“I haven’t made any decisions yet,” Radkowski said, and deliberately turned his back on Trevor to walk up behind the rockhopper. With luck, he wouldn’t have to. With luck, the problem would never come up.
12
On the Top
Ascending the cliff on the far side of the canyon turned out to be actually somewhat simpler than descending. The channel Radkowski had found led almost to the canyon rim, close enough that the remaining two hundred feet to the top were easily climbed, and bolts set into the rock to anchor cables to slowly winch the rockhopper up. Once out of the catena, they were able to unstow the dirt-rover.
Dazed, slightly dizzy from the constant pain of her arm, Estrela thought to herself, I’ve been stupid, I’ve been stupid, I’ve been stupid. Every rock that the rockhopper crawled over hurt her.
She wanted to snarl and bite when they treated her like a child. She held back, forced herself to appear calm, because she knew that she needed their help to survive, and more, she needed to get on the captain’s good side if she was to be chosen to return.
The crew were beginning to get on each other’s nerves. She could see it in the curt language they used with each other, in their short tempers.
Her attempt at seduction in the rockhopper, the night that Ryan had gone haywire, hadn’t worked. Even before the radio had broken in, the mood had gone bad. Radkowski hadn’t actually told her no, but when she had unzipped his jumpsuit and slid her warm hand inside, he had gently pushed her away. Perhaps if she had a little more time…
She was in pretty bad shape for a seduction right now, with a broken arm. The captain wasn’t the one she’d really like to seduce, though, not by a long shot. And it sure wasn’t Trevor. She saw the way the kid looked at her sometimes, and sometimes she even went out of her way to show him a little skin, to give him a bit of a thrill, but that was just to be nice. She didn’t have any real interest in seducing children. He said he was twenty-one, but to her he sure didn’t look twenty-one. She doubted if he was a day over eighteen. Maybe seventeen. He was just a kid.
No, the one she’d really like to catch alone was Ryan Martin. His slender, lithe body; his long eyelashes and hazel eyes and the intensity of his gaze when he was talking…He was the only one of the crew that she would crawl for. There was something about him, some essential core of sadness…
But it was the captain that she had to seduce, she knew. Ryan was candy. The captain was the key to life and death.
The landscape outside the rockhopper’s viewports was hypnotic, almost magical. North of the Coprates Catena the land was flatter than it had been. She couldn’t name the rocks anymore, but they almost seemed to talk to her. The pain in her arm sang a little song to her, made her head dance. The landscape and the pain, the pain and the landscape; it was all mixed up together in her mind.
13
Edge of the Knife
John Radkowski’s throat hurt.
The scenery was less varied now, flat, uninteresting. Or perhaps it was he who had lost interest in the scenery.
There was another smaller canyon for them to cross, he knew, a branch of the Valles Marineris, before they even came to the main gorge of the canyon. He debated stopping for a day, trying to acquire Earth with the high-gain antenna and asking for advice, but he knew that their chances of success were best if they could make the dash north as quickly as possible, without stopping anyplace it wasn’t absolutely necessary. And, anyway, the advice they had gotten from Earth had been, so far, completely useless. The only useful information he’d received was the part he had gotten on the private channel, the one that the crew—and the population of Earth, following with vicarious attention the unfolding disaster in space—had not heard. The advice had been that they had better come up with a rescue plan to save themselves, because there was no chance of any help whatsoever from Earth.
He didn’t need to waste another day for them to tell him that they couldn’t give him any help.
His throat hurt. There was a metallic taste in his mouth, as if he had been sucking on a galvanized nail. It must be the Mars dust, he guessed; the dust, finer than talcum powder, got into everything. He took a deep sip of the electrolyte fluid, but it didn’t really help.
It was going to be a long day.
Toward midday they reached the next precipice. The canyon was wider here, the far wall barely visible, but he knew that they were south of the main canyon and this was just a spur. Instead of winching the rockhopper down, this time they turned east, following the top of the cliff.
From the satellite photos, it had looked to him that if they navigated right, they could thread a path which crossed over the canyons on a spit of land, a narrow ridge that dropped rapidly on either side.
After about five miles, the cliff edge curved around to the northeast. A few more miles, and they came to a point. To the left, to the right, there was nothing visible but canyon. Radkowski stopped the rockhopper.
Ahead of them, a ridge cut across the canyon, dropping away on both sides. It disappeared into the distance, curving gently downward. It must have been a sharp edge once, carved away from either side by the enormous, unknown knife that had carved the great canyon. But now, millions, probably billions of years later, the sharpness of the ridge had been rounded, and there was, if not actually a level place at the center, at least a wider place, wide enough that perhaps the rockhopper would be able to cross the canyon without descending.
They stowed the dirt-rover on its rack on the rockhopper. He directed Tana, Ryan, and Trevor to walk ahead on foot, roped together for safety. With Estrela in the cabin with him, he took the rockhopper along the narrow trail behind them.
It was like driving on a tightrope. He gave the driving his entire attention; focusing on the tiny ribbon of ridgetop ahead of him as if he could keep the rockhopper balanced by sheer willpower. In a way it was simple; on the narrow cusp of the ridge, there were no obstacles, no boulders, no crevasses. As long as he kept to the ridgeline it was easy.
And at first the ridge was wide enough to be almost a road, sloping slightly downward at a gentle angle. It was wide enough for the three crew members ahead of him to walk side by side, Trevor skipping and running ahead to peer down over the cliff edge on one side, then the other.
“How are you doing there, Commander?” It was Ryan’s voice.
He toggled the radio to reply. “Not bad so far.”
“If you get tired and want me to take a turn driving, let me know.”
“Okay. No problem so far.”
But as they went further on, the ridgeline narrowed. Now it was narrow enough that he could no longer keep all six wheels on the ridgeline. He slewed the rover around crabwise, until it was turned completely sideways on the ridge. Each wheel of the rockhopper had independent steering, and he used this feature to turn all six wheels ninety degrees. Now the rock-hopper could roll sideways, and he could keep the two middle wheels on the peak of the ridge. The two fore wheels and the two rear wheels he extended downward to the full length of the cantilever struts, conforming to the shape of the ridge, pressing against the ridge on either side to give him balance. The belly of the rover was dangerously close to scraping the ridge, but there was nothing he could do about it.
The pressurized cabin of the rover hung out over the edge of the cliff. Below him he saw nothing but an endless slope downward, downward to a bottom that was invisible in the distance below.
Ahead of him, the three crew members were walking in a single file now, Tana in the lead, Ryan at the back. The trail, narrow for the rock-hopper, was much wider for those on foot, but they had also slowed their pace. It was dangerous for them as well. He knew that Ryan Martin had the worst position. If Trevor ahead of him were to slip and fall off the ridge, Ryan would have to instantly jump off of the ridge on the opposite side, or risk having Trevor’s fall pull them all over.