S Morden - No Way

The distance between ship and buggy was barely anything, yet time seemed elastic, stretching out so that the closer they got to Frank, the further they had to go.

Then it all snapped back, including everything that Luisa had told him about this part. It was OK. He knew what to do.

The pilot held out her hand, brisk, business-like. “Lance. Thank you for coming to get us, and letting us share your home.”

Frank looked down at his own gauntlet, empty and open. He moved it forward, and she grasped it. Not a dap. A firm, positive handshake. She wasn’t a con. She’d never known the inside of a jail cell. It felt… wrong.

“Welcome to Mars,” he managed. He could already feel the blood draining from his head, and he knew he was going to faint for real this time. His stomach was cold and his face was hot. His vision tunneled until all he could see was the top of her faceplate, through which he could make out the junction of her beanie cap against her forehead. She was frowning.

“Jim,” she said. “Catch him.”

From:Carolina Soledad

To:Miguel Averado

Date:Sun, Feb 7 2049 09:03:29 -0300

Subject:Lava tube project

Hello, Professor.

I was making some measurements last night (couldn’t sleep—the rain was so loud!) when I came across this. I looked at previous images, and there’s definitely a change in albedo from one to the other at the point marked. I was wondering if you’d seen any evidence of active erosion in this area before that might indicate subsurface settling. Because this could easily be a recent partial collapse of the lava tube, and the brightness of the target due to the uneroded rock fall.

Carolina

[images appended HiRISE2 22 11 54 N 97 39 00 W 8/21/2048 and 22 40 05 N 97 41 25 W 12/16/2048, annotated]

He couldn’t have been out for more than a few seconds, and once his head was lower than his heart recovery was almost instantaneous. Even so, he came to with four helmets looking down at him, not two.

One of them, a man with the blackest skin he’d ever seen, was kneeling in the dust by his side. He applied gentle pressure to Frank’s breastplate and made sure he didn’t move.

“Morning, Lance. How’re you feeling?”

It took Frank a moment to realize the man was talking to him, that he was Lance Brack now, and not Franklin Kittridge. He could have told them then, he could have blurted it out and let the whole thing unwind from there, but he held his tongue and covered his actual confusion with an easily faked confusion.

“Good. Good. Sorry. I didn’t mean to, you know.” The last time he’d fainted was when he discovered that his job on Mars was supposed to be done by robots. Before then? Even with all the ridiculous high-impact tests XO had inflicted on him, he’d never passed out. Thrown up, yes, but not passed out.

“You just take your time, Lance. I’m the doctor, by the way. Fanuel. Everyone calls me Fan.”

Frank glanced at the man’s label: Perea. The flag of… Cuba? That wasn’t right. Panama? Blue triangle, white star, three red stripes and two white. Puerto Rico.

“I’m OK. You can let me up.”

“I’m here to fuss over you. Maybe later we can meet up in the medical room, and I can check you over. A lot can happen in eight months, and that sleep process they used? Let’s just say I’m not a believer.”

Frank’s body was a map—the very recent scars on his chest and on his arm—that anyone competent could read. And it was pretty obvious that NASA wouldn’t have sent someone less than brilliant to Mars.

“I’d have to talk to XO about that first,” he said. Something that Luisa had told him to say. “My medical history is commercially sensitive.”

“They’re never likely to find out, because of patient–doctor confidentiality, but OK. I’m not going to push.” Fan took his hand away and slipped it under the back of Frank’s helmet. “Let’s get you sitting up, and see how that goes. You been eating OK, sleeping? Noticed any changes in your health recently?”

“I’d have—”

“To talk to XO first. Sure. I get that. Reach up. Leland, take his left, Jim, the right please.”

Frank found his forearms gripped, whether he liked it or not, and was levered into an awkward semi-sitting position, where the lower edge of his hard carapace dug into the tops of his thighs. He blinked, and remembered these were people and they were holding him, touching him: even through layers of cloth, insulation and rubber, it felt strange, alien.

“I’m good,” he said. “Let me up.”

“You sure?” Fan must have spotted the flash of irritation cross Frank’s face, because he moved behind him and told Jim and Leland—Leland Fisher, United States—to lever him upright.

Frank blinked the spots away and let the fans cool his skin. He wasn’t going to faint again, and he had no idea why he’d done so in the first place. Sudden relief, probably. He had been stupidly stressed over the last few weeks, and as he stood there, still held by the arms and propped up at the back, he discovered that his anxiety had pretty much gone. Instead of that knot of worry clawing at his guts, he felt calm. Cotton-wool calm.

“I’m fine. You can let go now.”

Both the men waited for confirmation from the doctor to do so, then backed off to give Frank some space. He didn’t know whether he should be embarrassed. Instead, he was just grateful.

“You OK now, Lance?”

Lance. Got to remember. Lance from now on.

“Thanks. Good. Sure. Didn’t mean to do that.” Frank’s arms hung limply by his side, and he thought he should do something with them. He lifted them up and pointed vaguely at the crater walls. “So, this is Rahe. It’s not much to look at, but it is on another planet. I guess you’ve got plenty of things planned, so if you want to grab your stuff—you’ve got stuff, right?—I’ll take you up to MBO.”

Frank counted heads, came to four, and remembered there should be six. The last two astronauts were climbing down the ladder, one waiting for the other before coming across to join them. He could probably take two, maybe three at a time.

“There’s no rush, Lance,” said Lucy. Pilot Commander Lucy. Was he supposed to just call her Lucy? She didn’t seem the type who’d want to be called by her first name. Let alone have it shortened to Luce. Ma’am? He didn’t know. Yet attracting people’s attention over the headsets without saying their name first was hard, unless they were the only other person around. “Let them have a walk around, stretch their legs. We had an,” she paused, “interesting landing.”

“What she means is, we almost missed the crater completely, came down hard, and landed on fumes.”

Frank tried to identify the speaker, but wasn’t familiar enough with their tone and cadence to make a call. Not Fan. Leland or Jim.

“What she means,” said Lucy, more pointedly, “is that despite some unusual atmospheric conditions and anomalous telemetry, the pilot was still able to eyeball the target and touch down safely within a couple of hundred yards of the projected landing site. I will be filing a full report in due course.”

“Wait,” said Frank. “You flew that? And nearly crashed it?”

“No,” she said. “The automatics were going to crash it. I took over and manually landed the ship, which I did perfectly. It’s why I’m on this mission, Lance.”

“I didn’t mean—”

“No offense taken. Armstrong landed on the Moon with less reserves than I had, so I don’t even get bragging rights. I’d trained for worse scenarios than the one that presented itself, and what we had was fixable. We’re down and safe, and I’m going to leave what went wrong to the engineers for now.”