Olympus Mons (22 page)

If Jesperson had been surly and mean trucking
out
to the edge of Amazonis, when we found out later what had taken place during the “private” conversation aboard Cee One, his wild wolverine personality flared white hot and came to the fore, turning him inside out as well as plain
nasty.
Spouting strung-together bad words, he ranted about Scheiermann's “bullheaded tunnel vision,” and how it had blossomed into murderous idiocy. In my partner's view, shooting down the captain's promise to spread the word about our dilemma was not just unconscionable, it amounted to what he called, “Aiding and abetting mass murder.”

An open secret had circulated quietly in Burroughs, namely that the remaining calendar time, too slim to begin with, had completely evaporated as far as any U.N. attempt to hand us either a rescue or reprieve was concerned. Above and beyond anything and everything else, the genuine threat to our continued existence was something Scheiermann more than anyone should have deeply appreciated. Jesperson accused the director of refusing to acknowledge the truth even to himself. Trouble was, we didn't learn how badly the director had blown it until getting back inside pressure at Burroughs.

Crawler One took aboard cargo, and nothing else, including eight pressure-suits custom fabbed for half the newcomers, plus cartons of medical supplies, the few kilograms of personal belongings allotted each newcomer, varieties of microchips, electronic book and music discs for our database library, holographic movies and documentaries, and other entertainment goodies, plus bales and bundles of esoteric items we've learned to think of as luxuries.

Dumbfounded to hear the director decline his intention to speak up on behalf of the enclave, Captain Kinsolving probably returned to the lander shaking his head either in wonder, or pity. The umbilical tube was unshipped and withdrawn. Cee One trundled away, and Crawler Five took its place. We passed most of another idle hour while Cee Five inhaled eight of the new chums along with their customized vacuum gear and a few additional supplies. Our turn came next.

My partner jockeyed the beast into position and powered-down. I went aft and stood by to cycle the airlock. Faint scrapings and clunks conducted through the crawler's skin told me the umbilical tube was being connected and sealed. Soon a radio voice blared from the cabin speakers: “Tight here; pressure's up!”

The airlock cycled open, and there in the hatchway, searing my over-distended eyeballs, stood Glorious Gloria Steinkritz.

***

It's been my privilege over the years to view coveys and squadrons of fetching fems. My very own squeeze, Lorna, was no slouch in the looks department before the ordeal of living in Mars and giving birth tacked on some lines and wrinkles and sags. Yet as feminine jewels go, Glorious Gloria soared high above what any male might think of as the norm. Somewhere in her mid- to late-thirties, she owned a shock of raven hair cropped pageboy style
—
neat bangs clipped so properly they looked supernatural draped over her clear, high forehead. Glorious Gloria's turned-up nose separated eyes the color of green Chartreuse, once upon a time my favorite after-dinner gargle, except with a dash of yellow liqueur smeared around the irises. Nothing, not even the pack-batteries strapped in pouches around her slim waist could hide the figure underneath a rumpled tan jumpsuit.

“Hi,” was all she had to say.

“Welcome to Mars, Miss.”

“Thank you for the greeting. I'm Dr. Steinkritz.” She accompanied the correction with a smile, holding out a firm, dainty hand.

“Why then a special hearty welcome to you, Doctor. My name is Barnes, and this here is Jesperson.”

Thinking to help make comfortable the eight warm bodies we'd be carting across Tharsis to their endangered home away from home, my partner had stepped back into the aft cabin. Standing statue-still, frozen in mid-stride, he stared at Dr. Steinkritz as if paralyzed, while Glorious Gloria stared back at him every bit as hard. Sparks flew betwixt and between them; it was like a scene in some superheated holovision romantic drama, except happening right there in front of me for-real. Their first encounter put out a static discharge that could've lighted the crawler.

“How do you do, Mr. Jesperson,” said Glorious Gloria.

“Not too badly,” he admitted, a throaty catch in his voice, “unless you ask for details. And yourself, Doctor?”

“I'm frankly delighted to be here, overjoyed to finally be released from endless quarantine on the ground, and a second forever quarantine aboard ship.” Glorious Gloria primly seated herself on an open foldbunk.

I offered words of welcome to the other passengers as they came through the umbilical tube one by one
—
five men and two women
—
and invited them to relax and rest a bit during the long, swaying, jouncing ride back to Burroughs. All the newcomers except Dr. Steinkritz looked and acted raggedy and out of sorts, nor could they be blamed for feeling frazzled after spending months cooped up in carbon dioxide isolation aboard ship, and weeks before that isolated in New Zealand's Bevvins Clinic. Not Glorious Gloria, however; she had sort of a built-in glow about her that made her look composed, self-contained, ready for whatever might come next.

Once the umbilical tube had been unshipped and withdrawn, Jesperson energized the crawler.

I slid into the co-driver seat, and muttered, “Ooh-la-la!”

He rolled his eyes as if to say, ‘Ain't it the truth!' and eased the joystick forward. We fell in between the other pair of crawlers jolting and rocking across the rust-colored, boulder-strewn wasteland. In the lead, Cee One kept to a sedate forty-plus kph to minimize shaking up the newbies.

Dr. Steinkritz came forward not long after we got underway and hunkered down in the aisle between the drivers seats for a better view through the transpex forward bubble. Those all-seeing eyes of green Chartreuse flicked back and forth over the drab landscape, taking it all in one sweep at a time.

“Best hang on,” advised Jesperson. “Now and then the boat gets rocky.”

She took his advice, clutching the back of either seat. “Rocky doesn't say it by half. I've never seen so many rocks all in one place.” Pointing toward the portside horizon, she said, “That has to be the big volcano.”

Jesperson assured her it was Olympus Mons.

She remarked that the monster didn't look so enormous at a distance
—
more like a gigantic wall made up of the cliffs ringing the gigantic shield volcano's base.

It was the first time I'd ever seen Jesperson take his eyes off the road, except there was no road for him to take his eyes off of, to cut a sideways glance at Gloria. She met his gaze, and sparks flew again.

“You can see only a small chunk of the escarpment,” My partner told her, sounding a bit rattled, not at all like himself. He explained how the wind hadn't finished whisking away the orographic cloud layer that still hid everything above three or four kilometers.

They batted meaningless chitchat back and forth a while longer. After a short jouncing, swaying period of silence, out of the blue Glorious Gloria asked Jesperson if by chance he was the same gentleman who had led the rescue team that plucked a pair of injured climbers from a peak in the Canadian Rockies fourteen, fifteen years earlier.

“Guilty as charged,” he told her. “How did you root up that acorn of useless information?”

“I had ample leisure, and to spare,” she said, “sitting around in the New Zealand clinic, so I researched the medical dossiers of all current Burroughs residents
—
a purely professional interest, you understand. Your name and background stuck in my mind: alpinist, intel agency field agent, lecturer, skydiver, whatever else I seem to have forgotten.”

I grinned. “Been holding out on me, haven't you, Bwana? That's some fancy pedigree. I had no idea you were famous.”

The dirty look I fielded came out of the special private stock he reserves t'use on me.

“Tell me, Dr. Steinkritz,” he said, not to be outdone by her recital of his credentials, and superhuman accomplishments, et cetera, and so forth, “are you by chance the medic who hopes to save every infant born in Mars?”

“Guilty as charged,” she said, echoing his earlier reply. Her smooth contralto lightly salted with mockery, she went on to say, “My specialty is pediatrics. Pardon me, now I suppose I'll have to say ‘exotic' pediatrics. I could be mistaken, but it sounds as if you don't approve of my ambition.”

“Not really disapproval, Doctor. It's just that too many thirsty little mouths tend to make things more difficult around here.”

At the time, Gloria had no inkling of our water worries. She sounded a touch puzzled and said, “Don't you like children, Mr. Jesperson?”

“Only,” he told her, “if they're properly prepared.”

Glorious Gloria didn't crack a smile. “How long have you been in Mars?”

“Far too long. It's something you already knew if you had a peek at my dossier?”

“All right, I've been found out. Please listen, both of you. I'm eager to do a complete work-up on everyone in Burroughs, especially gentlemen like you who've been Mars-rationalized for some time. It will aid my research tremendously if you'll agree to cooperate. Establishing current metabolic baselines for veteran revision patients such as you will simplify my task immensely when it comes to dealing with newborns and youngsters, or other adults for that matter.”

Gracious fella that I am, I said, “Happy to oblige, Doctor.

“Include me out,” said Jesperson. “Our chief medic tells me I'm incredibly healthy. I plan to live forever.”

“How fortunate for you.” She said it lightly, but a tiny burr of irritation crept into the statement. “I'm afraid fulfilling your ambition doesn't sound too practical.”

“Will it hurt to try?”

“No-o-o, I suppose not. I'll keep it in mind when I check you over.”

“Don't hold your breath, Doctor.”

Gloria pretended to be amused, but it was a less than convincing performance. Casual badinage and banter flew back and forth between them during a few more kilometers of the homeward trek. I know guy-gal fencing when I hear it, but what I overheard was more like dueling. Anyhow, to me the picture painted itself straight away in bright shades of Technicolor. A blind man would've twigged to what came down between those two, nor did either of them pretend to make any bones about it.

***

Tradition calls for our four-man, one-woman Burroughs Administrative Council to stage an informal welcoming shindig for newbies. The meet ‘em, greet ‘em dog and pony show took place that evening after the sixteen hunks of fresh meat had refreshed themselves, changed clothes and rested some. Before dinner, they were taken on an hour-long walkabout of the complex, introduced to our various facilities, and then shown a twenty-minute indoctrination holodisc highlighting the fews joys and diversions to be found in Burroughs, yet for some reason neglecting or sloughing off the assorted trepidations, tribulations and trials.

The director's stodgy “welcome wagon” lecture was meant to acquaint the new Marsrats to our ways and means, procedures and rules, lacks and dangers. It came off without a hitch until Scheiermann stuck both feet in his mouth up to the crotch by casually mentioning the eruption, shaker, and the current water crunch.

Indignant is too tame an adjective to define the reactions of all but one of the newbies, nor could the recently minted Marsrats be blamed for being wildly upset by the news. In concert, fifteen sets of vocal cords began stridently demanding to know why their owners had been permitted to take ship for Mars after an endless stay in carbon dioxide quarantine, and another in trajectory, only to become members of a seriously endangered subspecies. As I said, our director may be a book-smart former academic, but he's almost as practical as teats on a boar hog when it comes to confronting anything smacking of a real-world crisis. Realizing too late how bad the gaffe had been, he tried to cope by patiently explaining that the newbies were already in trajectory when the eruption and quake had cut off our water supply. His well-reasoned, well-spoken explanation didn't wash worth a damn.

One of the new chums, a nasal-voiced Pakistani gent, demanded to know why the whirligig ship hadn't turned tail and hauled all sixteen new chums back to the safety of the Earth-Luna System. By this time literally sweating bullets, Scheiermann goosed Doc Franklin into fielding an answer to that piercing question. The areographer's stiffly worded clarification, spot on in the facts-as-known department, should've been administered with a hefty dose of painkiller, not a shot of wry. Further antagonizing the complainer and his fellow newcomers, Franklin's scholarly declaration had informed them that even with a nuclear prime-power source aboard it would've been absolutely unheard for a whirligig ship to de-spin and remate its components, retrofire and reverse course in mid-trajectory. His second try at clearing the muddy waters, while every bit as scientifically accurate as the first, did more damage when he nerved himself up and explained the deeper reason why doubling back had been impossible: all sixteen newbies, now Mars-rationalized carbon dioxide freaks, could never again live among the homeworld's billions. This “news item” badly riled every one of the newcomers, doing so in exactly the same way it forever riles me.

Having volunteered to undergo the Bevvinase Process, all but one of the new chums had been intellectually, if not emotionally aware of how the rework had radically changed their lives. Learning of the enclave's shortly to be waterless future, on top of Franklin's “never again” sentence of permanent exile, failed miserably to calm down the distraught, shaken-up new neighbors. Grousing amongst themselves, they were shown to their assigned quarters, while Dr. Steinkritz, who struck me as nothing if not a direct, in-your-face straight shooter, appeared to take the dismal news in stride. She and Yokie had their heads together talking medical mumbo-jumbo long before Scheiermann made the welcoming ceremony fall on its face. As a doctor, I think Gloria was too preoccupied with the medical challenge for a mundane topic like death by thirst to affect her professional composure. Then too, as a woman she seemed to also take Jesperson, spiny disposition, sharp tongue, ditzy personality and other assorted warts in perfect stride. I think that surprised me more than her failure to outwardly worry about the final curtain that might soon come down on all of us.