Olympus Mons (33 page)

***

A confirmed creature of habit, Director Walther Scheiermann usually skipped breakfast. Shortly before indulging in a midday snack of veggie soup and barley toast, he ingested the blood pressure medication prescribed by Dr. Yokomizo to stabilize the mild atrial flutter not caused by a valve problem that he had lived with for a number of E-years. Not long afterward he must've felt a peculiar weakness steal over him, and decided to lie down for a few minutes. The minutes turned into half an hour, and he eventually lapsed into unconsciousness.

He was found huddled on the settee in his domicile by none other than Vic Aguilar, who “dropped by” to get the director's chop on a final scream for help
—
a last ditch lasercomm transmittal the council had ordered dispatched sunward. Vic got on the horn and summoned Doc Yokomizo. Puzzled, Yokie gave Scheiermann a quick once over and ordered him taken to the medicenter. He called Dr. Steinkritz, hoping she would be available for consultation. Gloria had wisely made herself as scarce as it's possible to be inside pressure.

I was with Jesperson when he collared Yokie as he left the director's side at the medicenter. “How's he doing, Doctor?”

“It's too soon for that question to be meaningful.” Plainly puzzled, Yokomizo studied Jesperson, a glint of vague suspicion clouding his dark eyes. “I don't understand this. Weeks ago, during his quarterly checkup, Walther was asymptomatic except for a mild cardiac anomaly. It forces me to rule out specific health issues other than chronic hypertension. There simply are none. It's strange . . .”

Acting his fool head off, Jesperson made a hand-wringing pretense of anxious concern. “Can't you at least make an off-the-cuff guess about how long he'll be out of commission?”

“Sorry, no. As I said, it's too early. We can only wait, see what develops.”

“Not sure any of us can survive a long wait.” Jesperson launched into exactly the sort of terse, hard-sell pitch I was expecting to hear. He mentioned the warning signs of an impending sandstorm, making the threat sound extra-dire, and cited the critical need to hold all five remaining crawlers in readiness to transport the men and stockpiled materiel out to Olympus Rupes. “With the director unavailable,” he concluded, “it's your call, Doctor. As his deputy, you've shown sympathy for what we hope to accomplish. All we'll need is a go-ahead to saddle up and truck out to the volcano.”

Yokie apparently had no more faith in Franklin's upcoming ice expedition than we did. Jesperson's impassioned plea had obviously swayed him, yet as the poster boy for conservatism he straddled the fence, no more than halfway sold on my partner's suggestion, although it was my impression that becoming persuaded to approve his plan was a distinct likelihood. He stroked his jaw, “Give me an hour or two, Mr. Jesperson. Let me think about it. I promise to be in touch by early afternoon, two o'clock at the latest. Will that be satisfactory?”

My partner knew he had to settle for what he could get, and clammed up. I was about to say something, and got shushed by an elbow in the ribs, after which Jesperson practically shoved me out of the infirmary.

“Think he took the bait?”

“Without question, and bit down hard. Yokie's Mr. Square Shooter. Once his mind's made up, I believe he'll be inclined to turn off Franklin's ice party and let us have a go at the brass ring. Time to get cracking, Barney. Start rounding up the troops and have them stand by, all set to ramble.”

“What if Yokie shoots down our gig in flames?”

“Why then we go anyhow, of course.”

“Oh, of course! Now fill me in on something, Bwana. Back at your place, I heard you tell Gloria you'd looked up her screwy six-bit word.”

“Iatrogenic.”

“Sounds about right. What the hell is it? What does it mean?”

Jesperson's wolfish grin flashed briefly. “Medical lingo. The prime commandment all physician live by is, ‘First, do no harm.' Iatrogenic refers to an inadvertent type of harm. Long ago it was bloodletting, now it's treating a false positive symptom, misdiagnosing a disease, ailment, now and then introducing harmful medication into a patient's system on purpose or by error, harm occasionally compounded by faulty treatment.”

“Are you telling me
—
?”

“You don't want to know any more, Barney. The director's alive and well. He'll wake up later instead of sooner, and feel one helluva lot better about things in general than we will traipsing up that brute of a hill. Gloria says he won't come around in time to set up any roadblocks, and I took her word for it.”

That, sum total, is all I ever found out, though guessing the nitty-gritty was simple enough. I may be simple to think so, but I'm fairly sure I guessed good.

A day on Mars is slightly less than forty-one minutes longer than an E-day. At twenty minutes after one o'clock that afternoon, Deputy Director Yokomizo called Jesperson and told him an executive directive had been issued in the council's name ordering Franklin and his ice pirates to stand down, and in the next paragraph giving Jesperson and his foot-sloggers an unconditional green light.

My partner slammed down the phone, whooped like the wild wolverine he'd changed into, and we got real busy real fast.

 

We
lost a Marsrat almost before getting started
—
a lousy omen.
By late-afternoon, the flurry of activity in Burroughs had surged and swelled into a five-alarm fire drill. In accordance with his “wolf chase” scenario, Jesperson had set a goal of thirty-six candidates, minimum, from which to select two dozen qualified climbers and a pair of designated alternates. He wound up with eighty, ninety or more Marsrats clamoring to play shortstop on the ol' ball team, not just do batboy duty. Catch was, most latecomers had declined any and all invitations to undergo the necessary foot-sloggin' conditioning. Doubt whether any of ‘em would've lasted through the first full day's hike.

Having already logged in the top-seeded baker's dozen, every one a confirmed foot-sloggin' veteran of the ringwall trail, I stood beside my partner with a clipboard, keeping score as he culled candidates from the herd of clamorers. The hullabaloo started getting louder when the list crept up into the teens, by which time sixteen names had been penciled in, with bunches of “left outs” all of a sudden developing a serious ambition to be heroes, mostly sluggards who'd scoffed and poked fun at us and conscientiously ducked the daily drill, refusing break a sweat prepping for the ordeal, or earning the aches and pains that came with it.

All sass and vinegar once the tally firmed up, Jesperson climbed on top of a glass table and made a short, straight-from-the-shoulder speech. He worked hard to impress those who'd missed being chosen on the importance of hopping over to the loading dock's in the North and South Tunnel airlock and lending a hand to Gimpy's grunts, who were stevedoring small mountains of accumulated gear and supplies aboard all five remaining crawlers. I credit Jesperson with extraordinary foresight
—
not plain everyday foresight, but super-deluxe
extraordinary
foresight. Every item tagged for the assault on Olympus Mons, not counting perishables, had been stockpiled for weeks, checklisted, sorted and separated by category, then cross-indexed, and split up into piles of what the script called for in the way of each sledge load.

While all this was taking place, Franklin had given Doc Yokomizo a long, loud earful, pleading his “ice hunt” case to a point where Yokie probably thought about exercising his own iatrogenic solution to get the areographer out of his hair. Turned down cold during Yokie's chilly reception, the areographer made himself scarce during the climber selection process, nor did he show his long, horsey face at either loading dock. Finally, screwing up his courage and stiffening his spine, he confronted Jesperson and sheepishly said, “I hope you understand why I
—
”

“Don't have time to be understanding,” my partner told him.

“You have to realize I had only the best intentions in my efforts to —”

“Listen, I'm busy as hell, Franklin. What I realize is that if you interfere with what I'm doing in even the smallest, most insignificant way, I'll kill you.”

Stuffed shirt or not, Franklin must've figured Jesperson meant what he said. He stomped away, head high, and went off to lick his wounds.

Cee One was the first crawler to roll out of South Tunnel. On toward evening, the other four caravanned west across Tharsis in a sand-churning daisy chain, arriving at the way station in darkness, where the drivers circled the wagons in the stub-walled compound. Each crawler was jam-packed with Marsrats, pressure-suits, quantities of irreplaceable water, two portable, mini-fuel-cell-powered air compressors, bladders of liquified food, spare fuel-cells, pressure-suit-and belt-pack batteries, spare overboots, food, waste and water bladders, charged and spare air flasks, both of our special repair kits, two spare pressure-suits, and our fancy, homemade getaway parachute packs.

An hour before the dawnlight halo started graying the eastern sky, Gimpy energized the hoist system control console. With nearly fourteen hours of summer daylight ahead of them, teams of eager, well-coached Marsrats sprang into action the instant they set their overboots in the rock-strewn sand at the foot of the Olympus Rupes talus slopes. Heisting the cargo aloft went like clockwork all day long as teams beavered the payload items Jess had earmarked for the first netload slated to go upside, the second, third, fourth and successive netloads, and finally both spindly sledge weldments. The climbing team, waiting at home in Burroughs, was also getting set to trot. We sat around nervously checking and rechecking our personal vacuum gear, and tried to get as much rest as the excitement would allow.

The bravest part of the exercise came in early evening, when teams of overeager Marsrats refused to call a halt at sundown. Jesperson had taken it for granted the load gang on the ground, and especially the bo's working on various platforms going up the scarp in stages, would shut down operations when it got too dark and dangerous to see. Not those hardy Marsrats! They slaved on into the night without saying a word, riding the cargo nets step by giant step up ‘n down the scarp's steeply inclined face, with only their built-in pressure-suit headlamps to light the way.

The accident in late evening threw a lasting pall over the good works.

Try and imagine what the Marsrats were accomplishing at the escarpment. Think how downright dizzy-making it must've been working in cumbersome vacuum gear at the brink of a kilometers-deep drop with nothing but a circlet of light to show where you could put down the overboots it's not possible to see directly underneath you even in daylight whilst wearing a pressure-suit. Furthermore, whichever way it's aimed the headlamp in a suit's headpiece does next to nothing about cutting through the soot-black emptiness up there, or for that matter the deep dark down on the floor of Tharsis.

When Jesperson learned the work was going on into the night under far less than minimum safety conditions, it spurred him to think we might be able to do likewise during the trek. He thought about it, thought about it some more, and decided that once upside the scarp the climbing team could get a jump on Olympus Mons by setting out before daybreak, not waiting for first light.

As each crawler emptied out it turned tail and trucked back to Burroughs. Us and the other two dozen eager climbers, including the pair of alternates, were shuttled across the highlands late the following afternoon. We spent the night packed like sardines inside the smallish way station habitation module.

After working at the foot of Olympus Rupes for fifteen hours straight, Vic Aguilar wore a long face when the way station airlock hatch cycled open and he stepped inside and filled us in on the casualty. Seems an overtired Marsrat had leaned out too far while he and his partner guided and manhandled a netful of cargo onto one of the upper platforms. He'd lost his footing gone over, probably falling into one of the huge, deep gouges and cols that corrugate the escarpment's next-to-vertical face. Far as I know, the remains were never recovered.

Doc Yokomizo checked the vital signs of half the designated climbers, and Glorious Gloria did likewise for the other thirteen. When everyone ticketed for the game day kickoff had been pronounced fit and sound of wind and limb, if not necessarily of mind, the medics turned us over to Jesperson. I expected to hear a cheerleader spiel from my partner, maybe a rally-round-the-flag pep talk like the St. Crispin's Day eve of battle speech in Shakespeare's best and greatest play, Henry Number Five. I once saw a topnotch holovision production, and got so caught up in the king's “light a fire under the troops” speech that I dug a book out of the library and read it over a couple of times. I remember trying to find out something about St. Crispin, too, and what his “day” was all about. There was nothing in the database to clear it up, nor could the Jespersonian Fount of all Human Knowledge come up with an answer.

All business on this occasion, my main man toned down his pitch, delivering a short, not what you'd call sweet eve of battle message. First he spelled out what we'd have to be doing hour by hour, day after day climbing his “big hill.” Then he sketched out his refined “wolf chase” scenario chapter and verse, starting off with instructions to the pair of first-up climbers slated to ride the net along with the bare sledges. Reaching the uppermost, largest level-six platform a good distance below the scarp's rolling, gradually flattening brow, they and the next pair to arrive were to re-sort and re-distribute every item of goods and supplies the team had stashed up there earlier, and then pack the welded assemblies with gear and supplies per Jesperson's first-onloaded, last-offloaded schedule. He stressed the importance of doing it strictly by the numbers, telling the bo's to make damn sure the sledges were loaded in the order of usage, with zero deviations. None!