Missing! (11 page)

They got nothing, no signal at all. “What's happened at Advance Base?” Roger asked, sounding both concerned and fearful. “You don't think they're all—”

“The lightning,” Mickey said quickly. “It's fouled up their transmitter, that's all. You saw the weather readouts. They had the worst of the storm. May take them days to get back online.”

Sean hoped he was right.

They made slow time. Driving the cat in that strange red mist was almost like driving blind. Roger called out the directions, but every other minute they had to divert around boulders, and once or twice rolling crescent dunes defeated them, sand and dust piled high but too loosely packed and unstable for them to drive across. They had to go around, and guessing which side of the dune offered the best path led them into some labyrinths. From time to time Roger sent out a hailing call on the prep team's emergency frequency, but without any response.

The second beacon was nearly buried in a drift. They saw no sign that anyone had been there, and they headed toward the next beacon, another five clicks down the trail. “What's around here?” Mickey asked. “What geographical features?”

Areological,
Sean corrected mentally, but he said nothing out loud and studied the map. “Not much. There's an impact crater ahead and to the south.”

“Big one?”

“Ten or twelve kilometers across. It has an eroded rim that's elevated well above the plain.” Sean strained to see ahead. “We're not going to fall into it.”

“I think you're drifting too far north,” Roger said, bent over the navigation console. “Bear to the right a little more. That's good. What's our speed?”

Mickey sniffed. “About three clicks an hour.”

“These things can do thirty.”

Mickey's face was red with frustration. “You try doing thirty in this mess!”

“All right, all right,” Roger said. “I know you're doing your pathetic best.”

Mickey didn't answer, but he did speed up. They
reached the next marker, stopped, and repeated their call.

“Nothing,” Mickey said. “If it was clear, we could do a flyover and look for—”

“Hold on!” Roger's voice was sharp with concern. “I heard something. Boost the gain.”

Sean adjusted the radio, straining his ears. Crackling static, a constant hiss. And then—words? He couldn't be sure. Maybe. Maybe.

Roger said, “I don't think that's anyone calling us. More like pressure-suit radios. They're talking to one another, and we're barely able to pick up a signal, but it's too weak for us to make it out.”

“Where are they?” Sean asked, pounding his fist on his knee.

“Hang on, I'm trying to get a fix.” Roger muttered under his breath, not to Mickey or Sean, but just begging whoever it was to keep talking. Sean felt as if he wanted to leap out of the cat and go running across the surface of Mars, but he fought the feeling down. He couldn't hope to find anyone on his own.

From the electronic mush, Alex's voice came suddenly
sharp for a couple of words—“don't let”—and then it was gone again. Roger said, “This can't be right. They wouldn't be twenty kilometers southeast of us, would they?”

Sean fumbled frantically with the map. He found the location of the nearby beacon, giving him their spot on the map, and then he measured twenty kilometers. “That would put them way south of the trail. Twenty clicks, let's see, that's a spot just inside the crater wall. No way would they go in there!”

“Or maybe they're just
outside
the crater if the fix isn't just right,” Mickey said. “How could they get so far off the trail?”

“Don't know,” Sean said. “Look, we have to go on and check this out. We can make it in four hours.”

“Maybe,” Mickey said. “But we can't make it back to the shuttle before nightfall.”

“We've got a survival tent aboard,” Roger said. “If we find them, we can crowd together with some in the tent and some in the cab of the cat. Shouldn't be too hard to get through one night.”

“I don't like leaving the shuttle,” Mickey said.

“No one's likely to steal it,” Roger pointed out.

“No,” Mickey replied, controlled anger in his voice. “But what if another storm comes up? What if the shuttle got hit with lightning or buried in a drift?”

“Then we'd take the cat to Advance Base,” Sean said.

Mickey shook his head. “What if we find them and take them to Advance Base and—and things aren't right there? What's the plan then?”

“Don't ask so many what-if questions,” Sean said. “None of that has happened yet, and we can't be sure it will happen. But we know Alex is out there somewhere, and we know he's talking to at least one other person. If we head back to the shuttle, we'll lose the trace. I say we go on.”

“We have to, Mickey,” Roger said. “Seriously. What if it was you out there?”

Mickey let out a long breath. “I suppose I'd want some loonies to come looking for me. Okay. Sean, look sharp and keep me from driving this thing into a gulley. We have to make tracks.”

They wound their way forward slowly, taking a
twisting path around obstacles in their way. Sean kept checking the weather photos, but as far as he could tell, the storm was heading southeast now, away from them—though he could tell from the high-resolution images that the area around Advance Base had been hard hit. The radio chatter came and went, never clear enough to understand. They tried broadcasting on the same frequency, but they couldn't be sure if they were getting through. Each time they heard something like voices, though, Roger worked to refine his radio fix.

“Helmet radios are generally good over line-of-sight distances of four kilometers or less,” he said once. “If we can get around this bloody big pile of rubble”—he glared at the rim of the crater, passing by on their right, looking like a dim wall in the poor afternoon light—“we should be able to talk to them.”

“Why aren't they using their cat's radio?” Mickey asked, but it was a question none of them could answer.

They drove on in uneasy silence, all of them staring ahead. Sean, at least, was a little fearful of what they
might see, but Roger was right: They really had no choice but to follow the ghostly voices and hope for the best.

The oxygen generator failed fifteen
minutes after they made camp. Dales went out and brought it into the tent, but they couldn't find the reason for the breakdown. Apparently some circuits had been fried by the lightning, but they had no way of testing the unit and no way of repairing the circuits.

“That's pretty grim,” Salma said. “How much tanked oxygen do we have left for the tent?”

“Tonight,” Dr. Henried said. “That's it. But I suggest we wear our suits and save the last of the tent cylinder. It can give us another three hours of oxygen apiece.”

Jenny did some quick mental calculation. With the oxygen tanks they had dragged behind them on the travois, the suits had a forty-hour supply. Advance Base was more than two hundred kilometers away to
the east. At the most, they could probably make three kilometers an hour, two hundred and forty kilometers … eighty hours.

Alex seemed to read her thoughts. “Don't worry about running out of air. We'll find the trail. Advance will send a team out to find us, and they'll be equipped with everything we need. We're not dead yet.”

“Of course not,” Salma said, putting a hand on Jenny's shoulder. “Not by a long shot.”

They had an hour or so of oxygen left in the tent before they had to put the helmets on. As far as it was possible in the cramped space, Dr. Henried, Dr. Dales, and Dr. Weston got together and carried on a quiet consultation apart from the other three.

At last, Dr. Henried cleared his throat. “We've come to a decision,” he said. “We'll make for the trail and try to get as close to Advance Base as we can. If it seems possible that a party will not be able to save us all, the three of us will give whatever remains of our oxygen to you three.”

Salma objected at once. “No. That's not fair. None
of the women-and-children-first nonsense. We're in this together.”

“True,” Dr. Henried said. “However, if some of us must die so that some of us can live, well, that's the only logical course to follow. Far better for three of us to survive than none.”

“Then we draw straws,” Salma said. “I won't play by your rules.”

Jenny looked at Alex. He seemed to be struggling, but he finally said, “I agree.”

Jenny was truly afraid now. But from somewhere she found just enough courage to say, “So do I.”

The afternoon was rapidly losing
itself in a murk the color of brick dust. Mickey had turned on the cat's headlights, but they were little help. The airborne dust turned the beams into a blurry glow that hardly made a difference in visibility. “We should be able to get through to them,” Sean said for the seventh or eighth time.

“It's this bloody dust,” Roger returned. “It's diffusing the signal the same way it's diffusing the head-lamps. We have to be close, though. Five clicks or less, I'd say.”

“It'll be night soon,” Mickey muttered. “Then what?”

“We have to keep going,” Sean said. “We'll be okay in the cat.”

“Yeah, until I topple us off a scarp or crash into a boulder,” Mickey replied. “Sean, it's too dangerous.
Nobody goes rolling across Mars at night, even in good weather.”

“Shut up, shut up,” Roger said frantically. He had clapped headphones over his ears, and he leaned forward, eyes squeezed closed, concentrating. “I can make out some words. I hear a man, Alex, and—yes, it's her, it's Jenny! I'm going to try to get through again. Obviously they haven't heard us yet. Stop the cat, Mickey. I'm going to see if I can send them a directional beam. Maybe that'll get through this soup.”

It was frustrating work. A narrowcast radio beam was more powerful than a broadcast one, but it had to be aimed just right in order to get through. They had rounded the northeastern side of the crater, and they assumed that the people they were looking for were almost due south of them. “Almost” wasn't precise enough, though. Roger spoke into the radio: “Prep Team, this is a rescue team. If you hear me, respond.”

No answer, after three repetitions. Roger adjusted the directional antenna fractionally—a matter of a few centimeters here meant that five clicks away the
beam could be half a kilometer to the right or left. He repeated his call. Then another adjustment, another repetition. Sean felt his stomach fluttering as if he'd swallowed a flock of butterflies. They were so close. Why couldn't they make contact? He itched to take the radio controls from Roger, but he knew that the younger boy had expertise he lacked.

“Come on, come on,” Sean said under his breath, urging Roger to keep trying and Jenny to answer him.

The sixth try. The seventh. And then, just as Roger was about to move the antenna again, a man's voice, just on the edge of hearing: “Say again? Rescue team? This is Prep Team. Where are you?”

Mickey exhaled loudly, and Sean realized he had been holding his breath too. Roger handed the receiver to Sean. “You're the boss. Tell him.”

“Prep Team, this is a rescue team from Marsport,” Sean said. “We can't get a good GPS fix because of the after-effects of the storm. We believe we're a few kilometers north of you.”

“Who is this?”

Sean looked at the others. “Sean Doe,” he said. “I'm, uh, the rescue team leader.”

“Henried here. Who's the senior member of the rescue team?”

“Mick—uh, Michael Goldberg,” Sean replied. “But I'm the one responsible.”

Sean heard two yelps of surprise, and Jenny said, “Sean! What are you—”

But Henried shushed her and said, “Are there no adults on the team?”

“Give me that,” Mickey said. He took the receiver and said, “Dr. Henried, the important thing is that we've got transportation if you need it, along with medical supplies, food, and oxygen. Give us your situation.”

A long pause, and then Henried said, “We're in a bad way. Our cat's broken down, and though we're all right for food and water, we've only a few hours supply of oxygen. No casualties, but we're all pretty much exhausted. Under the circumstances, I won't ask too many questions. It's good to hear a voice, no matter who it is. What can we do to help?”

Roger took the receiver back again. “I need a better fix on your position,” he said. “Do you have a directional transmitter?”

They didn't. But Henried had a good idea of the team's location with respect to the crater—he said they were just off the two o'clock position, maybe a hundred meters east of the crater rim.

“Got it,” Sean said. “We're coming as fast as we can, but visibility is bad. It'll be full night before we can get there. We could drive right past you in the dark.”

“I think we may be able to help with that,” Dr. Henried said.

Alex stood outside the survival
tent. He wondered how cold it was. Fifty below, at least, and the temperature was plummeting. Like deserts on Earth, Mars gained heat during the sunlight hours but lost it rapidly at night. Alex had been outside the tent for half an hour, and he wouldn't be able to stand much more. He
held a work light at his chest, a brilliant halogen lamp that in ordinary circumstances could provide illumination for a huge area. He pointed it north, but for all its brightness he couldn't see anything much. The dust scattered the light, giving him the impression that he was at the bottom of a murky, blood-colored sea.

His feet were beginning to feel like icicles. He'd have to give up and go inside the tent in a few minutes, and then it would be someone else's turn. “You're still coming, aren't you?” he asked over his helmet radio.