Grand Tour 06 Return to Mars by Ben Bova

Author:Ben Bova [Bova, Ben]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction, Fantasy
ISBN: 0380976404
Publisher: RosettaBooks
Published: 2014-06-25T23:00:00+00:00

NIGHT: SOL 41

“I SEE THAT NONE OF US ARE GOING TO GET ANY SLEEP.”

Stacy Dezhurova was smiling as she spoke, but her bright blue eyes were dead serious. Trudy Hall was still on duty at the comm console. Stacy sat beside her while Jamie paced slowly back and forth behind her. Vijay had pulled in another chair and sat by the doorway, watching them all.

The comm center cubicle felt crowded and hot with all four of them jammed in there. Jamie did not answer Dezhurova’s remark; he just kept on pacing, five strides from one partition to the other, then back again.

“Tommy must have found him by now,” Hall said, swiveling her chair slightly toward Stacy.

“Then why doesn’t he call in?” she demanded, almost angrily.

“They must still be down inside the caldera,” Jamie said.

“It is night,” Stacy pointed out, almost accusingly.

Jamie nodded and kept pacing.

“It’s the waiting that’s the worst,” Vijay offered. “Not knowing what—”

“This is Rodriguez,” the radio speaker crackled. “We got a little problem here.”

Jamie was at the comm console like a shot, leaning between the two women.

“What’s happening, Tomas?”

“Fuchida’s alive. But his backpack’s banged up and his battery’s not functioning. Heater, air fans, nothing in his suit’s working.” Rodriguez’s voice sounded tense but in control, like a pilot whose jet engine had just flamed out: trouble, but nothing that can’t be handled. Until you hit the ground.

Then he added, “We’re stuck on a ledge about thirty meters down and can’t get hack up ‘cause the rock’s coated with dry ice and it’s too slippery to climb.”

As the astronaut went on to describe how the tether winch almost pulled out of its supports when the two of them tried to haul themselves up the slope, Jamie tapped Hall on the shoulder and told her to pull up the specs on the hard suit’s air circulation system.

“Okay,” he said when Rodriguez stopped talking. “Are either of you hurt?”

“I’m bruised a little, Mitsuo’s got a bad ankle. He can’t stand on it.”

One of the screens on the console now showed a diagram of the suit’s air circulation system. Hall was scrolling through a long list on the screen next to it.

“Mitsuo, how do you feel?” Jamie asked, stalling for time, time to think, time to get the information he needed.

“His radio’s down,” Rodriguez said. A hesitation, then, “But he says he’s hot. Sweating.”

Vijay nodded and murmured, “Hypothermia.”

Strangely, Rodriguez chuckled. “Mitsuo also says he discovered siderophiles, inside the caldera! He wants Trudy to know that.”

“I heard it,” Hall said, still scrolling down the suit specs. “Did he get samples?”

Again a wait, then Rodriguez replied, “Yep. There’s water in the rock. Liquid water. Mitsuo says you’ve gotta publish … get it out on the Net.”

“Liquid?” Hall stopped the scrolling. Her eyes went wide. “Are you certain about—”

“Never mind that now,” Jamie said, studying the numbers on Hall’s screen. “According to the suit specs you can get enough breathable air for two hours, at least, even with the fans off.”

“We can’t wait down here until daylight, then,” Rodriguez said.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.