Geoffrey Landis - Mars Crossing

The training they had done on Earth before the flight had told him all about Martian dust storms. Mostly they talked about the global dust storms, storms that covered the entire planet for months at a time. But now that he thought about it, he remembered that they had told him about smaller dust storms too. How long did they last, a week?

“How bad is it going to get?” he asked Ryan.

Ryan lifted his wrist and made a measurement of the sun. His wrist carried a tiny sensor designed for a spot check of the illumination for virtual reality photography. He looked at the reading and then did some calculation in his head. “I’d say that this is about the peak of it,” he said. “Optical depth right now is about as high as it’s ever measured.”

“This is it?” Brandon was incredulous. “This is a great Martian sandstorm?”

“Sand? No.” Ryan shook his head. “It’s not a sand storm. I don’t even know if Mars has sandstorms. I doubt it. It’s just dust. And, yes, this is as bad as it gets.”

This wasn’t had. Above him, he could see the occasional flicker of blue light across the sky. It flashed in sheets, like an aurora, darting in silent splendor from horizon to horizon. It was like walking on a slightly hazy day, like a Los Angeles smog. The air seemed clear around them, but their shadows were blurred. Rocks far away in the distance were a little less sharp, and the horizon was blurred. Mountains in the distance were indistinct, blending smoothly into the yellow of the sky.

“This is a dust storm?” he said. “Heck, I’ve been through worse than this on Earth.”

Ryan shrugged. “Guess they’re a bit overrated,” he said.

The morning was Brandon’s time alone, the only time, really, that he could be by himself. He had never needed much sleep, and the adults just took too long to get moving in the morning.

The others had at last come to accept the fact that he wanted to go out exploring first thing in the morning, and let him. Mostly he didn’t even really explore, just found a rock to sit behind, where he was out of sight of the others, where he could look out in the distance, pretend he wasn’t locked up inside a tiny awful suit, pretend that his friends and his music and his virtual reality were just around the corner, and that in just a few moments he would go inside, and everything would be there.

But mostly he just wanted some time to be by himself. When he had wanted to join the Mars expedition, nobody had ever warned him that going to Mars would take away his privacy. On the whole expedition, he was never far away from the others. Even when he jerked off, it had to be in a hurry, something quick and furtive in the tiny bathroom cubicle, and he was sure that half of the others were talking behind his back while he was in there, asking just exactly what he was doing that was taking so long.

Being out on Mars in the morning was simply a chance to be alone.

The dust storm was still going, but he was used to it now and hardly noticed. One side of the habitat was covered with a fine layer of dust; it was peculiar how it had deposited on just one side. The downwind side.

The terrain he walked over still looked like sand, but the sand was cemented together, firm as concrete. Indurated soil. The phrase came back to him from the hours of geology briefings. Martian duricrust.

He didn’t feel like sitting, so he picked the most interesting landmark, a miniature butte perhaps half a mile away, and climbed up to the top. It was smaller than it looked, only about twenty feet high.

From the flat top, he could see other buttes, all seeming to be the same height, twenty feet or so above the ground. It was just like the southwest, he thought. He knew this territory. The original surface had been higher, where he was standing, and over the millennia, the winds had eroded down the surface, leaving slightly harder rock, like what he was standing on, behind to stand up above.

It must have been dust storms just like the one that was happening now that did it. So much for Ryan’s confident prediction that the dust was too fine a powder to erode anything. But then, he thought, it may have taken millions of years to erode. Billions, even. Even pretty fine dust might be able to carve down rock over a billion years.

Still, the dust storm was somewhat of a disappointment. He had pictured a storm like something from one of the songs, howling winds and sand: “the naked whip of a vengeful god / that cleanses flesh to alabaster bone.” He had pictured coming out of a tent and finding themselves buried. Something a little more than a smoggy day with heat lightning.

Looking back the way he had come, he could see the habitat. They had picked the bottom of a gentle dip in the ground to put up the bubble, and inside it he could see the shadows of the other three Mars-nauts just beginning to stir about. They weren’t even breakfasting yet, he thought. Slowpokes.

He thought about giving them a call on the radio, just to check in, but decided they just might ask him to come back in and help deflate the habitat. It would be ages before they would be ready to move on, and he didn’t feel like coming back yet.

He scrambled down the edge of the miniature butte and walked over to climb the next one.

There was still plenty of time to explore.

The habitat was deflated and packed away. Tana and Estrela were suited up, as was Ryan, and they were ready to go.

“Ryan Martin to Brandon,” Ryan broadcast, once again. “Calling Brandon. Calling Brandon. Come in.”

Where the hell was Brandon?

“Possibly his suit radio is malfunctioning,” Tana said. “Maybe he hears you, but can’t respond.”

If his radio had failed, it didn’t seem likely that he wouldn’t return immediately, but maybe he had found something interesting. “Brandon, we’re not receiving you. If you’re hearing this, return immediately. Brandon, return immediately.”

In the worst case, even if his radio had completely failed, he would trigger his emergency beacon, which ran from a separate thermal battery, completely separated from the rest of the systems. The suit could fail completely and the emergency beacon would work.

But where was he?

The wind and the settling dust had thoroughly erased his footprints. Ryan had no guess even which direction to look. He had vanished without a trace.

“Brandon, come home,” Ryan broadcast. “Brandon, we’re here. Brandon, come home.”

There was no answer.

Brandon Weber wasn’t worried, not yet. He had been waiting for the call for him to return to the campsite, and enjoying the chance to walk during their delay. He mildly wondered what the others were doing that was taking them so long to get moving, and wandered a little farther than he had planned.

He checked the time, and with a shock realized that it was after nine. Where the heck were they doing? Where was that radio call, anyway?

He toggled his radio. “Brandon, ah, Whitman, checking in. What’s up, guys?”

No answer. He toggled his radio again, and then with a sinking feeling noticed that the red light didn’t come on.

Uh-oh. The suit radio wasn’t working. No wonder they hadn’t called; they’d probably been calling for an hour and were going to be as mad as hell.

He toggled it a couple more times. Was it was possible that it was the light that had failed, not the radio? “Hello, camp. Brandon here? Are you there?”

Nothing.

“Uh, I’m coming back. Wait for me, okay?”

They were going to be pissed.

A radio check was part of the space-suit checkout, but nobody else had been around when he went through the check list. He couldn’t recall if the red light had come on or not.