The Martian Viking (23 page)

Johnsmith rolled on his back and sighed. She was right, and he knew it. This was their best chance, and he found himself trembling to think of what they were going to do. "We're both working outside tomorrow," he said.

"Yeah, and that's when we'll do it."

UNFORTUNATELY, SEVERAL OTHER people were working outside in fairly close proximity. These included Felicia and Alderdice. Johnsmith had the crazy idea that they might be able to take his two friends with him, since minicarriers could safely accommodate up to six passengers.

As team leader, he could give them orders to go over to the hangar, and then he would explain things to them. Of course, Felicia might not do as he said, out of spite. There wouldn't be much he could do about it, in that case. And Alderdice might not be able to defy his obedience implants. Well, he would just have to find out for himself if they would come.

Felicia was running a big tractor, digging out a huge rectangle of sand for the foundation of a new, permanent building. Helping her was Alderdice, who calibrated the exact dimensions of the enormous hole in the sand.

"Alderdice," Johnsmith said. "I need to talk to you."

Alderdice rolled up a blueprint and held it like a baton. "Sure."

"Can we talk helmet to helmet?"

"Okay." Alderdice switched onto the appropriate channel with his chin.

"Look, I'm going to need you and Felicia over by that hangar."

Alderdice's brow furrowed. "I don't know if Felicia will go," he said. "She's pretty angry at you."

"That's why I need you to persuade her."

"Oh, I see."

"Maybe if you don't mention me at all, she'll go along without protest."

"Yeah, maybe."

"It's important, Johnsmith said. "Otherwise I wouldn't ask, my friend."

"Okay." Alderdice looked a little confused, but the two of them had been through so much together that Johnsmith knew he could be trusted.

"I'll be over there working with Frankie." Johnsmith gestured toward the hangar.

"I'll talk to her," Alderdice said.

"Thanks." Johnsmith leaned into the wind and walked back to where Frankie was kneeling, absorbed by her covert work on the sentry.

She jumped when he came up beside her. The casing of the spidery robot's thorax was open, and she was busily substituting modules and memory droplets. Johnsmith had no idea where she had gotten the stuff; presumably from the Arkies, but he couldn't be sure.

"How's it going?" he asked.

"Fine, about another ten minutes and we'll be ready to fly out of here."

"Listen, I've asked somebody else to come along," he said.

Frankie had been preparing to slip a module into place, but she stopped cold and looked up at him. "What did you say?"

"Alderdice is coming, and he's bringing Felicia," Johnsmith said nervously.

Frankie nodded. "I see," was all that she said.

"I can't leave them here," Johnsmith said. "They're my friends."

"It's going to be pretty dangerous," Frankie said.

"Felicia's wanted to get out of here since the day we arrived," he said. "And Alderdice . . .well, we'll see."

"Maybe we can use their help," Frankie said. She went back to work.

Just when she was closing the thorax casing, Alderdice and Felicia staggered up under a strong gale. Johnsmith saw the pain and resentment in Felicia's eyes.

"Helmet to helmet," he said.

Felicia stood off to one side while he and Alderdice talked. She did not look at Johnsmith, only at Frankie. Her expression was anything but friendly.

"Alderdice, there isn't much time." Johnsmith watched the robot scuttle off onto the desert, its guidance system askew. "We're getting out of here, and I want you and Felicia to come with us."

Alderdice gaped through his face mask. "What did you say?" he asked.

"We're leaving. We're going to escape. Come with us."

Alderdice shook his head. "You know I can't do that. My implants."

"Fuck your implant," Johnsmith said. "We can get away from this hell hole, but this will be our only chance."

"I can't do it, I tell you," Alderdice said. In spite of the cold seeping through his pressure suit, he was sweating. "It's against the law."

"I'll go," Felicia said to Johnsmith with an icy calm. "You won't have to ask me twice, you two timing son of a bitch."

"Good." Johnsmith was relieved, but he still had Alderdice to deal with. "Just fight it this one time. You've taken onees, and that shook your faith in the rightness of your damn programming implants, Alderdice. Just take it to its logical conclusion. The whole fucking Conglom is rotten to the core. Why should you let it keep you in chains?"

"It's not a matter of letting it," said a desperate Alderdice. "I don't have any choice."

"No, you don't." Frankie was holding a pistol, pointing it right at Alderdice's chest. "You're coming with us, or I shoot you where you stand."

"Frankie . . ." Johnsmith was stunned. "What are you doing with that . . ."

"We can't leave anybody here who knows what we've done," Frankie said.

"They'll find out sooner or later," Alderdice said.

"We'll take every second we can get," Frankie said. "Now, get in this hangar."

Alderdice reluctantly did as he was told. The two minis were resting on runners in the shadows inside. The cockpits were open.

"Get in," Frankie said.

Alderdice, Felicia, and Johnsmith clambered up and inside, taking up three of the six seats. Frankie got in last.

"These seats aren't very comfortable," Alderdice complained.

"Shut up," said Frankie.

"Don't you dare tell him to shut up, you bitch," Felicia snapped.

"Please," Johnsmith said, "all of you." He reached up to close the cockpit.

A shadow appeared, crossing the threshold of the open hangar door.

"Somebody's coming!" Felicia cried. "Torquemada."

Frankie pointed her pistol at the open door. A man entered. He was far too short to be Torquemada.

"It's Jethro Pease," Johnsmith observed.

"Take me with you," Pease said, holding onto the runner supporting the mini. "Please."

Johnsmith looked at Frankie. She shrugged.

They pulled Pease inside the mini, and Johnsmith shut the cockpit. They heard the hiss of oxygen filling the enclosed space.

Frankie turned on the power. Nothing happened for a few seconds, and then there was a piercing whine. The mini shook and its engines roared into action.

"Let's get the hell out of here," Johnsmith said.

Frankie punched a few buttons on the panel in front of her, as if she were making a phone call back on Earth. The mini shuddered violently as if lifted off its runners.

It shot forward with terrific speed, flattening them against their seats.

"Whoo-hoo!" Jethro Pease shouted.

They flew out over the desert a couple of miles, and then banked. The mini passed over the Elysium compound. The prisoners stopped working and stared up at the unexpected sight. Just before they lost sight of the compound altogether, Johnsmith got a glimpse of a solitary figure rushing out of the onee plant. It had to be Angel Torquemada, he realized with great satisfaction.

At that moment, he decided that even if they were caught, this adventure was worth it.

There was a festive atmosphere inside the minicarrier. Even Alderdice wasn't as unhappy as he might have been. They were free of Torquemada and that wretched compound, at least for the moment.

"If only we had some champagne," Johnsmith said. The smaller size of this craft made the sensation of movement much more immediate. Johnsmith felt a little giddy.

"Do you know what you're doing, Wisbar?" Felicia said.

"Olympus is almost exactly due west," Frankie said. "I think I can keep the guidance system going in a straight line until we see a mountain the size of Missouri. If not . . .well, you pays your money and your takes your chances."

Felicia's brow furrowed. Clearly, she had never heard this archaic expression before, but she was too proud to admit that she didn't understand what Frankie was talking about.

The giddiness soon turned to motion sickness. Alderdice was the first to be affected.

"Can you set this thing down?" Johnsmith said. "I think Alderdice is going to be sick."

"We can't stop," Frankie said. "They're after us now, and they won't even
think
about slowing down, much less stopping."

Johnsmith knew that she was right. "I'm sorry, Alderdice, but you'll have to wait until we get to Olympus to be sick."

Alderdice groaned. He was not having a good time, but he tried to hold it in. Fortunately, it had been just before lunch when they had hijacked the mini, so there was little solid food in his stomach. Somehow, he managed to hold it all in.

"Uh oh," Frankie said about half an hour later.

"What's going on?" Johnsmith demanded.

"They've bollixed the program from Elysium somehow, I think."

"How did they do that?"

"I don't know, but the damn thing isn't going in the direction I've been telling it to go in. Some kind of bug in the programming, I guess."

"Shit."

"So far they've only made it change direction. But pretty soon they'll be able to make the mini turn around and go back to the compound."

"What can we do to stop it?" Johnsmith asked.

"Bring the mini down." Frankie didn't wait for a consensus. She slowed the mini's velocity, and bumped to a rough landing on the red sand.

"Everybody all right?" she asked.

Alderdice breathed a sigh of relief as he put on his helmet. As soon as everyone's head was covered, Johnsmith thrust open the cockpit, and they climbed out onto a desolate plain hundreds of kilometers from any human habitat.

"Now what?" Felicia asked.

"Now we search for the Ship," said Jethro Pease. "That's what I was doing when they found me, and that's what I'm going to do now."

"Well, they've been tracking us," Frankie said, "That means it won't be long before they'll be here hunting us down. We better get over into those hills." She pointed to distant crags, barely visible through concentric whorls of orange dust.

Felicia looked as though she might protest for a moment. But then she followed the others meekly.

"I'm sure now that I'm destined to be there when the Ship sails in," Jethro Pease said as they marched across the barren Marscape. "It's what I was put here for."

"You were put here as a nonproductive citizen, who the Conglom found to be no longer useful," Alderdice said.

Pease seemed hurt by this allegation. "That doesn't mean I can't be there when it happens."

"That's right," Frankie said. "Maybe we'll all be there."

"And maybe not," a scowling Felicia said. "You know, I thought the Arkies were a courageous band of visionary revolutionists, and now I'm beginning to think you're just a bunch of religious fanatics."

From the silence that greeted Felicia's remarks, it was clear that nobody was interested in what she thought, least of all Frankie. Still, she continued her cynical and yet naive chatter as they trekked across the desert toward the ragged hills.

The sun set rapidly, as it always does on Mars. They kept walking, and Johnsmith began to worry about how long their oxygen was going to hold out. Surely they had a few days to live. But what then?

He remembered seeing a twentieth century video, originally a celluloid film, about an astronaut lost on Mars. The guy found some rocks that gave off oxygen when he burned them. Wishful thinking; a miracle. Just what they needed now.

The going got pretty rugged as they reached the foothills. Jagged stone plinths protruded from the sand like the rotting teeth of a giant.

"Maybe we can rest here," Alderdice said. He was clearly very tired, and in some ways he still had not accepted the morality of what they had done.

"No, we have to keep moving," Frankie said.

"Why?" Felicia demanded. "We might as well die here as up in those mountains."

"Some revolutionary you are," Johnsmith chided her. "You give up way too easily now that you're really free, Felicia."

He saw her clench her teeth angrily and turn away. But he no longer cared.

"You can stay here if you want, Felicia," Frankie told her. "But going over these mountains is our only chance."

"How so?" Alderdice asked.

"On the other side is the travel route between the pole and Elysium. There are tours of influential people every few days. If we're lucky, one will pass by and we can signal to the carrier. They're programmed to always pick up lost travelers, and some of them even have human pilots."

"Then we can still make it," Alderdice said. "We can still get out of here alive."

"The chances aren't good," Frankie said.

"What choice do we have?"

They started up the mountainside, looking for the less precipitous passes. The pressure suits helped, since they were made of extremely durable polymers. The low gravity and low atmospheric pressure helped, too. Johnsmith had never imagined it could be so easy to climb a mountain.

At last they stood at the summit, gazing down upon an ancient seabed.

"The carriers skim along close to the bottom of the seabed," Frankie said. "That way they don't get buffeted by quite so much wind."

"Oh."

"The Arkies have been planning to waylay a carrier down there." She pointed to a passage between two plateaus, no more than twenty kilometers wide. "There's no way they'll be able to get past without seeing us, and they'll have to stop and pick us up."

"And if they don't?" Felicia asked.

"Then we'll have no choice but to disable the carrier."

"How?"

"I'll shoot the pilot."

"
If
there's a human pilot," Johnsmith said.

"And if there's not, I'll try to blow out its guidance system."

"Christ," said Alderdice. "It sounds as if our chances are
very
slim."

"Very slim indeed," Frankie said.

They began the descent down to the seabed. Tired as they all were, they reached the narrow passage by dawn.