Olympus Mons (25 page)

I reached the upper platform literally shaking in my overboots, and had to fight down a crazy, savage impulse to dive over the edge, get the whole miserable business over and done with.

***

Stages two and three were scary-as-hell dittos of stage one, if slightly longer lifting stretches than the first stage. No glitches cropped up, yet to me each was every bit as spooky as the first, if not more so.

It was stage four that turned into a living, breathing horror show. Stage four was out of this or any other world. At that altitude, the cargo net had climbed up into the orographic cloud layer
—
an unexpected blessing, since the dissipating mist hid some of what wasn't underneath us. Our net popped up into sunlight not far below the staging platform, and the sudden glare from sunlight on the mist forced me to up the polarization of my faceplate lens, and Jesperson did likewise. Assuming cumbersome outerwear wouldn't be needed during the few hours of exposure on this test run, and wanting as much freedom of movement as possible, my partner had decided we could leave our ultraviolet cloaks behind. For the week-long trek up the volcano's rugged slopes, however, wearing UV protection would be mandatory.

The net slowed its rise, edged up a tad farther, and came to a stop.

We dangled, and dangled.

Jesperson sang out, “On the money, Gimp. Bring us in.”

We waited, and waited. Nothing happened. We dangled some more. On a long, semi-slack cable, the wind, weak though it was, began gently swaying the net. I cranked my head back against the headpiece padding and looked up at the boom. Refusing to move, it stayed right where it was despite our dangling presence.

“In position, Gimp,” called Jesperson. “Do you copy?”

“Something's haywire up there,” reported the maintenance boss. “I actuated three times. See anything that might be honked up?”

His words froze the blood in my veins.

“Not a hair out of place far as I can tell,” reported Jesperson.

“Don't like the sound of that,” comforted Gimpy.

I cried, “Neither do I!” Gimpy sounded worried, worrying me more than him.

“Boom's either stuck,” he told us, “or something's out of whack. Best I bring you guys back down.”

“Christ yes!” I said extra-loudly.

“Hang on!” Jesperson had the nerve to tell him. “Let me think.” We dangled and swayed a while longer while he thought. Then we dangled some more, gently moving back and forth in a sickening arc on the moderately slack cable.

“Do your thinking,” I advised Jesperson, “on the way down.”

“Shut up!” he said unkindly.

Twisting in the wind, the net we were in swinging slowly back and forth roughly two and a half miles above the Tharsis highlands. Jess ruminated, cogitated and finally came to a decision. “I think we can do it,” he said in his own, extra-calm way.

“Do what?” I asked, dreading the answer.

“Swing ourselves over to the platform.”

“Like hell!”

“Don't be a spoilsport, Barnes! Come on, follow my lead.” He gave instructions to Gimpy, whose radio voice sounded slightly weaker at that altitude. “Timing will be critical, Gimp. Pull us up slightly, and give us more slack on the cable. We'll swing ourselves back and forth until we're right over the shelf, all but up against the wall. When I give the word, drop us fast.”

“You're off your rocker,” observed Gimpy, a statement I heartily endorsed, and wasted no time telling Jesperson so.

“Don't wet your pants,” he said. “As you were, Gimp. Forget what I said and lower us maybe half a meter so we'll end up close to level with the platform when you cut us loose.”

“Sure you guys know what the hell you're doing?” asked Gimp.

“No,” I said, “we sure as hell don't!”

“Whenever you're ready, Gimp,” my partner told the maintenance chief.

“‘Kay, you say so.” In my mind's eye, I could see Gimpy's indifferent shrug. “It's your neck,” he added.

“Our
necks,” I corrected.

We unreeled downward a smidgen. The wind, stronger up where we were than lower down, stirred the breaking-up mist and began swaying the net in a longer back ‘n forth, sick-making arc. I thought I'd been scared earlier, but it'd been only a warm-up.

“Lean with me, and pump,” instructed Jess. “It'll be exactly like what you once did in a kiddy playground swing. Come on, help me build up momentum.”

Clutching the net's upper webbing in a death grip, I leaned per instructions, rocking back and forth in time with Jesperson‘s leans. He was right, yet also wrong. It was
nothing
like being in one of the swings I'd been fond of during my misspent youth. I looked up and the breath caught in my throat. I couldn't hold back a hastily delivered exclamation: “Sonuvabitch!”

“Complain later,” Jesperson said. “Now lean with me.”

“It moved.”

“What?”

“The boom, it moved.”

I must've sounded overexcited, because Jess left off leaning. “Gimp,” he asked, “did you hit the boom command again?”

“Yeah, been doing it regular.”

“Barney said the boom moved. Keep hitting it.”

“There, Bwana! See it?” I said seconds later.

“Barney
did
see it move, Gimp. It just moved maybe half a meter. Don't let up.” Then suddenly, “Wait, hold on! If the boom takes us all the way over, we'll crash into the wall. Lift us a notch. Give us a chance to reverse pump and kill some swing before you activate again.”

“Gotcha,” said Gimpy. “Just say when.”

We swung way out over nothing, swung back almost to the lip, with both of us danglers leaning hard in the opposite direction, working to defeat the swing. We were still doing a smallish back and forth pendulum when Jesperson finally said, “Okay, Gimp. Activate when I tell you, then stop when I say so. We don't want to crash into the wall behind the platform, so timing will be critical.

On our third short backswing, he said, “Okay, hit it now, Gimp! Keep doing it, and get set to drop us when I give the word. As we approached the platform, he yelled, “Now, Gimp!”

It was a near thing. We were dumped hard, a hair late, landing on our backsides too close to the platform's brink. The crunch cracked a pressurized air flask that shattered right beside me. Luckily, each spare bottle was wrapped in a protective fiberglass mesh that helped contain some of the flying glass shards, but the neck and valve sailed away never to be seen again.

I remembered to breathe after inspecting a scrape on the buffer padding of my pressure-suit, and saw that it wasn't deep enough to puncture the fabric. Sitting there in a trembly, three-dimensional daze, too terrified to move or think, I found myself breathing in loud, wheezing gasps.

The second glitch on that gawdawful stage four platform was almost as big a heart-stopper as the first. What hurts is confessing that it was my own fault. I uncoupled the downside cable carabiner from the lower cargo net ring, and was in the act of inserting a horn into shelf's fixed hook, and having a tough time holding it due to a stiffer tug from the downside cable, when the carabiner slipped out of my grasp and dragged toward brink. I lunged, grabbed it with both gauntlets and came within a hair of lunging myself into a long, final tumble.

On the upper shelf, Jesperson had knelt down to inspect the socket holding the uncooperative boom's vertical post. Hearing my squawk of dismay at almost losing the downside cable, all he said was, “Come up here, Barney, and I'll show you what's gone sour. A rock fall must've damaged the housing seals. The pivot's choked with windblown grit, and maybe the drive gearing, too. We'll have to come back up, clean it out and do repairs.”

I took extra care pussyfooting up the ascending ramp hauling the remaining spare air flask, with the cargo net slung over my shoulder.

***

The final stage six lap came later that afternoon, lifting us maybe two hundred meters or so farther than any downside stretch, though we still ended up a goodly distance below the gigantic, curling basalt brow topping off the escarpment. The boom rotated, warped us in over a platform larger than any of those below. My partner told me he figured on staying only minutes, so there was no reason to uncouple the cargo net. He ordered some slack, and together we used the fixed hook to secure the lower carabiner, net ring and cable
—
our one and only road home.

Perched there on the uppermost platform, with the wind moaning around us almost four miles above the Tharsis highlands, I could see straight off what a hefty hike it would be up and over the gouged, rolling shoulder of Olympus Rupes to less steeply rising terrain leading to the mouth of the big canyon, furrow, cleft, whatever it was, the pipeline erupted from.

“Shame it's still cloudy,” remarked Jesperson. “The view from up here should be spectacular on toward sunset.”

“Screw the view! Let's hightail it back down.”

“Patience, Barney!” He stepped out to the brink, turned around casual like, and stood with the heels of his overboots a few decimeters from the sheer drop. Tilting his head back against the quilted padding of his suit's headpiece, he gazed upward. “I can barely make out the upper part of the canyon's mouth. The pipeline dives into shadow, and vanishes not far above us, yet every stretch of the visible pipe string looks to be intact. Come have a look.”

“No thanks. What say we make
us
vanish? Have a heart, Bwana! The canyon and pipeline will stay right where they're at till we come up to do the fix.”

Standing high on a mountain, his emotions soaring higher than the distant summit of his blessed pet volcano, Jesperson was back in his natural element after too long an absence. He sounded philosophical saying, “We've come this far. By rights we should take advantage of the opportunity, hike on up there and see what's to be seen of conditions in that canyon. I'd like to find out how tough hiking through it might be.”

“Try ‘n get me up there, Bwana! Just you try'n do you hard-sell tap-dance on me, and I'll shove you and your smart mouth right off this damn volcano!”

The hearty chuckle filling my suit's headpiece made me want to carry out the empty threat.

“On second thought,” my partner said, “you could be right
—
a first for you.

“Yeah, I am, but don't spoil me. I wouldn't know how to handle it.”

“Enough sightseeing for one day,” he said. “To be on the safe side, let's change air flasks.”

“We could add some from the spare, but why bother? Let's just dump ‘em and go
down.”

A genuine, small-minded halfwit might call the ride down “uneventful.” To me it was every bit as hairy as each lap I'd lived through coming up. I might even have even gone along with “uneventful” except for the rotten, free-swinging, horror show it took to get shut of level four and its stuck, partly stove-up boom.

I get dizzy ‘n sick at my stomach every time I think about level four.

***

In early evening our weary quartet trooped out of South Tunnel's utility airlock and found a minor revolution in swing. Art the Barkeep, loudmouthed work-dodger that he is, had asked around and found out where our non-absconded crawler had gone. Art was waiting for us in the airlock service area with the enclave's respected brewmaster, Karl Stier, in tow.

Art's life, such as it is, began in south Philadelphia. Like everyone from South Philly, each word Art utters exits from the side of his mouth at an obnoxious volume. Why people from the southerly side of the City of Brotherly Love all talk that way I don't know. It pays to stand off to one side, downwind of Art's sideways speech if you're serious about making out what it is he's trying to say.

“Hey, Jesperson,” he called sideways, “you've got t'help us straighten out a king-sized mess. Karl and me, we've all of a sudden been put in a real rotten fix.”

Tired as he was, Jesperson displayed less than his usual zero sympathy. “For instance?” he said, sounding disinterested in whatever answer came back.

“The damfool council's gone and cut off Karl's water.”

The news made Black-like-me scowl as only he can scowl. “You sayin' no beer is gettin' brewed?”

“Not one damn liter.” Art sounded purely disgusted. “They've nixed water for Karl and me and everybody else.”

Jesperson cut me a knowing glance. The brain trust had repeatedly ignored
his
warnings of the vital need to enforce water rationing, but apparently Glorious Gloria Steinkritz, M.D., Ph.D, et cetera, had been listened to a whole lot more closely. I later heard from a witness that she browbeat the council members like a broken drum, making water matters perfectly clear.

Jesperson shrugged. “About time. Sorry, Karl, but the beer drought has to stay in place until the aqueduct's back online.”

“Beer,” said Karl, sounding duly aggrieved, “I am unable to make.”

Hearing the note of deep sorrow in the brewmaster's voice, my partner relented slightly, even showing a trifle of un-Jespersonian sympathy for the brewster's predicament. “You've no idea how badly that tears me up. I honestly think it hurts me more than it does you.”

“Give you three guesses,” Art said sideways, “what a beer shutdown'll do t'my business.”

Jess shrugged again. “No help for it.”

A close-mouthed German from some Black Forest village way down south near the Danube, Karl explained haltingly that his family had been brewing suds since the thirteenth century. To him, outlawing beer ranked with outlawing sex. No wonder the bo's were up in arms. Most of ‘em would've willingly given up sex for the duration of the emergency, but not beer.

Jesperson's impatient word spill said it all. Anxious to get home and clean up, he told the beer blight victims water rationing was more that just essential, it was literally a life ‘n death matter. He ignored Art's indignant sideways response, urging Karl to store his special grain and hops for the duration and join our foot-slogging team.