4

Meridiani

Helmut checked the seals on his helmet one more time and glanced at his clothes trunk to make sure it was latched properly. The ranger was approaching the Sunwing D and the transfer tunnel docked to it. For the first time, Helmut was boarding an aircraft without the need to don a spacesuit. But since the technology was still experimental, they were suited up anyway.

He looked out the porthole to see the machine. It was the greatest achievement in Martian aircraft development to date. The central pod was a cylinder 2.5 meters high, 2.5 meters wide, and six meters long, able to accommodate a cockpit, six seats, a tiny galley, and a head. Alternately, it could carry up to 1,200 kilograms of cargo. The pod was embedded in a quadriplane, four wings stacked on top of each other, 2.5 meters apart, 95 meters from tip to tip, and 3.8 meters wide; together they provided 1,600 square meters of lifting surface. Flaps that could be extended a meter provided an additional 300 square meters of lifting surface per wing for horizontal takeoffs and landings. Equipment pods twelve meters in from each wing tip contained methane and oxygen storage, electrical conversion equipment, fuel cells, small rocket motors to provide vertical takeoff and landing if necessary, and landing gear. Sixteen propellers studded the front of the second wing, providing forward thrust for the aircraft. The central fuselage had a tail extending from it with vertical flaps for control and steering. And since the entire top wing and the leading and trailing sections of the others were covered by forty percent efficient solar cells, the aircraft had 4,000 kilowatt-hours of power per sol available to its propellers.

It was a big, awkward-looking vehicle with a total mass of five tonnes, but it flew at 300 kilometers per hour through the thin air and carried people quite reliably from place to place. That sol there were four passengers for the sixteen-hour night flight to Aurorae Outpost: Helmut Langlais, Anna Racan, Skip Carson, and Érico Lopes. The pilot was Guillaume van de Velde.

Once the ranger docked firmly to the transit tunnel, the driver pressurized the latter and they all crawled up the slanting structure, pulling their luggage along with them, and entered the aircraft via the rear hatch. Guillaume climbed into the pilot’s seat with Érico seated right behind, since he was certified to fly the Sunwing D as well. They stowed their luggage in the crawlspace under their seats and strapped in while the tunnel was removed and Guillaume ran through the checkouts. “Okay folks, we are ready for takeoff,” he announced over the radio. “To reiterate the basics, the flight will last sixteen hours and twenty minutes and will take us nearly a quarter of the way around the world; 5,000 kilometers. I’ll let you know when you can take off your helmets and gloves about fifteen minutes after takeoff. We’re expecting rough weather over Meridiani about the middle of the night, which may make sleeping difficult. I recommend that we get ready for bed about 9 p.m. with lights out a bit after that, so plan on getting anything you need to eat and drink before then. We’ll rise about 5 a.m. Dawes time, when the sun comes up. The rest of the flight will be in daylight over the eastern chaoslands of the Mariner system. Landing will be a bit before noon, Dawes time; just in time for supper in Yalta Biome. So check your seatbelts, because I anticipate clearance for takeoff right away. There’s no one for us to wait for, after all.”

Helmut checked his straps and eyed the airbags mounted in the back of Érico’s seat right in front of him, as well as other bags mounted in the floor and ceiling. In a crash the cabin filled with airbags, it was said. He didn’t want to experience that, however.

Guillaume engaged the engines and the aircraft leapt forward. There was no air traffic to wait for; Dawes had two flights a month at most. While the aircraft was equipped with small methane-oxygen rocket engines for vertical takeoff, a horizontal takeoff required much less energy, so the vertical takeoff capacity was saved for emergencies or flights to places lacking landing strips. Helmut looked out the window as the Sunwing reached the beginning of the clay runway. They started down it and the plane gained speed surprisingly fast as all of the propellers were given full power. Helmut was pushed back in his seat, surprised by the sharp acceleration. The end of the wing out his window lifted immediately; in twenty seconds the landing gear under the right equipment pod was airborne as well as the wings bent upward from the growing lift; finally fifty seconds after beginning its run, the central pod went airborne as well. The plane began to climb sharply and the landing gear retracted. Then the flaps began to retract as well.

Dawes dropped behind them and was invisible almost immediately. Within a minute it was almost impossible to tell how high they were because there were no objects of known size, such as cars and houses, to see. Helmut finally noted a dirt road below and to the north and focused on the spacing of its parallel tracks to get some sense of their height.

Fifteen minutes after takeoff, Guillaume activated the common frequency. “We have now climbed to our cruising altitude of 1,000 meters. We’ll be staying here until we reach Meridiani, where we may have to climb over the storm cells if they are still active. Meanwhile, you can take off your helmets and gloves, but we recommend you stow them in the restraints overhead so you can reach them quickly in an emergency. We’ve got the usual range of snacks and sandwiches in the galley; I hope someone can get me a chicken salad sandwich.”

Helmut chuckled at that comment as he unfastened his helmet, pulled off his gloves, and anchored them overhead. Érico was doing the same and nodded at the young man behind him, whom he didn’t know. “How’s the mining?” he asked.

“Oh, it’s going well; we’ve dug a lot of gold, as I suppose you’ve heard.” He paused. “Congratulations on your reelection, by the way.” He was not one to miss a chance to strike up a conversation with someone important.

Érico smiled. “Thanks. I’m not sure congratulations are in order, though; it’s a lot of work.”

“I liked the way you ran the borough meeting at Dawes; it was skillful. It must be strange not running for office and having no idea whether you might win or not.”

“You might have no idea even if you did run. But I wouldn’t say I didn’t ‘run.’ Listening to the Aurorae town meeting last Satursol, one gets the impression about a dozen people wanted to be elected. Our campaigning is just more subtle and indirect. And less time consuming for everyone. I don’t know how long it will last because anyone who spends more time is likely to get more votes.”

“It’s a vicious circle.”

“The trick is keeping everyone focused on saying what Mars needs rather than on what they will do. That will keep the personalities out of the picture. But if you look at the website for the ‘Future of Mars’ Forum, you’ll see that a dozen people went to a lot of trouble stating their views.”

“And two of them were elected to the Borough Council. What do you think of the analysis by the New York Times that the vote reflects a move away from the Commission and its personnel?”

Érico thought a moment. “I think the author may be right. Silvio and Madhu are just about the only two people at Aurorae who devote a substantial amount of time to non-Commission tasks. Silvio isn’t paid by the Commission at all, any more; he earns enough from the store and the bank to pay his own way. Madhu works only fifteen hours a week for the Commission and devotes the rest of her time to her art or to commissioned pieces. But on the other hand, Ruhullah came in fourth in the vote and he’s Vice Commander, so I wouldn’t make too much of an anti-Commission trend.”

Helmut nodded. “True enough. But most of the time, political commentators are describing very slim majorities as trends. Consider the mess in the U.S. right now.”

Érico shook his head. “It’s really quite remarkable, with the revolt of the conservative Christian right against the moderate Republican presidential candidate. You’re right, it isn’t clear what the ‘trend’ is there, but there are a lot of opinions.”

“It’s being understood all wrong, too,” added Skip from the seat behind them. “This is the death knell of Republican conservatism. The Democrats have finally figured out how to revive old-fashioned liberalism by stressing moral values that resonate with the masses. People who think this is the chance of the right wing to win big are deluding themselves.”

“We’ll see about that,” replied Helmut suspiciously, for even though he did not see himself as a right wing conservative, he had been raised in Texas and understood the mindset.

“Do you want to bet?” asked Skip, with a twinkle in his eye.

“No, not me!” replied Helmut quickly, and Skip chuckled.

“I suppose I should be thinking about a new script about politics on Earth instead of life on Mars,” mused Skip. “Actually, I feel like I got a lesson in Martian politics over the weekend, Érico. I much prefer small scale, shoot-from the hip, frank give and take about the issues to the canned lies we get in the U.S. I suppose it can’t continue forever, though. Elliott’s a real opponent of partisan politics, isn’t he?”

Érico nodded. “It’s against his religion, even though most people who ask him about it simply can’t understand his position. I think I do now; it’s a matter of faith and integrity.”

“Well, we can’t run a secular government on faith,” snorted Skip.

Érico shrugged. “It depends on whether the faith is culturally conditioned or not. As Will likes to say, we no longer poison politicians; we just assassinate their character. And he’s right, when I go to the cafeteria to eat I don’t have to worry someone will poison my food, even though any leader did have to worry about that three hundred years ago. I guess we do make progress.”

“But can Mars really establish a moral society?” asked Helmut. “That’s the myth, but the track record’s not so good, with two people shipped back to Earth on Columbus 6 for crimes.”

“That’s what I find fascinating about this place; not just that it has a myth, but people believe it!” exclaimed Skip. “People here, and people on Earth, even when it’s contrary to the facts.”

“We’re a work in progress,” replied Érico. “And we all have a palpable feeling that we are making progress because the place keeps growing. That reminds us that we are a moral work in progress as well. I suppose we’ll get disillusioned some time, but it hasn’t happened yet. Maybe it’ll take a generation; Mars is still a new idea.”

“How big will we be in a generation?” asked Helmut.

Érico shrugged. “We could have thousands to tens of thousands, and in a century we could have tens to hundreds of thousands. Our size is shaped by many factors out of our control; technological breakthroughs, the will of governments to support this place, etc.”

“The optimism about the future here is really palpable, though,” said Skip. “It makes me very attracted to this place. Sometimes I’m tempted to stay beyond this columbiad. I think Elliott’s uniquely suited to generate the optimism, also. He doesn’t criticize, but calls for a higher standard. And he’s very good with diversity, thank God.”

“I wish he’d run for Governor of the Earth,” said Érico, half joking. “Will has his faults, of course. He can have high expectations and can get impatient, and sometimes he runs with an idea and doesn’t listen. There are times he’s too consultative when he should be decisive instead. But overall, he does a pretty good job.”

“Rather than talk politics, I prefer to serve,” said Anna, interrupting the men. “Coffee and tea are ready. Who will get out the sandwiches? Skip and Érico, the powerful men present can’t look at the younger man to serve them, because he has torn cartilage in his knee and shouldn’t be walking much.”

“I’ll help,” replied Skip, immediately unbuckling his belt and heading for the galley area.

In a few minutes they had a pleasant little supper ready. Érico and Helmut reversed their chairs to face backward so that they could see the other two. Guillaume came out of the cockpit and joined them; he now had little to do until the approach to landing because the onboard computers could do everything.

Helmut also looked out his window between conversations at the vast expanse of rolling, meteor-pummeled, gullied, sand blasted, dust-mantled, lifeless ground below. Except for a wind-blown drift here and there, the land’s appearance was essentially unchanged for 3 billion years; it was a mind-numbing, unfathomable ancientness, nothing like the dynamic surface of planet Earth. The color was distinctively more reddish-orange-pink than terrestrial deserts. The invisible cold and thinness of the air also seemed palpable to Helmut as he sat and stared out the window.

Then the sun set and in five minutes nothing could be seen below as an utter blackness descended. Overhead, a billion stars appeared.

After another hour of discussions about gold, and exploring Hellas Basin, and the new fumerole verified on the flank of Elysium Mons, it was time for bed. Guillaume planned to sleep in his pilot’s seat, but the other four folded their seats down flat and inflated air mattresses to put over them or in the narrow aisle. Soon they were all asleep, with lights off. Helmut’s last thoughts was of a plastic bubble of air hurtling through the blackness of the Martian atmosphere, bearing five human beings across space and time to their home. . . .

He had no idea how long he had slept when the lights suddenly came on, blazing brightly in the cabin. He began to open his eyes and was almost thrown from his bed by a patch of rough air.

“Wake up, everyone,” said Guillaume. “I’m afraid Meridiani is much rougher than forecasted. The doppler radar shows a serious storm ahead. Everyone has to get in their seats and strap in.”

They all scrambled to toss the mattress pads into the aisle and set up the seat backs. The sunwing began to be buffeted pretty sharply. “Can’t go over it?” asked Érico.

“No way. The storm’s too high.” Érico nodded as he strapped himself in.

The plane suddenly heaved upward, struck by an updraft. Helmut, who was not yet strapped in, banged his head against the helmet dangling above him. “Strap in!” repeated Guillaume urgently. “Put on your helmets if you want to protect your heads!”

That wasn’t a bad idea. Helmut finally got into his seat and strapped in. He reached up and grabbed his helmet and snapped it onto his suit, even if he didn’t need it, and then grabbed his gloves. He connected his umbilical and activated its oxygen flow, so as not to drain his auxiliary tanks; they were small and held only an hour of oxygen each.

They hit another big updraft and the sunwing yawed to the right; Guillaume fought to stabilize it. Helmut couldn’t remember feeling such a rough ride anywhere, nor had he heard of one.

A powerful blast on the right side tipped the aircraft to the left. Then there was a popping noise and the sunwing suddenly veered to the right. Alarms went off in the cockpit. The nose tipped downward.

“Crash positions!” shouted Guillaume.

Érico unstrapped himself and jumped forward to grabbed Guillaume’s helmet. He lowered it over the pilot’s head and snapped it in place in spite of some bumps, then fell back into his seat.

Helmut looked around, startled and frightened. He glanced out the window, but all he saw was blackness. Then he saw Érico bend over, head between his heads; crash position. So he did the same.

They were going down fast, spinning as they fell. The floor leveled out as Guillaume gained some control using the landing rockets, then dipped downward again as the sunwing took its own course, then leveled out again. Helmut lifted his head quickly to look forward and could see Guillaume’s controls. He had the terrain image on; the gps showed where they were and the computer projected a crash spot onto the surface, which Guillaume was trying to move to smoother, dust-covered ground.

Helmut lowered himself back into crash position. What had happened? There was no time to find out. Oh God, please help my mother deal with this. . . he thought.

Then suddenly there was a boom! and the cabin filled completely with airbags. Helmut felt them smash into his head and neck from the ceiling, into his helmet from the front, into his legs from under the seat. His suit stiffened as the airbags displaced air and pushed up the cabin’s air pressure; then it relaxed as the cabin pressure explosively escaped. He couldn’t tell whether the banging and bouncing he felt was from the airbags or the crashing. The central pod hit the ground, broke free from the wings, bounced back into the air, came back down, then rolled over twice and came to a stop.

Held in place by the airbags, Helmut was buffeted around, but was mostly unhurt. Most of the emergency lights continued to glow; each had a battery backup. He lifted his head, but the airbag above him was still partially inflated and did not allow him to move much. The cabin had depressurized, but he couldn’t tell what else had happened.

There was rustling over the common frequency, and a few groans. “Érico here; bruised and maybe with a broken arm.”

“I’m here, too,” said Helmut. “I think I’m alright.”

“Skip here,” added Carson, with a gasp.

“Anna here; I’m hurt, but I’m not sure how.”

Érico began to bang against the airbags around him with his left hand, pushing them flat. Helmut began to do the same, enlarging the area around him. The cabin was still a mass of life-saving bags.

“Aurorae Control here.” The voice was Rostam Khan’s, over their common channel. “Any response from Guillaume? His suit is losing air fast and his blood oxygen’s falling.”

“I’m trying to get to him,” replied Érico. “He didn’t get his gloves on, I think. Where are we, Rostam?”

A pause. “Latitude ten point three south, longitude three fifty three point seven. Don’t worry about that now, focus on Guillaume. We’re readying a shuttle.”

“Helmut, can you help?” asked Érico, exasperated.

“I’m trying.” Helmut unlatched his safety belt, but it got tangled in the bags and wouldn’t retract. He tried to stand but realized that his left foot was squashed against Érico’s seat; the seats had broken free from their restraints and compressed forward, and had been held apart by the airbags. “I’ve got a broken foot; left foot,” he reported.

“And I think I have a broken arm. Together we’re whole,” replied Érico.

Helmut finally managed to work himself free and stood carefully. Érico moved over a bit so both of them could get at Guillaume, who was limp. “Anna, is the airlock or the bathroom still pressurized?” asked Érico.

“Both,” replied Rostam, who had access to quite a lot of data from Aurorae. “But I can’t start an automatic depressurization sequence; the control computer’s down.”

“I can open up the bathroom,” said Anna. She rose and limped back to the bathroom door and opened a mechanical valve to bleed off the air inside.

“I can’t find his left glove!” said Érico, frustrated. “The cockpit took the brunt of the impact and broke open. The air mostly escaped that way and I think it blew his glove out.”

“Let’s get him back to the bathroom, then,” said Helmut. He reached down and picked up Guillaume’s ungloved right hand. Then he grabbed the man’s arm with both hands and squeezed as hard as he could. “We need a tourniquet to keep in the air.”

“We don’t have one. Lift him.” Helmut nodded and pulled upward. Guillaume lifted out of the pilot’s seat.

Skip, who had been banged badly in the chest, leaned forward to help, but was dazed and couldn’t do much. Hobbling, Helmut raised Guillaume and pulled him past the tumbled seats. Anna opened the bathroom door and entered; Helmut passed the unconscious pilot to her. She pulled him inside and they closed and latched the door. “The bathroom’s pressurizing, thank God,” Anna said over the radio a moment later. “But it’s slow, the air tank must have a leak.”

“I think all three of the pod’s tanks are damaged,” added Rostam.

“Then we don’t have much oxygen,” said Érico. “Rostam, when can the shuttle blast off?”

“Minimum of two hours, and that’s assuming you have adequate landing conditions. Our meteorological data right now are pretty bad.”

“Our emergency tanks only have two hours of air,” said Helmut. “We don’t even know the life support packs are functional, and they only have six hours.”

“But there’s oxygen elsewhere,” replied Érico. “The sunwing has two pods.”

“Your impact speed was 180 klicks,” added Rostam. “Guillaume did a brilliant piloting job. He slowed you up a lot. I think the rockets used up all their oxygen and methane compensating for the broken wing; it appears the starboard wing broke off, including the equipment pod. But the leeward pod is sending us data, and the GPS shows it’s seventy meters away from you.”

“We better go look,” said Érico to Helmut. “Can you hobble that far?”

Helmut nodded. “But do we have to go now? If we have enough air, shouldn’t we wait until dawn?”

“Negative,” replied Érico. “You and I could go into shock from our broken bones. Our conditions will get worse, not better. The rule is, you go get your oxygen immediately and get yourselves in a secure place for rescue.” He looked at Carson. “Skip, how are you doing? Can you sit here and wait for us?”

“Yes, I think so. My suit’s intact. I think I may have some broken ribs, though. It’s hard for me to breathe.”

“Take it easy, then. We’re going to go find an oxygen tank.” Érico looked at the cockpit in front of him, and the huge rip in the kevlar-nomex plastic combination that formed the central pod’s skin. Dust sifted in through the tear. If they had been in a metal cabin it would have torn to shreds; they had been saved by the fact that they had crashed inside a giant, flexible airbag, which in turn had been filled by dozens of smaller airbags. “We can go out that way,” he said. “Let’s check out the life support packs.”

Helmut nodded. There was a closet between the galley and the bathroom in which five life support packs were stored; he hobbled back and opened the door. Everything inside had been packed carefully and was intact except for the central pod’s own main oxygen tank, which was located below the ceiling and had been damaged when the pod had rolled over. He pulled out three life support units, helped Skip put one on, then helped Érico, who had trouble working with one arm. He put his own on last, connecting the oxygen hose and electrical umbilical to his suit with some relief. He never liked to run on emergency oxygen bottles and backup batteries.

They moved forward and pushed through the rent fabric. Pitch blackness and icy, buffeting winds greeted them. Érico turned on his helmet light, so Helmut followed. The blackness was replaced by swirling reddish gray. Some small boulders were visible a dozen meters away, but they were hard to see in the dust. “Hey Rostam, we’ve got about fifteen meters visibility,” exclaimed Érico. “Can you download to us the GPS coordinates of the pod?”

“Sure, hold on. I’ll send them to all of you.” They waited. They could hear a conversation faintly on another public channel as Anna was removing Guillaume’s suit and trying to revive him.

Helmut issued oral commands to the suit’s computer, identifying himself and giving his password. A moment later he saw an email arrive from Rostam. He ordered the suit’s computer to run the gps navigational program and input the destination from Rostam’s email.

“Let’s go,” said Érico. Helmut wasn’t ready, but he nodded, then realized his companion probably wouldn’t see a nod. “Roger,” he replied, his voice quavering a bit. Érico set out into the whirlwind and Helmut followed, frightened by the thought.

The terrain was smoother than typical Martian landscape; Guillaume had managed to crash into a dust deposit. They headed for a rock half a meter across that lay in the right direction, then paused and found another rock that was roughly in the right direction and headed for it. Érico dragged his feet to make a clear trail in the loose reg; even with the dust storm raging, the footprints would be visible for many hours. They could use them to get back.

Helmut followed behind Érico, trusting the older man’s instincts, relieved he didn’t have to make difficult decisions. In half a minute their helmet lights reflected off a smashed wing section. The engine pod, a cylinder about two meters long and almost a meter in diameter, was tipped on its side, propellers ripped off. Érico approached and looked closely. “I’ll steady you so you can keep your weight off the bad foot, and you use your two hands to turn the pod over,” he said. “With these injuries, it’s too heavy for us to drag back to the cabin. We have to open the pod and pull out the oxygen tank.”

“Acknowledged.” Helmut was trying to mask his shaky voice with professional language. He got down on his knees and Érico kneeled near him to help. He rolled the pod over, which was heavy even in Martian gravity. Érico handed him an electric screwdriver and in spite of the shake in his hands, Helmut was able to open the dented engine pod. Inside was a light green oxygen tank and a red methane tank; the colors were standard. He struggled with the cutoff valve and the screws holding the tank in place while Érico encouraged him.

Up came the tank. It was sudden; several of the support brackets had been broken by the impact. He pulled it out, and even though it had a mass of only twenty kilograms, it felt heavy. Together they hobbled back to the central pod with it.

“Head for the airlock in back,” said Érico. “From the sound of things, Anna can’t get Guillaume’s suit back on.”

“What did they say? I’ve been too busy.”

“He’s unconscious, but alive at least.” Érico looked at the pod as it appeared in the swirling dust. “Skip, can you come out through the break in the cockpit and walk around to the airlock?”

There was a long pause.

“Skip?” Érico sounded worried.

“Yeah, I’m still here. I think so. Hold on.” The two men stopped at the front of the ruined aircraft and waited over a minute before Skip began to poke his way out through the hole. They came over and helped pull him out.

“Can all three of us fit in the airlock?”

“We’ll hold our breath,” replied Érico wryly. “Once we open the connecting door to the bathroom we’ll have more room.”

“It’ll be really tight for all five of us,” said Helmut. “I can stay in the pod for a while if necessary.”

“No, let’s all get inside and connect this oxygen tank,” replied Érico. “One or more of us can go back out later. This tank has enough oxygen for all of us for two sols. We can probably get more if we need to.”

The three men helped each other walk to the rear of the aircraft, where they entered the airlock. With some struggling, they did manage to get inside, close it, and pressurize it; then they carefully opened the connecting door to the bathroom. They took off their helmets; five human beings were squeezed into a space of about two square meters.

“How is he?” Érico said to Anna.

She shook her head. “It’s not looking good. I had to revive him with mouth to mouth resuscitation. He’s breathing on his own right now, at least.”

“Rostam, when can the rescue shuttle launch?”

There was a pause. “The weather’s the big problem. We have to wait until daybreak there; the pilot needs the light if there’s an emergency. You’ve got a four or five hour wait.”

Érico looked at the others incredulously. “Okay, Rostam, we don’t want to risk any more lives. We’ve got air and access to a bathroom.”

“This is Will Elliott,” exclaimed the governor over their radio channel. “I’ve been here in the control room for several minutes. We’re doing everything we can to get you guys back here safely. There’s a medical team in Paris scrambling right now to advise us on Guilllaume’s condition; he may have brain damage. The storm is abating and if the local winds fall enough, we may be able to launch in three hours. We’ve turned the meteosat’s doppler radar on your position and we’ve got good, detailed data coming in, so we know the weather conditions with great precision. There are several dust devils in the storm front. The whole world is watching and praying for you all.”

“Thanks, Will,” said Érico. “Except for Guillaume, the rest of us don’t seem to have anything life threatening.”

“But let me check,” replied Anna. “That’s the next step, while we wait. Skip first; I think you’ve got broken ribs.”

-------------------------------

Helmut stood outside the smashed pod, looking east, shielding his eyes from the dawning sunlight, looking for the shuttle Apollonaris. The air was still filled with dust, though enough had settled to give a kilometer or so of visibility. He glanced around at the desolate terrain for a moment. They had landed on a wierdly sculpted land where a fifty-meter thick dust deposit had been steadily eroded by millions of years of wind, leaving erosional remnants, gravel lag deposits, and exposed strata. It was quite unlike anything he had seen before, though it was common in the polar regions. At least he might live to see such terrain some day. He had already talked to his father twice to assure him he would be okay.

An orange flare appeared in the sky in front of him. The Apollonaris had activated its engines for the landing sequence. A hundred meters of flame extended from the tiny vehicle, forming a long orange arrow with a tiny silver head that was the shuttle itself. It approached with incredible speed, but was slowing rapidly as well. It settled on the tail of flame about three hundred meters to the north of the crash.

“Deactivating engines and preparing to open cargo bay doors,” exclaimed Ernesto Gomes, the pilot. “We’re preparing to rescue the crew.”

“Beautiful landing, guys,” exclaimed Helmut, who was the only one outside, since the damage to his foot was not serious. “You’re a sight for sore eyes.”

“We’re glad to see you too, Helmut,” replied Ernesto. “Just stay put and we’ll be right over.”

It was a matter of two minutes before the cargo bay door began to open, swinging downward to become a ramp to the ground. Inside the cargo bay was a ranger, and two spacesuited figures were busily unclamping the flight restraints so that it could be driven out. Finished, they jumped into the ranger and drove it down the ramp, then wheeled quickly to the wreck. Helmut was there at the rear airlock to help attach the passenger tunnel, so they could transfer Guillaume quickly without suiting him up.

The three of them had trouble getting the passenger tunnel to latch properly; the fuselage was damaged. But they finally got a connection that was air tight enough for a few minutes. One by one, the five of them entered, then the two crew. The ranger’s cab was crowded with seven people. They laid Guillaume across the space behind the seats; Helmut sat on the right side of the seat with Skip next to him, then Anna, then the driver; Érico stood in back with the other astronaut. After a quick drive back into the shuttle’s cargo bay, the two spacesuited astronauts secured the ranger for launch. Helmut insisted he could help, and just before the cargo bay door began to close he saw the shuttle Olympus descend from the sky and land three hundred meters south of the crash with a team of engineers to collect the parts for analysis.

“Come on, we’ve got to get inside and strap in,” said Kurt Hollingworth, who was directing the rescue team. “Ernesto is scheduled to blast off for Aurorae in three minutes.”

“The analysis team needs to get our luggage.”

“Don’t worry, when they leave here nothing will be left. It’ll be a sol or two, though.” Kurt finished securing the ranger’s last anchor to its flight cradle, then pushed Helmut ahead of him to the airlock. They were inside and strapped in place with thirty seconds to go.

Helmut watched his right hand shake as the engines fired and pushed them deeply into their seats. The acceleration was barely one terrestrial gee; they didn’t dare use more than that with Guillaume. It didn’t bother him as much as the adrenaline-induced shaking. He wondered how long it would last.

The suborbital flight, one eighth of the way around Mars, lasted only twenty-five minutes, and ended with another three-minute burst of the engines. Then there was silence and they were at Aurorae. Kurt and his assistant jumped up. He put his hand on Helmut. “No, you stay put and don’t move. We’ve got plenty of help here, believe me. No one in the outpost has slept all last night, to get ready for this moment.”

“Okay.” Helmut sat back in the seat and felt the clankings and bumpings as the ranger was unlocked. With a big rollercoaster bump it rolled down the ramp and raced across the ground to Joseph Hall, where it could drive inside.

The doctors insisted that all of them come out of the ranger and climb onto stretchers, even though Érico and Helmut both protested. Greg saw Anna when she came out. “How are you?” he said to her, and his voice broke from emotion.

“Oh, alright; nothing a week of rest won’t take care of.” She smiled wanly.

“Nothing’s broken?”

“I don’t think so; I can’t examine myself so well. We’ll know after a few MRIs are taken.”

“Get on the stretcher and we’ll get you to the hospital right away.”

She nodded and laid down on the stretcher. Spontaneously, Greg bent over and kissed her on the head; then he picked up his end of the stretcher.

Will stood in the doorway, watching and encouraging them. “Just let me walk!” growled Érico. “I’m not that hurt.”

“You’ve earned a ride,” replied Will from outside.

“No, I’ve earned some personal dignity!” he replied. Érico shook his head at the front stretcher bearer and headed for the door. Helmut did the same.

“Don’t worry, I’m not in that bad shape,” he added.

Will reached out with his hand as Érico reached the door. “You’ve both earned our admiration.”

They shook hands, then Erico stepped out, followed by Helmut. The crowd that had gathered to watch began to applaud. Then both began to walk to the hospital. Will watched them go, then headed back to mission control in Riviera Biome. “Did you see?” he asked Rostam when he got there. “Érico and Helmut both refused the stretchers. They wanted to walk.”

“Yes, I saw a bit of it.” He pointed to the screen, which had a jerky image of three astronauts working on a section of wing. “They found it.”

“Already?”

“We knew where it was; we can get gps on the equipment pod. It fell to the ground only a kilometer to the west of the crash.”

Will nodded. He pushed an icon on a nearby screen. “Julia, any useful evidence yet?”

The camera stopped moving; apparently it was mounted to Julia’s helmet. “Well, this is the wing section the craft lost. I can’t tell you why it broke off yet, but we’ll take it back to the lab and we’ll know in a few months. It appears the carbon fiber reinforcing struts snapped clean, which suggests some pretty large stresses.”

“The wind shouldn’t be able to do that,” commented Rostam.

“Something did it,” replied Will. “Any word from Langley?”

“Not yet. They’re still running a computer simulation of the accident.”

“Four parallel wings never struck me as a good idea,” said Will, shaking his head. “Thanks, Julia. I’m here if there’s anything new.”

“Acknowledged. Any word from Silvio?”

“He says the baby’s fine, don’t worry,” replied Rostam. Julia had given birth just five months earlier, but her expertise required her assistance with the flight.

“Will, Aster-1’s in orbit around 2019XA,” reported Thierry Colmar. “The burn went fine. Houston ran it without any trouble.”

“Oh?” Will looked at his watch. “Good. Lord knows when we’ll have time to land her. Houston may have to do that for us as well.”

“A few sols in orbit will allow good data gathering,” replied Thierry. “And the folks here who do remote sensing aren’t needed for the crash investigation.”

“Thierry, everyone’s needed for the crash investigation. We don’t have enough human resources to handle an emergency any other way.”

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