Rescue Mode - eARC (36 page)

“That’s the first site they tried.”

“They should try a couple more sites in the arroyo.”

“But we agreed not to disturb that area, so you could study it.”

Amanda flashed her brightest smile. “I found what I was looking for.”

“A fossil?”

“No, not that. I think I’m about to confirm the Chinese discovery.”

“You found biomarkers?”

Amanda, nodded, barely able to contain her excitement. “I just sent the data back to Ames for them to cross check. In about an hour I’ll be able to go back and run more tests, but I think we found what we came to find.”

“That’s great, and I am sure the news will elate everyone back home, but quite frankly, I think I’d rather we’d found water.”

Outside, Connover and McPherson had spent the past three hours toting the core sampler to a new location, farther from the habitat.

Ted looked back and saw their bootprints in the rusty sand. Each hole they had drilled was farther away from the habitat.
If we don’t strike water soon, we’ll get so far from the Fermi that we won’t have enough piping to carry the water back to the habitat.

“So what do you think, Ted?” McPherson asked. “Is there really any water around here?” His voice sounded tired, dispirited, in Connover’s helmet earphones.

Ted lowered himself to the ground. “Take a break, Hi. Don’t get yourself overheated.”

The geologist sat down beside him. Both their excursion suits were spattered with pinkish dust: the boots and leggings, their gloves and sleeves, their backsides. Connover knew that if the gritty dust worked its way into their backpacks, their life support pumps might be damaged. That’s why he insisted on a thorough vacuuming whenever they returned to the habitat. Time to open up the backpacks and inspect the equipment inside them, he thought.

“Do you think there’s really any water here?” McPherson repeated.

“You’re the geologist, Hi. You tell me.”

Reflexively, McPherson went to scratch his beard. His hand bumped his helmet visor instead.

“All the observations show permafrost belowground,” he said.

“But how deep? That’s the question.”

“Deeper than our core sampler’s been able to reach.”

Connover nodded wearily. “It doesn’t do us a damned bit of good if there’s an ocean of frozen water beneath us, if it’s too deep for the mole to reach.”

“We could die of thirst while we’re sitting on top of a frozen ocean.”

“Poetic.”

McPherson took a deep breath, then clambered to his feet. “Well, we’re not going to find any permafrost by sitting on our butts.”

“You’re right,” Connover agreed. As he got to his feet, he giggled softly.

“What’s so funny?”

“I never thought that being an astronaut would mean drilling goddamned holes in the ground.”

McPherson grinned back at him. “We’ll make a geologist out of you yet, Ted my boy.”

December 7, 2035

02:07 Universal Time

Mars Landing Plus 32 Days

The
Arrow

The klaxon jolted the three people on the
Arrow
out of sleep. Benson snapped awake and immediately scrambled to unstrap himself from his sleeping bag.

“SOLAR STORM ALERT,” the loudspeakers blared. “REPORT TO THE SHELTER IMMEDIATELY. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.”

Fortunately, the shelter was their sleeping area, so there was no need for them to go anywhere. Still, Virginia and Taki tumbled out of their cubbyholes in nothing more than their shapeless tank tops and panties, wide-eyed with sudden fear.

“It’s all right,” Benson immediately reassured them, shouting over the klaxon’s wail. “We’re safe in here.”

He went to the communications panel on the bulkhead and shut off the klaxon. The sudden silence was palpable.

But Taki said, “Bee, we lost a lot of water. Is there enough in the skin to protect us?”

“Should be,” he replied tightly. “Mission control ran the numbers just before we broke Mars orbit and started home. With the water Ted sent up from
Fermi
, we ought to be okay.”

“Ought to be?” Virginia asked. She looked frightened, floating almost a foot above the deck, drifting toward the hatch.

Benson put out a hand to steady her. “Just after the accident, once we patched the leak, it didn’t look good,” he said. “They thought that a major solar storm would give us a significant radiation dose. Not lethal, but enough to raise our chances of getting cancer by ten percent or so.”

Taki said, “But that was when they thought there’d be eight of us aboard using up the water. And no replenishment from the
Fermi
.”

“Right,” said Benson. “The numbers they ran just before we left Mars orbit looked a lot better.”

“And that was for four people,” Taki added. “Now we’re only three.”

“We’ll be okay,” Benson repeated.

Virginia still looked unconvinced. She glanced around the narrow confines of the area, as if trying to see the invisible subatomic particles that were bulleting through her body.

“It’ll be all right,” Taki said.

“How high is the radiation level now?” Virginia asked.

“Pretty close to normal, I would guess,” Benson replied. “The cloud hasn’t reached us yet. I’ll have the readings from the command center piped into the comm panels in our cubbies. We’ll get minute-by-minute reports.”

“Unless the sensors fail.”

“They’re hardened against radiation, Virginia.”

“But we’re not.”

Taki pushed herself up off the deck and rapped her knuckles against the overhead. “We’re shielded, Jin. We’ll be fine.”

Virginia nodded. “I’m sorry I’m such a worrier. It’s just . . . kind of scary.”

Rubbing his chin in thought, Benson said, “You know, we could take the emergency box shields from the CTV and bring them in here. They’re high-density polyethylene: should give us a good layer of extra protection.”

“But we’d have to go out and take it from the crew transfer vehicle,” Virginia countered. “We’d have to leave the protection of the shielding here.”

“That’s all right,” said Benson. “The radiation cloud won’t reach us for several hours. I’ll check with Houston and see if we have time enough to get the box shields from the CTV.”

Taki smiled at him. “Yeah, but if you do we’re going to be cooped up in something the size of a phonebooth for a couple of days, at least.”

“With nothing much to do, except watch the radiation readings,” said Benson.

Virginia’s worried frown eased into a tentative smile. “Bee, you’ll be stuck in here with the two of us.”

Taking up on Gonzalez’s smile, Taki suggested, “I suppose we could play computer games. Or something.”

Feeling his cheeks warming, Benson pushed himself toward the hatch. “I’m going to the command center and check in with mission control.”

December 7, 2035

02:09 Universal Time

Mars Landing Plus 32 Days

Fermi
Habitat

When Houston’s CME warning reached Mars, it automatically triggered the alert klaxon, just as it had aboard the
Arrow
.

Catherine and McPherson were in the auxiliary airlock, where they had been spending their nights. It was a cramped little space, between the inner and outer hatches, its floor area not quite big enough for Hiram to stretch out to his full length. He had to sleep curled around Catherine’s body. Somehow he didn’t mind that. Neither did she, apparently.

Catherine snapped to a sitting position. “What’s that?”

“Emergency,” Hi answered, and immediately felt stupid.

He fumbled in the darkness for the flashlight he always kept beside him, grasped it and flicked it on with his thumb. Then he reached for his coveralls and began tugging them on. Catherine was doing the same.

Through the thick inner hatch they heard the automated warning: “SOLAR STORM ALERT. REPORT TO THE SHELTER IMMEDIATELY. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.”

Getting to his bare feet, McPherson cracked the inner hatch open. “We’d better get to the sleeping area.”

“Yes. Quickly,” Catherine said, zipping up the front of her coveralls.

The lights were on throughout the habitat, and Ted Connover was sitting at the communications console in the command center, looking grim.

“How long do we have before it hits?” he was asking the display screen, which showed a mission control technician.

Amanda Lynn came out of their sleeping area, wearing a rumpled pullover shirt that reached her knees.

“Solar flare,” Ted told Catherine and Hi before they could say anything. “Looks like a big one.”

Glancing around at the hard walls of this section of the habitat, Amanda said, “We should be okay in here.”

With all four of them squeezed into the command center, the compartment felt crowded, steamy.

Connover was studying the spiky lines of graphs on the console’s display screens.

“No rise in radiation levels, so far,” he said. “The cloud’s still several hours away.”

The network of satellites that had been put in orbit around Mars by NASA, the European and the Japanese space agencies monitored radiation levels above the planet’s atmosphere, together with dozens of other duties, such as relaying communications around the planet and retransmitting messages to and from Earth.

Looking up from the displays, Connover broke into a tentative smile. “We’ll be fine in here. In fact, we could probably keep on working as usual, as long as we don’t go outside.”

Catherine said, “The atmosphere protects us,
non
?”

“Not as much as Earth’s atmosphere shields against radiation storms,” said McPherson, “but even the thinner air of Mars gives us a decent layer of protection.”

Connover nodded agreement. “You know, the safety guys back in Houston were pretty damned conservative when they drew up the mission guidelines. They were using old data, back from the days when they thought that a CME storm could kill you outright if you weren’t protected. It turns out that the atmosphere of Mars shields us from most cosmic rays, even though it’s a hundred times thinner than Earth’s atmosphere.

“If we were outside and exposed to a CME flux, we’d get a bigger radiation dose than we would on Earth, but it’d be about the same as we’d get in an orbiting space station. But in here, under the water shield, we’ll be fine.”

“No worries,” Amanda said. She looked far from relaxed, though.

“Not here,” said Connover. “It’s the guys in the
Arrow
that I’m worried about. They’re facing a helluva bigger flux than we’ll catch, and they’re much more vulnerable.”

“Don’t they have that portable shelter from the crew transfer vehicle?” McPherson asked. “They could use it to give them an extra layer of protection.”

Connover said, “Yeah, they could, couldn’t they?”

“Perhaps you should call Bee and suggest it,” said Catherine.

Connover hesitated.
Bee’s probably already thought of the portable shelter,
he thought.
He doesn’t need any suggestions from me. He’ll think I’m interfering.

“Call him,” Amanda urged.

With a single curt nod, Connover reached for the communications panel. “Right,” he told them, while he thought,
I’ll have to chance Bee getting sore at me. There are lives at stake. Including his.

December 8, 2035

19:00 Universal Time

Mars Landing Plus 33 Days

Baton Rouge, Louisiana

The teenage boys were, of course, much more interested in their online gaming than with their school homework. All three were juniors in high school, and possessed the latest-greatest computers, notepads, and virtual reality systems. None of them paid much attention to what was going on in the world, except for the Mars mission. They were the demographic that President Harper was trying to inspire by the exploration of Mars, and he’d succeeded. They were hooked.

To an outside observer, the three of them were standing in the jumbled, gadget-crammed bedroom with its unmade bed and telescope standing by the only window, wearing metal-mesh sockhats on their heads as they flailed at unseen enemies like a trio of youngsters being attacked by a swarm of invisible bees.

From their own perspective, however, thanks to the images flooding their minds from the sensor webs affixed to their heads, they were battling hordes of shape-changing Martian monsters hell-bent on taking over their high school. Never mind why the aliens wanted their high school; the game had them totally engrossed.

Manuel, the unofficial alpha male of the pack, was as usual kicking the other two boys’ butts by killing upwards of fifty of the wily green monsters in this latest virtual reality simulation to hit the Internet, inspired by the country’s renewed interest in space exploration. For high school boys, killing dreaded Martians was the next best thing to lusting after high school girls.

Manuel pulled off his sensor web first. He had won this encounter and eliminated the Martian threat, for now. Level three would be next.

“Man, that was great!” he enthused as the other boys peeled off their sensor webs. “I can’t wait to try that in the porno mode.”

“Your mind is always in the gutter, Manny,” Jim complained.

“Best place to be, man.”

Billy, the youngest of the three asked, “Hey, did you hear about the
Arrow
? One of the spacewatch feeds is saying that the guy who died was infected with something he picked up on Mars. They’ve got a video of him showing a Martian creature busting out his gut.”

“No way! Are you kidding me?” Jim said. “I thought he had cancer. That’s what the science feeds say.”

“Yes, way,” Billy insisted. “It’s all over the news feeds. That video’s gross, dude. I sure hope they don’t bring that shit back here.”

“I don’t believe it. You can make anything look real these days. Just look at this game. I can’t tell if I’m in your room or at school fighting Martian zombies. Anyway, I haven’t read anything like that on the science feeds. You see too many conspiracy theories on those alternative sites.”

Both boys turned to Manuel, who was a good six months older than either of them.

With a totally serious expression, Manuel proclaimed, “The space agency won’t allow us to get infected. If it’s real, the government will send the ship off into the Sun or something and that’ll be the last time we go to Mars for a long, long time.”