Red Hope (15 page)

There was silence from everybody.

Adam questioned, “So, Yeva, they haven’t deciphered
what the creation was that caused their own demise?”

“No, the university expert said that the concept as
written has no translation in either English or Russian. At least not yet.
Whatever it was, they were very proud of it. Don’t worry, we have hundreds of
world experts trying to figure it out.”

Adam sighed and said, “Okay, thanks for the update
Yeva. That’s a pretty heavy message. Um, we’re gonna keep working here for
about another twenty minutes or so.”

“
All right guys, be safe out there
,” said Yeva
before signing off.

The two explorers walked back to the anti-gravity cube
room and continued trying to photograph every granite panel they could see. The
engravings went from the floor up to about ten feet and stopped. It would
require a lot of photos.

When they finished taking pictures, Adam collected the
memory cards from the cameras and put them securely into his pressure suit
pocket and zipped it shut.

Rather than leave right away, they began to play with
the anti-gravity cube. For such an advanced piece of technology, it sure was
fun. Just as Keller flicked it with his index finger, the ground began to
shake. The floodlight tripod rocked back and forth sending shadows bouncing on
every wall. Another Marsquake. They felt a grinding roar and a clunk as dust
fell from the ceiling.

Adam and Keller looked at each other frozen in fear.

They took off running toward the door. Their
helmet-mounted flashlight beams bounced erratically illuminating the ground. There
was no light coming through the door opening anymore; the round slab of granite
had rolled back over the entrance. They were trapped.

In the middle of the Big Turtle housing unit was an inexplicable round
wall. It was only about six feet in diameter, but there it was like a giant
redwood tree growing right up through the room. This was the droppable caisson
room. It was a hollow elevator shaft of sorts sealed everywhere except the
bottom. At the top were windows to allow ambient sunlight in. On one side was a
hatch that would allow access to the empty shaft. The entire contraption
resembled an upside down cup.

Any poor astronaut who wandered through that caisson door
right now would be instantly exposed to the Martian atmosphere. They would fall
out the bottom of the ship to their death.

Molly was listening to Yeva explain the NSA report
over the microphone to Adam and Keller.

“
All right guys, be safe out there
,” said Yeva.

She put down the printed report from the NSA.

“Adam and Keller are busy at the pyramid. Shall we
lower the caisson?” asked Yeva.

“Of course. Let’s play in the dirt,” replied Molly.

With the flick of a few switches, a loud rhythmic whirring
sound was heard. The caisson started lowering toward the red soil very slowly.

Molly and Yeva were surprised at how much the moving
caisson momentarily shook the entire Big Turtle vehicle. However, it didn’t
shake very long. With a loud clunk the caisson’s bottom not only hit the ground
but drove into it a few inches, powered by the entire weight of the Big Turtle
on top of it. The whole building trembled again and then stood still.

Yeva typed a code into the wall computer near the
caisson hatch. With the caisson floor now sealed off by Mars itself, this new
outdoor room with a sandy red floor was slowly flooded with breathable air.

Yeva checked a few old steam gauges and declared,
“Pressure looks good. The temperature is still a bit cold, though. Let us give
it a minute.”

The pressurization process was loud. Everything about
the caisson was loud.

Yeva plastered her nose to the observation window
looking down into the brightly lit cylindrical room. It was very surreal to see
the red dirt with shadows cast across it from the skylight window frames above.

The temperature in the caisson finally rose to just
above freezing. Yeva grabbed ahold of the round handle and spun it repeatedly.
Once the mechanism let go, a wisp of air was heard escaping through the opening.
She held her breath and stuck her head through the hatch and looked down. Red
dusty dirt. She took in a deep breath hoping to get the first sense of what
Mars smelled like. It smelled like rust. Each dramatic exhale of the cold air
now sent a cloud of condensation from her lungs.

“Hey Molly, this looks like plain red dirt to me,”
exclaimed Yeva whimsically.

She swung her legs through the hatch and began
climbing down the ladder. Carefully at first and then accelerating. When she
got to the bottom rung, she paused. She bit her lip in concentration and took
the final step down to the dirt. It was much softer than she expected. It was
like very dehydrated powdery soil back on Earth. A huge grin overtook her face.

Yeva bent down and scooped up a handful of the red
soil. She stood up holding it cupped in her hand. No words could describe her
childlike amazement. She was the first human to touch Mars, but nobody would
notice. For reasons that not even she understood, Yeva stuck her tongue out and
tasted the red dirt. It tasted like metal. After a few seconds, she turned her
hand over and dumped the dusty stream of dirt to the ground. Then she wiped her
hand on her pants.

Yeva took small steps at first walking around the
circular extent of this room. She looked down and saw the shoeprints she was
leaving. Yeva stopped to contemplate an idea she was hatching. At that moment,
she started hopping up and down on her right foot while removing her boot and
sock from her left foot. She was now standing on her right leg and slowly
dropped her foot on the soft red Martian soil. She laughed out loud.

Yeva dug her toes into the powdery dirt, then looked
up to see Molly’s head in the hatch looking down and laughing at her.

“You look like you’re having way too much fun down
there,” said Molly with a smile.

Yeva removed her other boot and sock and began to walk
in circles around the room. The ground was painfully cold. She was kicking up a
cloud of red dust now. Each breath sent out huge billowing clouds of
condensation.

Yeva yelled up to Molly, “Adam may have put the first
shoeprint on Mars, but I am the first human to truly walk on this devil planet.
I have touched it with my own feet!”

Yeva could only take the cold for so long, though. She
put her boots back on her nearly frostbitten feet before climbing back into the
housing unit to warm up a bit.

Yeva and Molly gathered several items of test
equipment and took them one by one through the hatch and down the ladder. While
Molly brought down more equipment, Yeva began setting up the machines.

First up were the spectral analysis machine, the seismic
sensors and a whole host of compact soil study test kits. The tallest device
looked like a standup vacuum cleaner, but it housed a core drilling machine
that would take a four-foot-long core sample of Martian soil and rock.

After Molly delivered the last test unit, Yeva asked
her to help run the spectral analysis machine.

Molly nodded and then said, “Hold on. We need some
work tunes.”

She climbed up the ladder and disappeared through the
hatch. Molly went over to the communications laptop and turned up the volume on
the Pandora streaming music service which had been running for several hours
already. She laughed as she considered that a multi-million dollar
interplanetary data link was being used to stream
Hotel California
to
the speaker system on the ship. She cranked the volume all the way up so they
could hear it in the caisson.

Molly climbed down the ladder and the two began
running their experiments and tests. Up in the room above them, a garbled
message was coming in from Adam’s headset screaming that they were stuck and
needed help. Unfortunately his pleas weren’t loud enough to overcome the classic
rock songs from the 1970’s.

“Stop breathing!” yelled Adam to a panicked Keller.

“What do you mean stop breathing!”

Adam closed his eyes to concentrate and said, “I mean
stop breathing
so fast
. Look, we have plenty of oxygen in our tanks, but
there’s no need to use it all up right now!”

Keller was clawing at the multi-ton door even though
there was no way for him to move it. It hadn’t closed all the way; there was still
enough room to stick a few fingers through. Perhaps enough to pry it open if
had they had a prybar.

“Too bad we don’t have a
prybar
,” complained
Adam.

He looked around to see what they could use, but the
only thing in the room aside from granite was the floodlight on a tripod and two
digital cameras.

Adam turned on his headset and screamed, “Yeva, Molly,
we need help! The door closed and we’re trapped.”

Only silence came back.

“I don’t get it, the door shouldn’t completely block our
signal,” said a frustrated Adam.

“What are we going to do now?” asked Keller.

Adam looked around and then said, “Nothing. We wait.
That’s all we can do.”

Keller sat down on the floor and proceeded to breathe
heavily as his stress levels skyrocketed.

Adam ran over to him begging, “Look, you’ve gotta calm
down! If you keep breathing like that, you’re going to run out of air.”

Keller checked his gauge and then looked at Adam.

“I only have ten minutes left,” admitted Keller. His
eyes showed sheer panic.

Adam looked at his own gauge and saw he had nearly
twenty minutes left. Keller was using up his air too quickly. Without thinking,
he blurted out, “Keller, did you bring your pills?”

“With me? Are you mental? What, am I going to rip off
my helmet and slam down some meds with a handful of my own pee?”

Adam was pacing back and forth now.

“Look, I, I don’t know. Okay, you gotta slow down that
breathing. Don’t worry, they will come for us.”

Adam plopped down on the ground next to Keller and
said, “Think of your happiest memory.”

“What? Are you serious?” said Keller incredulously.

“Look, I’m trying to calm us down. Tell me your
favorite memory,” explained Adam.

Keller stared at him and said, “
No
.”

Silence followed as Adam stood back up and wandered
around the room looking for something that could help them out of this trouble.

Keller sat there shaking. He turned to look at Adam
and said pathetically, “Okay, I’ll try it
your
way.”

Adam walked back toward him.

Keller continued, “It’s about the world’s tallest
tree. Look, I’m telling you this is pointless.”

Adam scolded, “Just do it. Okay? Now tell me about the
world’s tallest tree.”

Keller put on a smirk and said, “Yah, um, alright.
Some of my high-school friends and I were competing in this big contest to have
the world’s fastest bicycle. This was back in the 1990’s. Yah, our team went
out to a big international race in California. Well, we crashed our bike on the
first practice run so we had like three days to kill before the flight home.”

Adam could sense that Keller was slowing down his
breathing.

“So we decide to go see the world’s tallest tree. It’s
up around a town called Eureka, you know, in northern California. So, we drive
way up this mountain. Like 45 minutes. We get to the entrance gate at the park where
the tree is. It’s got a combination lock on it.”

Adam laughed and said, “And you didn’t have the
combination, right?”

Keller added, “That’s right. Turns out you have to pay
for access before you drive all the way up that mountain; and they were closed
by the time we got there. So we’re parked there in the middle of nowhere
wondering what to do. Then we see a car coming up to the locked gate from the
other
side; they were just at the world’s tallest tree!”

Keller laughed and then continued, “It’s like a three mile
drive from that gate down a gravel road to the tree. So the car stops and it’s
a family visiting from Korea. The Dad can’t get the lock undone, so, like he
can’t leave the tree park! He sees us young punks there and asks us for help.
So he gives us the combination and we open the gate for him. When they leave,
we re-open the gate and drive down that gravel road.  We saw that tree, yes we
did.”

Keller was contemplating the scene. He was back there.
It was 1994. He was listening to the new Pink Floyd album on his Walkman. It
was the highlight of his teenage years.

Then Keller reciprocated, “Okay Captain Alston, what
is
your
favorite memory?”

Adam contemplated and smiled as his mind flooded with
memories of pleasant happy times.

“Um, I guess I have
two
really. The first is
listening to music with my kids in the living room on a warm Texas summer day.
So, one day, my daughter is standing on my toes and we’re dancing around the
living room to the Rainbow Connection song. You know, that Muppets song? The
one that goes ‘
Someday we’ll find it, the rainbow connection
’?”

Adam could almost hear Kermit’s voice singing to the
banjo as he and his daughter danced through the dusty sunbeams flooding through
the big arched windows.

Keller laughed out loud, “Yah, I remember that song.”

Adam looked wistfully at the ground. “I guess that’s
more of a scene really. Not much story there, huh? Now, I also have a memory of
being a kid watching MacGyver with my family and…”

“Oh crap, oh no!” exclaimed Keller as he looked over
at Adam. 

Feeling insulted, Adam replied, “Well, I know it’s not
a
tallest tree
story, but give me some credit.”

“No, no. It’s not that,” said Keller. He had a look of
realization and said, “We’ve got the golf cart. Yeva and Molly have no way to
get here. They could walk, but they’d never make it in time.”

Adam knew that already and was hoping Keller wouldn’t
realize it until after he calmed down. Now Adam was panicking because Keller
was panicking.

The rescuers that they were counting on wouldn’t make
it here in time. They
couldn’t
make it here in time. Their doom was
becoming certain. Adam’s brain went into overdrive. He started making fists to
crack his knuckles; it helped his brain work when stressed.

“Think, think, think,” he said out loud.

He looked at Keller and asked, “How much air do you
have now?”

Keller looked down at his gauge.

“About seven minutes.”

Adam stopped pacing.

“Okay, look, we’re desperate. We’ve got one chance
here. We do have
something
that might move that door, but one of us will
have to hold our breath.”

“What the heck are you talking about?” blurted Keller
loudly.

Adam explained with authority, “These oxygen bottles
we have on our backs. If we knock the nozzle off, it’ll act like a rocket and
push on the door. At least for a few seconds.”

“And then we both die from suffocation.
Nice plan,
”
said Keller sarcastically.

Adam shook his head, “No, we’ll only use one. We have an
auxiliary Y-hose so we can share the remaining tank.”

Keller said, “Okay, use my tank. It’s almost empty.”

Adam looked at him with distress and said, “No. We
have to use the one with the most air. It’ll pack the biggest punch.”

“That means…” said Keller without finishing his own
thought.

Adam ran back to the anti-gravity cube room and
grabbed the floodlight. He brought it back to the door and placed it on the
ground. Then he reached down and pulled out the hammer that was in a pocket on
his pressure suit. He looked at Keller and said, “Are you ready? We’ll have to
run like crazy when this door falls down.”

“Or die if it doesn’t,” replied Keller.

Adam reached back to disconnect his hose, but
hesitated. Instead, he talked into his headset microphone, “Yeva? Molly? Can
you hear me? Hey look, we’re trapped in the pyramid. The door rolled back over
the opening. We’re going to try to knock the door over with one of our oxygen
tanks, but it probably won’t work. If you get this message, please bring oxygen
tanks. I’m not sure how, but please try.”

Adam looked at Keller and said, “Let me explain what
I’m going to do. I’ll remove my oxygen tank and
you
hold it up against the
door, um, up near the top. Wedge it against the door jamb if you have to. Do
not let go of the tank! When I knock the nozzle off, that rocket power should
push on the top of the door. That may be enough force to make it tumble
outward. Got it?”

Keller nodded in nervous agreement.

Adam was looking for courage. He squeezed his eyes
shut and thought of dancing in the sunbeams with his daughter again. He smiled
at the memory as he gulped in some air and held his breath. With the hammer in
his right hand, he reached back with his left and disconnected the tank from
his backpack.

The tank fell off onto the ground. He grabbed it and
jammed it against the top of the door. Keller held it in place with both
gloves. Adam got a good grip on the hammer. He swung at the nozzle and hit it
with authority. It bent sideways, but didn’t break. He reached back and swung
again. He missed and smashed Keller’s thumb. Keller let out a guttural scream,
but he didn’t let go of the tank. Now panicked, Adam swung back hard and the
hammer flew out of his hands off into the darkness.

Adam’s eyes bulged in sheer panic. His heart was
pounding now. He took another breath of the remaining oxygen in his suit and
quickly looked around the nearby floor. No sign of a hammer. He fell to the
floor to run his hands through the dirt to find it.

Adam stood up and ran off into the darkness, but
couldn’t find it among the dusty ground covering. He looked up and noticed
Keller was frozen with fear.

Adam ran back toward the door and grabbed one of the
digital cameras and smashed it against the bent tank valve. Camera bits went
everywhere, but the tank nozzle remained intact. Adam dropped to his knees
knowing that he only had another minute of consciousness left. A silence came
over him even though his heart was still pounding. Hypoxia was setting in.

Adam felt something tap him on the shoulder. He looked
up. Keller was holding the bottle up with one hand and pointing his other
toward the darkened room with the anti-gravity cube.

“Get the cube!” commanded Keller over the headset.

Adam jumped up to his feet and ran into the darkness
only illuminated by his head-mounted flashlight. He grabbed the cube and ran
back toward the door. The cube was a mixture of strangeness. It seemed unusually
dense for its size, almost made out of something as heavy as gold. Adam lifted
the cube with both hands and smashed it down on the bent tank nozzle.

A roar came out of the tank as it jack-hammered into
the big granite door. Keller could barely hold the tank as it jittered around
the top of the door jamb, but finally the big stone door slowly leaned away
from the pyramid. The oxygen bottle rocketed for only a few more seconds, but
at the last moment the door toppled away from them with a ground rattling thud
revealing bright sunshine and the golf cart in the distance.

Adam fell down with near suffocation. He was on all
fours with no strength to stand. His hand reached into one of his suit utility
pockets and pulled out an auxiliary Y-shaped air hose. He feebly held it up to
Keller for him to share his remaining air.

“
No
,” said Keller over the headset.

Adam looked up and asked with a raspy voice, “What?
Hook me up here. I’m dying.”

Keller looked at his oxygen gauge again.

“I know. But I’ve only got four minutes left. If I
share this, neither of us will make it back to the ship.”

Adam’s eyes were bloodshot and filled with the rage of
betrayal.

Keller looked horrified at his own decision and cried
out, “I’m sorry, man. Look, I’m really sorry. I’ll. I’ll tell everybody that
you died a
hero
. We’ll bury you here on Mars, okay?”

Adam started gasping for air like a helpless fish out
of its tank. Keller saw it and turned away saying, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I
know you saved my life. I’m sorry.”

Adam started to really see the sunbeams again. The
music was coming back. He was fading. His head dropped. All he could see out of
his visor was the floodlight tripod and the smashed camera bits.

Keller stumbled toward the golf cart, but paused to
catch his breath near the edge of the fallen stone door. He slumped over with
hands on knees just resting for a second trying to calm down from all the
stress and grief he was feeling for his doomed friend.

Adam reached out and grabbed the tripod. He pushed
through all his pain and light-headedness to stand up, climbing the tripod like
a crutch. He stumbled up behind Keller and with his last remaining strength
swung the tripod like a baseball bat right into Keller’s helmet, shattering
open the glass on his visor.