It was their first evening on Mars, the first chance to see the stars burning down through the thin tissue of Martian atmosphere, and maybe see the Earth as an evening star, but each one was so exhausted when they finally were inside the Arcadia Base Habitat that star gazing was furthest from their minds. Don and Asya lifted the unconscious Abdul Qawi's body through the hatch from the pressurised rover to the couch of the small sick bay – his form so light in the gravity of Mars that he seemed to be hollow, like a sagging tailor's dummy – and Annika spent half an hour checking his life signs once they had removed his EVA suit. He was in a stable condition. She could see his chest rising and falling, and his skin tone had regained a healthier blush since they had first examined him in the re-pressurised interior of Jamal. She gasped, once, and showed the others a burned patch on the lower leg of the suit, and a corresponding red patch of skin on his calf. He had come that close to becoming part of Jamal's heatshield.
All they could manage for the base were the standard ECLSS checklists and a brief status report back to SSI and then they found themselves slumped around the wardroom table. Marco's eyes kept flickering closed and jerking open. Asya stared dumbly at a handheld display which showed Hab status data. She muttered to herself in Russian. Don realised that he had been gazing at the same few spots on the wall for a minute or two and had difficulty forming a coherent thought, except how strange it seemed that when he leaned forward on the table, it almost felt as if there were a layer of foam rubber between him and it, cushioning his weight. Perhaps if he threw himself into the tenuous air of Mars outside he would float, or drift down like a fall leaf.
Annika came in last, fresh from the sick bay, fell into a seat and looked around at them. "We need sleep," she said. The others nodded and stirred themselves.
Asya stood up too quickly and sprang halfway to the ceiling. "Sleep, yes. And that's an order." Don caught a kind of grim humour in her tone.
They spoke few words beyond the necessary. Don remarked on the smell in the air: "Like a new car. And maybe ozone." Each one picked one of the small bedrooms, dropped onto their new bed, and surrendered to sleep. The last thing Don heard was Marco: "Ohhh yeaah!" as he settled.
Don woke once, stumbled to the bathroom and back, and glanced out at the spangled night sky through bleary eyes before falling back into bed. He was sure he was still dehydrated, but chugging half a bottle of water before bed had started to redress the balance. His mouth was still sandpaper. They had lost so much sleep during the approach and landing, and also his body was telling him it was late afternoon rather than pre-dawn. All their resolutions to synchronise their schedules with Arcadian time had come to nothing.
When he finally awoke in the daylight, Annika was sorting through the supplies to find breakfast for them all. He wasn't feeling very refreshed, but compared to the night before, he felt fine. The wardroom-cum-dining room had enough space for four chairs around its circular table but little extra for moving between table and counter. The atmosphere was sparse, simple: pale green décor with pine needle highlights and mock-hardwood edging was the theme. "Gooood morning!" he croaked, and chuckled self-consciously.
Annika looked around and smiled wearily. "The docs are on at us already about baseline sleep tests. None of us hooked up to the monitors last night, I'm quite sure."
Don nodded, not up to facing the aggression of the SSI medical research fraternity yet, and squeezed into a chair. "What you got for us here?" he mumbled, opening up a large packet labelled 'Grains – Assorted'. The morning light glanced off its sheeny texture, and he glanced out of the window. It didn't look too different from the view from the Mars Society's MDRS base in the Utah
Just then Marco stumbled in and opened his arms wide. "Mars! We're actually having breakfast on Mars! Whoa!"
"Yeah, hold that thought," retorted Annika, "because you may or may not want to call it breakfast when you see the pick."
"Huh? Rats been at it already?" Marco laughed.
They stretched out the jests and teasing on the food that they had endured for the past eight months and what they dreamed about growing one day, the strange recipes they could concoct based upon the bank of seeds, insects and stocks of spirulina algae they had brought or were stored away in the Hab. Don was longing for potatoes, but they all knew they wouldn't have the resources or the floor space to grow vegetables for quite a while.
Don examined Marco surreptitiously. He was obviously angling for Annika's attention, and sidelining his own conversational efforts like a jealous suitor. Well, let him do that, he thought. What do I care? He got up and went to check on A.Q.
"Hey, where you going?" asked Marco, halfway through a juggling act involving packets of freeze-dried fruit. In the lower gravity, it wasn't hard to keep three or five objects tumbling lazily through the air for quite a while.
"I'm not hungry yet."
"Suit yourself, amigo."
"Commander, my priority as Base Medic is A.Q. We mustn't lose him. He still hasn't regained consciousness."
We are standing around the wardroom table and trying not to growl at each other. At least, I'm trying. Annika hardly has a growl in her, so it's unfair. Don scowls and says as little as possible.
Asya, well, she's something else. Her normal way of speech has always been to snap or snarl, so now when the pressure is growing, she needs to up the decibels to prove she's annoyed with us. But it's like she's suffered a failure in her drive train. She's burned out. So she comes out with a sharp line in crusty sarcasm and ferocious stares instead.
"If he's not in a stable condition, let's get it over with and bury him!" she says, "Oh, no, let's stand around and watch him breathe instead! Look, we need to work!" A little of the old fire in her eyes.
I have my own agenda too, as much as I am eager to see Abdul Qawi up and about again. I tell them that Asya has a point: our top priority is a detailed inspection of the Hab, a piece-by-piece breakdown of the redundant ECLSS units, a thorough test of the power supply and the batteries, an ongoing regime of leak tests and partial-pressure monitoring. It's survival now, I tell them. I think everyone agrees, even Annika. It hurts to disagree with Annika. In fact, it hurts that we're arguing, and I realise too late that I spoke harshly, in order to make Don and Annika agree with me. And of course that rarely works anyway.
Don speaks up at last, with a sideways glance at me that doesn't escape me. "I agree with everyone, but let's consult SSI on this one." We all look at him as if he's come out with a proverb in Cantonese. "I mean, expert medical advice. Annika has great medical skill, but –"
He's interrupted by Asya. "Yes, OK, let's keep asking them for every last thing. Let's depend on them as much as possible. Look, we are not children anymore!"
"It's not every last thing. This is a human life." Don knows that by keeping composed, he will frustrate Asya and defuse her outbursts.
"But he is not dying! We need to work hard, all four of us!" She casts her glare around the room. "He knew what to expect, forcing himself into the crew."
"And how do we know that he's not dying? Annika is our medical officer. She says it's a priority."
Asya glares at him, seething. "And I? What am I here? Does anyone listen?" With that, she walks off, bouncing noisily off the door frame. We hear her open the hatch leading to the rover and latch it open. She's gone to start her inspections.
We look at each other with something like guilty stares.
Finally Don says, "OK, here's a good compromise. Annika should spend one hour examining A.Q., and if he is in fact stable, report that to Control, then get to work with us. I think we'll get through everything just fine that way."
Suddenly I remember something else. I need to compile a full report on the Jamal / Naqsh systems, a full evaluation. What worked, and especially what didn't. They must improve the rocket body, the docking system, the ELS, or someone's going to die. Something's going to blow up on the pad or a crew will have a life-and-death crisis on the way out here. I pour this all out to the two of them, and they nod sympathetically. "But it's not critical just now, is it?" ventures Annika. "Can it wait a day or two until we get things sorted here?" I tell her I have to get the performance data off Jamal's flight computer today, at the very least, and back everything up. They both nod. Good.
I look around at the Hab, and catch myself muttering in Portuguese. I visualise all the ECLSS and electronics in this place. I wonder how much of this kit is going to keep us on the edge of our seats, too.
Then Don says, as carefully as a convict up for parole, "And when we've done all our systems inspections and everything's fine, and A.Q.'s doing well, what next?"
Asya's voice echoed down the corridor. "I know you want to see the NewSpace site. I'm not going to allow that for at least a couple of weeks."
Don calls back that he still needs to carry out the site survey we were meant to do on the walk-over from Jamal, and he needs to find or improvise new tools for that, since A.Q. once again threw out Don's stuff to make room for himself. I can't help laughing at that point, stifling it as best I can, and he shoots me a look. Then he manages a half-smile. "Yup, I'm starting to detect a pattern here," he says.
Asya says, "Site survey. If you must. But only when we have a green light on ECLSS. Focus on priority, or we will all die." A pause, then she goes on, "We are all going to die anyway, so make sure it is later rather than sooner."
We roll our eyes at each other and get to work.
I'm standing at the console later when I hear a groan from the sick bay. I get there just before Annika does. Making speed in one-third of Earth gravity isn't so easy. My feet keep slipping, even on this high-friction flooring. I end up leaping – slowly – into a door frame and just managing to swing myself under it without smashing my head.
Abdul Qawi rolls his head towards me. Man, but does he look worn down. His eyes barely open. At first he's babbling in Arabic, but then he notices us. "We make it?" he finally mumbles, slowly. I nod, then he winces and says, "My head not good. What happen?" Annika takes a step forward and looks at the heart rate monitor and EEG she's rigged to him. He raises his head and looks around, confused. "Why am I… this…?"
We take turns explaining what happened, but this doesn't seem to help. I tell him that he saved our lives, that he's a hero. He frowns deeply, as though trying to solve a complex mathematical puzzle in his head. His gaze wanders from Annika to me and back again. I wonder how much he understands of what we're saying. Finally, Annika says, "Just rest, A.Q. You've had a tough time, but you're going to make it. You'll get over this." But as she turns away, her wrinkled brow and scared eyes tell another story. She won't tell me though, not at first.
"His suit supply was as good as empty. He was breathing his own exhalations. Any longer and he'd be dead.
"His blood oxygen is way up now. It's OK. But how long was he hypoxic?"
The three of them were back around the wardroom table. Asya was lying down on her bunk, exhausted.
Don said, "The suit supply is meant to last eight hours. He was in his suit for a little over seven. What happened?" He didn't want to be sitting there. He wanted to remove himself from people, from issues, from crises. But he knew that wasn't a viable option.
"Hard work happened," said Marco with a shrug. "He burned through a whole lot of air on his EVA."
Annika knocked her forehead with a knuckle. "If only we had known! We were sitting there in the lander, talking to Control about how he died!"
"There's no use punishing ourselves now," replied Don, as gently as he could. "You know there was no way we could have known. When you lost his telemetry, we all assumed he'd gone. In fact it was the plasma from the heatshield, and the locker he climbed into that hid his signal. And maybe he damaged his transponder at the same time, scrambling around."
Marco raised a finger, thinking. "And… and that locker does not open from inside. He try probably to signal us. But there was no way we can get to him."
Annika carried on. "So he has hypoxia of the brain. Perhaps other organs were affected too. But you can tell by talking to him – when he's awake – that he is very confused and isn't thinking straight. He barely knows where he is."
Don closed his eyes, trying not to feel crushed. When he opened them again, Marco was rubbing his face in his hands and Annika was staring at the table top. "So he'll recover, right?" Don asked, hardly daring to voice the question.
From the conflicted look on Annika's face he knew the answer wasn't an unqualified 'yes'. "He might, and I hope he does, but the brain is not a simple organ, as we all know. We may have to look after him for a long time. Nothing is guaranteed."
There was a certain weight with which Annika carried herself now, Don thought, which didn't surprise him too much. He had always known that she possessed great inner resources. Even though she wasn't the engineer that Marco was, and she often struggled with the in-depth maintenance procedures, and she couldn’t keep up with his own monologues on the Martian climate and geology, she retained her balance. There was very little that ruffled her. Even when she had to suit up for a Marswalk, and he could tell she was apprehensive, she always summoned the courage to proceed with little more than a deep breath.
Marco hissed out his breath and looked up at them. "That's all we need! Man!" He ran one hand over his shaved head. "I mean, poor guy. I was looking forward to, I mean, he risked that for us. And now he's paying the price." He put his face back in his hands. "And it should have been me."
Another long silence ensued, then Annika stood up. "Now is the time when we have to pull together," she said, "and pull ourselves together," she added sharply, glancing at Marco, who looked at her with eyebrows raised.
"Yeah, let's get going then," he finally said.
Several times a day Don noticed that Marco and Annika clashed over some work issue. They seemed to be vying for effective control of the team. They would disagree over which job in a sequence should be done first, and what could be left for the next day, and how exactly to answer the constant media clamour about the Smaug's crew, and whether another short Marswalk was necessary. Don left the Marswalks to them, apart from the preliminary site survey which he carried out with Annika on the third day. That was the highlight of his first week on Mars. He thrived on the suit preparation and briefing, and he realised that it reminded him of the deep caving expeditions he had been part of, years before. The cursory site survey itself didn't tell them much about Mars that they didn't already know. He would need a long program of research involving core samples, spectrum analysis of rock specimens, and a great number of excursions far and wide.
Several times he had to answer media questions about 'how he felt' and so on regarding the Smaug crew. He was beginning to harbour a grudge against whoever had decided to position SSI's landing site so close to that of NewSpace. They had a whole planet to explore, didn't they? It seemed such a great idea, until these things happened.
Several times Annika and Marco raised their voices at each other and neither could back down or suggest a compromise, so Don had to step in and untangle their knot of disagreement. A hot wave of irritation would wash over him as he realised that this was necessary – yet again – and he would spend the rest of the day fighting an unvoiced resentment. On another occasion he was resting on his bunk and didn't get to them in time, and Asya resolved the matter of who would go out and finish installing the new solar array power delivery cables by doing it herself, alone, which was against their protocol. She announced this by shouting over the intercom, silencing Marco and Annika's heated debate, and ordering Annika to come and check her suit before egress.
It was the most Don had heard her speak since the landing. She was outside for five hours, much longer than Marco said it should have taken. Don peered outside in concern, but each time he saw Asya either bent over the power cable connectors or standing still, apparently gazing around at the monotonous, almost totally flat horizon. But eventually the work was done. She came back in, went through the suit scrubber, and disappeared into her bunk without a word. She didn't emerge for twenty-four hours.
Marco started finding minor problems cropping up in the battery and power supply systems. It was something intermittent, he would say, scratching his hairless head. They were fine for now, he reassured them, but he would need to get to the bottom of it soon. He talked long and hard with the systems engineers back at SSI, taking over the boardroom for hours at a time. Earth had overtaken Mars in its orbital race, and the communications lag was slowly increasing.
Then on the fifth day Don decided that something had to be done to pull the team together, since Annika had stopped trying to fix their relational dislocations. He proposed a party to celebrate their first week, reminding them that they had talked about such an event back in Dubai
Annika lit up with the idea. Marco caught on and started calling it a fiesta. When they told Asya what they planned, she said little except to tell them in her deadpan way to have a nice time and to make sure they completed all their work.
On day seven, Fiesta Day, Abdul Qawi was noticeably more alert and was able to look Don in the eye when he came in to visit. A.Q. was up and about the Hab now, which caused them all some alarm at first, until it became obvious that he wasn't about to start playing with the environmental controls or try to Marswalk without a suit. He could carry on short conversations, but on any technical topic he would quickly go blank and shrug apologetically. Still, it was a big improvement.
The Fiesta was a hit – even with Asya. Annika had drawn her in by insisting that they needed her to give a speech on the many contributions Russians had made to the exploration of the Red Planet. Also they rationed themselves one bottle of Merlot to share around. Everyone ended up with a wine glass in one hand and a bulb of orange or tomato juice in the other. Even the simple act of holding a wine glass helped to loosen up everyone's nerves. The cameras were running, but they had decided they would edit the recording before transmitting to Earth.
Halfway into their evening, with everyone squeezed into the boardroom, Annika asked Asya to make her speech. Marco had already attempted to teach them the samba, along with some Portuguese phrases. Don had read out jokes sent by some of the SSI staff – mostly to a refrain of groans – and Annika had told a long, rambling Nigerian folk tale about hungry ghosts and the heroic children who outsmarted them. Meanwhile, Abdul Qawi sat in the corner and appeared to be listening. An occasional smile passed over his face. His wine was untouched, but he swished the liquid in its glass and watched its slow movement as if hypnotised by its lazy grace. A drop of it escaped the rim and flew, as a tiny golden balloon, through the space between them, to land between Don's feet. Don grinned at him, but now Abdul Qawi was lifting himself up repeatedly on the arms of his chair, enjoying a second of freefall each time. He could have been the only person in the room.
Asya stood up and cleared her throat. She shook her head and picked up her tablet to read. Her speech was long winded, bombastic, and punctuated by their cheers. It pitted the honest, courageous Russian people against the kleptocratic state and the 'American imperialists'. Don applauded this heartily. She charted the successes and failures of the Russian space program from the end of the Second World War to the present day, including all the Soviet probes to have reached Mars, only to fail.
"And that is why," she declaimed in a rising tone, "the Russian people have sent their last cosmonaut across the icy steppes of interplanetary space to the planet known as Mars. Cosmonaut-Commander Anastasiya Vladimirovna Komarova," – 'Hooray!' – "the greatest space explorer the world has seen, will continue to honour their uncounted sacrifices as she –"
Don then noticed that her eyes sparkled with moisture. She stopped to draw breath. "I am not even sure why I came to this dead planet," she finally muttered, and threw her tablet onto the tabletop as she let herself fall back into her seat and tossed down the rest of her wine.
Don found no words. She had perfected that technique early on in the week, Don recalled, that throwing of herself backwards into a chair, to land with a mere muffled swish of disturbed air. Now it was a disturbing habit of hers, a sign that her grip was loosening.
Marco stared back at him, raising his eyebrows. Annika regarded Asya keenly, and shifted forward in her seat as if about to speak.
Just then A.Q. began gabbling and trying to stand up. Something in Asya's words had excited his bony, sparrow-like features. "No, no!" he cried, flopping back into his seat. "Not a dead planet! It is a world like space, is all! The air, too thin, too dusty. You, the great space explorer, must explore here. It is almost vacuum. We wear suits. We live by the checklists. You must always explore. Always explore!"
Asya gave him a shrewd look, then drew herself to her feet and excused herself. "I must sleep. All of you, sleep. Enough talking." She edged around Annika's seat towards the door. "And that is an order," she murmured, almost comically.
"I was going to say," Annika ventured, "that we still need your expertise here. The mission goes on, Commander. I'm sure you'll see things differently tomorrow." But by then the target of her encouragements had vanished back into her bunk room.
Don thumped A.Q. lightly on the arm. "Hey, you're a live one today," he said. "You feeling better?"
A pair of wide eyes stared back at him, the whites glazed with filaments of veins, the eyelids quivering. He was leaning forwards, alert, on the cusp of something, raising one hand, one finger. "Yes, yes," he replied, as if caught up in deep thought. The eyes tracked away, to Annika, to Marco, to the window. "Much better." Then he sagged back and closed his eyes.
"A.Q.," began Marco gently, picking up a tablet, "I got something for you. I got some Arabic poetry here. Listen up, and I'll play it." He thumbed and swiped for a few moments, and they all peered down at his screen as if it were a clear well of water. The poetry, when it came, caught Don unawares with its insistent rhythm and the alternation of soft and harsh consonants. The reader's voice was deep. Abdul Qawi sat with mouth slightly open, eyes wide and fixed not on the tablet now but on a scene that only he could see.
There were at least ten verses. When it was over, A.Q. sat frozen in the same attitude for many heartbeats.
"What was the poem about?" asked Annika at last.
"It is a wedding," he replied, in a grave tone. "In the steep, high mountains, a village, a storm, a search for the bride. A tragedy." He sighed. "He falls. She finds his body. Very sad, but very magnificent." He grasped Marco's hands in his own suddenly. "Thank you," he whispered. "Thank you." He pulled Marco closer and kissed him on both cheeks, several times, in the manner which was very familiar to them from their time amongst the Arabs.
Standing, he went on in a firmer voice, but looking down, searching the floor. "It reminds me. The djambia dance, the bara'. I was walking in the space." Looking up at them all, he smiled like a tremendous sunburst. "I almost died, right?" They nodded eagerly. "But we live. We do it. We are here!"
Read on: 'Making My Own Luck'
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