Below Mercury by Anson Mark

Author:Anson, Mark [Anson, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
Tags: Science Fiction
Publisher: Glenn Field Publishing
Published: 2011-06-26T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Later, nearly an hour after the great rush of air that had saved them, they were gathered together in a circle in the middle of the hangar, helmets off, sitting in their spacesuits on some freight boxes they had found. They had opened some of the emergency rations from the spacesuit survival packs, and shared the small bars of food round between themselves.

Clare checked her watch. It showed 19:06, so it was still August 9 – the day of their arrival over Mercury. She worked back over the events in her mind. It seemed hardly possible that, less than two hours ago, she had been sitting in the commander’s seat on the spaceplane, coming in to land. Now the ship was just a twisted pile of scrap metal out on the crater floor, and they were marooned, trapped inside an abandoned mine.

Her breath smoked in the frigid air. All around them, a layer of frost lay over every exposed surface. The air had dropped all its moisture when it encountered the deep cold of the hangar, and it had frozen out on the metal structures and rock walls.

The robot stood by the inner hangar door, its eyes glowing in the darkness, waiting for a command.

There was no telling whether they could find any more food, but Clare had insisted that they eat something to get their blood sugar back up before they did anything else. They ate in semi-darkness, by the lights on two of the helmets; they had switched off the others to save the batteries.

Clare picked out the last crumbs from a food bar wrapper, and crumpled it in her hand. It was time to take stock.

She knocked on a freight box for attention, and looked round at them all. Their faces were lit from below, giving them all an eerie appearance.

‘Okay guys, let’s assess our situation. It seems we’ll be staying here awhile.’

She chose her words carefully. She didn’t want to underplay their situation, but she had to keep everyone’s spirits up and talk positively.

‘Our most important needs right now are air, warmth, water and food. If we can secure those, we can start thinking about how to call home.

‘First – air. Seems like we’ve got plenty of that.’ She gestured in the direction of the open inner doors. ‘I guess we’ve all got some questions about how it came to be there, but let’s do this in order.

‘Second priority – warmth. It’s pretty cold in here, but we can manage okay with our suits on. Steve, what’s the temperature doing?’

Wilson glanced at his suit gauges. He had been keeping track of the air temperature and pressure while they were eating.

‘Minus eleven degrees and still rising. Oxygen partial pressure is stable at ninety percent nominal – we’ll be fine as long as we take it easy.’

‘Okay, good. Now – water and food. We’ve got enough emergency rations for another forty-eight hours, and that’s it. We’ll run out of water before that – all we’ve got is what’s in the bottles in the ration packs.

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