The voltage convertor takes half an hour to put together. I splice it on to the robo's handset and get suited up. It's dark in the Hab. I creep around, nervous of waking up the others. If they stopped me carrying out my plan tonight, there might not be enough battery supply to take us through another night. The urgency is drumming in my head like a thrash band. All being well, I will be back when the others are just waking up and wondering where I am. I want to see the looks on their faces. Oh yes, especially Annika's. I may have misplaced my moral compass these last weeks, but surviving and saving the mission are solid enough cross-bearings to take me forwards.
I'm picking my helmet off the rack when I hear slow footsteps behind me. I whirl around. It's A.Q. We've made the medical room his bunk room. I must have woken him up as I passed his door. He's chewing on a granola bar and staring vacantly at me. He's wearing the neck-to-ankle white cotton gown he sleeps in. With his half-grown beard and frizzy hair he's an apparition: hybrid cherub/hobo.
"Oh. Hi," I offer, and carry on checking my helmet before fitting it to the collar ring and snapping it tight. The visor's open. Maybe he is actually sleep-walking and won't raise the alarm.
"You might want to take one of these," he says. He's holding out an oxygen cylinder and fixing me with a level stare. My suit's dual cylinders have enough for eight hours, which isn't enough, given that the robo will take at least three hours, maybe four, to reach the site. I already have one spare. So I nod and take the cylinder. That will give me a total of sixteen hours. I could almost walk back from the other site if I had to. Almost.
I snap the visor down. But just as I'm locking it he raps on the faceplate. He wants to tell me something. So I open up again, and he says, "I remember something." I wait, eyebrows raised. He looks away, puzzled, before focussing again on me. "Do not take unnecessary risks," he says. "Always prepare for every failure mode. Never undertake solo excursions." He still stares at me. I realise that he's reciting phrases from the training manual that he helped to write.
"Yeah, thanks," I reply softly. "But these risks are necessary for everyone to survive. I have to do this. I'll be fine. I'll be back in the morning. Okay?" He smiles, takes another bite from his bar, and I close and lock the visor again.
Then I exit the airlock, carrying the handset with its recharger, and the spare cylinders. There's the robo. It's almost totally dark except for some dim red emergency lighting on the outside of the Hab and my helmet light. It only takes ten minutes for me to unscrew the maintenance panel, plug the recharger into the auxiliary output of the robo's power supply and check the handset is on, then I climb up onto the front blade of the robo, placing the spare oxygen beside me. It's the right size and curvature for me to sit on it and dangle my legs off the front, but it's not going to be a comfortable ride. At least with me weighing so much less than I would on Earth, I'm not going to compress my buttocks nearly as much.
Hmm. Second thoughts, I'll strap the oxygen and the rest of my gear onto the side of the blade where there's an eye-hole for lifting it when it's detached. The nylon tie-up wraps are in a suit pocket. That's better. Mustn't lose those cylinders.
Now to test the contraption. The handset needs me to use both hands – one to hold it, the other to steer the little joystick or prod the buttons. It was designed to be used with a suit, so that's good. Gently now: Power on. Lift the scoop a little so my feet don't hit any protruding rocks. It's jerky but effective. I'm not unseated by the movement. Then forwards: slowly, ever so slowly. It was made to respond to feathery touches of the handset, and it does. I can feel the hum of its motors through the suit, and I am smoothly propelled away from the Hab. This is going to work. I can feel it. Such a simple plan: go out, get what you need, come back. Fix the solar power field. I have thought through what to do in case of failures: suit failure, robo failure, and so on. I have a suit patching kit, spare oxygen, tools, emergency pup tent and ration pack. What I can't do is eat in this suit. So I ate all I could beforehand, and the suit has a two-litre water supply.
The robo has headlights, two on the front and one at the rear. So far I can see where I'm going. At 20 to 30 kph there's little chance of running off a precipice – not that there could be any of those on this plateau – and I'm steering around the larger rocks and bumps, although that is slowing me down quite a lot. I can navigate using the robo's inertial system. Our base's radio direction finder beacons will be good until I at least get around the hills.
Or how about if I drive over the hills? The straight-line distance is about halved, then. It's tempting, but spontaneous changes to the plan like that are what cause accidents and failures. We haven't surveyed the hills; we only have satellite photos. I could easily get stuck or have to turn back. I'll stick with the long route.
Ah! That's better. I've picked up the tracks of our rover from our trip a few days ago. That helps a lot. Now I can make better speed.
This takes a lot of concentration. I don't know if I can keep this up for several hours without a break. But I have to get there – and back. So I will.
The darkness is impressively deep. Outside the headlights there's nothing at all. I don't dare look overhead at the sky; must keep my eyes on the ground ahead.
Onwards to the Smaug.
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Must stop for a break. I'm exhausted. Wow, but I've reached the pass between the hills. Over halfway? I think so. And the last stretch is the easiest.
I'll switch off the headlights, lower myself to the ground and climb out. Stretch. Ahhh…
The night sky is awesome. The dust cuts down the seeing from perfect to merely spectacular. There's Pegasus, there's Hercules! Hey, that makes me feel at home. I think Orion's below the horizon. But Ursa Major, the Big Bear, is not pointing at the hub of the sky here. I almost forgot. The pole of Mars points at nothing in particular that's instantly visible – so navigating by the stars immediately becomes a little harder than it is back on Earth. I hope I don't have to walk home in the dark. I think that's Cygnus, and there's the swan's tail, Deneb, shining brightly enough, but it's about ten degrees from the sky's centre of rotation. I picture the starfield swinging around a spot just about… there. And I can easily trace out the Milky Way arcing across the sky, giving Deneb a backdrop of lace. Or maybe a scarf of those nanodiamonds they say are scintillating through a few of the proto-planetary nebulas.
Time to get on with this. Back up into my saddle. Off we go.
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The squat shape of the NewSpace Hab wavers into the double cone of my headlights like a lazy wraith. One moment it's shimmering into existence, the next it's gone… and then it's sitting there, waiting for me. The exaltation fills me for only a moment, because it's taken nearly five hours to get this far. There were some dips and bumps which Robo couldn't handle, and I came close to falling off my saddle. I had to slow it right down. In a few places I had to reverse. But here I am. I drive right up to the Hab and cut the motors. I'll leave the headlights on. Will the dawn come soon? I haven't been outside at these times here before. I'm not even stopping to check the time. Get the stuff and get home.
With my helmet light swinging in front of me, I walk over and start looking for locker number 113B. From my distracted glance at the schematics for Smaug, I know that all the external lockers are numbered 100 and above. The B means that it's higher than ground level. It should be around the other side from the Hab's gaping entrance. Around here somewhere. I start rubbing off the dust with my gloves, trying to find the locker numbers. Rub, rub, rub: a maintenance sign telling me not to step on this surface. Rub, rub, rub, rub: a cover for an electrical outlet. And so on. Five minutes later I find 115A. It was lower down than I expected. Here's 116A. So I backtrack and find 113A pretty quickly. Then… reaching up, I rub for all I'm worth where I think I can see the dust stands out from the hull about the thickness of a piece of card in a twenty-centimetre square. It's at the limit of my reach.
It's not what I expected. It's a handwritten sign! Looks like a thick black marker pen in curved strokes. I have to step back and play my helmet light over it to see what it says.
The breath catches in my throat.
SALUT / HELLO
SEE SIGN AT ENTRANCE
LT DIOR AUBERT
Is this for real? Might Don have left this here as a badly-aimed joke? I'm breathing hard now, taking it in. No, not unless he found a way to deposit static charged dust onto it so it blended in with the rest of the hull. This is the real thing.
Then I'm running for all I'm worth around the Hab, chinning open the radio channel: "Hey! Don! Asya! Annika! I found something! A.Q.!" I babble on a bit before I remember that they're probably all asleep and I'm beyond the limits of range.
I find myself rubbing dust off the hull like a mad thing, all around the entrance. "Hey, Marco, get a grip," I mutter to myself in Portuguese. A few deep breaths. More rubbing, then I find it: more card, more big black strokes of marker pen. I stand back and take it all in, with my eyes bugging out.
CREW OF NEWSPACE SHIP SMAUG
LANDED NEAR HERE DAY 1 YEAR 1
RELOCATED DAY 48 YEAR 1
DETAILS ON FLASH DRIVE
IN CREW 1/4s
That is all. I want to slap my head. Of course! The dust! I knew they must have left a message, but we didn't take the time to look. But now we can –
Wait, there's a flash drive in the crew quarters? I dash up the staircase inside, noting for a moment that my main mission – the spare connector – will have to wait. I won't be long.
The crew lounge once had an oval table and six chairs. I know that from the design concept photos. Of course, they took all that, and now it's just an empty shell. I can see Asya's footprints in the dust. Or maybe Don came up here too. I don't remember. There's still a counter along one side of the room. But it's bare, except for some scraps of clipped wiring and plastic edging material. I hunt the shelves and along the floor. Nothing! Nothing that resembles a flash drive anyway. NewSpace went with a conventional data storage system, so I know the kind of UCS-1.3 drive to expect. The flash chip is almost as tiny as an amoeba, but the whole drive is just large enough to hold between two fingers. I don't see it. I have a quick, increasingly frantic hunt through each dusty, empty bunk room and even what's left of the bathroom, but no joy.
I have to give it up. At least now we can come back and have a thorough search at a later date. At least we can be sure that they did relocate. They didn't fall into a crevasse or fall prey to trapdoor-spider Martians or some black-ops government conspiracy, as some of the fringe media people insisted. At least, not up until moving day.
Outside again, I carefully remove the sign from beside the entrance. They used some patented Marsproof tape to secure it; tough stuff, but I can peel off the corners with a screwdriver, then pull the rest from the hull surface. I want proof when I get back home. Also… it's going to be a historical item one day, so we had better look after it. I fold it carefully and tuck it into the pocket of my suit leg.
Back around the rear of the Hab, I get the locker open and easily find the connector in its lightweight protective packaging. I just have to open up the package and double-check that it's what I think it is, then I'm back aboard my ride, the package is next to me in the scoop, and we're off.
Hahhh. Mission
Next stop: Arcadia
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Keep reading: I Can See For Miles
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