“You look while I check their internal radio.”
From inside the Airbus rover, which took some trouble getting into, Julia tried to raise them on radio. Nothing. She came back out quickly, since she had taken her helmet off to go inside. After the greenhouse, she wasn’t going to let it out of her sight again.
“This motor is jammed, or burned out,” he reported over the comm. “I can’t get a rise out of it.”
They looked at each other grimly through their faceplates.
“They could have just gotten tangled up,” she said hopefully.
“Uh-uh,” Marc grunted. “More like they got trapped, tried to power out, and overloaded the motor.”
“Well, there’s nothing for it but to go down.”
“Yep. Better tell base. Viktor’ll scream bloody murder, but he can’t stop us.”
His prediction was exactly right. Viktor even shouted over comm, something she had never heard him do.
“They knew what they were doing! We are not responsible to get them out. I sprain my leg there. If something happens to you—”
“I’ll be very careful.”
“So was I!”
“Look, Chen was a scientist—” She stopped, realizing she had used the past tense. “What if they found something really important down there? And are cut off?”
“I do not like—”
“We’ll just go—”
“It is night. Soon so cold you are not able to move joints in that suit, maybe.”
“The vent gets warmer pretty fast.”
“That is not enough to—”
“This is an on-the-spot decision, Viktor. We’re going in.”
“I, I order you not to—”
She switched off. Immediately she felt terrible about doing it, but she left it off.
Marc had heard. They said nothing, just checked their harnesses, securing the yokes.
“How about carrying oxy tanks this time?” Marc asked.
“Theirs?” She nodded at the rack of bottles on the rear of the Airbus rover.
“Ummm. I was thinking ours.”
“Both, why not? Look at their rack—four gone. They took two extras, but by now they’ll be low.”
“That’ll up the mass on our lines a lot. They’re Mars-rated for one ton metric, so…” He calculated. “Okay, there’s plenty margin. But they’ll be pretty damn awkward.”
They put two tanks apiece on their lines, double-clamping them five meters above the yokes. She did not like the idea of that much mass ready to fall on her, and checked the clamps three times.
Backing down the slope, playing out their cables, Julia looked up into a bowl of sharp stars. Already her suit felt chilly. Her heater was ticking away, fighting the frigid plunge as the skimpy warmth bled out of the thin Martian atmosphere.
The crew never operated outside at night, an absolutely solid rule. Mechanical parts stuck, valves jammed, suit power ran out fast. They had a power connection in the line to Red Rover’s inboard nuclear power source, but they would have to stop to tap into it. She gritted her teeth and wondered if Viktor had been right.
Sure he was. This is foolish.
But another part of her knew that if she walked away from here without trying to find them she would answer for it the rest of her life. Not to others—to herself.
She glanced over at Marc as they played out line. Something in his face told her that he was having the same thoughts. Had reached the same conclusion. And neither of them had needed to talk about it.
They got the oxy tanks past the Y-frame that routed the lines. It was awkward getting the bottles set right. Then the two of them backed over the lip and negotiated the bottles into place above them.
In their suit lamps she could see him concentrating on where his feet were, how his weight was displaced—the riveting attention trained into them by the years. After all the gut-churning tension of the last few days, it actually felt good to be doing something—clean, direct, muscles and mind.
They went down gingerly, parallel to the Airbus monofilament cables. Marc said, “I wonder if that differential was built after seeing our plans?”
She grimaced, puffing as the winch lowered them both into an inky well. “Why not? All’s fair in a race.”
“Look there,” he called.
From below seeped a soft ivory glow. The darkness above them made the seeing different this time. A thin mist boiled up and cloaked the radiance in streamers of gossamer finery.
“Careful not to touch the mat,” she said.
