And then what, Brandon wondered? What it they did find supplies? Would there be enough to get them to the pole?
As the sun set and their eyes adjusted to the dusk, they noticed an odd phenomenon. The bases of the dust devils were surrounded by pale sheets of blue flame.
“I don’t believe it,” Brandon said. “They’re on fire.”
All of them stared. The pale fire brightened and flickered. Sometimes it wrapped around and then in a flash coiled all the way up the dust devil, a column of light disappearing into the heavens. For a moment it would vanish, and then flicker back to life, a blue glow dancing at the base of the column of dust.
“Plasma discharge,” Ryan said.
“What?”
“Static electricity,” he said. “The wind blowing over the dust must generate an electric potential. Like, like rubbing over a carpet on a dry day. Something like lightning, but the pressure is too low for an arc. They’re natural fluorescent lights.”
“Is it dangerous?”
“I don’t know.” Ryan pointed ahead. “But I think we’re about to find out.”
Brandon stepped back involuntarily as the dust devil raced forward. It seemed fixated on Ryan, and enveloped him. For a moment it hovered over him, dust swirling all around. Ryan began to glow, first with blue light from his fingertips, then the blue glow jumping to his helmet, his backpack, and then for a moment he was entirely outlined in blue fire.
“Ryan!” came Tana’s voice over the radio. “Are you okay?”
For an answer there was only a burst of static. And then, almost reluctantly, the dust devil peeled away. The sheet of pale fire clung to Ryan for an instant and then faded.
Ryan looked down, then up, and then his voice came across the radio. “Testing, one, two. You hear me?”
“Coming through fine,” Tana said.
Ryan flexed his fingers, and then laughed. “Well. I guess that answers your question.”
Ryan’s suit, a moment ago covered with a film of brick-colored dust, was as clean as if it had been through the laundry.
“Still,” he said. “I think that maybe it’s time we should get inside.”
18
The Storm
The next day they were in the middle of a fully developed dust storm. There were no more dust devils; now the dust was all around them.
The landscape was odd. It was dimmer than before, lit by a soft, indirect light that was easy on the eyes. The sun was a fuzzy bright patch in the yellow sky. It was the exact color of the gravy on the creamed chicken that the high school cafeteria served, Brandon thought. Babyshit yellow, that was what the kids called it.
Brandon wondered what the kids back at his school were doing right now. He looked at the clock, but then realized that it wouldn’t help him; it was set for Martian time, for a twenty-four-hour-and-thirty-nine-minute Martian sol, not for an Earth day. He could ask Ryan—Ryan always seemed to be able to calculate that kind of stuff in his head—but what would be the point?
The training they had done on Earth before the flight had told him all about Martian dust storms. Mostly they talked about the global dust storms, storms that covered the entire planet for months at a time. But now that he thought about it, he remembered that they had told him about smaller dust storms too. How long did they last, a week?
“How bad is it going to get?” he asked Ryan.
Ryan lifted his wrist and made a measurement of the sun. His wrist carried a tiny sensor designed for a spot check of the illumination for virtual reality photography. He looked at the reading and then did some calculation in his head. “I’d say that this is about the peak of it,” he said. “Optical depth right now is about as high as it’s ever measured.”
“This is it?” Brandon was incredulous. “This is a great Martian sandstorm?”
“Sand? No.” Ryan shook his head. “It’s not a sand storm. I don’t even know if Mars has sandstorms. I doubt it. It’s just dust. And, yes, this is as bad as it gets.”
This wasn’t had. Above him, he could see the occasional flicker of blue light across the sky. It flashed in sheets, like an aurora, darting in silent splendor from horizon to horizon. It was like walking on a slightly hazy day, like a Los Angeles smog. The air seemed clear around them, but their shadows were blurred. Rocks far away in the distance were a little less sharp, and the horizon was blurred. Mountains in the distance were indistinct, blending smoothly into the yellow of the sky.
“This is a dust storm?” he said. “Heck, I’ve been through worse than this on Earth.”
Ryan shrugged. “Guess they’re a bit overrated,” he said.
19
Walkabout
The morning was Brandon’s time alone, the only time, really, that he could be by himself. He had never needed much sleep, and the adults just took too long to get moving in the morning.
The others had at last come to accept the fact that he wanted to go out exploring first thing in the morning, and let him. Mostly he didn’t even really explore, just found a rock to sit behind, where he was out of sight of the others, where he could look out in the distance, pretend he wasn’t locked up inside a tiny awful suit, pretend that his friends and his music and his virtual reality were just around the corner, and that in just a few moments he would go inside, and everything would be there.
But mostly he just wanted some time to be by himself. When he had wanted to join the Mars expedition, nobody had ever warned him that going to Mars would take away his privacy. On the whole expedition, he was never far away from the others. Even when he jerked off, it had to be in a hurry, something quick and furtive in the tiny bathroom cubicle, and he was sure that half of the others were talking behind his back while he was in there, asking just exactly what he was doing that was taking so long.
Being out on Mars in the morning was simply a chance to be alone.
The dust storm was still going, but he was used to it now and hardly noticed. One side of the habitat was covered with a fine layer of dust; it was peculiar how it had deposited on just one side. The downwind side.
The terrain he walked over still looked like sand, but the sand was cemented together, firm as concrete. Indurated soil. The phrase came back to him from the hours of geology briefings. Martian duricrust.
He didn’t feel like sitting, so he picked the most interesting landmark, a miniature butte perhaps half a mile away, and climbed up to the top. It was smaller than it looked, only about twenty feet high.
From the flat top, he could see other buttes, all seeming to be the same height, twenty feet or so above the ground. It was just like the southwest, he thought. He knew this territory. The original surface had been higher, where he was standing, and over the millennia, the winds had eroded down the surface, leaving slightly harder rock, like what he was standing on, behind to stand up above.
It must have been dust storms just like the one that was happening now that did it. So much for Ryan’s confident prediction that the dust was too fine a powder to erode anything. But then, he thought, it may have taken millions of years to erode. Billions, even. Even pretty fine dust might be able to carve down rock over a billion years.
Still, the dust storm was somewhat of a disappointment. He had pictured a storm like something from one of the songs, howling winds and sand: “the naked whip of a vengeful god / that cleanses flesh to alabaster bone.” He had pictured coming out of a tent and finding themselves buried. Something a little more than a smoggy day with heat lightning.