Pure water ice was improbable on the Martian surface. It would sublime away quickly. But the light orange film on the edges of the rocks near the hole glistened. “Vent,” Viktor pronounced.
“Remember the gods,” she said, absently.
“I go,” he said, and without ceremony pulled his line tight.
“Hey, I’m the biologist. I want to take a sample of this film—”
“So take. I am captain, I go.”
He started backing over the rim. There was enough room to let him descend by walking backward down the inside. She knelt and used a sterile wiper to collect the film, then secured it in a biosample baggy. She was nearly out of the baggies and here at last there was—
“Ow!”
She turned to see him wheeling sideways with a silky slowness she would never forget.
“Viktor!” With her cry she tried to stop his fall.
Barely below the lip, Viktor had caught his left boot during a power descent. When he tried to free the tip he managed to turn it, leveraging it with his whole weight. “Ah!”—his second yelp rang in Julia’s suit comm when he hit the side of the hole on the rebound. His right arm smacked the wall vainly and a plume of red dust arced up and out of the hole.
“What happened?”
He tried to make the left foot bear weight. “Damn, hurts.”
The dust began its lazy descent as she bent over Viktor’s line. The top of his helmet was still in the light. “How bad?”
“Did not feel break.”
“Hope it’s just a sprain.”
“I lost my hold with boot. Rock was slippery.”
“It looks like ice on the rocks. Condensed out from the plume, I guess.” She’d have to think about it later.
He hit the winch control and ascended to her level. She wrestled him clumsily over to the narrow edge of the hole and made him lay down. She unfastened the bottom of his insulated legging and ran her hands lightly over the ankle cuff of the pressure suit underneath. “Suit looks okay, no breaches. How’s your self-med?”
The damned dust had settled on his faceplate and she couldn’t see him, but knew he would be checking the readouts on the inside of the helmet. “Normal.” His voice was thin and strained.
“Good. How do you feel?”
He shifted slightly, groaned. “Like yesterday’s blini. Light-headed. Foot hurts like hell.”
Keep him talking. Can’t risk shock. She was no doctor, but her year of physician’s assistant training snapped into high gear. She kept her tone light. “That’s what you get for doing cartwheels.”
“Unnnh. I can’t move it.”
She frowned, wondering how difficult it was going to be to get him back into the rover. Help was more than forty klicks away, and she was driving the only pressurized vehicle on the planet. Mission protocol limited the open rover to twenty-five klick trips, so the two of them had to manage it on their own. She thought of calling Marc on the emergency band, for moral support if nothing else. No, concentrate on Viktor. Plenty of time to analyze things in the rover. If she could get him there.
“Okay, enough laziness. Let’s get you up.”
“Aw…right.” His slightly slurred voice worried her. They were all worn down, and shock could be setting in.
She slipped her left arm clumsily around his waist, feeling like a kid in a snowsuit. Suit-to-suit contact had a curiously remote feel about it, with no feedback from the skin. Still, she liked hugging him, even this way. They had slept together in a close embrace ever since the launch from Earth orbit.
“I’ve got some great stuff in the rover that’ll make you feel like a new man.”
“Want to feel like man I was.”
“C’mon, get up.”
“Why not pull me up on the line? I lie down—”
“Don’t think I could.”
“Pull with rover.”
“Hey, I’m in charge.”
“Aieee!”
With her help he heaved himself up onto his right leg, leaning heavily on her. Together they struggled for balance, threatened to go over the edge, then steadied. She had long ago stopped counting how many times the 0.38 g of Mars had helped them through crucial moments. It had proved the only useful aspect of the planet.
“Whew. Made it, lover.” Keep the patter going, don’t alarm him. “Ready? I’ll walk, you hop as best you can.”
Like a drunken three-legged race team, they managed to stagger slowly up the crater slope with the judicious assist of the winch. You will work as a team, the instructor at mission training had said constantly, but she hadn’t anticipated this. Over her comm came deep, ragged gasps. Hopping through drifts of gritty dust, even in the low gravity, was exhausting Victor. Luckily the rover was just a dozen meters away.
Slow and steady got them there. He leaned against the rover as she struggled off first her harness, then his. She rolled him into the lock and set the cycle sequence. No time to brush off the dust, but she got off the coverall they used over suits to keep the dust at a minimum. She hooked it with her own to the clamps beside the lock. Skip the usual shower on entry, too. She climbed into the lock with him, sealed it. She hit the pump switch and oxygen whistled into the lock from half a dozen recessed ports.
With a wheeze, the cycler finished. She was jammed in and couldn’t turn around to see him. She felt the rover’s carriage shift. Good; he had rolled out of the lock and was lying on the floor.
