S Morden - One Way

“Hush. Kittridge to Brack, Kittridge to Brack. We’re at the target. Over.”

“Copy that. Don’t waste your breath on talking to me. Get to it. Over and out.”

Frank flipped the cover of the bolt, and slipped the crank over the head of the wingnut, moving along the closure, one bolt at a time. If it wasn’t the buggies inside, then… it was over before they’d started. No, he wasn’t the praying kind. Maybe they should have woken Zeus after all to intercede for them.

He put the tool back in its loop and tugged at the manual release. A puff of air—actual air, or just an inert gas?—came out, and helped the door open. It rose up partly, and Frank had to lean into it to lock it fully in place. All he could see was packaging that had grown enormously plump.

“What have we got?” Marcy was suddenly beside him, peering in.

“Can’t see yet. Let’s get the other door open.” He pulled the lever and the door swung towards them. He still expected a heavy sound of movement, not the silence with which it shuddered into place.

Marcy immediately reached forward and dug her fingers into the protective material, trying to pull it apart as if it was Christmas morning.

“We need to save this too. As much as we can.”

“Why? It’s just stuff. What would we ever need it for?”

“I don’t know. Just that if we don’t have it, we can’t use it.” Frank pulled out a box-cutter knife that had a spring-loaded retractable cover. He needed both hands to work it, but that was the point: to keep any part of him away from the blade.

He cut through the layers, the air pockets in the insulation wilting as he sliced. He took it slowly, making sure he didn’t hit anything underneath. Each unheard pop reminded him of the air he was breathing and would never get back.

“OK, now.”

Marcy peeled back the insulated covering. “I can see a chassis. It’s the right container. Thank fuck for that.”

“Kittridge to Brack. We’ve hit that home run. Over.”

The reply came back, choppy and indistinct. “Copy. Over.” That was all. Frank thought Brack might be just a bit more enthusiastic about their discovery, and the fact that they might not die after all.

He checked his air. Thirty-five per cent.

“We build one, drive it back, and come and get the other one tomorrow,” he said.

“Not both? Why not both?”

“Because we don’t have time to do that.” He used the knife to cut the latticework chassis free of its ties, and together they lifted it out of the container. Picking a patch of open, not too rocky ground a little way away to work on, they set it down. It was lightweight titanium tubing, and on Mars it weighed even less.

The sealed drums contained a lot of the other important kit. The wheels, great big springy things that doubled as shocks and had a motor in each wheel. The control board, which fixed on to the chassis in front of the driver. The seat, which bolted on to the deck of the frame. And the power pack, the most complicated and critical part of the whole set-up. If that didn’t work, all they had was a giant shopping trolley.

The fuel cell was a black box—literally a black box—with plug-in terminals on the outside. No user-serviceable parts inside, it proclaimed, though it was inevitable that they were going to have to open it up and fix it at some point. It wasn’t as if anyone else was going to do it.

They’d practiced this, though. Frank and Marcy weren’t exactly a well-oiled team, but they had worked well enough together, listening to each other’s grunts and curses, watching each other’s expressions of exasperation or concentration.

Frank did the heavy lifting, holding the chassis up while Marcy rolled a wheel into place. Neither of the pair of nut runners that came with the cargo was charged up: either they’d gone flat over the year in storage, or they’d been shipped in that state. The wheels were going to have to be tightened by hand, and they had one adjustable wrench between them.

That was going to slow them down. A lot.

He checked his air. Twenty per cent. That gave him nominally… OK, that wasn’t a good sign. He should have been able to just come up with the number. He was good with numbers, calculating quantities and part-loads in his head and getting it right. An hour and forty-five.

They were going to be cutting it fine.

“Anything we can leave till next time, we leave,” he said. “Let’s just get this working.”

“I thought I was the one in charge, Frank.” Marcy cranked the last nut on the hub, and handed him the wrench, while she went to collect the second wheel. It was as tall as she was, yet she managed to effortlessly bounce and roll it across the Martian surface. Puffs of dust rose and fell around her. It coated everything.

Frank wiped his faceplate with his free hand. “You are. I’m just keeping you straight.”

“Don’t need keeping straight. Just do the job. I still think we’ve got time to make both buggies.”

“Why don’t we see how long one takes first?”

“Why don’t you lift the chassis and let me get this wheel on?” She turned the tire and held it in position while Frank batted his gloves together—the dust plumed out, and almost immediately dropped to the ground—and pushed at the open strutwork.

“Higher,” she said, and he complied. “Hold it.”

From the satisfyingly solid vibration in his hands, the wheel had slipped into place.

“Wrench.”

He handed it back, and kicked his heels while he watched her work. So that was part of the problem: he didn’t have as much to do as she did, nor enough distraction.

He could test the electrics. The fuel cell assembly was genuinely heavy, and back on Earth it took two of them to lift it. Here, not so much, but it was an awkward length, and difficult to carry. But he could test it where it was, still in its drum, by carrying the control board to it.

The board had read-outs, and a fat, insulated cable running from its back, terminating in a plug that slotted home and locked in place on top of the fuel cell’s black casing. He held the board, minus its steering column, under one arm, and leaned in over the edge of the drum to fix the connector into place.

His suit’s hard torso stopped him from bending over that far. He stood on the drum lid, and tried again, this time just getting the degree of movement he needed to push the plug in and twist the locking ring.

He put the board on the rim of the drum and lifted the cover from the on-switch. His finger hovered over it, and then he wondered what he was waiting for. Either it would power up, or it wouldn’t. If it didn’t work, it wouldn’t be a disaster.

Not yet, anyway. There was still another one in the cylinder, meant for the second buggy.

He pressed down, and the board waited for a heart-stopping second before lighting up and going through its boot-up sequence.

“We’re good,” he said. What he wanted to do was wipe the sweat off his face, and he could only let the fans slowly clear that. He drank some water, and watched the read-outs. “We have one hundred per cent capacity. System pressure is stable. Full power. It works.”

“I’m ready for the next wheel.”

Frank put the control board down inside the drum, so it didn’t even remotely run the risk of falling off, and hefted the chassis again. She did that thing of getting the wheel on first time, which was good, because if the usual speed of the buggy was ten miles per hour, it was going to take them an hour and a half to get back. Frank had almost exactly that amount of air left.

If they were driving, they wouldn’t be walking, nor expending that extra energy and using up that oxygen. There was some slack. But they were getting down to the wire. They certainly weren’t going to build another buggy. Not today.