SUNDOWN: SOL 49
DEX TRUMBALL FROWNED AS HE LISTENED TO JAMIE ON THE rover’s comm link.
“The meteorology people don’t expect the storm to get across the equator, but they’re keeping an eye on it.”
“So what’s the problem?” Trumball asked, glancing over at Craig, driving the rover.
The ground they were traversing was rising slightly, and rougher than the earlier going. A range of rugged hills rose on their left, and the last rays of the dying sun threw enormously elongated shadows across their path, turning even the smallest rocks into dark phantoms reaching out to block their way.
“It’s a question of timing,” Jamie replied. “Each day you get farther from the base. If we wait to recall you until the storm’s a real threat, it might be too late.”
“But you don’t know that the storm’s going to be a real threat, do you?”
“The prudent thing to do,” Jamie said, “is to turn back and try this excursion again late in the summer, when the threat of storms is practically zero.”
“I don’t want to turn back because of some theoretical threat that probably won’t materialize.”
“It’s better than getting caught in a dust storm, Dex.”
Trumball looked across at Craig again. The older man gave him a sidelong glance, then returned to staring straight ahead.
“You made it through a dust storm, didn’t you?” he said.
It took several moments for Jamie to reply, “We had no choice. You do.”
“Well, lemme tell you something, Jamie. I choose to keep on going. I’m not going to stop and turn back because of some asshole of a storm that’s a couple thousand klicks away.”
Sitting in front of the comm console, with Stacy beside him and Vijay at his back, Jamie kneaded his fists into his thighs.
If I order him to return and he refuses, then whatever authority I have over these people goes down the drain. But if I let him continue then they’ll all know that Dex can do whatever he wants to and I have no way to control him.
He realized that it was Dex who was making the decisions. The idea of putting Craig in charge was a farce from the beginning. Possum was not raising his voice, not saying a word at all.
Which way? Which path? Jamie thought furiously for several silent moments. He drew up in his mind an image of Trumball’s route across Lunae Planum and into Xanthe Terra.
“Hold on for a minute, Dex,” he said, and cut off the transmission.
Turning to Dezhurova, he ordered, “Let me see their itinerary, Stacy.”
She punched up the image on the screen before Jamie’s chair. A black line snaked across the map, with pips marking the position expected at the end of each day. Jamie scanned it swiftly, then hit the transmit key again.
“Dex?”
“We’re still here, chief.”
“If the storm crosses the equator and threatens you, it won’t happen for at least four or five more days. By then you’ll be much closer to the fuel generator than to the base, here.”
“Yeah?” Trumball’s voice sounded wary.
“In two days from now you ought to be at the halfway point between here and the generator.”
“Right.”
“That’s going to be our decision point. The point of no return. I’ll decide then whether you can keep going or have to turn back.”
“In two days.”
“Yes. In the meantime we’ll keep close track of the storm. Stay in touch with us hourly.”
This time it was Trumball who hesitated for several moments before answering, “Okay. Sure.”
“Good,” said Jamie.
“We’ll be bedding down for the night in another hour,” Trumball said. “Call you then.”
“Good,” Jamie repeated.
He cut the transmission and leaned back in the little wheeled chair, feeling as if he had sparred ten rounds with a professional boxer.
Fifteen minutes later, Jamie was in the geology lab, running an analysis of the core samples that Craig’s drill had brought up, happy to be dealing with rocks and dirt instead of people. Sedimentary deposits, no doubt about it. This dome is sitting on the floor of an ancient seabed. If we’d been here a few hundred million years ago, he thought, we’d have needed scuba gear.
“Jamie,” Stacy Dezhurova called out sharply over the loudspeakers, “we have an emergency message from Rodriguez.”
He instantly forgot his musings when Dezhurova’s voice rang through the dome. Jamie left the core sample in the electron microscope without turning it off and sprinted across the dome to the comm center.
Dezhurova looked grim as she silently handed Jamie a headset.
Rodriguez’s voice was calm but tight with tension. “… down there more than two hours now and then radio contact cut off,” the astronaut was saying.
Sitting again on the wheeled chair next to Dezhurova as he adjusted the pin microphone, Jamie said, “This is Waterman. What’s happening, Tomas?”
“Mitsuo went down into the caldera as scheduled. He found a lava tube about fifty-sixty meters down and went into it. Then his radio transmission was cut off.”
“How long—”
“It’s more than half an hour now. I’ve tried yanking on his tether, but I’m getting no response.”
“What do you think?”
“Either he’s unconscious or his radio’s failed. I mean, I really pulled on the tether. Nothing.”
The astronaut did not mention the third possibility: that Fuchida was dead. But the thought blazed in Jamie’s mind.
“You say your radio contact with him cut off while he was still in the lava tube?”
“Yeah, right. That was more’n half an hour ago.”
A thousand possibilities spun through Jamie’s mind. The tether’s too tough to break, he knew. Those Buckyballs can take tons of tension.
“It’s going to be dark soon,” Rodriguez said.
“You’re going to have to go down after him,” Jamie said.
“I know.”
“Just go down far enough to see what’s happened to him. Find out what’s happened and call back here.”
“Yeah. Right.”
“I don’t like it, but that’s what you’re going to have to do.”
“I don’t like it much, either,” said Rodriguez.
Through a haze of pain, Mitsuo Fuchida saw the irony of the situation. He had made a great discovery, but he would probably not live to tell anyone about it.
When he entered the lava tube he felt an unaccustomed sense of dread, like a character in an old horror movie, stepping slowly, fearfully down the narrow corridor of a haunted house, lit only by the flicker of a candle. Except this corridor was a tube melted out of the solid rock by an ancient stream of red-hot lava, and Fuchida’s light came from the lamp on his hard suit helmet.
Nonsense! he snapped silently. You are safe in your hard suit, and the tether connects you to Rodriguez, up at the surface. But he called to the astronaut and chatted inanely with him, just to reassure himself that he was not truly cut off from the rest of the universe down in this dark, narrow passageway.
The VR cameras fixed to his helmet were recording everything he saw, but Fuchida thought that only a geologist would be interested in this cramped, claustrophobic tunnel.
The tube slanted downward, its walls fairly smooth, almost glassy in places. The black rock gleamed in the light of his lamp. The tunnel grew narrower in spots, then widened again, although nowhere was it wide enough for him to spread his arms fully.
Perspiration was beading Fuchida’s lip and brow, trickling coldly down his ribs. Stop this foolishness, he admonished himself. You’ve been in tighter caves than this.
He thought of Elizabeth, waiting for him back in Japan, accepting the subtle snubs of deep-seated racism because she loved him and wanted to be with him when he returned. I’ll get back to you, he vowed, even if this tunnel leads down to hell itself.
The tether seemed to snag from time to time. He had to stop and tug on it to loosen it again. Or perhaps Rodriguez was fiddling with the tension on the line, he thought.
Deeper into the tunnel he went, stepping cautiously, now and then running his gloved hands over the strangely smooth walls.
Fuchida lost track of time as he chipped at the tunnel walls here and there, filling the sample bags that dangled from his harness belt. The tether made it uncomfortable to push forward, attached to his harness at the chest. It had to pass it over his shoulder or around his waist: clumsy, at best.
Then he noticed that the circle of light cast by his helmet lamp showed an indentation off toward the left, a mini-alcove that seemed lighter in color than the rest of the glossy black tunnel walls. Fuchida edged closer to it, leaning slightly into the niche to examine it.
A bubble of lava did this, he thought. The niche was barely big enough for a man to enter. A man not encumbered with a hard suit and bulky backpack, that is. Fuchida stood at the entrance to the narrow niche, peering inside, wondering.
And then he noticed a streak of red, the color of iron rust. Rust? Why here and not elsewhere?
He pushed in closer, squeezing into the narrow opening to inspect the rust spot. Yes, definitely the color of iron rust.
He took a scraper from the tool kit at his waist, nearly fumbling it in his awkwardly gloved fingers. If I drop it I won’t be able to bend down to pick it up, not in this narrow cleft, he realized.
The red stain crumbled at the touch of the scraper. Strange! thought Fuchida. Not like the basalt at all. Could it be … wet? No! Liquid water cannot exist at this low air pressure. But what is the pressure inside the rock? Perhaps …
The red stuff crumbled easily into the sample bag he held beneath it with trembling fingers. It must be iron oxide that is being eroded by water, somehow. Water and iron. Siderophiles! Bacteria that metabolize iron and water!
Fuchida was as certain of it as he was of his own existence. His heart was racing. A colony of iron-eating bacteria living inside the caldera of Olympus Mons! Who knew what else might be found deeper down?
It was only when he sealed up the sample bag and placed it in the plastic box dangling from his belt that he heard the strange rumbling sound. Through the thickness of his helmet it sounded muted, far-off, but still any sound at all this deep in the tunnel was startling.
Fuchida started to back away from the crumbling, rust-red cleft. The rumbling sound seemed to grow louder, like the growl of some prowling beast. It was nonsense, of course, but he thought the tunnel walls were shaking slightly, trembling. It’s you who are. trembling, foolish man! he admonished himself.
Something in the back of his mind said, Fear is healthy. It is nothing to be ashamed of, if you—
The rusted area of rock dissolved into a burst of exploding steam that lifted Fuchida off his feet and slammed him painfully against the far wall of the lava tube.