No Way

12

He couldn’t have been out for more than a few seconds, and once his head was lower than his heart recovery was almost instantaneous. Even so, he came to with four helmets looking down at him, not two.

One of them, a man with the blackest skin he’d ever seen, was kneeling in the dust by his side. He applied gentle pressure to Frank’s breastplate and made sure he didn’t move.

“Morning, Lance. How’re you feeling?”

It took Frank a moment to realize the man was talking to him, that he was Lance Brack now, and not Franklin Kittridge. He could have told them then, he could have blurted it out and let the whole thing unwind from there, but he held his tongue and covered his actual confusion with an easily faked confusion.

“Good. Good. Sorry. I didn’t mean to, you know.” The last time he’d fainted was when he discovered that his job on Mars was supposed to be done by robots. Before then? Even with all the ridiculous high-impact tests XO had inflicted on him, he’d never passed out. Thrown up, yes, but not passed out.

“You just take your time, Lance. I’m the doctor, by the way. Fanuel. Everyone calls me Fan.”

Frank glanced at the man’s label: Perea. The flag of… Cuba? That wasn’t right. Panama? Blue triangle, white star, three red stripes and two white. Puerto Rico.

“I’m OK. You can let me up.”

“I’m here to fuss over you. Maybe later we can meet up in the medical room, and I can check you over. A lot can happen in eight months, and that sleep process they used? Let’s just say I’m not a believer.”

Frank’s body was a map—the very recent scars on his chest and on his arm—that anyone competent could read. And it was pretty obvious that NASA wouldn’t have sent someone less than brilliant to Mars.

“I’d have to talk to XO about that first,” he said. Something that Luisa had told him to say. “My medical history is commercially sensitive.”

“They’re never likely to find out, because of patient–doctor confidentiality, but OK. I’m not going to push.” Fan took his hand away and slipped it under the back of Frank’s helmet. “Let’s get you sitting up, and see how that goes. You been eating OK, sleeping? Noticed any changes in your health recently?”

“I’d have—”

“To talk to XO first. Sure. I get that. Reach up. Leland, take his left, Jim, the right please.”

Frank found his forearms gripped, whether he liked it or not, and was levered into an awkward semi-sitting position, where the lower edge of his hard carapace dug into the tops of his thighs. He blinked, and remembered these were people and they were holding him, touching him: even through layers of cloth, insulation and rubber, it felt strange, alien.

“I’m good,” he said. “Let me up.”

“You sure?” Fan must have spotted the flash of irritation cross Frank’s face, because he moved behind him and told Jim and Leland—Leland Fisher, United States—to lever him upright.

Frank blinked the spots away and let the fans cool his skin. He wasn’t going to faint again, and he had no idea why he’d done so in the first place. Sudden relief, probably. He had been stupidly stressed over the last few weeks, and as he stood there, still held by the arms and propped up at the back, he discovered that his anxiety had pretty much gone. Instead of that knot of worry clawing at his guts, he felt calm. Cotton-wool calm.

“I’m fine. You can let go now.”

Both the men waited for confirmation from the doctor to do so, then backed off to give Frank some space. He didn’t know whether he should be embarrassed. Instead, he was just grateful.

“You OK now, Lance?”

Lance. Got to remember. Lance from now on.

“Thanks. Good. Sure. Didn’t mean to do that.” Frank’s arms hung limply by his side, and he thought he should do something with them. He lifted them up and pointed vaguely at the crater walls. “So, this is Rahe. It’s not much to look at, but it is on another planet. I guess you’ve got plenty of things planned, so if you want to grab your stuff—you’ve got stuff, right?—I’ll take you up to MBO.”

Frank counted heads, came to four, and remembered there should be six. The last two astronauts were climbing down the ladder, one waiting for the other before coming across to join them. He could probably take two, maybe three at a time.

“There’s no rush, Lance,” said Lucy. Pilot Commander Lucy. Was he supposed to just call her Lucy? She didn’t seem the type who’d want to be called by her first name. Let alone have it shortened to Luce. Ma’am? He didn’t know. Yet attracting people’s attention over the headsets without saying their name first was hard, unless they were the only other person around. “Let them have a walk around, stretch their legs. We had an,” she paused, “interesting landing.”

“What she means is, we almost missed the crater completely, came down hard, and landed on fumes.”

Frank tried to identify the speaker, but wasn’t familiar enough with their tone and cadence to make a call. Not Fan. Leland or Jim.

“What she means,” said Lucy, more pointedly, “is that despite some unusual atmospheric conditions and anomalous telemetry, the pilot was still able to eyeball the target and touch down safely within a couple of hundred yards of the projected landing site. I will be filing a full report in due course.”

“Wait,” said Frank. “You flew that? And nearly crashed it?”

“No,” she said. “The automatics were going to crash it. I took over and manually landed the ship, which I did perfectly. It’s why I’m on this mission, Lance.”

“I didn’t mean—”

“No offense taken. Armstrong landed on the Moon with less reserves than I had, so I don’t even get bragging rights. I’d trained for worse scenarios than the one that presented itself, and what we had was fixable. We’re down and safe, and I’m going to leave what went wrong to the engineers for now.”

There was a brittle edge to her voice, that indicated she’d come within a whisker of coming down hot and had just about managed to hold it together. She was both furious and relieved, and because she was in charge, she wasn’t going to show either. He liked her for it.

“I’m… glad you made it down.”

“We all are,” said Leland. “Makes doing our jobs a whole lot easier.” He pushed his fist into Frank’s upper arm, close to where the bullet wound was, and Frank clenched his teeth against the unexpected twinge. “Lucy has ice-water where the rest of us have blood, and we’re all very grateful for that.”

Leland looked up and around, taking in the view. The other astronauts were walking about, testing their bodies and suits against the gravity and the terrain. Bursts of chatter flitted in and out of Frank’s ears like birds—everything seemed interesting, the rocks, the clouds, the dust in between, the shape of the land, the way the sun shone through the atmosphere and threw halos and bands of light and dark in the sky.

Only the pilot seemed content to just be. She could, of course, be reliving the last few minutes of flight when triumph and disaster were separated only by her skill and her reactions. But her face was impassive behind the layer of optical-grade plastic.

“So, Lance,” said Leland, “you got any advice for us new bugs?”

Again, the mental gears had to mesh before getting up to speed. “Don’t fuck up?”

Leland laughed. It was an easy, unpracticed sound, that just rolled out of him. “Well, that’s a philosophy I can get behind.”

“Here, everything’s trying to kill you. Everything. And if you fuck up, it will.”

“You’ve done OK, Lance.”

Frank had just about survived. But he couldn’t say that. He couldn’t say anything about it at all. His mistake—his only mistake—was trusting XO. He wasn’t going to make that mistake again.

“That’s because I didn’t fuck up.”

“That’ll be music to Fan’s ears. Safety first, last and always.”

“I’m here to serve,” said Fan, “all and equally, according to their need. And to remind them, in the words of our friend here, not to fuck up.” He reached out and touched Frank’s suit, where the bullet had gone through. “So what happened here?”

“I got a swipe with an unfinished ring section.” Frank felt he ought to embellish the story. “The robot’s sensor must have been on the fritz.” He felt he could pretty much blame anything on the robots, since they never existed and certainly weren’t around to examine now.

“Must have been an interesting few moments. But you dealt with it?”

Frank dipped into his waist pouch and held up a selection of patches. “You should be carrying these around with you, too. All the time.”

“Just in case. We’ll see to that. Thanks, Lance.”

He was getting the hang of it. Lance. Lance Brack. That was the name he answered to, even if it wasn’t painted on his suit.

“OK, people,” said Lucy, “gather round. We’ve got a schedule, and Mission Control will be wondering what we’re doing. Introductions first. This is Lance Brack, XO’s representative at MBO. When we all get up to MBO, he can show us around and talk us through any changes to the routines and infrastructure we need to get up to speed on. Lance has been here, by himself, for eight straight months, and having all of us descend on him is going to be a difficult adjustment, so let the man be. If you’ve got questions that aren’t a priority, stow them for now. OK, Lance? We’ll keep out of your hair for as long as you need.”

They were all now standing in a circle. Seven of them. It was almost like old times, back in training. And it was how it should have been, on Mars. All seven of them, standing and looking at the base they’d made, living and working side by side. Not Brack: he was never part of the team. But Frank’s colleagues were. Cons. Misfits. The awkward squad. His team.

Goddammit, he wasn’t going to cry.

“Fanuel’s already introduced himself. Jim is our rock hound. Isla will be doing all the plant experiments. Yun—Feng Yun—is an atmospheric scientist, and hopefully you’ve got all her kit. Leland is that thing that no one knows they need until they need it, the appropriately titled “human factors”, and I guess you know who I am. These people are my responsibility. Anything and everything that happens to them is my business, because when we go home, we’re all going home.

“This afternoon will be orientation and safety drills. Tomorrow, and the next few sols, will be dedicated to unpacking our mission-specific equipment and testing. This has been a long road. For some of us, most of us, this is going to be the high point of our careers, of our whole lives. We’ve dedicated ourselves to get to this exact point, and we’ll never have these moments again, so every hour, every minute on Mars needs to count. Tonight, we get to party. Tomorrow, we start work. OK? Let’s get to it.”

There was a chorus of assent—someone said “so say we all”, echoing back to a sci-fi show Frank faintly remembered from the reruns.

“Leland, Isla,” said Lucy. “You’re first up. Lance, if you could escort them to MBO, then head back for the next batch.”

“I’ve got two buggies. One of them could drive back with me, pick everyone up.”

“We can do that. Leland, you good?”

“I’m magnificent. Lance can show me the ropes.”

“You need a trailer for hauling stuff? I’ve got two of those as well.”

“We traveled light. Hand-luggage only.”

“OK. You’ll have to hang on, and I’ll take it as slow as I can.”

Frank led the two astronauts to the buggy, and already it seemed normal. He didn’t know how that could possibly be. There were six—count them, six—extra people here, and it was just normal. Maybe it’d sink in later, when they were all in his base, making noise, filling up the connecting ways, tramping dirt around and generally being there.

And it wasn’t just for today. It was for the next year and beyond. He was going to have to make some big adjustments, and Lucy had been wise enough to start by telling her crew to back off when he needed the space. That was how someone earned his respect from the get-go.

Frank climbed up the usual way, reaching for the lowest strut, pushing a foot against the wheel, and half walked, half clambered over the latticework until he could drop into his seat.

“Hop on up,” he said, through the chatter. It was noisy, and he couldn’t mute it. Or rather, he could, but it wasn’t like he was trying to keep secrets, just the peace and quiet. Isla—Weber, American—just pulled herself up, hand over hand, without using her legs.

“Where should we stand?” asked Leland, looking up.

“We—” OK, stop there. There is no “we”. There never was. “Wherever you want, but somewhere behind me, hanging on to the roll bars will be fine. Probably easier if you sit down and you can brace against the struts.”

Like we all did. Like I did. Except I can’t say that because if I’ve done it, who the hell was driving?

Frank strapped himself in, and looked at the controls. His mind was inexplicably blank for a moment. He blinked and reached forward, and his hands naturally fell into position. That was better. He felt the chassis rock as Leland joined them. He couldn’t turn round to check on them, so he said: “Everyone OK? Holding on?”

“We’re good. Take us home, Lance.”

One of them patted his shoulder—Frank was going to guess Leland again, who seemed quite tactile—and he took that as a sign that he could move off. He drove them in a broad arc away from the Hawthorn, then back along the base of the Heights to the start of Sunset.

He almost said “we” again, and bit down on the word before he could voice it. “I normally come down this way. The slope’s stable here, and not so steep. If you’re going out onto the eastern plains, then it’s the most direct route. Straight along and up Long Beach, where the crater wall’s collapsed.”

“Long Beach? You from LA?” asked Leland.

Dee was. Dee had died, but his names lived on. “It was a Mission Control thing,” said Frank. “The base is up on the Heights, and the road between is Sunset Boulevard. The ridge of hills down the middle of the crater we called Beverly Hills.”

The “we” crept out again, but that was OK. He’d already introduced the idea of Mission Control giving him a hand.

“You know those features have official IAU titles?” It was the first time Isla had spoken. To him, certainly. It might have been the first time she’d spoken, period.

“No. No, I didn’t.” No one had bothered to tell him, or correct him, because he was supposed to be fucking dead, like Dee. And some of that deep reservoir of anger leaked out in his voice, despite himself.

He didn’t know how to apologize, or make it better, so he just shut up and concentrated on not turning the buggy over and killing the new people. He pointed the wheels uphill and remembered to soften the front tires more than he normally would to compensate for the extra weight on the back.

“If it starts to roll, just jump clear.”

“You won’t roll it,” said Leland.

“That’s kind of the plan. But, you know. Stay frosty.”

“Frosty. Got it.”

That was what they’d said to each other. Frank and his crew. And now he was trying not to cry again. His emotions were all over the dial, and he just couldn’t control them: from despair to rage to grief, and back again. He was a wreck. An actual physical, psychological car crash of a human being, swinging between extremes with no middle ground.

He widened his eyes, let the fans dry him out, and thanked whoever had designed their suits that the faceplate only allowed ten-to-two vision.

The buggy growled and chewed its way up the drop-off, and leveled out on the Heights—or whatever its proper name was—and he dialed the stiffness back into the tires so that they once more skipped over the surface.

“That’s your MAV,” said Frank, and pointed. “And there’s the base.”

“I like what you’ve done with the place,” said Leland.

“It’s what we’ve got. Breathable atmosphere, hot water and enough juice to keep the lights on.”

“Sounds perfect. Isla’s looking forward to seeing the greenhouse.”

She was the plant specialist, right? “I’ll give you a tour later on. I just follow the instructions, though, I don’t pretend to know what I’m doing.”

“You’ve made modifications?”

“I don’t know about that. I did what I thought was right.” He probably ought to explain more. “I had problems with the fish.”

“Problems? The reports said protein output was right in the middle of the expected mean.”

Frank took a moment to work out what she meant. “They grew fine. I, I just couldn’t eat them. I couldn’t kill them to eat them.”

“Oh. So…”

“So I grew more grains and nuts and peas and beans, and cut back on the fish production. I ramped it up again for you guys. I think I’ve timed it right.”

“I’ll take a look. We’ve dehydrated meals to fall back on.”

“You won’t be short.”

“I’ll still take a look.”

“You won’t be short,” he repeated, again with far too much venom. “I got drums filled with dried grains and nuts and I freeze-dried my own herbs rather than throw them. I did my job. There’s plenty.”

OK, so he should probably apologize now. So should she. But she didn’t know what she’d done wrong, and he didn’t know why he was taking offense so hard.

They drove the rest of the mercifully short way in silence, and when they pulled up outside the base, Isla climbed down, thanked Frank formally for the ride, and walked straight towards the cross-hab airlock without asking for directions.

They’d trained for years for this. They knew the layout as well as he did.

“It’s hard adjusting, Lance. No one here hasn’t got a massive self-belief in their own opinions: they wouldn’t have got picked for the mission otherwise. No harm, no foul. Let’s go and get the others.”

Frank watched Isla’s retreating back, and still couldn’t bring himself to say even the simplest sorry.

“Sure. Let’s do that.”