Red Planet Run (12 page)

“Mom?” Both twins moved nearer to me.

I am ashamed to admit that I didn’t even think of the arms locker. I stood there with my mouth open and watched it come.

It was either a bug-eyed monster or some kind of vehicle. It didn’t look like something the Librarians would use to get around, so I decided it was a vehicle. “It’s a vehicle,” I said, as if by saying it out loud would make it so.

Neither of the twins moved an inch from my side.

The four balloons rolled over themselves, hauling their bizarre platform of cubes and tubes and cones on a directional bearing that had us as their objective, and the closer they got, the more bizarre they looked. I relaxed a little. One of the cubes was an Eddie Bauer Atpak; I recognized the goose emblem on the side. The Librarians weren’t, I was pretty sure, patrons of Eddie Bauer. “It is a vehicle,” I said. When it turned to avoid a boulder and light glanced off the ladder bolted to one side, I was relieved to see that it was a vehicle for humans. One Librarian encounter per lifetime is all I recommend.

The balloons resolved themselves into wheels made of sections of overstuffed bags, the superstructure into a cabin of interconnecting, segmented shafts and elbows made of some transparent material, maybe graphplex. The whole thing looked like a perambulating gerbil cage, and it might have been the absurdity of the entire structure that kept me mute and immobile when a four-alarm fire should have been nothing to it.

The twins were no better off, and the three of us stood there, speechless, as the vehicle pulled up before us with a distinct flourish. A moment later the top half of the cone sitting in the forward section of the chassis popped its top, and a gray pressure suit clambered out and down the ladder, landing solidly on both feet in a puff of pale pink Martian dust. He might as well have appeared in a bolt of lightning and a billow of smoke for all the gawking awe we accorded him.

Our expressions must have been clearly visible through our helmets. Undaunted, the gray suit marched up, and a thin, lined, leathery face with a grin that split it in two looked out at us. He said something. I was still too bemused to produce even a shrug. He waved a reassuring hand, twisted a knob on the side of his helmet, and spoke again. Still nothing. Another twist, another, and suddenly a voice crackled in our ears.

We all jumped, and a chuckle emanated over our headsets. “Scared you, did I? Bet you weren’t expecting to see anyone round these parts. Saw you come down, thought I’d come over and say Hi. Nice tub, even if she does look like a drunk on her way home at closing time. I reckon I’d shine up some on my landings, though, were I you.” He gave out with a hoot of laughter that rang off the insides of our helmets and had us all reaching for our volume knobs. “Balloons, is it?” He leaned back and gave the exterior envelope a long, assessing look from bright, sharp eyes. “The Chaumont design, be my guess. Practical yet elegant.” He gave an approving nod and started around the toroid.

Like automatons, we followed him.

“Toroid for the gondola, is it? Well, an efficient form, I suppose, although it is kinda hard to build on to, and then there is all that wasted space in the center. I purely hate wasted space. Still, I suppose now I think on it you’d need it to pack the balloons into, wouldn’t you? Not a get-around I’d pick myself, though; too little say in where you go. Wait a minute, where the hell are my manners?” He smacked me on the back hard enough to dislocate a vertebra. “I’m Johnny; who’re you folks?” He gave another of his laughing hoots and me a second smack on the back, which this time nearly knocked me over. I hoped my rebreather was still connected.

I felt like I needed to sit down, but there wasn’t anything to sit down on. “Ah,” I said, my voice sounding weak in my own ears, “I’m Star Svensdotter. This is my son and daughter, Sean and Paddy. Our ship’s the
Kayak
.”

“The
Kayak,
is it?” He thought it over, frowning, and I felt myself holding my breath. At last he nodded. “Good name. Short, easy to remember, easy to hear. Important for Maydays. I approve.”

“Thank you,” I said meekly.

He gave the
Kayak
’s hull a farewell, approving smack. “Well, it’s been nice visiting with you folks, but you’ll have to excuse me; I’ve got work to do.”

“Work?” Sean said.

“What kind of work?” Paddy said.

Johnny bent a stern eye on both speakers. “Come along, and I’ll be pleased to show you.”

Like sheep, we followed him out of the shadow of our hull and over to his vehicle. From a locker bolted to the rectangular chassis he produced a small metal object made of, it looked to me, every size nut and bolt and washer ever produced from a tool-and-die machine in the history of man, shaped into two skinny pyramids, one larger than the other, attached at their bases.

“What’s that?” one of the twins asked.

“An ozone-maker,” Johnny replied, in a matter-of-fact tone of voice that squelched any response, disbelieving or otherwise. He squinted around at the landscape. His eye lit on a nearby hollow at the base of a cliff and he gave a sharp, satisfied nod, produced a small shovel presumably out of a hat, and marched off. We trailed along behind.

We reached the hollow in a body and the three of us stood around, watching, as our new friend carefully rearranged the loose soil at the base of the cliff into a small hole, into which he planted the thick end of the gadget he had brought with him.

“This here’s an ozone-maker,” he repeated. “My own design.” He paused to beam up at us expectantly.

“An ozone-maker,” I said. “How, ah, interesting.”

“ ’Tain’t just interesting,” he said reprovingly, “it’s necessary. I been moseying across Mars for, oh, getting on ten year, must be, planting these out. Plan to keep on doing it till I keel over. Probably won’t be any time soon—you’ve probably already noticed how easy it is to get around on Mars; not much strain on the old ticker.” He held his gadget erect with one hand and patted dirt around it until it was buried up to its base line.

Sean broke out of his stupefaction long enough to say, “That thing makes ozone?”

“Yup.”

“How does it work?” Sean asked, a mistake, as this launched a lecture. Ozone—he called it oh-three—was made up of three oxygen atoms per molecule. There was ozone in Mars’ stratosphere in minute quantities, necessary to absorb short-wave UV radiation, “or,” Johnny grunted, “it did before those blankety-blank, deleted, unprintable idjits downstairs started mucking up the air.” He did not tone down his invective out of courtesy for his audience, and I could see the twins’ ears growing points inside their helmets. Eventually he ran out of breath and waved a sarcastic hand, taking in the general area of the entire, not as lifeless as we’d thought, planet upon which we stood. “You see what can happen from that kind of foolishness.”

Ozone, Johnny said, was produced above twenty klicks when short-wave solar radiation was absorbed by molecular oxygen. He had just begun a pungent description of oh-three’s irritating odor and strong oxidizing properties when one of the twins interrupted him. “How does your ozone-maker work?”

He shrugged. “Simple. Surprised you can’t figure that out for yourselves.” Sean looked annoyed, Paddy affronted, and Johnny gave a malicious grin that warmed my heart. “You need oh-two to make oh-three, right? My oh-three-maker plugs into the permafrost and boils it out of the ground. The oh-two molecules bleed up through the structure and into the atmosphere. As it climbs, the solar radiation agitates the oh-two into oh-three.” He stooped and twisted a bolt on the side of his gadget. A small, faceted sheet unfolded from one side. It looked like a solar collector, which it proved to be. “Power,” he explained in an aside, and twisted another knob. “Eureka, like that Greek fella said. Instant oh-three!”

He sat back on his heels, clearly expecting applause.

“Remarkable,” I said with perfect truth.

Sean looked at Paddy, and Paddy said, “Why? I mean, why are you doing this?”

Johnny stared up at her. “Well, now, missy, that’s about as dumb a question as I’ve ever heard.”

She blushed and he relented. “I have a fondness for Mars, missy. To paraphrase the late, great Daniel Webster, it’s a small planet but I love it. All it’s lacking is a little matter of atmosphere, and I don’t plan on going to my just reward until I’ve got these little devils churning out that sweetheart of a UV-eating gas all over. Once we get us some protection from the UV, why, I figger it’ll be just a matter of sticking a seed in the ground and stepping back quick before it jumps up and pokes me in the eye.”

He chuckled at his joke. The twins exchanged a long, silent glance, and I nudged them both, once each, sharply, in their backs.

Johnny groaned a little as he got to his feet, and stamped the dirt in firmly around the gadget’s sides. He brushed the dust from his gauntlets and said, “Well, I’d stay and visit a spell, but you know how it is, a fella gets used to his own company. Be seeing you!”

He turned to go and I found my voice. “Wait! Mister— Johnny, wait up a minute!”

He paused, looking over his shoulder, his expression impatient.

I came up next to him and stopped, somewhat at a loss. “Can we offer you something? Are you low on any of your supplies?”

“Naw, I grow what I need and trade with Vernadsky for the rest.”

Vernadsky? “Well, books then? Or I know—maybe we can run you a copy of the latest news from downstairs.”

He snorted, the expression denoting a wealth of disdain. “Don’t need no book but the Good Book, and there ain’t been any news fit to listen to since the UER overran the EC.” He cackled. “How long’d that last?”

“They are still the United Eurasian Republic.”

He gave me a sardonic look. “But?”

“Well—” I hesitated. “You know the French.”

He cackled again. “Figgered. Them Russkies might’s well’ve taken on Satan himself; they’d’a had a better chance. Well, I’m off. Been nice meeting you folks.” He gave a jaunty wave and climbed back into his vehicle. The cone snapped back down, the wheels began to roll, and we scattered to get out of the way. For the first time I noticed the name, lettered clumsily on the side of the chassis,
Runamuck
. Beneath the name its home port was listed as New Peoria, Mars. Not a location I’d found on any map generated from Maria Mitchell Observatory, but I’d guess real enough in Johnny’s mind.

The
Runamuck
turned up a previously unnoticed ramp-like fall of rock and disappeared over the rim of the canyon. We watched him until he was out of sight.

The twins broke the spell to crouch before the metal contraption jabbed into Martian soil. “Look.” A finger pointed at the tip of the pyramid. I bent over. It might have been my imagination but I thought I saw the barest wisp of steam before it boiled out into the atmosphere. My son the skeptic fetched a sniffer from the
Kayak
and confirmed a minuscule quantity of oh-two present in the emission.

We never saw Johnny again. Occasionally we ran across one of his ozone-makers, dotting the landscape like the spoor of some exotic Martian beast, and I may say right here that every one of those little devils we came across was still working, still churning out that sweetheart of a stinky gas so essential to life as we know it, one molecule at a time.

If we left it up to Johnny, Mars should have an atmosphere in time to welcome settlers around, oh, 2342658 A.D.

Or so.

It is a mistake to allow any mechanical object to realize you are in a hurry.

 

—Ralph’s Observation

 

THE SUN WENT DOWN
and darkness fell with the shock of a blow. Suddenly and completely exhausted, we stumbled back to our cockeyed craft, nuked something to eat, and spent a restless night in suits, strapped into our uncomfortably tilted bunks.

The next day was spent assessing damage to the
Kayak
, which was extensive. After our rough descent, about the only thing working were the legs. The more we looked, the more amazed and grateful I was that the hull was capable of holding a seal. I could see a minimum of a month’s worth of repairs and maintenance before we could lift out of our canyon and make air for Cydonia, wherever our canyon was, and wherever Cydonia sat in relation to it. “Let’s get to work,” I said without enthusiasm, and without enthusiasm we got to work.

We broke the stepladder out of its locker and assembled it, and I climbed up and fumbled the railing out of its recess. When I descended, the top of the ladder ran smoothly back and forth along the railing. “Pretty good all right,” I said. I climbed back up and began the process of removing the ablation shields. Some of them, like the one on CommNav, were already so loose they nearly fell off in my hands, and all were so badly burned that there was no hope of salvaging the material against any future need. I didn’t say anything as we worked our way around the
Kayak
’s keel, but I saw the twins exchange one very eloquent glance when I let the first buffer fall and in Mars’ one-third gee it shattered into a thousand crisp, charred pieces.

The task, new to us, took a while to get down right, and we didn’t finish it until the following day. For lunch we popped some Enertabs—I could hear Charlie fuming about proper nutrition and adequate rest periods—and finished the job, in time to nuke another pre-packaged meal from our store of Space Services Rations and fall exhausted into bed, this time sans suits. I forgot to strap myself in and fell right out again.

I spent the next three blasphemous days balanced on the top rung of the ladder exposing the solar cells layered over the top third of the gondola. Not before time; the batteries were as close to being dead as made no never mind. It took two days for them to recharge, and we ate our meals in the dark until they did.

We were still careening into morning from our off-kilter beds, but leveling them and the
Kayak
required lift. The exterior balloon, the Montgolfier, was limp from rips and leaks; small rips and slow leaks to be sure, but the fact remained that it had ruptured during the descent. I wondered how it was going to stand up to the yearly Martian dust storms.