Return to Mars (24 page)

Jamie shook hands with Rodriguez. His bare hand hardly made it around the astronaut’s glove, with its servo-driven exoskeleton “bones” on its back.

“Good luck, Tomas,” he said. “Don’t take any unnecessary risks out there.”

Rodriguez grinned from behind his visor. “Hey, you know what they say: There are old pilots and bold pilots, but there are no old, bold pilots.”

Jamie chuckled politely. “Remember that when you’re out there,” he said.

“I will, boss. Don’t worry.”

Fuchida stepped up to the hatch once Rodriguez went through. Even in the bulky suit, even with sparrowlike Trudy Hall standing behind him, he looked small, somehow vulnerable.

“Good luck, Mitsuo,” said Jamie.

Through the sealed helmet, Fuchida’s voice sounded muffled, but unafraid. “I think my biggest problem is going to be listening to Tommy’s yakking all the way to the mountain.”

Jamie laughed.

“And back, most likely,” Fuchida added.

The indicator light turned green and Trudy pressed the stud that opened the inner hatch. Fuchida stepped through, carrying his portable life-support satchel in one hand.

“Tell Vijay to take good care of the garden,” he called as the hatch was sliding shut. “The beets need a lot of care.”

He’s all right, Jamie told himself. He’s not scared or even worried.

Once they had clambered into the plane’s side-by-side seats and connected to its internal electrical power and life-support systems, both men changed.

Rodriguez became all business. No more chattering. He checked out the plane’s systems with only a few clipped words of jargon to Stacy Dezhurova, who was serving as flight controller.

Fuchida, for his part, felt his pulse thundering in his ears so loudly he wondered if the suit radio was picking it up. Certainly the medical monitors must be close to the redline, his heart was racing so hard.

Jamie, Vijay and Trudy Hall crowded over Dezhurova’s shoulders to watch the takeoff on the comm center’s desktop display screen.

As an airport, the base left much to be desired. The makeshift runway ran just short of two kilometers in length. There was no taxi-way; Rodriguez and a helper—often Jamie—simply turned the plane around after a landing so it was pointed up the runway again. There was no windsock. The atmosphere was so rare that it made scant difference which way the wind was blowing when the plane took off. The rocket engines did the work of powering the plane off the ground and providing the speed it needed for the wings to generate enough lift for flight.

Jamie felt a dull throbbing in his jaw as he bent over Dezhurova, watching the final moments before takeoff. With a conscious effort he unclenched his teeth.

You’re more worried about this than you were about the generator launch, he said to himself. And immediately knew the reason why. There were two men in the plane. If anything went wrong, if they crashed, they would both be killed.

“Clear for takeoff,” Dezhurova said mechanically into her lip mike.

“Copy clear,” Rodriguez’s voice came through the speakers.

Stacy scanned the screens around her one final time, then said, “Clear for ignition.”

“Ignition.”

Suddenly the twin rocket engines beneath the wing roots shot out a bellowing blowtorch of flame and the plane jerked into motion. As the camera followed it jouncing down the runway, gathering speed, the long, drooping wings seemed to stiffen and stretch out.

“Come on, baby,” Dezhurova muttered.

Jamie saw it all as if it was happening in slow motion: the plane trundling down the runway, the rockets’ exhaust turning so hot the flame became invisible, clouds of dust and grit billowing behind the plane as it sped faster, faster along the runway, nose lifting now.

“Looking good,” Dezhurova whispered.

The plane hurtled up off the ground and arrowed into the pristine sky, leaving a roiling cloud of dust and vapor slowly dissipating along the length of the runway. To Jamie it looked as if the cloud was trying to reach for the plane and pull it back to the ground.

But the plane was little more than a speck in the light orange sky now.

Rodriguez’s voice crackled through the speakers, “Next stop, Mount Olympus.”

THE TALLEST MOUNTAIN IN THE SOLAR SYSTEM IS A MASSIVE SHIELD Volcano that has been dormant for tens, perhaps hundreds of millions of years.

Once, though, its mighty outpourings of lava dwarfed everything else on the planet. Over time, they built a mountain three times taller than Everest, with a base the size of the state of Iowa.

The edges of that base are rugged cliffs of basalt more than a kilometer high. The summit of the mountain, where huge calderas mark the vents that once spewed molten rock, stands some twenty-seven kilometers above the supporting plain: 27,000 meters, more than 88,000 feet. For comparison, Mt. Everest is 8848 meters high, 29,028 feet.

Olympus Mons is so tall that, on Earth, its summit would poke high above the troposphere—the lowest layer of air, where weather phenomena take place—and rise almost clear of the entire stratosphere. On Mars, however, the atmosphere is so thin that the atmospheric pressure at Olympus Mons’ summit is only about one-tenth lower than the pressure at ground level.

At that altitude, the carbon dioxide that forms the major constituent of Mars’ atmosphere can freeze out, condense on the cold, bare rock, covering it with a thin, invisible layer of dry ice.

“SO HOW DOES IT FEEL TO HAVE ALL THREE OF US TO YOURSELF?” Vijay asked.

Jamie and the three women had just sat down for a late lunch. Rodriguez and Fuchida would be landing at Olympus Mons in less than an hour. Trumball and Possum Craig had reported a few minutes earlier that they were trundling along toward Xanthe with no problems.

Vijay grinned devilishly as she said it. Jamie felt his brows knit slightly in a frown.

“Yes,” added Trudy Hall. “You’ve very cleverly removed all the other men, haven’t you?”

To cover his embarrassment, Jamie turned to Dezhurova. “Don’t you have anything to add to this, Stacy?”

She was already munching on a hastily-built sandwich. Stacy chewed thoughtfully, swallowed, then said, “What is the American word for it? Kinky?”

All three of the women laughed; Jamie forced a smile, then turned his attention to his plate of microwaved pasta and tofu herb salad.

He was thankful when the women began to talk among themselves about the food, the taste of the recycled water, the way the washer/dryer was fading their clothes. They all wore the standard-issue coveralls, but Jamie noticed that they each had individualized their clothing: Dezhurova had stylish Russian logos from her days as a government astronaut sewn above her breast pockets; Hall always clipped bits of glittery costume jewelry to hers; Shektar added a bright scarf at her throat or a colorful sash around her waist.

“We should try the clothes-cleaning system they use at Moonbase,” Dezhurova said. “It is much easier on the fabric.”

“I’ve heard about that,” Trudy said. “They just put the clothes out in the open, do they?”

Stacy nodded vigorously. “Yes. In vacuum on the lunar surface the dirt flakes completely off the fabric. And the unfiltered ultraviolet light from the sun sterilizes everything.”

Vijay pointed out, “We don’t have a vacuum outside.”

“Very damned close,” Dezhurova countered.

“Plenty of UV,” said Trudy.

“What do you think, Vijay?” Dezhurova prompted. “Worth a try, no?”

“We’ll need some sort of container, won’t we? You don’t just hang the clothes on a line.”

“I suppose we could,” said Trudy.

”At Moonbase they put clothes in a big mesh basket and run it up and down a track set into the ground,” Stacy explained. “The basket rotates, like the tumbling action in a washing machine.”

“We don’t have anything like that here.”

“I could rig one up,” Dezhurova said confidently. “It should be simple enough.”

“Do you think you could?”

She nodded solemnly. “Possum is not the only one here who is good with his hands.”

“What do you think, Jamie?” Shektar asked.

Grateful that they were no longer teasing him, he replied, “What about the dust? It would get onto the clothes, wouldn’t it?”

“There’s dust on the Moon, too,” Trudy said.

“But no wind.” - “Oh. Yes.”

Dezhurova said, “We could put the basket track on poles, off the ground.”

“I suppose,” said Jamie.

“Otherwise our clothes will keep on fading and fraying.”

“They’ll fall apart completely, sooner or later,” said Trudy.

Vijay’s evil grin returned. “Jamie wouldn’t mind that, would you, Jamie?”

He tried to stare her down, but instead pushed himself away from the table. “Tomas should be calling in, in five minutes or so.”

As he got to his feet and fled to the comm center, Jamie was certain he heard them giggling behind him.

Rodriguez was a happy man. The plane was responding to his touch like a beautiful woman, gentle and sweet.

They were purring along at—he glanced at the altimeter—twenty-eight thousand and six meters. Let’s see, he mused. Something like three point two feet in a meter, that makes it eighty-nine, almost ninety thousand feet. Not bad. Not bad at all.

He knew the world altitude record for a solar-powered plane was above one hundred thousand feet. But that was a UAV, an unmanned aerial vehicle. No pilot’s flown this high in a solar-powered plane, he knew. Behind his helmet visor he smiled at the big six-bladed propeller as it spun lazily before his eyes.

Beside him, Fuchida was absolutely silent and unmoving. He might as well be dead inside his suit; I’d never know the difference, Rodriguez thought. He’s scared, just plain scared. He doesn’t trust me. He’s scared of flying with me. Probably wanted Stacy to fly him, not me.

Well, my silent Japanese buddy, I’m the guy you’re stuck with, whether you like it or not. So go ahead and sit there like a fuckin’ statue, I don’t give a damn.

Mitsuo Fuchida felt an unaccustomed tendril of fear worming its way through his innards. This puzzled him, since he had known for almost two years now that he would be flying to the top of Olympus
Mons.
He had flown simulations hundreds of times. This whole excursion had been his idea; he had worked hard to get the plan incorporated into the expedition schedule.

He had first learned to fly while an undergraduate biology student, and had been elected president of the university’s flying club. With the single-minded intensity of a competitor who knew he had to beat the best of the best to win a berth on the Second Mars Expedition, Fuchida had taken the time to qualify as a pilot of ultralight aircraft over the inland mountains of his native Kyushu and then went on to pilot soarplanes across the jagged peaks of Sinkiang.

He had never felt any fear of flying. Just the opposite: he had always felt relaxed and happy in the air, free of all the pressures and cares of life.

Yet now, as the sun sank toward the rocky horizon, casting eerie red light across the barren landscape, Fuchida knew that he was afraid. What if the engine fails? What if Rodriguez cracks up the plane when we land on the mountain? One of the unmanned soarplanes had crashed while it was flying over the mountain on a reconnaissance flight; what if the same thing happens to us?

Even in rugged Sinkiang there was a reasonable chance of surviving an emergency landing. You could breathe the air and walk to a village, even if the trek took many days. Not so here on Mars.

What if Rodriguez gets hurt while we’re out there? I have only flown this plane in the simulator; I don’t know if I could fly it in reality.

Rodriguez seemed perfectly at ease, happily excited to be flying. He shames me, Fuchida thought. Yet … is he truly capable? How will he react in an emergency? Fuchida hoped he would not have to find out.

They passed Pavonis Mons on their left, one of the three giant shield volcanoes that lined up in a row on the eastern side of the Tharsis bulge. It was so big that it stretched out to the horizon and beyond, a massive hump of solid stone that had once oozed red-hot lava across an area the size of Japan. Quiet now. Cold and dead. For how long?

There was a whole line of smaller volcanoes stretching off to the horizon and, beyond them, the hugely massive Olympus
Mons.
What happened here to create a thousand-kilometer-long chain of volcanoes? Fuchida tried to meditate on that question, but his mind kept coming back to the risks he was undertaking.

And to Elizabeth.

THEIR WEDDING HAD TO BE A SECRET. MARRIED PERSONS WOULD NOT BE allowed on the Mars expedition. Worse yet, Mitsuo Fuchida had fallen in love with a foreigner, a young Irish biologist with flame-red hair and skin like white porcelain.

“Sleep with her,” Fuchida’s father advised him, “enjoy her all you want to. Bin lather no children with her! Under no circumstances may you marry her.”

Elizabeth Vernon seemed content with that. She loved Mitsuo.

They had met at Tokyo University. Like him, she was a biologist. Unlike him, she had neither the talent nor the drive to get very far in the competition for tenure and a professorship.

“I’ll be fine,” she told Mitsuo. “Don’t ruin your chance for Mars. I’ll wait for you.”

That was neither good nor fair, in Fuchida’s eyes. How could he go to Mars, spend years away from her, expect her to store her emotions in suspended animation for so long?

His father made other demands on him, as well.

”The only man to die on the First Mars Expedition was your cousin, Konoye. He disgraced us all.”

Isoruku Konoye suffered a fatal stroke while attempting to explore the smaller moon of Mars, Deimos. His Russian teammate, cosmonaut Leonid Tolbukhin, said that Konoye had panicked, frightened to be outside their spacecraft in nothing more than a spacesuit, disoriented by the looming menace of Deimos’ rocky bulk.