Mars

SOL 40: SUNDOWN

The thermometer on the instrument cluster built into Jamie’s left sleeve read forty below zero Celsius. He almost smiled. The one place where the Celsius and Fahrenheit scales agree: forty below is forty below on either system. Cold, no matter which way you read it.

The sun had just touched the jagged horizon, throwing immensely elongated shadows across the broken, rocky ground. Jamie saw his own shadow reaching out incredibly, stretching far out in front of him. But nowhere near far enough.

He had been pushing forward around the rippled sand that betrayed the dust-drowned crater. When he turned to see the tiny lifeless sun he also saw his rover, two thirds sunk in the red dust, disappointingly close. He had been trudging around the ghost crater’s perimeter for more than an hour, yet it seemed that he had hardly begun his trek to the second vehicle.

The cable stretched from the connection on his harness backward toward the partially buried rover, most of it resting on the ridged surface of the sand. The farther I go around the crater, the more cable’s going to be lying on the sand, Jamie said to himself. That shouldn’t cause any problems. I don’t think it will. Shouldn’t be any problem at all. The cable won’t sink into the damned sand. Even if it does we can winch it taut if I get to Vosnesensky’s rover. Not if. When. When.

He kept walking. Even when he turned backward he kept his legs moving toward his goal: that second rover where Vosnesensky and Reed and Ivshenko were waiting for him.

It was getting dark. And cold. Jamie’s legs felt rubbery, weak. Cold saps your strength. Got to keep going.

He walked at the slow, steady pace he had learned from his grandfather when they had hunted mule deer up in the mountains. “Just get your rhythm right,” Al would say, “and you can walk all damned day, no trouble. It’s all in the rhythm. Don’t hurry. Don’t rush. The doer won’t run very far. You can walk him until he’s exhausted and ready to drop at your feet.”

Yeah. Right, Grandfather. If you’re healthy. If you’ve been getting all your vitamins. If you’re breathing real air and it’s not forty below zero and dropping fast.

It was getting too dark to see the ground. Jamie reached up and turned on the lamp atop his helmet. Don’t want to step into the sand by mistake. Wonder how golfers would like it here on Mars? Sand traps two kilometers wide. No water hazards. Maybe we ought to bring a set of clubs here the next time. Might start a demand for tourism. Take your vacation on Mars. Climb the solar system’s tallest mountain. Drink a glass of Martian Perrier. Put your bootprints where no one has stepped before.

“Jamie! Did you hear me?”

He snapped his attention to Vosnesensky’s demanding voice. “What? What did you say?”

“I asked if you had turned on your helmet lamp. It is becoming quite dark.”

“Yes, it’s on.”

“Can you see the ground well enough to guide yourself?”

Jamie looked down. He was trudging along the hard-packed stony soil. A dozen paces to his right the rippled sand began.

“Yep. I can see okay.”

“Good. Good.”

Then Jamie realized what Vosnesensky’s call meant. The Russian could not yet see Jamie’s light. He was still too far away from the rover to be seen. He had miles to go.

They chattered back and forth, Jamie, the two cosmonauts, even Connors and the women. Jamie listened to the tension in their voices even when they tried to joke and banter. They’re scared. They’re all scared. And I am too.

It was fully night now. Jamie heard the soft breeze of Mars sighing past him. Gentle world, he told himself. If only you weren’t so damned cold. Why did you make it so cold, Man Maker? Or why did you make us so weak? Did Coyote trick you into it?

“Talk,” Vosnesensky said. “Speak, Jamie. Let us know that you are all right.”

“It’s getting… too damned cold… to talk much,” he said. He was panting now. His legs felt stiff, hurting.

“Turn up the heater in your suit to maximum.”

“Did that already.”

“Make certain.”

“Right.”

The heater dial was already turned to max, Jamie knew. He tried it again and the dial would turn no further. Too bad we don’t have a thermostat control for the planet. Stop the temperature from dropping any lower. Be a nice touch.

He kept plodding along, one foot after the other. One step at a time. I can outwalk any mule deer in these mountains. I can walk all the way around Mars if I have to. Show me how, Grandfather. Lead me.

Jamie remembered the fetish, stuck in his coverall pocket. He wished he could worm his arm free and reach into the pocket for it. He knew its power would warm him, bring him strength.

The cable suddenly pulled taut, yanking Jamie off his feet. He toppled over backward and hit the ground with a thud.

“Holy shit,” he muttered.

“What?”

“What is it? What’s wrong?”

Vosnesensky in one ear, Joanna in the other.

“Cable’s stuck,” Jamie said. He struggled up to his knees, tugged on the cable. “Christ, it feels as if…” he had to take a gulping breath “… as if the winch motor’s frozen.”

“That should not happen,” Vosnesensky snapped.

“Right. Tell me.” Jamie pulled on the cable again, leaning his full weight against it. It gave a little, stuck momentarily, then suddenly freed up. He staggered backward ludicrously, arms flailing to regain his balance, a string of obscenities he had not used since undergraduate days flowing from him.

“Jamie!” Joanna’s voice was pitched high with anxiety, almost a scream.

“Okay… I’m okay…,” he gasped. “It worked loose again.”

“The motor of the winch is self-heating,” Vosnesensky said, as if to prove that what had happened had not happened.

“Right,” said Jamie. He looked down at the ground to get his bearings, then started out again, keeping the sand a dozen paces to his right.

Sure, the motor’s self-heating. Down to what temperature? Fifty below? A hundred below? A hundred fifty? Jamie did not want to look at his thermometer again. The numbers would be meaningless. It was cold. He could feel his life warmth seeping out into the thin keening night air. Numbers. Numb. Cold and freezing and numb.

His feet felt as if they no longer belonged to him. Cold and numb. He kept plodding forward; at least his legs obeyed the dogged commands of his brain. He leaned into the harness, dragging the cable behind him. If the winch motor goes I’m really stuck. Damned cable weighs too much for me to drag all the way without a motor helping me.

He heard a humming sound in his earphones, almost rhythmic, droning.

“What’s… that?”

“ ‘The Song of the Volga Boatmen,’ ” Vosnesensky’s voice answered solemnly out of the darkness. “It has been used for ages by men pulling barges up the Volga river. I thought it would help you.”

“Sounds like… a funeral dirge.”

Vosnesensky stopped his humming. “If you do not appreciate my music, then let me hear you speak. I want to hear you.”

“No breath for talking.”

“Make breath! I want to know that you are conscious and making progress.”

“You can hear my gasping, can’t you?”

“Yes, but I—wait! I can see your light! Jamie, you are getting close enough for me to see the light from your helmet lamp! Where are those binoculars? Yes! It is your helmet lamp! You are getting closer!”

Vosnesensky was being ridiculous. What other light could he possibly see out on this frozen empty slope?

“Keep moving, Jamie.” Tony Reed’s voice. “Don’t stop now.”

“Don’t stop now,” repeated Vosnesensky, with even more fervor in his voice.

“What’re you… going to do… if I stop? Come out… after me?”

“If both my legs worked,” Ivshenko said, “I would gladly come out to greet you.”

Jamie shook his head, knowing that they could not see his gesture even if they were standing beside him in the full warm light of noon. Ivshenko can’t walk and Mikhail can’t even stand up, from what he had heard.

“Jamie,” Joanna called, “talk to me, please. Tell me about your home in New Mexico. I have never been there.”

“Not my home. I don’t have… any home. Not in New Mexico… not anywhere. Except here. Maybe here. Mars is my home.”

“Tell me what we will do once we return to Earth, then,” she said.

“I’ll tell you about Coyote.”

“Coyote?”

“The trickster. Always causing trouble.”

“Yes,” Joanna said. “Tell me.”

“You know… the patterns of the stars? The constellations?”

No answer. Jamie kept plodding forward, panting, until he heard Joanna in his earphones. “Go on.”

“First Man and First Woman… put the stars in their places,” he said. “They had… all the stars… in a blanket. Wanted to put them… in the right places… in the sky. Harmony is beauty. Order and… harmony.”

The cable was sticking again; it was harder to pull it along. Jamie leaned all his weight into the harness.

“What happened then?” Joanna asked.

“Old Coyote came by… saw what they were doing. He grabbed… the blanket… swung it around and around… then he hurled the whole blanket… full of stars… into the sky. That’s… what made… the Milky Way.”

“Oh!” said Joanna.

“Coyote ruined… the harmony of the sky. He’s always… messing things up.”

“A cosmological myth,” Vosnesensky said.

“Kind of.” Jamie wondered how Coyote had tricked Man Maker into making Mars so cold. So utterly damnably cold. Then he realized that Coyote had tricked him, had tricked all of them, into coming to this dead world. This world of death.

But it’s not dead, a voice in his mind said. You found life here.

Jamie blinked sweat from his eyes. Strange to find life on a world where we’re all going to die, he thought. Strange to be sweating while you’re freezing to death.

He staggered forward another few steps, then sank to his knees. His legs refused to move any farther. His arms felt as if encased in ice. Far in the distance he could see the tiny running lights of Vosnesensky’s rover. Close enough to see. Close enough to reach.

Jamie tried to push himself to his feet, but he hadn’t the strength to do it. Cold freezing numb. He crawled on his hands and knees, hearing the voice of his first mission instructor warning, “Even the smallest tear in your gloves, the tiniest leak in a seal or a joint, will kill you within minutes out on the surface of Mars.”

Totally spent, he sprawled on the hard rocky ground. With a last supreme effort he managed to turn himself on his side and tried to struggle up into a sitting position.

He failed.

Lying on his side, half propped up by the bulky backpack and harness, Jamie looked up at the cold solemn stars glittering in the darkness. He thought he saw Coyote up there, laughing next to the Hunter.

“I’m sorry,” he gasped. “I can’t go… any farther. I’m done…”

“Jamie!” Joanna shrieked. “You must go on! You must! For me! For all of us! Please!”

“I tried…” The pain was ebbing away. His entire body was becoming numb, floating in nothingness like the Buddhist nirvana.

He heard Joanna sobbing and the muttering of voices in his earphones.

“Listen…,” he said, his voice sounding weak, far away, even to himself. “Tell them… it doesn’t matter. Doesn’t matter… that I died. That all of us die. Everyone dies. Not important. We’ve learned so much… and there’s so much more… to find out.”

“You must not die, Jamie! You must not!”

He felt no pain. A profound sense of acceptance spread over him, as if he had always been meant to be at this place. He remembered his grandfather telling him of Chief Seattle, who had said long ago that the Earth does not belong to man, but man belongs to the Earth. We belong to Mars, too, Jamie realized. Now we do. Now we do. And to the sun and all the worlds, all the stars. That’s why we want to see it all, explore it all. It’s our heritage. Our birthright. It’s worth dying for.

I understand, he said silently, marveling at the clarity of his vision. Finally I understand who I am.

The whole universe of stars hung up in the darkly glittering night sky and gazed down at the small frail figure of a man lying helpless and alone on the frozen windswept slope of an ancient avalanche on Mars.

From far, far away he heard voices, but they meant nothing to him. They faded into the silence of eternity.

He understood now that Man Maker and Life Taker are one and the same, just two different aspects of the single creator. I’m ready, Jamie said silently. I’ve done the best I could. Now I’m ready for you. He heard Coyote laughing in the crystal darkness of the frozen night.