wasn’t.

“Paddy will be with you,” Helen reminded me. “She’s been better on a scope since she was five than you ever were in your life.”

Helen was always such a comfort to me. “What’s this?”

“Helium pressure inside the Charliere. There’s a He-maker mounted inside the Charliere’s throat; it should kick on automatically when the sensors show a depletion.”

“And if they don’t?”

“They will; they’re backed up five times, and if it comes to it you can climb up inside the envelope with a sniffer”— Helen jerked her thumb towards a locker mounted next to the door—”and check it out in person. Same system for the Montgolfier.”

“And this red toggle?”

“That’s your transponder, your emergency locater beacon. That’s how you yell for help.”

I looked at her. “We better not need help very bad, since it’d take an average minimum of two weeks for you just to get the word.”

Unabashed, she said, “There’s one on the hull, too. And here’s fire extinguisher remotes, and these are the controls for the deflation port and the jibs.”

I surveyed the array of knobs and gauges before me. “You know, Helen,” I said slowly, “this is the first time I’ve realized that I’m going to be setting down on Mars in a vehicle of whose operation I have only the most rudimentary understanding. I’m not much more than an adequate pilot at the best of times, and that’s on solar sleds and jitneys. What do I know about balloons?”

Helen waved an airy hand. “What’s to know? The launcher injects the craft into the atmosphere, the drogue chutes pop the envelopes, and the Martian winds do the rest. All you have to do is sit back and enjoy the ride. And take pictures and keep a log,” she added as an afterthought.

Somehow I just knew it wasn’t going to be that easy.

Into the darkness, into the silence, I said, “Crip?” He didn’t reply at once. “Crip?”

His voice snarled over my headset like a bad-tempered cat. “Whaddya want? I’m a little busy at the moment.”

“You’ll tell me, won’t you? When we hit air? You won’t just let us go without saying anything?”

“Svensdotter, sit back, shut up, and stop worrying. We’re in the pipe. You’ll be a flatlander again before you know it.”

Nope. I wasn’t worried. I was the head of an expedition with the full influence and considerable resources of the independent nation of Terranova at my disposal. Helen Ricadonna was behind me one hundred percent; I could almost feel her hand pushing at the small of my back. I had a crackerjack pilot and a taut ship with a proud name. What was there to worry about?

· · ·

The night before launch Charlie threw a party. Everything had happened so fast and we were all so tired that it felt more like a wake.

“She still needs a name,” Crip said, looking at me.

“Call her the
Kayak,”
Leif suggested. “After Emaa Katya’s boat.”

“That sounds nice, dear,” Mother said, nodding. “Sean? Paddy? What do you think?”

“I don’t care,” Paddy said.

“Call it whatever you want,” Sean said.

“Esther, dear? What do you think?”

Emaa Katya made it to shore with one kid out of three. At this point the prospect of losing one or both of the twins was very appealing. “Sold.”

And the
Kayak
she was.

· · ·

She shuddered a third time, and I wished again for an unshielded window to see out of. Re-entry is always spectacular; it’s the only time the moth gets to fly inside the candle flame and survive. The controlled erosion of our shield made a comet’s tail of ionized particles and ablative material that, if you were its cause for being, put Comet Halley to shame.

Another bump, harder than the previous ones. “What the hell?” Crip said suddenly over my headset.

Now I was nervous. “Crip?”

A string of curses that sounded as if they were delivered from between clenched teeth was my reply.

There was a ripping, tearing, terrifying
cree-aaack!
from above, and a corresponding
thud
that sounded dull and deep from below—and the bumps starting coming, irregularly and all at once. I jiggled up and down in my restraints. From the other side of the craft one of the twins cried out. “Mom?”

“Mom, this isn’t supposed to be happening!”

“Crip! What the hell’s going on?”

Our only answer was a steadily building roar outside the bulkhead. There was a series of sharp
pops!
and then the separate bumps came harder and faster and closer together until they merged into one long vibration that rattled my teeth and forced tears from my eyes. Something broke free from its fastening on a wall across the cabin; I heard it clanking against something else, but my vision was so blurred I couldn’t see what it was.

“Mom! What’s happening!”

“I don’t know! Stay strapped in!”
Oh shit oh dear oh shit,
but those last words were under my breath and strictly for my own edification.

The vibration increased, so that it seemed the
Kayak
was shaking apart around our ears, reducing us all to a state of speechless endurance. I was too scared to wonder if we were going to die. I lay where I was because there was nothing else to do, my hands knotted into the restraints, trying by sheer willpower to bring us safely down.

I don’t know how long it lasted. It felt like days and was probably only seconds. When we finally broke through, there was one long, blessed moment of absolute silence, followed by a sinking feeling that increased to a fall and then to a plunge the likes of which I hadn’t felt since taking wing from Orville Point back on Terranova.

“Mom!”

“Stay strapped in!” I yelled.

There were one, two, three more cracks, then another and, thank God, final jerk that jarred my teeth together.

“It’s okay,” I called. “Hear that?” The shrill waHOO of the drogue release siren echoed across the craft. “The drogues are out. We’re inside, we’ve hit atmosphere.”

I’ve never felt anything as good as the moment my deceleration couch hit me in the fanny and the
Kayak
’s plummeting descent first stalled and then, after a nearly motionless, midair pause, resumed in a much slower, steadier fashion. I’ve always liked slow in spaceflight; it makes for a longer trip but a softer landing.

We were well and truly captured by Mars’ gravity; enough so that I could sit up, unstrap, and drop both feet to the floor and expect them to stay down. I stood up. My legs were shaky but they held.

The
Kayak
’s motion was odd, and it took me a moment to remember that we were swinging in simple harmonic motion at the bottom of our pendulum at the end of the drogues’ vertical load lines. I wondered what our altitude was, and when the pressure-triggered explosive bolts would deploy the Montgolfier. As if my thought triggered it, the bolts went off, it felt like right over my head, in a series of controlled explosions, one right after another, sounding like a 21-gun salute. There was a queer hissing sound and the floor hit the bottom of my feet and almost knocked me over. The
Kayak
swung hard and the floor tilted up behind me. I took a running step forward and in the dark tripped over a bulkhead panel that had shaken loose during our descent. The
Kayak
swung hard again and I danced around, grabbing futilely for something to hold on to. The only thing my clutching hands grabbed was air. I fell, heavily. The gondola swung hard in the opposite direction, and I slid rapidly across the floor and slammed into a bulkhead. “Ouch! Dammit!”

“Mom! Are you okay?”

The first thing my hand touched turned out to be the door into CommNav. I grasped the frame in both hands and pulled myself through with an assist from the pendulum. The pendulum swung like a pendulum do, and I slid rapidly and ignominiously across the floor of CommNav to collide with the bolted-in base of the console seat. “Shit!”

“Mom? What’s the matter?”

I had to wait until the little blue cartoon birds stopped flying formation around my head before I could heave myself up into the console.

As soon as the seat cushion felt my weight, the instrument panel lit up, bathing me and the room in a red and green but mostly yellow glow. The green came from the Montgolfier deploy, the red from the locater beacon, and the mostly yellow from all the
Kayak
systems on standby.

“Mom?”

“It’s okay, Sean!” I yelled. “I’m in CommNav! Stay where you are until this thing settles down!”

“I don’t think it’s ever going to settle down,” Paddy said sourly from the opposite doorway, “and it’s me, anyway.”

“Dammit, Paddy, I told you to stay put! Strap in!”

“There’s only one seat in here,” she pointed out.

I swore. “Then stay where you are and hang on!”

The
Kayak
swung back in the opposite direction, but I noticed the arc was not as wide. The return swing was shorter, too. Paddy, mindful as always of my age and authority, waited for the middle of the next arc and took three quick, short steps to clutch at the back of the chair. At the same time, somewhere behind us, something started with a whir. Another waHOO sounded, which I quickly silenced with a hard smack of one hand, and another light flashed green in front of me.

“The He-maker’s on,” Paddy pointed out unnecessarily.

“Uh-huh. Means the Charliere’s deployed and inflating.” Another light blinked green. “And the legs are extending. Looks like everything’s working. Everything important, anyway.”

“So far,” Paddy said skeptically. “I thought Crip said our entry was going to be smoother than decel in the scout. It felt more like we were riding inside a jackhammer in a silver mine on 2Vesta.”

“Let’s see if we can find out why.” I punched up the standby net and raised my voice. “
Kayak
calling
Pushmepullyou, Kayak
calling the
Pushmepullyou.
Crip, you out there somewhere?”

The only reply was a burst of static. I repeated. More static. I called again. Again, static—in bursts, interspersed with dead air.

“Mom?”

“What?”

“Listen.” Paddy was frowning, her dark blue eyes fixed on the squawk box.

“To what?”

“That static. It’s—I don’t know, it sounds almost metered, like…”

“It’s CW,” Sean said from the door. At our blank looks he elaborated. “You know. Morse code. Dit dah.”

“You read Morse?”

“Dit-dit-dit, dah-dah-dah, dit-dit-dit,” said my son.

“What’s that?”

“SOS. That’s about all I know in Morse. Seems appropriate right now.”

“Great,” I said again. Well, I used to know Morse in another life. I swiveled back to the console and concentrated. Sean was right. Now that I knew what I was listening for, I could hear the rhythm in the bursts of static. Dit-dah-dah-dit, dit-dah-dah-dit, dah, dah-dah-dah, dah-dit-dah, dah-dit-dah. “P, P again, T, O—that’s easy—K this time, K again. Okay, PP is probably
Pushmepullyou,
KK is
Kayak.
What the hell is TO?”

“To?” Paddy suggested. “As in
Pushmepullyou
to
Kayak?”

The same code sequence repeated itself, once, twice. “If he’s sending CW, that must mean his transmitter is knocked out. Or our receiver.” I didn’t care for that idea. “Maybe his receiver’s still up.” I punched in the standby net. “Crip, this is Star. Can you hear us? Is that you sending CW?”

The code sequence continued for a moment. Then it was abruptly interrupted by a series of dah-dit-dah-dit dah-dah-dit-dahs. I blew out a relieved breath. “CQ back at you, buddy. Is your voice transmitter out?” Dit-dah, dit-dit-dah-dit. “A, F? Affirmative? Okay, stand by one, I’m going to switch in the translator.” I reached across the control panel and accessed the computer. “
Kayak
computer, boot up.”

There was a long silence. The hair on my neck stood straight up. I re-entered the code and said sharply, “
Kayak
computer, boot up.”

There was another silence, broken by a tinny voice from the ceiling pickup. “
Kayak
computer, on line. Voice ID, Star Svensdotter, access all programs. Proceed.”

My sigh of relief nearly took out a bulkhead. “Computer, run communications program.”

“Running.”

“Analyze incoming transmission and translate into System English.”