No Way

23

The sky had cleared. Yun’s forty per cent had lucked out. The storm had contracted and swung south. On the other side of the equator, Mars was still blanketed in airborne ocher dust, and it could still come back. But Frank had been able to plug in the buggy for a full day, without worrying about leaving the base short, and thanks to their surfeit of generating capacity, the battery banks were mostly full.

At some point in the night, he’d dozed. But it wasn’t proper sleep. At least he was already awake for his set-off at 0300. He hadn’t said anything to anyone else. Not to Luisa, not to Lucy.

Not to Isla.

He still didn’t know what that had meant. If anything. If it had happened. If he’d hallucinated it. She’d not mentioned it. Neither had he. It wasn’t as if he could forget it, or wanted to forget it, not like some of the other things. Just that… what was he supposed to do?

It was dark when he stepped outside. He’d made absolutely certain that he hadn’t woken anybody up. He’d secreted two fully charged, spare life support packs in the med bay airlock, and he went round and collected them, strapping them to the back of the buggy he was taking.

He’d be at the outpost in an hour and a half; there, he’d swap out his life support, and carry straight on over to M2. The route wasn’t certain, and he’d be slowed down by the fact that he was working solely on lights.

That would eat into the energy budget, but he’d kill them as soon as the sky got light enough, shortly before dawn. He could be at his destination by, say, 0700. That would give him some poking-around time when he got over there. Unless their buggy was out and in view, M2 were unlikely to see him approach: they were in a cave, in a deep trench. He thought he could scout them out without necessarily revealing he was there. He could decide, based on what he found, what to do afterwards.

Though quite what he could do, he hadn’t worked out. He was going to have to wing it, and that didn’t sit well with him. The decision to go—dangerous, reckless, possibly pointless—was bad enough. All his old fears about M2 and what they could do to him came back with a vengeance.

It was still dark. Frank looked away to the south, towards the hidden summit of Ceraunius Tholus, towards the outpost, and towards M2. His guts tightened, and for a moment he had to swallow hard and breathe slowly. He had to do this. He was the only one who could.

He climbed up on the buggy, powered it up, and waited until his nose was pointing towards the dark bulk of the mountain before bringing the headlights up slowly. The ground glittered with frost, and it was hard, cracking under the wheel plates as they dug in and gripped.

He headed up the Santa Clara, and when he’d gone through the first curve of the river, flipped the lights to full. That was better. There weren’t many obstacles on what was essentially a flat river bed that was now layered with even more dust, but it was the dust itself that made the going heavier than it normally was. He adjusted the responsiveness of the tires accordingly, so that they were broader and less springy.

It reminded him of his trips out away from the pressures of the base when most of the others were still alive. Driving up alone, and just taking in the view from further up: the sky, Rahe crater, the distant bulge of Uranius Tholus. A few minutes of peace, before descending again. The days before he’d known what XO had planned for him.

Eventually, he worked his way out onto the summit plain, and there, despite his expectations, was the outpost, apparently intact and unharmed. Though he knew with his head that the wind couldn’t really exert any pressure, his experience of the storm had been overwhelming. If all he’d encountered was a few shreds of plastic clinging to twisted metal, he wouldn’t have been surprised—but a quick tour of the outside told him that it was still bolted down, still under pressure, still functioning. The air was clear—not rain-washed, but scoured—and the cold probably helped to settle what was left of the dust that might have otherwise been blowing around. He checked the temperature, and it had dropped over a hundred degrees from yesterday.

The leeward side of the hab was higher than the windward. Dust and sand had dropped there, and now had frozen into place. The other side was blasted clean down to the bedrock. All traces of tracks and footprints had been erased, wherever they’d lain.

The aluminum supports and rings were almost mirror-like where they were exposed to the wind, enough that he could catch his own reflection. Suit lights and blank face. Unrecognizable as himself.

He picked off one of the life supports from the buggy and carried it into the airlock. The surface of the door was smoother than it had been. Some of the detailing had flattened. The look of the door seal had changed too, from plump and effective to worn and thin. They had some spares. He needed to swap that out before it failed.

But the pressure held as he pumped the airlock up, and because he was alone, he had to climb out of his suit in order to exchange life supports. His old one still had a good six hours in it. He’d probably swap it out again when he passed this way on the return leg; he just wanted the buffer that a fresh one would give him.

Goddammit, it was cold. Cold enough that the sweat on his feet threatened to stick to the floor panels. He should have thought of that. Everything he touched was at below minus one hundred. He was going to get burns. The main base never got that cold. Even when they hadn’t had heating. Stupid to get frostbite or hypothermia. Careless. Dangerous.

Quickly, then. Get one of the jackets the crew used and stand on that while pulling the pack from its clips, and plugging the new one in, then scrambling into the insulated spacesuit as fast as he dared. He thumbed the “close” tab on his control panel, and waited for the heated air to start circulating again while he ran on the spot and clapped his hands together, trying to get his circulation going again.

When he and Zeus had hauled an airlock out with them onto the eastern plain beyond Rahe, in order to collect the last of their wayward supplies, it had been difficult to change life supports in such a cramped space, and cold for sure. On the way back now, it would be day, and the outside temperature would have gone up as far as freezing, and that would be OK. Certainly not as bad as he’d just experienced: he’d done himself some damage this time, because he hadn’t thought it through.

He curled his toes, clenched his fingers. He could still feel everything, which was good, but he’d scorched his fingertips and the soles of his feet. Yes, he’d learned, and he’d lived. He was damn certain he wouldn’t be doing that again without taking extra measures.

Outside, it was only getting colder. And maybe it was the fact that he was higher than Everest that should have given him the clue as to just how cold it was going to get. Cold things were brittle. He’d have to be extra careful, because breaking plates, or worse, bearings, was going to leave him stranded and in trouble. There’d been no real choice in his route, though: going around the base of the mountain would have been a round trip of over two hundred miles, and completely out of range.

Frank climbed up and restarted the buggy, and headed initially towards the caldera, in order to get past the next river valley. He’d then turn south, around the CT-B crater, and follow the direction of the lava flows down to the plain again. There was a good stretch of flat ground before the trench, before more hilly terrain, caused by a huge impact crater off to the south-west.

He rumbled on, feeling the vibration in his hands and his spine, as the frozen ground hammered under the tires. He kept the suspension loose, reasoning that he needed all the grip he could get. After what seemed an interminable stretch across the broad summit, he started feeling the bite of the straps against his chest, holding him in his seat. Downhill.

He’d gone further than he ever had done before, well beyond the area they’d searched during the dust-storm. No tracks, and neither was there an astronaut’s body, encircled with blown sand. His lights deepened the shadows and made them solid, but he could pick out the few craters that he needed to avoid and steer around them.

The headlights, and staring at the patch of illuminated ground ahead of him, ruined his night vision, but even so he could see one of the moons of Mars dash overhead in the dark sky, and the first lightening of the sky over to the east—just a hint, a pinking of the black. He could see faint features out on the plain that stretched from the foot of the volcano, as far as the horizon.

The fuel cell was… OK. The drive up was always draining, and even though he could ease off now, he faced the same climb on the way back. Better keep an eye on that. His suit was good, though, and the temperature, now that he was off the very top of the mountain, was no longer quite as low, while still being triple-figures negative. 0500. Dawn in an hour or so.

He drove on, and on. Features in the distance didn’t seem to come any closer, even though the ground was speeding past underneath him. But it did grow gradually lighter, and eventually he killed the buggy lights completely. He was so far from home, in a landscape that was completely unfamiliar to him, even by Mars’s standards.

Then he was at the bottom. One last bump of the tires as they dropped off the lava shelf and into the sand sea, and he was within twenty miles of his target. An hour there, an hour back to this point. 0540. He’d made good time.

From now on, he’d be making a dust plume behind him, but it was still very early, and it wasn’t likely that anyone would be ranging out beyond the immediate vicinity of M2. He checked his air, and his fuel cell levels again. His suit was still fine. His fuel cell? He made some quick calculations. If he could get back to the top, then there’d be no problem. He could coast down to the Heights, even if he had to walk from there. He wasn’t in that zone yet, but he’d have to watch it all the same.

The sun broke into the sky. Shadows, which had grown diffuse and gray, sharpened, and the land turned rose-red for a moment. Then the frost started to boil away, and fog blanketed the ground, so thickly that Frank stopped for the time it took for it to mostly disperse again.

When it had, he could see clearly the hilly country around the big impact crater miles off to the south-west. He wasn’t going to miss the trench, which was closer and more or less due south. Everything was going well enough.

There was no evidence he’d been seen, yet.

The quality of the vibrations in his hands changed as he left the plain and drove up onto the more chaotic debris. A surface layer of dust hid blocks of rock thrown hard and fast along with the pulverized and melted debris. It was like driving over broken concrete in places, so seeking out the deep tracts of sand was worthwhile.

Then there it was. The ground in front of him seemed to stop. A few yards more, and he could see across to the other side, the steep cliff edges with their bands of exposed rock, black blocky lava and lighter material sandwiched between. He coasted to a halt, and slowly, stiffly, dismounted from the buggy.

As he walked to the edge, he realized he was closer to the cave entrance than he thought. And it was a proper cave—an overhanging shelf of rock on top gave way to an almost sculpted arch underneath. Smooth sides and a gradual curve down to the floor of the trench, where it obviously continued. Not a circular tube, but oval, wider than it was tall, but even with solidified lava filling the lower part of the channel, it was easily a hundred feet high.

There’d been a rockfall in the past. Big chunks of the roof, some as large as an apartment building, lay where they’d fallen in the approaches to the tunnel, but they didn’t block the way. He couldn’t see the back of the cave. It could run for a short distance. It could run for miles. There was no way of telling from the outside.

But he could see the top of the descent ship, landed squarely in the middle of the trench, a couple of hundred feet away from the entrance, sitting in a field of broken rock and sand. It looked more or less intact. Slightly at an angle, perhaps, but it wasn’t on the flattest of terrain.

And over there, in clear ground, was a small solar farm—Frank guessed at maybe three to five kilowatts—dumb panels already pointing at the rising sun, which illuminated the trench east to west with ruddy light. MBO was supposed to have ten in the initial stages, and it now had fifteen.

It had fifteen because XO had allowed him to think M2’s panels were spares for MBO. Of course they had, since M2 didn’t officially exist.

How did they expect to keep this hidden again? It was literally right there, in plain sight. Certainly, the descent ship was. Maybe he could make out the pale curve of a hab inside the cave, and maybe he was imagining it. The abrasion on his faceplate made fine detail difficult.

The airwaves were dead. He tried every channel, including the common one they’d all shared during set-up. There was no traffic at all. Not even a hiss. No messages and no carrier. Random clicks and pops. Nothing meaningful. No comms, the man had said. No comms. If they’d taken Station seven, then the parts or the expertise hadn’t been enough.

It looked dead. Nothing was moving.

There was nothing else for it. He was going to have to drive down and take a closer look.

It was four miles east to the start of the trench, and five miles back west to the cave entrance. He checked his air and fuel again, and yes, he could probably spend an hour picking over the site before he had to leave to get back to the outpost.

The ramp down into the trench was wide and shallow, pocked with craters filled with sand. It gradually narrowed, and the walls rose to form cliffs: rocks that had fallen from them littered the floor, but they didn’t seem to have rolled all the way into the middle of the depression. By the time he drew level with the ship, the trench walls were towering over him, and the tunnel mouth was a black pit.

There. He could just make out a single hab, side on. Presumably there’d be other habs stretching back into the cave. If they had them. If they had the means of inflating them and heating them with such a paltry amount of power. He couldn’t imagine running a greenhouse on that few watts, and there was no sign yet they’d picked up their RTG.

They had to be dead. Surely, they had to be. He’d wasted his time, put his cover story at risk, and maybe blown it with XO and put the NASA mission in jeopardy. No one could survive with so little kit, and for how long? Almost four months now?

He almost turned back there and then. But he’d come all that way, and he was going to go and check, just to make sure. Put his mind, finally, at rest. And maybe then he could actually get some sleep.

And there. A single figure, slouching their way towards the panels. Frank sat stock still. They didn’t appear to have spotted him, or the buggy. They weren’t looking for him, and they were intent on something else.

That wasn’t an XO-issue spacesuit, like the one Frank wore. Nor was it like the one the M2 crew member wore who he’d previously met. It was—goddammit—a NASA suit. He was close enough to make out the color-splash of the mission patch.

Jim. Jim’s suit.

Frank urged the buggy forward, and got within about thirty feet before he finally entered the astronaut’s eyeline. They turned towards him, reflecting the morning sun across their faceplate. They stopped. They took a step back.

Shrugging off the harness, Frank jumped from the buggy seat and clambered down, running across the sand and shouting: “Jim! Goddammit, Jim, you lucky, lucky—”

But it wasn’t Jim. It was the man from the M2 buggy. Who, naturally, recognized him. But it was definitely Jim’s suit. Name tape. Little American flag. Mission patch on the arm. He wasn’t mistaken.

“Where’s Jim?” Frank said instinctively. But there were no comms. Nothing over the airwaves. He was going to have to communicate in a different way.

The astronaut peered at Frank through a faceplate that was as scuffed as his own. He looked like… he looked like shit. If he was gaunt before, now he looked old. A wizened old man, who reached up and tapped the side of his helmet with two fingers.

Frank knew what he needed to do, but he hesitated. This was M2, and at first glance, it wasn’t a viable base. This guy—these guys?—should be dead by now. If they were here to stake a claim on Mars, then they weren’t doing so great—and were hardly the threat he’d built them up in his mind to be.

But this man had Jim’s suit. Frank had to know why.

He gestured you-me-talk, and warily shuffled closer. The man wasn’t empty-handed. He had a manual wrench. Lightweight, sure, but all the weight was at one end. Frank had a nut runner, and that was it.

They were within arms’ reach. Then closer still. The other guy seemed just as nervous as Frank at this encounter. Surely, he knew what he was going to ask?

Their helmets touched. Frank tried to stand where he could see the wrench. “Jim Zamudio. Where is he?”

“He’s inside.”

Goddammit. He was alive after all.

“You’re wearing his suit.”

“Said I could borrow it. I had a problem with mine, right?”

“Sure. In there?” Frank pointed to the hab. “How did he even get here?”

“I was up on the volcano. Found him lost. Anyways, he’s in the hab. Go on in.”

The man broke contact, but Frank purposely resumed it with a click of perspex.

“You were up on the volcano. And you were, what, ten minutes away from safety, yet Jim let you come all the way back here. Nearly three hours away?”

“I don’t know what you’re saying. Ten minutes?”

“We’ve got a hab up on the top. It’s got air, and a radio. Jim would have been able to guide you back to it.”

“Well, he was in a bad way. He wasn’t making much sense.”

“You said you found him lost. He had plenty of air. As much as I did.” This wasn’t adding up.

“The suit was faulty, OK? Just get inside and see for yourself. I got to get on here, and you’re using up my airtime.”

The man broke contact again, more determinedly, and he gestured towards the hab. His lips were moving, but the sound couldn’t travel between them.

Frank dragged him back by the arm. “His suit was faulty, and you’re wearing it now. I thought it was your suit that wasn’t right.”

Then his prison senses kicked in. We want to discuss something, just step in here where the guards can’t see you and the cameras don’t cover. Frank reflexively stepped away, even though previously, yes, it had been him pulling the man closer.

His helmet rang like a gong, and suddenly, he was down. Tripped. Pushed. And the figure leaning over him was holding a wrench over their head, about to bring it down hard on Frank’s suit controls.

Frank kicked out, taking out the astronaut’s legs, and rolled awkwardly away, scrambling to his feet. The other guy stood up and closed the distance between them, swinging the wrench, but telegraphing each move so that Frank didn’t have to do much in the way of dodging, but instead just backed away.

He’d backed away too far. The other man was now between him and the buggy. He threw the wrench at Frank—badly aimed, and it glanced off his carapaced shoulder on the way past—then started to climb up the buggy’s chassis on the way to the driver’s seat.

What was he doing? Hijacking the buggy? No. Obviously, stopping him from driving away. Frank jumped, grabbed the man’s leg, and pulled. The man’s other foot came away from the side of the tire he had wedged it against, and he was now hanging by his arms, with Frank hanging from him. He kicked out at Frank, missed because Frank had moved sharply out of the way, and still he hung on. He tried to carry on climbing with just his hands. Despite his weakness, his furious intensity dragged Frank across the sand. He tried to shake Frank off with another kick.

Frank felt the blow against his chest, a solid punch that nevertheless did nothing but leave a boot mark against the white plastic. He took the foot he was holding on to, and he wrenched it around by more than a right angle. He felt something give at the same time as the man in Jim’s suit went rigid. He could pull him off the buggy easily now, and Jim’s helmet hit the sand hard.

The wrench was too far away to retrieve, so Frank pulled his nut runner from his belt and pinned the man face-down in the dirt. He banged on the other man’s helmet with the nut runner once, twice, three times: hard enough to send a message and perhaps disorientate, but not enough to crack the seals.

He had to turn to check he wasn’t being bounced from behind. He’d hear nothing. He’d see nothing outside of the narrow window in front of him. But they were still alone. The hab’s airlock stayed closed.

He knelt down, bent his head low until their helmets touched. He could hear groaning, but that wasn’t his priority right now.

“What have you done with Jim?”

No answer.

Frank took his nut runner and banged on Jim’s helmet again.

“What have you done with him?”

“Go to hell!”

OK. Frank adjusted his position slightly so that he could put his weight on the man’s ankle.

“One last time,” he shouted through the screaming. “Where is Jim Zamudio? Is he alive or dead?”

He lifted his foot to ease the pressure. He could hear the man inside Jim’s suit panting.

“He’s… he’s…”

How difficult would it be to say “alive” if Jim was actually alive? He clawed his fingers around the mission patch on the spacesuit’s arm and ripped it free. He tucked the patch into his belt pouch, reholstered his nut runner, then looked again at the cave entrance. Suit lights. One. Another. Goddammit. Coming towards him. Fast.

Frank scrambled up into the buggy seat, and didn’t bother to strap himself in before he gripped hard on the accelerator triggers. The wheels spun before the tire plates dug in, and he jerked away, bouncing over the ground, heading past the descent ship, on his way towards the end of the trench. The rattling of the frame grew too much, and he slowed momentarily to buckle up.

He also activated his rear-view cameras. The tiny screen told him what he suspected. Dust plumes. Two of them. Right behind him.