G. Nordley: Martian Valkyrie

So I went up to the political level to postpone a negative decision—no need to admit failure yet. A good face was put on everything as I worked furiously to get myself and some volunteers down to the planet. Of course, there were some minor drawbacks that never made the press releases. All that superior equipment was not on that one lander. The one that survived had an aircraft instead of a rover; so once we got there, we would have to walk where we couldn’t fly.

Thirty hours after her landing, we watched Dr. Karinsdatter step off an Amundsen landing pad to gather samples. This told us that the Norwegian expedition had succeeded to that point, and put the final nail in the coffin of any remaining hopes for us—no one from our expedition would be the first person to set foot on Mars. A woman, instead, would join Gagarin and Armstrong in the history of space. My country once had such a woman as its presidente. It was not a successful experiment.

Boris Yakov, the Leonov’s commander salvaged some glory for us. He went outside and left a footprint on Deimos.

Meanwhile, Dr. Karinsdatter roamed around her camp on the Martian surface in a pedal-powered, wirewheeled tricycle, collected multitudinous samples, released some mini-balloons and transmitted a fair amount of surface data to that radio telescope north of Oslo herself.

Never mind the dollars per bit; our army of robot floaters and crawlers got far more data in absolute terms, and that is still coming in. We won in what counted.

We learned that one of the Norwegian supply landers had fallen into a sinkhole, and we made much of this with offers of assistance to Halvorsen. The answer came back that he thought no assistance was needed, but that we should talk directly to the people on the scene.

Finally, two days after we braked into orbit I declared the remaining lander ready for the descent. We were determined to make one quick strike for the goal. The public, the politicians, and ourselves would feel like failures if we didn’t.

Five of us went down instead of the seven the mission plan called for. We said we had to do this to leave room for the Norwegians whom we might have to rescue—but in reality, four of the seven Leonov personnel with ground training asked to not be included in a one-lander mission. Despite their radiation exposure levels, they felt the protection of the Martian atmosphere was not worth the additional risk. Mission control did not dispute this.

At last I called Dr. Karinsdatter on the surface. Her base computer answered and the view from its comm camera filled my screen. It was a late Martian summer evening and I could see rolling hills and the dusty red horizon through their transparent inflated dome. For a moment, all the problems went away. This was why I had come.

“Commander Lopez?” Her voice came from off camera.

“Sí. I was admiring the view. We are going to descend in six hours, at local dawn. Is there anything you need?”

She walked up to the comset with a Martian rock in her hands. She had apparently just come in from sample gathering. Her hair, matted and disheveled, was still tied behind her head in a pony tail that fell to her shoulder blades and she was wearing only the thin body stocking the Norwegians used under their tight vacuum suits. It both covered her completely and revealed everything—and she seemed utterly oblivious to what effect this might have on us.

Mixed feelings ran through me, and eventually resolved themselves into anger. I saw a brief frown of puzzlement go across her face as she reacted to my expression.

“Cover yourself,” I demanded. “This circuit is open to my crew, who have not seen a woman in over six months.”

She shrugged her shoulders. “That is not my fault.” There was little soundproofing in our ships and I heard the men’s reaction. “Perhaps they would enjoy seeing me then, Commander. But very well.” The picture disappeared and I lost both Venus and Mars in one instant of self-inflicted pain.

“At any rate, Commander,” she continued, voice only, “this is an independent and self-sufficient expedition and we will get along better if you do not try to give me orders.”

I ignored this challenge and went to business. “We will come in from the west, from over Kasei Vallis.”

“ Ja, ” she answered, seriously. “Beware—the ground here is crusty with cavities beneath. We had one supply lander tilt because of that. You may wish to land south of our position— we have traversed the area several times and the ground … it is mostly solid there.”

I was irritated and unthinking. “We will make our own evaluation. If you continue to insist that you are in no need of our assistance, then I see little point in continuing contacts which would only be uncomfortable for both of us, I assure you.”

She ignored the taunt. “Per and the Fram will be arriving in four hours— you have the vector?”

“Yes.” Halvorsen and Worthing had buried some hatchets, and information was flowing now. “Give Per Nordli my regards … and my sympathies.”

“Commander, I regret any affront I’ve given you. Please, when you land, we will welcome you. I take no offense. Is this understood?”

Somewhere in the back of my mind, warning bells began to ring. Best not burn bridges. Christ allowed such a woman to wash His feet, I remembered belatedly. But that woman was repentant.

“Very well.” In the end, Thy will, not mine, be done. “I shall do what I need to do to bring back as many of us and as much data as I can. Rest assured of that… Dr. Karinsdatter. Lopez out.”

“Lykke til, commander. Luck to you.”

We would have to do all our ground exploring by foot, I thought. I did not want to take Norwegian leftovers, so we would have to traverse new ground. That way we would gain unique data and perhaps, hope against hope, find something which they had not found.

I put it that way to Mission Control. They told me no, land where the people on the ground say.

Did they take me for a child? I appealed to the political level again and got my way. I had not yet learned humility. That came five hours later.

We came in north of the Norwegians, in an uncratered area that was free of their tracks. Our computer gave us a textbook, fuzzy-logic-smooth landing, and I congratulated myself for not having to touch anything. It was not so bad, I told myself. Eriksson had been five hundred years ahead of Columbus, Amundsen a month ahead of Scott, but we had closed the gap to a couple of days.

Then a patch of thin crust gave in under the weight of our plus-zed land-ing leg and our fuel-laden lander tilted, stopping sharply when the unsupported leg hit the permafrost under the dust crust. A strut bent upward under redline stress, snapped, and impaled an oxidizer tank with its upper ten centimeters. Red fuming nitric acid flowed onto the already well-oxidized Martian soil and reacted in a way that produced more smoke than heat. But it looked spectacular.

Without pressure in the tank to hold it against the lander cabin’s Earth-normal atmosphere, the lander floor bent down, and cracked. Our escaping air vibrated the sides of the crack like a monster oboe reed as it escaped, to be replaced by nitric acid fumes. It sounded, felt, and smelled like hell.

With the fortune of prudent and well-rehearsed planning, we were wearing our spacesuits so we were not immediately harmed. I blew the lock doors and led the crew out onto the red soil away from the lander, in case there was an explosion. But no, the oxidizer just ran out and fizzled as we watched.

“Enrico,” Mustaffa said later, in an unfortunate attempt to lighten my mood, “at least this makes you the first man to set foot on Mars.”