Ghost of an Opportunity by Kevin McLaughlin

Author:Kevin McLaughlin [McLaughlin, Kevin]
Language: eng
Format: epub

Five

I’d made past the first two landmarks before my suit beeped at me loudly that it was down to emergency levels of charge.

“Recharge now. Recharge now,” it blared in my ear.

Like I wasn’t aware the suit charge was critically low? I shut the speaker off. No sense listening to the annoying voice telling me something I already knew, and it was just burning more power talking at me anyway. That made me consider whether there might be anything else I could turn off on the suit, to eke out just a few more minutes of life from the battery. The problem was, there were two main drains on the charge. Both of them were vital to survival.

“Which is more important, the air or the heat?” I mused. It seemed a damned shame to make it so far and not get all the way home. But the truth was that I needed both of those things to survive very long on the surface of Mars.

It was cold outside my suit, brutally cold. The temperature would only continue to drop as night fell. Without my heater I’d start cooling off rapidly. Hypothermia would set in. How soon, I didn’t know, but it would happen.

The air recycler was just as crucial. I could live on what was in my suit for a short while, but soon I’d be rebreathing my own exhaled carbon dioxide. I’d get giddy, then hallucinate, and then I’d die.

Neither of the choices presented felt particularly appealing. That said, I was moving at a decent pace, now that my ankle had some support. If I kept moving my muscles would keep burning energy. I’d keep myself warm that way. Well, maybe not warm, but at least maybe I wouldn’t turn into a popsicle right away. The suit was designed to keep heat in. My body was designed to create heat. It seemed like a match made in heaven.

Walking without breathing, on the other hand, just wasn’t going to happen. I’d get a short distance, but then I’d pass out, fall over, and suffocate. I’d be a warm dead person, but that wasn’t much help.

All these things went through my head pretty quickly. It’s remarkable how morbid one can get when they’re pretty sure they’re done for. I stopped myself once I realized I was debating whether it was more polite for folks to find my body as a toasty corpse or a frozen one. The truth was, by the time anyone got to me I’d be frozen no matter which way I went.

“Heater it is,” I said, and shut the thing off. More warning beeps popped up, but I silenced those as well. As I walked, I went through the suit’s electronics systems, turning off everything except the air and a pair of LEDs on my helmet. They didn’t draw much power anyway, and I wouldn’t be able to go anywhere if I couldn’t see where I was going.

Progress was being made. I was still on the last dregs of emergency power, but this would let me eke out another mile or so, maybe.

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