S Morden - One Way

“It’s pristine. Everything we do, everywhere we go, we’ll be first. Yes, we’re a bunch of convicts, out here on a chain gang: but we’re a chain gang on Mars. That has to count for something.”

The external temperature was rising with the sun, to a balmy five degrees. The ground appeared to be smoking, and a knee-high fog formed.

“Dew,” he said. He bent down and swirled it away with his hand. His glove remained stubbornly dry.

“We’ve a long way to go,” said Marcy. She turned her tablet towards him and showed him the red line they had to traverse. The ship was barely any smaller behind them. “We’ll have to do the sightseeing later.”

It was all novel at first. The mere fact of being on another planet, the knowing that they were the only people—the rest of their crew excepted—for a hundred million miles, the situation where people were relying on them for their survival. And then, surprisingly quickly, it grew boring.

The terrain remained initially exactly the same. Even though the white tower of the ship grew tiny and indistinct, the ground around them was still the rock-strewn hard surface that lay directly outside the airlock. And their destination—invisible in the distance—showed no sign of getting closer.

Picking their way over the rocks was still easier than kicking them aside, but it was inevitable that they ended up hitting some as they walked. Eventually, one that Frank knocked rolled away, and kept on rolling. He was surprised enough to stop and watch it go, only then realizing that it was heading downhill, and the nature of the ground was changing.

It wasn’t a steep slope, but it did steepen further down before leveling off onto the main crater floor below. And the difference in height was some two hundred feet. The edge of the slope looked as if it had collapsed several times before, as if bites had been taken out of the plateau, the bitten-off material collecting below. The line they were following led straight down the incline.

“Does that look safe to you?” asked Marcy.

“If you wouldn’t walk up it, don’t walk down it.” Her proximity to the potentially unstable edge was making him uneasy. “I’d be happier if you took a couple of steps back.”

She looked at her feet, and hopped away.

“It doesn’t look as stony at the bottom,” she said. “But maybe there’s a better route.” She opened her map and expanded the part they were on. “If we follow the edge, we can go down here, where these ridges are.”

It was a less direct route, but held less potential danger. Less obvious potential danger, that was. Neither of them really knew what they were doing or heading into.

“When we bring the buggies back, we’ll have to make sure we avoid this area. Can you mark it on that?”

“I don’t know.” She poked at the screen, but the red line stayed resolutely straight. “Brack? Brack?”

“Didn’t you have training on proper comms discipline?”

“There’s only us here, Brack. Who the hell did you think I was calling?”

“Discipline, Cole.”

“Oh, Jesus.”

“What was that, Cole? You’re breaking up.”

She turned and looked back in the direction of the ship, now finally vanished from view. “I can’t believe you’re making me do this. Cole to Brack, Cole to Brack, over.”

“Brack to Cole. That wasn’t that difficult, was it? Do you have a problem, or are you just missing me? Over.”

Her hand hit her helmet. Frank didn’t know which gesture she was going for, facepalm or fingers down her throat. She could do neither.

“We’ve hit the edge of a slope, and it looks loose, so we’re taking a detour, but I can’t mark it on the tablet. Can you do that?” She waited for a response, and when she realized none was coming, finally, grudgingly, added, “Over.”

“You’ve gone three miles in an hour and a half, and you want to take a detour? At this rate, you’re barely going to get to the cargo before your air runs out. Taking detours isn’t part of the plan, Cole. Not unless you want to die out there. You have one job. Jump to it. Over and out.”

“Three miles? Three? That can’t be right.” She looked at the map, bringing it so that she could judge the whole length of the route against their current position. “We’ve gone three miles in an hour and a half.”

“It looks easier going from now on,” said Frank. “But we’re going to have to pick up the pace.”

“And no detours.”

He looked at the slope. Walking poles? Something to test the stability of the slope before risking their necks on it? Just a little bit late now. He took two steps to the edge and over with a little jump. He rose, and fell, and his feet landed on the ocher sand, one foot up slope and taking most of his weight. Grains slid and slipped, carrying him slightly further before the slope stabilized and his boots dug in. He bent his knees and jumped again, bounding lower, balancing for the impact. More sand slipped down, but it didn’t seem like he was going to bring anything substantial down on top of him.

“I guess that’s safe enough,” he said. “Follow me.”

It took a fair few jumps to reach the foot of the slope. Marcy bounced down after him, causing only as much sand-fall as he had. Their boot-marks were deep dents in the loose material, and after the initial infill, seemed to freeze in place.

They were now both pink up to their waists. Frank drew on his leg with his fingertip, and just ended up pressing the dust into the silvered skin of the outer covering.

“Three miles out of fifteen,” said Marcy. She took up the map again and orientated them with the landscape. “That’s too slow, Frank.”

“But we’re still going to pace ourselves. Our turn-back point is four hours.”

“By which time we would have gone eight miles. That’s not enough. At that rate we’ll be getting to the cylinder at seven hours plus. That gives us just two hours. One to put the rover together, one to get it back before everything stops working.”

“Then we turn back now, and try again tomorrow.”

“And tomorrow will be exactly the same as today.” She looked into the distance, fixed on a point, and started walking. “Same problems. Same distance. Same kit. Come on, Frank. Up and down the mountain. They made us do that for a reason, right? This reason.”

The ground was reasonably flat, and while it was dusty and loose on the surface, it packed hard enough when walked on. Going faster, though. That was hard. On Earth, gravity brought his feet down with a slap, ready to push off again. On Mars, he flew. He had to wait to make each stride, even though each pace was longer. And lean forward more, to force his foot against the loose Martian sand.

And though his two hundred pounds registered as less than seventy in the reduced gravity, making forward progress was technically hard. His legs started to ache, and his shoulders—swinging his arms was one of the ways he could work his body to do what he needed it to do—began to burn.

When they stopped an hour later, they’d covered nearly three and a half more miles. They drank water. They chewed some of the energy bar that was fixed in a holder inside their helmets. They looked at each other. Six and a half miles in two and a half hours.

The same again would see them within sniffing distance of the cylinder, but they’d have used over half their air to get there. If that cylinder didn’t contain the buggies, then they’d never make it back to the ship in time.

“Brack?”

The airwaves hissed.

“Kittridge calling Brack. Over.”

“That’s how you do it. Your progress isn’t good enough, Kittridge. What are you going to do about that? Over.”

“We’ve upped the pace, but we’re not going to make it to the cylinder by the start of the third quarter. Over.”