“I was lucky to find it in six.”
“Okay, so not all those pingo hills have water under them, at least not so shallow.”
“It was just good luck, last-minute luck.”
“Your ‘luck’ was mostly sweat and intuition.”
They reached the first of the pingo hills in midafternoon, running exactly in the tracks of Marc and Raoul’s last expedition. Protocol: avoid new dangers. A new route would hold unknowns, perhaps deadfalls or a rock slide just waiting for a passing vibration to start it downhill.
Marc kept up a lazy discussion of the vent, and she answered, but her mind was elsewhere. She had devoted her life to space, but in the end it was this hostile yet beautiful land that she loved.
Until now, all active astronauts had been exclusively near-Earth-orbit guys, never out of sight of the looming custard clouds below. The deep range of the blackness between the worlds felt utterly different from near-Earth space, where the great ice cream planet hung over you like an ever-changing artwork of milky white swirls and hard blues and misty greens, encased in the precariously thin eggshell film of pale air.
Just going to Mars had changed that forever. On the long voyage they had hung between the eternity of diamond-shard stars as though frozen in their embrace, unmoving but for the hab’s gravity-giving cart-wheel. No reassuring Earth hovering nearby. Longer and longer pauses within radio conversations, until those became impossible.
Awaiting them was a real place—ruddy mystery, not just a slice of vacuum. Living here was different in a way she could not name. Not like a space station, though there were locks and gear and procedures in common. Not like the moon, though it had dust and dryness. She had never been there, but she knew that Mars resembled the moon, with bad weather and more danger. But more, it had a deep history it concealed artfully.
She wrestled with this, tried to talk about it with Marc, and could not find the words. Traditionally astronauts were minimal talkers. Here they still slung around the space cadet lingo now and then, but as the mission wore on they found English more useful. TWAs—three-word acronyms—faded, especially after you forgot what they stood for. But personal stuff was as hard as ever. Finally she descended to cheerleading. “Look, we give this vent a good shot, then we can go home with more than we had any right to expect.”
“I still want to find out if it ever rained here.”
“And I want to find out if those fossil microbes in your cores were the last Martians, or the first.”
“Lots of luck. Me, I’ve got my eyes on other prizes.”
It was quite like him to leave a leading question open like that. “Such as?”
“My agent, Carlos Avila? I got good news from him. A contract for a co-lead in a big new syndicated space epic.”
“Wow. Movie?”
“No, vid.”
“Think you can pretend to be a big-time space guy?”
Marc gave her a smile that might as well have a canary feather sticking out of it. “I start a month after we get back.”
“You’ve got the looks for it.”
“Hey, Carlos said we all do, for stuff like that. It turns out that actors are usually short, compact people. Something with the way our features photograph.”
“I’m not short.”
“Not short short. Compact.”
“We’re strong, sturdy.”
“So was Arnold Schwarzenegger. He was also shorter than you.”
“Really?” She laughed. All four of them were light. Astronauts generally were, to fit into tight spaces and consume fewer expendables. So far they had not suffered for it here; the 0.38 gravity helped.
She mulled over the idea. “So we should all go Hollywood?”
“What’s left, after Mars?”
Somehow the question stuck with her. What’s left?
An odd sensation, looking down the slope of her life from this pinnacle. It was hard for her to think that this was truly it, the last big thing she would ever do. Going back would be six months of boredom followed by endless Earthside ticker-tape parades and fawning fans. Pleasant enough, maybe, but astronauts were not attention-hounds. They wanted to do, not just be. Acting in fake spectacle vids and making speeches to the Rotarians…
She shook her head. Stay in the present. Mars isn’t over…yet.
When at last they rolled up to the vent she insisted on going out. That meant suiting up and Marc didn’t want to. Getting into a lobster suit was a chore and he was comfortable where he was. “Let’s do the setup in the morning.”
“Nope, I want to eyeball the site. And I want to spend all the time tomorrow underground.”
So they violated protocol. He watched her on the external camera while she checked the vent in the waning sunset light. Carefully she followed the boot prints she and Viktor had left, partly filled in by dust already.
“No change that I can see,” she sent over comm. “No signs of another outgassing here, either.”
Disappointing, but then, ice would have sublimed away here within a few days. Her heart pounded just to see the place again, even if it was a rather unimpressive little hole in the fading light.
She carefully walked back up the incline, remembering hauling Viktor this way. Their boot prints were wind-blurred.
She unhitched the two winch assemblies and freed the climbing harnesses from their mounts. Cables were still neatly coiled, the yokes ready. Neatness counts, especially on Mars. The cables were incredibly strong and light, the best carbon fiber. Thin wires threaded through the carbon also carried their suit comm transmissions back to Red Rover, for relay back to base if they needed it. Carefully she checked the connections and sent a hailing signal to the ship, whose onboard answered automatically.
“All set!” Job done.
Now for a reward. The first month here she had often gone out to witness the splendid ruby wonder of sunset. Dawn was even better, with ice clouds that quickly vanished, but much colder. Already a hard chill came stealing up from her boots.
