The Frederick Pohl Omnibus by Frederick Pohl

Author:Frederick Pohl [Pohl, Frederick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-08-31T06:51:08.566000+00:00

The Middle of Nowhere

Just ahead of us we saw a cluster of smoke trees suddenly quiver, though there wasn't a whisper of a breeze, and begin to emit their clouds of dense yellow vapour from their branch-tips.

'Let's get a move on, Will,' said Jack Demaree. His voice was thin and piercing, like the thin air all about us. 'It's going to get really hot here in the next twenty minutes.'

The steel and glass town of Niobe was in sight, a quarter mile ahead,

'Sure,' I said, and changed pace. We had been shambling along, as lazily as we could, in the effort-saving walk you learn in your first week on Mars. I stepped it up to the distance-devouring loose run that is only possible on a light-gravity planet like Mars.

It is tough to have to run in a thin atmosphere. Your lungs work too hard; you feel as though every step is going to be your last. Hillary and Tensing found no harder going on Everest than the friendliest spot on the surface of Mars--except, of course, that by day the temperature is high, and the light gravity lets you stand effort that would otherwise kill you. But we hadn't much choice but to run. The smoke trees had passed their critical point, and the curious gelatinous sulphur compounds that served them for sap had passed into gas with the heat. When that happened, it meant that the sun was nearly overhead; and with only Mars's thin blanket of air to shield you, you do not stay out in the open at high noon.

Not that we needed to see the smoke trees to know it was getting hot.

A hundred and twenty in the shade it was, at least If there had been any shade.

Demaree passed me with a spurt just as we reached the outskirts of Niobe, and I followed him into the pressure chamber of the General Mercantile office. We use helium in our synthetic atmosphere instead of Earth's nitrogen. So they gave us the pressure in one big ear-popping dose, without any danger of the bends we might have got from nitrogen. I swallowed and rubbed my ears; then we shed our sandcapes and respirators and walked into the anteroom.

Keever looked out of his private office, his lean horse face sagging with curiosity.

'Demaree and Wilson reporting,' I said. 'No sign of natives. No hostile action. No anything, in fact, except it's hot.'

Keever nodded and pulled his head back in. 'Make out a slip,' his voice floated out. 'And you go out again in two hours. Better eat.'

Demaree finished shaking the loose sand out of his cape into a refuse shaft and made a face. 'Two hours. Oh, lord.' But he followed me to the Company cafeteria without argument.

The first thing we both did was make a dash for the drinking fountain. I won, and sopped up my fill while Demaree's dry and covetous breath seared the back of my neck. Sand patrol can dehydrate a man to the point of shock in three hours; we had been out for four.

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