People of Mars (19 page)

“So don’t you waste
more time.”

9

Hera
mission

Kurt Siedel turned his
disconsolate gaze to Mars. The MSS was in an areostationary orbit
just in front of Valles Marineris. He’d spent weeks fixing his eyes
on the huge scar that broke the regular surface of the planet
almost by the equator; he was hoping to catch sight of Shuttle One
returning to the orbiting station, but was deluding himself.

The mission time had by now come to an end. The
launch window to go back to Earth was closing. They had ordered him
to go back on board the
Hera
and leave. They had said that his mates must have been dead
by now. But he and the team at Houston had known about it for a
long time, since when, right after entering the atmosphere, the
shuttle had failed to restore the communication with them.
Something terrible must have happened.

For hours, days, he had hoped for a banal radio
failure. Jack Diaz was a commander on the ball, and surely had made
the decision to stay in order to take some samples at least, before
returning to the orbiting station. But the shuttle had never come
back. Kurt had waited in vain to see her. Time and time again, he
had believed he’d discerned a tiny, white spot emerging from all
that red, only to have it disappear again. He had asked for the
authorisation to take Shuttle Two and go down himself. His
crewmates might have still been alive, but unable to communicate,
to take off. But Houston had refused. No shuttle would descend to
the Martian surface, before they understood what went wrong with
the first one. He had discussed it, insisted on it, but they had
said to go back to the ship, to leave for Earth.

Truth was that he’d
been scared. Those at mission control could have never physically
stopped him from taking the shuttle, but Kurt hadn’t done it
anyway. Shamed, he realised that he’d felt relieved at each refusal
from them. And as time passed, he’d regretted it. He had rethought
again and again about taking the opportunity. But the more he
thought, the more time passed and the lower the odds that he would
find the other four members still alive.

They couldn’t have
reached the habitat. And their air supplies must have ended by
now.

They were dead.

It was his fault,
too.

If only he had had a
little more courage, perhaps he might have saved them. It was too
late now. How could he return to Earth, look his friends’ relatives
in the eye and tell them he had done his utmost? It was a
falsehood. All he’d done was wait, postponing any decision. He had
done nothing.

He felt useless,
lost.

He recorded that video
in the pathetic attempt to apologise to everyone. He knew they
couldn’t ever forgive him.

He unfastened his
safety belt and rose from his seat. Moving slowly, he dragged
himself with his hands within the station devoid of gravity. He
reached the changing room beside the airlock. With precise
movements, he donned his suit, piece by piece. His helmet came
last, which he fastened in position with a final click.

The air supply was for
six hours. Too many.

He entered the
airlock. He waited for the vacuum to be created and then he opened
the exit hatch. Without hooking his safety lanyard, he pushed
himself outside.

Mars was there, ready
to receive him. With a steady, continuous motion, his body
distanced itself more and more from the station.

He activated his
spacesuit jetpack and let it push him toward the planet. With a
little luck, Martian gravity would capture and bring him down and
down.

He smiled to himself
as he realised that he would soon shine like a tiny falling
star.

A faint crackling
broke the silence of the empty, orbiting station, then a rustling,
finally a crackly, distant voice.

“Habitat Two here.
MSS, do you read me?”

But there was nobody
able to hear it, nobody able to reply.

“Mars here, it’s Jack.
Kurt, tell me you didn’t go!”

***

I rise by instinct,
without breaking eye contact with him. I move to meet him, one step
at a time, walking around the wide, dark, warm stain dividing
us.

I feel something
falling on my head. I touch my hair with a hand. It’s wet. I look
up and another drop lands on my face. It’s so dark over there. The
plastic covering of the greenhouse ends some metres behind, giving
way to something more uniform and compact.

“It’s melting
ice.”

My attention returns
to the owner of that voice. He is closer, but his face is still
enveloped in the shadow.

“The water vapour
rises, until it meets the cold metal sheet. It condenses and at
night it immediately transforms into ice. But a little warmth is
enough to make it melt again, and drip.” He is in front of me now,
he smiles. “A sort of little water cycle.”

“Jack …” It’s him.
It’s the man I saw when I woke up, the man who saved my life. But
there’s something else familiar in his face. “Diaz?”

“In the flesh.” He
nods with a pleased expression. He is by no means surprised to have
been recognised. “I’m happy you feel better, Anna.”

Before my eyes I have the living proof that not
all the crew of the
Hera
is dead,
that the mission hasn’t failed at all. It’s such a big revelation
that I can barely contain it. I knew about that, in the very moment
I understood that the transmission from Valles Marineris was an
SOS. It was the only possible explanation. But being here, now,
face to face with a man who has lived on Mars for over thirty Earth
years, is a concept I struggle to grasp in its entirety.

“But how …?”

“It seems evident to
me,” is his simple reply. He moves his eyes all around, as to show
me this evidence.

I follow suit and then
resume looking at the covering above us. He said it is made of
metal sheets. Sure, the heat would’ve melted the plastic. But
further on I can see some lights positioned on the living rock. The
greenhouse is connected to a cave, a pressurised one. How big is
it? I focus back on the dark stain in front of me. The cloud is
clearing up and I can see it again. Hesitant, I lower myself down
towards it.

“Go on,” he encourages
me. “There’s no danger.”

I reached out until my
fingers touch it. It’s warm, but not hot.

“You only have to
descend one or two metres from the surface before you meet the icy
rock, which cools the water down quickly. And this is good,
otherwise we couldn’t have used it to create all this.”

I’m standing again and
admiring the vegetation in the greenhouse: from small green lawns,
little plants, shrubs, to large fruit trees, all so florid, but at
the same time neat to the point of perfection. The plants are well
arranged, nothing seems to be left to chance. Each space is used to
the utmost.

I rest my gaze on Jack
again. How old is he? At least sixty. No, surely more. He was the
commander of the mission. His white hair and his winkles betray his
age, but he seems in good shape. His body is athletic; he has got a
juvenile, relaxed air. He is the personification of calmness.

“You should rest,
Anna.” He lingers on my name. “You’ve risked death, out there.”

I shook my head,
resolute. “No, Jack. I think you have a long story to tell me and I
won’t move from here, until you’ve done so.”

***

He sensed a hand on
his shoulder.

“Jack, stop for a
while,” Elena said.

He had been sending
the same message for hours, but hadn’t received any reply. He had
tried changing frequency, increasing the transmission power. But he
wasn’t sure he was actually able to do so.

When, weeks earlier,
he had lost control of the shuttle, right after penetrating the
Martian atmosphere, he had believed they would be dead in a few
minutes. The radio had stopped working. Three of the engines didn’t
respond to the controls and the vertical propulsion, which obviated
the lift issues due to the low atmospheric pressure, was working
erratically. Yet somehow, he had avoided crashing the aircraft.

All kinds of alarms
echoed in the cabin. The pressurisation was gone for good, as they
had entered at the wrong angle and at too high a speed; the
fuselage had lost its integrity. They had seen a part of the rear
metal sheeting flying away. The shuttle had barely managed to
maintain height, but had missed the landing area altogether, and
was approaching Ophir Chasma.

Actually it was the two thousand metre altitude
gap that prevented her from disintegrating on the planet’s surface.
Jack held his hand steady on the controls and, while the on-board
computer kept spitting useless data, he succeeded in manoeuvring
the aircraft into the canyon, down and down, to its deepest part,
where he had located a flat strip of land. There wasn’t much room,
but he had no other choice. As the undercarriage touched ground,
the right wing hit against the rocky wall, breaking and causing an
explosion, which was immediately suffocated in the oxygen-free
atmosphere. The shuttle skidded to the left, tilting on her side
and starting to slide on the other folded wing and the fuselage
itself at hundreds of kilometres per hour. Then she slowed down. In
the end, she stopped.

The crew was
frightened, but alive. The shuttle was a wreck. The radio wasn’t
working anymore. At most, they could count on a few hours of air in
their suits.

When they saw the
Habitat Two just a few hundred metres away, apparently intact, they
couldn’t believe their eyes.

It had been considered
lost by NASA, because it had stopped transmitting, after ending up
into Valles Marineris. When they reached it, they found that only
the communication system had been damaged by the impact, the
remainder of the habitat was operational. The photovoltaic system
was working perfectly, the life support was active, the reservoirs
were full of water, the pantries had plenty of food.

They were safe, but
they had no way of informing mission control.

They had worked for
weeks to repair at least the radio. The satellite antennas were
destroyed, useless. But they could try a short-range communication.
Their only hope was to contact the orbiting station, which should
be exactly over their heads.

When they had finally
believed they had done so, nobody had replied.

“I’ll rest when
somebody replies,” Jack retorted.

“
Maybe the MSS isn’t in a stationary orbit
anymore.” Elena didn’t look scared, but he knew she was. She, more
than anyone else, had been the one keeping the crew’s morale high,
but despite all she’d done, it had slipped lower and lower as the
days passed.

When the transceiver
had started working again, a sense of relief and enthusiasm had
spread among them, but it hadn’t lasted. Now, there was nothing to
hope for. If they didn’t succeed in communicating with someone,
nothing could save them.

“Stop at least for the
night. You are consuming too much power. We don’t produce it in the
dark and we need it for the life support.”

He rudely removed her
hand. “What’s the use of keeping us alive? The water supplies are
nearly finished. If we can’t use the remaining power to communicate
to Kurt that we are alive, we are just postponing our death!”

Elena lowered her eyes
and moved away from him. Of course, she knew that. Jack regretted
addressing her that way. Fighting was equally useless.

“Forgive me …” he
murmured. He left the radio and reached for her. Only now he
realised she was weeping. “Forgive me,” he repeated. He hugged
her.

There was a distant
rumble. Jack knew that kind of noise well. He had experienced it
many times, when he lived in California as a child. In response to
a reflex well rooted in his mind, he grabbed Elena by the waist and
dragged her under the doorframe, while a strong shake coming from
below ran through them. The room started vibrating with violence.
Objects of various sizes began to fall. A cabinet tilted
dangerously forward.

Then everything
stopped.

After a moment, there
was a loud puff. Some shouting, agitated footfalls in the
corridor.

“Guys!” Nestor burst
into the room, overexcited. “Hurry! You must see this. It’s
something incredible.”

They ran to the
observation room on the upper floor. The glass was partially dimmed
during the day, to protect the interior from ultraviolet radiation,
but it provided a perfect view on a wide area adjacent to the
habitat.

Irina was leaning
against the glass wall with both hands and staring outside,
astounded. “Is it snowing?”

Perplexed, Jack looked
at her. What the hell was she saying?

“It’s a miracle …”
Nestor whispered, while making the sign of the cross.

Following the line of
their gaze, Jack turned. A longitudinal portion of rock, not very
distant from the hab, had subsided at least five metres. It had
happened a few steps from a rocky wall, which was partly dragged
down creating a little cave. A sort of whitish cloud covered the
entire area, but not so thick as to prevent him from seeing a
high-pressure water column rising for many metres and then
collapsing. In the icy air of the late afternoon, aerosol drops
were freezing; floating in the breeze, they fell down little by
little as snowflakes.

***

“As night arrived, the
fissure had been sealed again by the ice.” Jack continues his
narration seated on the lawn. I’m beside him with my legs crossed,
being careful not to miss even the slightest detail of his
story.