S Morden - No Way

Frank gasped, dragging in so much air, so quickly, the suit struggled to respond. He deliberately placed his hands on his chestplate and timed his breathing. Slowly out. Hold. Slowly back in. Hold. OK, he wasn’t going to faint, not this very moment. The fans cleared his faceplate, and he took a drink of water from his sippy tube.

They were here. He was trembling with relief. He’d done it. He’d survived. Despite everything, despite XO, despite Mars. Despite himself.

The dust cloud was slowly collapsing. The grit pattered down, while the finer material kept on going up and thinning as it went. He’d need to sweep the panels clean after one launch and one descent. How prosaic. He waited until he could trust himself to drive, then reached forward to grip the steering controls.

He squeezed the throttle, and the buggy rolled forward. Had he forgotten anything? Surely he had. Perhaps he should take one last look around…

No. He’d already done that. He was good to go. He was Brack now. He was playing that part. Brack was going to drive over to meet the astronauts, cool as you like, and pick them up and bring them back to the base, and he was going to be fine. They’d be good people, and he could finally sleep.

He headed out to the drop-off, passing the fresh scour mark from his own reascending descent ship, black spokes radiating outwards and fading into smudges. He drove across them, and the tires made two cords through the wheel of soot. At the edge of the drop-off, he stopped, ostensibly to judge his route down, but actually to check that the NASA craft had really, genuinely arrived.

It had. It was there, well past the foot of the delta, almost halfway to the western edge of Beverly Hills, with a long scour mark of its own as it tracked across the crater floor before settling down on four fold-out legs. It looked smaller than his own ship, which made some kind of sense, since this was just to transport the crew from orbit to the ground, not all the way from Earth. A one-shot taxi, nothing more: a squat, blunt bullet.

The real deal was up in orbit: a now-silent, slumbering spire of a ship. He’d get there, one day.

Frank turned the control column and the buggy angled downwards, traversing the slope that would normally lead onto Sunset. This time, though, he was going to take a left, an unfamiliar direction, and it occurred to him just how little exploring he’d done. The relentless focus on building the base, gearing up for self-sufficiency, then survival…

But of course. XO hadn’t wanted the pristine landscape scarred by multiple tire tracks. Frank was supposed to be on his own, supervising the phantom robots and definitely not having the time to wander around Mars.

As it was, it looked just how they wanted it. There was so much of the crater, of the Heights, that he’d never seen up close, and yet it had been where he’d lived, worked, and nearly died, for eight months. He’d never even been to the top of the volcano.

That seemed a shame. If he was going to have stories to tell, he wanted at least some of them to be good. Everything changed from today, though. He’d have the chance to build up some memories he’d want to keep. Starting from now.

The buggy drifted slightly on the bottom of the slope—rocket-blown dust, nothing more—and he corrected for it. It gave him a jolt, but he handled it instinctively, knowing which way to turn to get the grip back. No danger at all of rolling it in front of the astronauts. He was going to stay frosty, just like his old crew used to tell each other.

He was down on the crater floor, rolling across the pavement of loose rock and angled slabs, heading towards the NASA ship. He knew it was NASA, because the letters were visible on the side, even at a mile distant. No XO branding, he noted. No sign of anyone climbing out either. He hoped they were all OK inside. The landing had looked flawless. The ship was intact. They were just waiting for him.

Shouldn’t he be hearing something in his headphones by now? Maybe they were on a different frequency to him. Maybe they hadn’t switched over yet. That was it.

Seriously, Frank. Stop inventing problems. They’re here. They’re finally here.

The shape of the descent vehicle resolved across the plain. He skirted a couple of old, eroded craters, and pulled up outside, looking up at the pale, slanting walls and reading the name “Hawthorn” on the outside. The MAV was called Dogwood. Someone in charge liked their plants, apparently.

The MAV had a box tied to one of its legs, that lowered a ladder to the surface. This one did too. Perhaps that was what they were waiting for. No, they could do that for themselves, from the inside.

Did they even know he was outside? Had he actually said anything, the whole time? Had he forgotten how to speak? He’d talked to the other XO astronaut a few weeks ago. He clearly remembered how, but he suddenly felt mute.

He coughed. He drank some water. He cleared his throat.

“Hello? Anyone listening?”

“Good morning, Lance. We were all wondering where you’d got to. This is Pilot Commander Lucy Davison, and the rest of the team are just as eager to meet you as I am. I appreciate that this could be a little overwhelming for you, so we’ll do the personal introductions in stages. I’ll come down with Jim, and we’ll take it from there.”

Another human voice. In his ear. In real time. Someone who didn’t actively want him dead.

“Sure. OK.” Everything that he wanted to say, that he imagined himself saying, even just playing it cool, had gone. Goddammit, even Dee would have been more articulate. He was still strapped into his seat like an idiot. He punched the buckle, got it at the second attempt, and shrugged his way out of the harness.

The ladder was dropping out of the ship, and the rungs clicking into place. The outer door was opening. There was someone standing there, in the airlock. Two people, one standing behind the other.

Frank climbed unsteadily out of his seat, concentrating hard on his hand- and footholds, but almost slipping nevertheless, having to grip tight as he slewed across the lattice frame of the buggy and banging his back against a strut.

Whereas they were climbing down, hand over hand, effortlessly, practiced, efficient.

He lowered himself to the ground, and turned. The first astronaut paused before they took that last step backwards off the end of the ladder.

Give them this moment. They won’t get another like it. They don’t need me shooting my mouth off.

“Mom. Dad. This is for you.” She placed her foot down firmly, pressing her boot into the red dust of another planet. She held on to the ladder for a little while longer, then put her other foot down and slowly shuffled to her left.

He remembered his first encounter with Martian gravity. It had screwed with him, coming straight from sleep, with his body remembering only its Earth-weight. He couldn’t walk without feeling like he was going to jump into space. And he’d never trained for it either. XO had deemed that, along with a whole stack of other things, unnecessary.

The second astronaut didn’t hesitate. He let go and let himself fall, bending his knees for the minimal impact. “Boom,” he said. Then he bounced up, throwing his arms to turn himself around as if he were a gymnast or a figure skater—diver, that was it—and on the half-turn, planted down again.

“Jim, cut it out.”

“Yes, ma’am.” The man extended his arm again, gesturing towards Frank. “Let’s go meet our host.”

Pilot Commander Lucy Davison—“Davison” on her left breast, U.S. flag underneath—was pocket-sized and compact next to Jim—“Zamudio” on his—who was long-limbed and lupine.

Was Frank expected to salute? Go through some sort of formal ceremony? Hand the base over using a set form of words? He didn’t know. He scarcely remembered his own name, let alone the fact that he was supposed to be using someone else’s.