One Way

13

Frank didn’t know if Dee had ever seen a dead body before, but once Frank had cut through the cable ties, there wasn’t any other option but for them both to lift Marcy down from the back of the buggy. Perhaps it was something in Frank’s body language that managed to translate itself through the bulky suit, but Dee didn’t so much as murmur a complaint or objection. It was something that Frank was grateful for. Neither was strong on conversation, so they worked mostly in silence.

Alice said she’d make good on her promise to “deal” with Marcy. He didn’t know what that meant. Presumably, there was some sort of protocol for burying the dead: if there was, he didn’t know about it. He didn’t even know if they had shovels. And that was as far as he wanted to think on the subject.

He had the head end, by unspoken agreement, but he kept his eyes elsewhere and they laid her on the ground face-down. Her suit was still plump and pressurized, still as heavy as it was before. Whatever the human soul weighed, it wasn’t so much as to make a difference. He unclipped her tablet from her waist, powered it up to make sure it still worked and had sufficient battery life, and fixed it to his own belt.

“You ready, Dee?”

Dee nodded, his young face slack with awe as his gaze skittered across Frank to the ship and the volcano and the crater wall and the pink sky.

“You have to talk to me, Dee. Tell me you’re OK. You’ve got to stay in touch, let me know if you feel hot or cold or breathless or sleepy or sick or you’ve a headache or one of your alarms has gone off. Got that?”

Dee nodded again before getting a grip on himself and saying: “OK, Frank. Sure.”

“Climb up, thread your legs through the struts and hold on to the back of the seat. I’ll take it easy, stop to check on you—so we can check on each other—and no stupid risks. Got that, Dee?”

“Got it, Frank.”

They had two jobs today: build the second buggy and fit out the trailers, then drive up out of the crater and retrieve the solar panel array. Because if they didn’t, they had no way to recharge the fuel cells. The ship’s own generators and batteries were at full stretch, keeping the ship’s systems going. If the buggies ran out of power then they wouldn’t move. If the ship ran low on power, they were going to have to sit there and freeze, or suffocate, whichever was first.

It struck Frank as another flaw in the mission plan. There were others, most intractable of which was the one supply cylinder that had dropped eighty miles away. That was pretty much out of range, and it might as well have been halfway around the planet for all that it mattered.

Many of the problems would have been solved by simply putting their ship closer to the eastern end of the crater, and actually parking up in the middle of the drop zone. Granted, none of them were pilots—at least, he didn’t think Brack was a pilot, but he didn’t really know anything about him—and they’d all been asleep. But someone back at Mission Control had known where the cylinders had come down, and still put the ship nearly at the original target.

He wasn’t in charge. If there was a reason for it all, he wasn’t party to it. He and the others just had to put up with the nonsense and try and sort order from chaos.

Frank sat in the seat, wiped his visor clear and set the buggy off at a steady ten miles an hour towards the drop-off. He’d seen on the map—Marcy had shown him, only yesterday—that the slope was least where it butted up against the edge of the crater. It added a little extra distance, but it was safer, and that was what they needed right now. Not to add to the danger that was all around them, just the other side of their faceplates.

The lower speed made travel much smoother. The tire plates deformed when rolling over a rock, and sprang back when they had passed over. Even the downslope onto the crater floor was nothing more than a gentle ride, only requiring Frank to keep the buggy wheels pointing in the same direction.

“Any of these places got names yet?” asked Dee.

“Aside from the volcano and the crater? I don’t know.”

“Maybe we should start doing that.”

“Maybe.” He’d not thought of naming things here, even though he’d done it at the XO facility on Earth. It seemed like something someone who was going to stay for ever was going to do. He was only on his third day awake, and perhaps the unreality of yesterday had affected him. He felt like he was dreaming still, and to give this slope, that line of hills, a sharp-edged crater, or a big blocky boulder a name, a permanent name, would solidify his presence. If he named things, he took ownership of them.

Once down on the crater floor, he found the tire tracks they’d made the previous day, still sharp and obvious in the dust. He could put the map away now, and just follow them east.

Just over an hour later, they were at the cylinder, and Frank made them check their suits over, looking at the contents of the air tanks, the water tanks, the pressure, the composition of the gases inside. There’d be no real exertion from either of them. Both were still at ninety per cent. How very different from yesterday.

Dee had to be talked through everything, but that wasn’t so much of a problem: “stand there and hold that” was good enough for most of the tasks. When it came to the few that required some expertise, Frank went through them step by step beforehand.

With both buggies out and fully fitted with their lights, cameras, roll cages, towbars and winches, they turned their attention to the trailers. These required some assembly—the lengths were fixed by through-bolts and the wheels went on two thirds of the way along.

When they were done, and had clamped the trailers to the buggies, Frank clambered into the empty cylinder and checked that they’d not left anything behind. Dee gathered up all the packaging and passed it to him in drums, which he stowed alternately left and right, until all that was left was to pack away the huge canopy of the parachute.

It should have been difficult, but it wasn’t, even though the size was monstrous. There was so little air to get trapped in the folds that the canopy could be bundled up and carried by the two men. Frank closed the doors on the supply ship and checked his tool belt.

“That was OK,” said Dee.

“It was OK because we know we’re not running out of air. Everything’s easier knowing that.”

“Sorry, Frank. She was… she was nice.”

Alice had told him how Marcy had killed twenty-six people, by jacking her truck’s autodrive to beat traffic control, and hitting a queue of stationary vehicles on the freeway. But she’d been nice, all the same.

“Yeah.” He chewed at his lip. He really didn’t want to have to discuss it. The wound was raw and open. She’d died at some point between him tying her to the back of the buggy and arriving at the ship, and most likely Alice would never tell him exactly when. He felt he could have done better, except then he’d have probably died too.

Dee pressed his gloved finger onto the side of the cylinder and made a mark in the dust. No, not a mark, a letter. He spelled out BRACK?

Frank wrote underneath RADIO ALWAYS ON. CAN HEAR ALL.

Dee took a step to one side, to write more. CAN FIX THAT. WILL SAY WHEN DONE.

He then smeared the whole conversation out with quick wipes of his palm, and batted his hands together, as if getting rid of the evidence.

Frank nodded. “We have to get to the next drop, and you’re going to have to drive. Did you get your license?”

“I got it. Not that it means much up here. But I played computer games, too. Controls are even the same as on the handsets.”

“This isn’t the same as some shoot-’em-up. Take it easy and follow me.”

“I got it, Frank.” Dee climbed up onto the second buggy and settled into the seat. “How do I turn this thing on again?”

“Button, right-hand side,” said Frank. “Tell me if you start to lose traction or you get warning lights. At any point: don’t wait until it becomes a problem.”

Frank mounted up and consulted the map. The crater wall was, for most of its circumference, a rampart: not quite a vertical wall of stone, but high steps of layered, fractured rock piled on top of each other, and totally impassable to anyone but the most serious mountain climber. At the eastern end, where they were, the wall had collapsed along a mile-and-a-half stretch. The rock had tumbled down, and the sand from the high plain had blown in and covered it, making a much shallower slope. A ten per cent gradient, against a hundred per cent elsewhere. He saw it as the first stroke of luck they’d had.

He still dialed down his suspension, and told Dee how to do the same. It was impossible to tell how deep the sand layer was. Those same rock ledges which dominated the crater wall elsewhere might lurk just below the surface.

How fast to take it? Marcy would have known, but Frank realized he was going to have to guess. Medium-quick, build up the momentum at the bottom and hope that it’d be enough to carry him up to the top. The crater floor was some fifteen hundred feet lower than the rim. They were climbing a mountain, no matter what their eyes told them.

He relayed his instructions and swung his buggy around to get the best run-up. He checked his suit again. Seventy-five per cent. Very different from yesterday. They should have been more prepared, with some kind of contingency plan. Marcy’d still be around, and he wouldn’t be having to nursemaid both Dee and his grief.

He used his rear camera to check where Dee was, and squeezed the throttle to slowly build up a head of speed. The wheels turned and bit down and he felt the land rise up underneath him, forcing him against the back of his seat. There was a jolt, followed a moment later by another as the rear wheel hit the same unseen obstacle, but he was moving smoothly enough. He squeezed down harder. Fifteen seemed like fast enough for the lower slopes.

The image on his screen showed Dee was already losing ground. “Give it some gas. You’re pulling, so don’t be scared.”

The empty trailer was bouncing hard without any weight on it. It didn’t have adjustable wheels in the same way that the front end did, just regular dumb ones, no motor, no active control. And in the lower gravity, it was slewing and fishtailing away, and now he was worried about damage to the linkage. He felt he had no choice but to ease off slightly, go slower and run the risk of stalling.

No, not stall, since the motors gave him maximum torque at zero revs, but that brought its own problems with overheating and burnout.

He kept going, and felt like his face was pointed towards the sky. The top of the slope was all he could see in front of him, and the curtain of the crater wall extending either side. Time dragged out. He was climbing, he knew that, but without a clear view behind him—the rear-facing camera couldn’t resolve the crater floor properly—he was unable to tell just how far he’d gone.

He found himself wondering what it would look like from above, from space. These two tiny insects crawling across the vast red brick wall of the planet. Their huge journey just a tick on the whole monumental edifice that was Mars, insignificant and meaningless.

The top of the slope seemed to be growing closer. Or was that an illusion? Steeper, certainly. He could hear as well as feel the motors growling around him: loose sand and rock crackled underneath. His speed was falling, and he tightened his grip around the throttle. Lots of loose material. He had to increase the traction. Lean forward slightly. Even though that last part wouldn’t do anything in itself.

He watched the odometer tick round in tenths of miles. Surely he had to be at the top by now? But the slope was inexorably upwards, and the ground swelled to meet him.

The motors changed note. For a moment, he thought he’d blown something, but his seat shifted under him and the nose of the buggy nudged downwards. The sudden expanse of emptiness, vast and uncaring and frigid, brought him abruptly to a halt.

The haze in the distance meant he couldn’t see forever, but it felt like it. Emerging from the narrow confines of the crater to be exposed to the full force of the Martian view was like getting punched in the guts. He was actually winded.

“Frank?”

“Alice.”

“You OK? Heart rate up, blood pressure up, breathing rate up. You’re hyperventilating.”

“At the top of the crater wall. You need to see this.”

“Describe it to me instead.”

“I guess. OK. There are three huge volcanoes, like blisters, one directly in front, one to the left, and…” He made sure the brakes were on and climbed out of his seat. Dee was coming up behind, slowly, laboriously, in his own time. “One behind, over Rahe. The ground doesn’t really rise or fall. It’s like the Midwest. Flat. Huge sky. Blue, almost black overhead. Pink haze down to the horizon, and I can’t even tell how far that is away. It’s huge. And there’s nothing. Just rocks and sand and craters of all sizes, different shades of red and brown.”

“Your breathing’s under control now, so you can shut up. Seriously, I can’t nursemaid you—any of you—and you have to look after yourselves. You faint, fall, cut yourself, whatever, while you’re out there, you have to deal with it. I can sit here and watch over your vital signs like Mother Hen, but I got to go and defrost Declan and he’s a whiny little shit at the best of times. Go and get the solar panels and bring them back here so I don’t have to spend too much time cooped up with him. Got that?”

“Ma’am.”

“Just do it. And try and bring your companion back alive this time.”

That was acidic enough to burn. Even when it had started to heal over, he was going to go back to that scab and pick at it.

“Loud and clear, One. Out.”

Marcy, veteran of the open road, would have loved this view.

Frank held up his hand to Dee and the other buggy slowed and stopped a few yards away from his.

“Let’s check our suits and our vehicles. Take a look around and orient ourselves, then we can head off to the target.” He walked around the buggy, taking his time to inspect the wheels and the underside of the fuel cell: there were a few scratches, and some of the tire plates were dinged, but nothing serious. The hitch was robust, with no sign of cracking on the metal welds.

Dee probably didn’t know what to look for, so Frank took him around, shaking the wheels and making sure all the bolts were still tight.

“You OK?” asked Dee.

“Fine.”

“Because—”

“I’m fine.”

Dee had enough sense to desist at that point.

Frank took out the tablet with the map and scrolled across it. The little white crosses of where the supplies had fallen looked uncomfortably like an old cemetery. When he put his finger on each cross the screen detailed the manifest: solar farm, hydroponics equipment, air plant, water maker, habitat module, communications, internal fixtures. Somewhere out there were their personal effects, too. Frank’s little brown box, and his letters, and his books. He guessed that wasn’t a priority, but if he was passing, he might be tempted to swing by.

“Five point six miles north of here. If you’re ready?”

“Ready.”

The landscape was novel. For a while. But after the first few miles, it became a repeat of yesterday. Nothing changed. The volcanoes were no closer, and one expanse of sandy ocher ground littered with fist-sized rocks was very much the same as the next. Half an hour of monotony. Frank kept on telling himself that this was Mars, a completely different planet, a whole new experience. But it didn’t feel real. There was a disconnect between his experience and his body.

Perhaps it was something to do with the thickness of perspex between him and outside, and that most of the sound was deadened to the point of non-existence. Like watching a screen on mute. He’d have to watch out for that.

He navigated his way over to where the map told him the cylinder was lying, and again, he saw the parachute before he spotted the—

“Ah, crap.”

The cylinder was crumpled, and the Mars surface strewn with debris. There was a trail of spilled packing material that extended away into the distance, snagged around rocks and half-buried by blown dust. The top of the container, where the transponder hid, was intact, but clearly the rockets that were supposed to lower it to the ground had failed in some way: fired too soon, too late, or cut out before landing. The bottom end was crushed like a soda can, and the impact had caused one of the two door-hatches to fail completely.

Frank kicked the cylinder as he stalked past it. Things were broken. Of the drums in the container, the lowest two had disintegrated completely, and the next one up had burst around its circumference. There might be something salvageable inside it, but until they could wrest it out, they wouldn’t know.

“It doesn’t look good,” said Dee. He lifted a flat shard and shook it free of dust. It was part of a solar panel, black and shiny. “We probably needed this, right?”

As much as he didn’t want to talk to anyone in the ship, Frank felt he had no other choice.

“Alice. Is Declan awake enough to answer some questions?”

“Just about. Hold on.”

He heard some scratching and scraping, then: “Yeah. OK. I’ve been asleep for a year, so don’t expect much sense.”

“The supply ship containing our solar farm managed to smash itself into the ground. Not crater-hard, but we’ve probably lost, I don’t know, a third of it, maybe more.”

Frank could hear Declan’s breathing. “Which third?”

“It’s a crap shoot. Do you want me to bring it in anyway and you see what you can do with it?”

“I’ll get a feed off your suit camera. Give me a second.”

“Hey,” said Dee. “We’ve got cameras?”

“Jesus, Dee. Pay some fucking attention once in a while, will you?” Declan sighed, and fell silent as he assessed the grainy pictures. “OK. Fuck my life. That’s not what I wanted to see.”

“Sorry about that.”

“We need to get some sort of power generating system set up. Those glorified golf carts you’re riding around on aren’t magic, and they’re going to run out of juice soon enough. Let’s have a look at the map.”

The airwaves went dead for several seconds, during which Dee started picking up random crap off the ground, shaking it and dropping it again. Frank scowled at him.

“Dee. Sharp edges. What happened last time?”

“OK,” said Declan, “I’ve found it. It’s another eight miles, east of where you are now. It’s the RTG we were going to use as the base load, when we’d got everything set up. But we can use it now while we see what’s left of the solar array.”

“What do you want us to do with this stuff?”

“Load what you can. Especially cables, regulators, switch boards, everything except the obviously trashed gear. Then get the RTG and bring it straight back. And… if that happens to have plowed a hole in Mars, remember it’s basically a big bucket of radioactive metal and you’re going to die if the casing is ruptured. Got that?”

“Sure. We copy that.”

Frank checked his suit readings, and made sure Dee did the same.

“You heard the man. Let’s load it up.”