Kenneth Gantz - Not in Solitude

The man shrugged. “You really want to know what I think? I think we’d better get the hell off this Godforsaken ball of nothing fast. We can’t take it. She’ll pour through our insulation like a sieve.”

Noel thought of Dane and young McDonald. Wertz with his heavy humorless stories. Not a chance. Not even the diamond-hard timageel that sheathed the spacecraft and the magnetic zoning could arrest the invisible bombardment.

“I’ll tell Colonel Cragg. There’s no word from McDonald since 0700. He’ll more than likely move up the take-off.”

Spivak said, “I know. He just left. He’s checking your take-off settings right now.”

“You know a hell of a lot,” Noel snapped. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Did you ask me?” The man grinned. “Look”—his face darkened savagely—“I want to go. We all want to go. We’ve made the trip and proved it, and this stuff is hot. The hull won’t turn it. We got no time for lifesaving. Except our own, and damn little for that. The colonel’s got good sense.”

Noel strode to the call box and flipped the all-stations key. “Noel to Colonel Cragg.”

“Noel.” The reply was crisp-toned and meaningful. “I was about to call you. The big computer is out. Edwards can’t get it to function, but I want an immediate take-off. I assume you’re ready. We’ll have to use the settings for 1300. Man all stations and charge the drive.”

“They’re not good for two hours yet!” Noel remonstrated. “The settings are computed to a tolerance of no more than 120 seconds.”

The speaker blasted. “I am well acquainted with take-off settings. They’ll have to do. We’re going off in less than thirty minutes. That is, if this spacecraft is ready, as ordered. It is, isn’t it?”

“It is,” Noel answered grimly.

“Then we use the 1300 settings and correct when we can after take-off. It would take the rest of the day to work out new settings by hand with a slide rule. Do you read me?”

Noel looked at Spivak’s broad civilian grin. “Yes, sir.”

“It’s 1043. We go off at 1100. I’ll stand by for your clear. Take over.”

DANE WADED through the lichens. During the first few minutes of it, he had thought that it was going to wear them down quickly. The weight itself wasn’t too bad. The inert forms of Dr. Pembroke, Jackson, and Beemis swung in the triangular hammock devised from specimen bags joined together and suspended from ropes knotted in baldric fashion around the waists and shoulders of the three bearers. By leaning outward against the weight of the three points of the triangle they could support the hammock off the ground fairly easily.

But the going had been awkward, until they caught the cadence of it. The sling fought its suspension among them, sagging and bumping the ground with every unevening of the pace. After a time they mastered the technique of keeping the suspending cords taut by an approximation of military step and with response to any slackening of one of the cords by leaning harder against the other two. The lichens now slid smoothly underneath, and even with frequent pauses they were making almost as good speed under the thin daylight, coming out burdened, as they had made on the way in under darkness.

Dane noticed that his thermometer had already climbed to -15° Centigrade for the ambient atmosphere. The pressure-suit air conditioner would soon be loading to hold down his body heat. He sniffed for the faintly chemical odor it imparted to his air when the temperature began to climb. His mouth was unusually dry, it occurred to him. He thought briefly of a malfunction. But his inside temperature was normal, so the thing had to be all right, even if he couldn’t smell it.

Sniffing like that reminded him of spring air and the fresh scent of newly turned earth. He was glad it was time to rest again and let the tiresome thing slip to the ground. He was thirsty. Mars and spring gardening. You think of funny things sometimes.

Now they were marching again. He must have been thinking of something when they had started. No one had said anything for a long time, so that the starts and stops and the marching were all about the same, except for the work of the carrying. It was a lot like wading in waist-deep water. The lichens offered a retarding inertia, rather than a clinging obstacle that had to be pushed forcibly aside. The sparsely entangled meshes of the rubbery plants parted for their advance with small resistance, bearing a shapeless shadow of the strangers effortlessly ahead of them and closing as effortlessly behind them into renewed entangled meshes. It was simply the matter of taking steps, one and then another and another. Uncomfortable and tiring but certainly possible. After a while he noticed that his mouth was open again and turned his head to the water tube.

But now it was something that Jane said about the sailboat. He couldn’t remember. He was surprised at his watch. How did it get to almost nine o’clock? If McDonald and Wertz would stop talking, he would be able to remember what Jane had said.

Ahead over the green stuff he saw one of the bare places. They could rest there awhile, and he would remember about the sailboat and tell them about it. The smallish sun was up pretty high in a blue-white sky. Hazy. Looked like snow. But they certainly had time to talk awhile before they went in to lunch.

“Take a break,” he muttered, coming out of the weeds into the open red dirt. He let his burden sag to the ground and sat down, deciding that Washington was a poor place for a man to live when he could be on the mesas and plains of Texas. Fatigue rolled over him. It was good to rest. Why had he thought about Jane Slocum? He hadn’t seen her for seven years. Since the weekend of the prom and he had gone back to Texas. It could be very dark in Texas, camping in the big deer lots. In the loneliness of late night it was dark in the camp, where the thick brush shut off the stars. It was dark, but the sleeping bag was snug-warm and the air was clean and easy to breathe.

Dane sat up, realizing at once where he was. It was midnight dark. With a quick pang he stabbed his light around, spotting the recumbent forms of Wertz and Lieutenant McDonald and the ones in the carrying sling. According to his watch, the hour was 2041. Maturing despair knotted around his bowels and jerked him wide awake with a clear realism. The spacecraft had been gone eight hours! He looked up for Earth, but the high haze was thick and the heavens were blindly unrelieved.

He threw on his radio and called. Over and over again until he had to admit the certainty. There was no answer. There could be no answer. The Far Venture was long beyond the range of their feeble radio packs. They were alone. Unthinkably abandoned. Never to see Earth again. With three days’ oxygen, he thought bitterly, they would not become old inhabitants of their alien world.

He bent his light over the lieutenant. The eyes were shut, the features composed and natural behind the visor of the helmet. Looking close, he saw the systole and diastole of the lips expressing a normal breathing. He shined the light on Wertz. They were both asleep. Nothing but asleep.

Well, he had his pistol. It would be kind to put them permanently to sleep. He fought the numbing impulse to review the delight of being snug aboard the onrushing space-craft—amid the familiar confinement—already thousands of miles along course. The challenge of the endless emptiness to be traversed would be welcome; the nagging thought that the perfect flight of the spacecraft might be imperfect, a minor trouble.

It was panic thinking—make-believe—absurd. They were here. On Mars. Colonel Cragg was human. Like all men, he was human. If he had to choose between saving himself and his crew and waiting out three overdue wanderers in a forbidding mystery, he would make only one choice.