Bernstein shook his head. “How’re we going to capture the methane in the first place? And how are we going to repair the fuel cell’s damage?”
“We can weld a patch on the cell,” O’Connor said. “We’ve got the tools for that.”
“And we can attach a weather balloon to the bore hole. That’ll hold the methane coming out.”
“Yeah, but will it be enough to power up the fuel cell?”
“We’ll see.”
With Bernstein clearly doubtful, they broke into the equipment locker and pulled out the small, almost delicate, welding rod and supplies. Faiyum opened the bin that contained the weather balloons.
“The meteorologists aren’t going to like our using their stuff,” Bernstein said. “We’re supposed to be releasing these balloons twice a day.”
Before O’Connor could reply with a choice Fuck the meteorologists, Faiyum snapped, “Let ’em eat cake.”
They got to work. As team leader, O’Connor was glad of the excuse to be doing something. Even if this is a big flop, he thought, it’s better to be busy than to just lie around and wait to die.
As he stretched one of the weather balloons over the bore hole and fastened it in place, Faiyum kept up a steady stream of timeworn jokes. Bernstein groaned in the proper places and O’Connor sweated inside his suit while he laboriously welded the bullet-hole-sized puncture of the fuel cell’s hydrogen tank.
By midafternoon the weather balloon was swelling nicely.
“How much hydrogen do you think we’ve got there?” Bernstein wondered.
“Not enough,” said Faiyum, serious for once. “We’ll need three, four balloons full. Maybe more.”
O’Connor looked westward, out across the bleak frozen plain. The sun would be setting in another couple of hours.
When they finished their day’s work and clambered back into the cockpit, O’Connor saw that the batteries were barely up to half their standard power level, even with the solar panels recharging them all day.
We’re not going to make it, he thought. But he said nothing. He could see that the other two stared at the battery readout. No one said a word, though.
The night was worse than ever. O’Connor couldn’t sleep. The cold hurt. He had turned off his suit radio, so he couldn’t tell if the other two had drifted off to sleep. He couldn’t. He knew that when a man froze to death, he fell asleep first. Not a bad way to die, he said to himself. As if there’s a good way.
He was surprised when the first rays of sunlight woke him. I fell asleep anyway. I didn’t die. Not yet.
Faiyum wasn’t in the cockpit, he saw. Looking blearily through the windshield he spotted the geologist in the early morning sun fixing a fresh balloon to the bore hole, with a big round yellow balloon bobbing from a rock he’d tied it to.
O’Connor saw Faiyum waving to him and gesturing to his left wrist, then remembered that he had turned his suit radio off. He clicked the control stud on his wrist.
“. . . damned near ready to burst,” Faiyum was saying. “Good thing I came out here in time.”
Bernstein was lying back in his cranked-down seat, either asleep or . . . O’Connor nudged his shoulder. No reaction. He shook the man harder.
“Wha . . . what’s going on?”
O’Connor let out a breath that he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.
“You okay?” he asked softly.
“I gotta take a crap.”
O’Connor giggled. He’s all right. We made it through the night. But then he turned to the control panel and saw that the batteries were down to zero.
Faiyum and Bernstein spent the day building a system of pipes that led from the balloon’s neck to the input valve of the repaired fuel cell’s hydrogen tank. As long as the sun was shining they had plenty of electricity to power the laser. Faiyum fastened the balloon’s neck to one of the hopper’s spidery little landing legs and connected it to the rickety-looking pipework. Damned contraption’s going to leak like a sieve, O’Conner thought. Hydrogen’s sneaky stuff.
As he worked he kept up his patter of inane jokes. “A Catholic, a Muslim, and a Jew—”
“How come the Jew is always last on your list?” Bernstein asked, from his post at the fuel cell. O’Connor saw that the hydrogen tank was starting to fill.
Faiyum launched into an elaborate joke from the ancient days of the old Soviet Union, in which Jews were turned away from everything from butcher’s shops to clothing stores.
“They weren’t even allowed to stand in line,” he explained as he held the bobbing balloon by its neck. “So when the guys who’ve been waiting in line at the butcher’s shop since sunrise are told that there’s no meat today, one of them turns to another and says, ‘See, the Jews get the best of everything!’”
“I don’t get it,” Bernstein complained.
“They didn’t have to stand in line all day.”
“Because they were discriminated against.”
Faiyum shook his head. “I thought you people were supposed to have a great sense of humor.”
“When we hear something funny.”
O’Connor suppressed a giggle. Bernstein understood the joke perfectly well, he thought, but he wasn’t going to let Faiyum know it.
By the time the sun touched the horizon again, the fuel cell’s hydrogen tank was half full and the hopper’s batteries were totally dead.
O’Connor called Tithonium. “We’re going to run on the fuel cell tonight.”
