Looking back the way he had come, he could see the habitat. They had picked the bottom of a gentle dip in the ground to put up the bubble, and inside it he could see the shadows of the other three Mars-nauts just beginning to stir about. They weren’t even breakfasting yet, he thought. Slowpokes.
He thought about giving them a call on the radio, just to check in, but decided they just might ask him to come back in and help deflate the habitat. It would be ages before they would be ready to move on, and he didn’t feel like coming back yet.
He scrambled down the edge of the miniature butte and walked over to climb the next one.
There was still plenty of time to explore.
20
Morning Call
The habitat was deflated and packed away. Tana and Estrela were suited up, as was Ryan, and they were ready to go.
“Ryan Martin to Brandon,” Ryan broadcast, once again. “Calling Brandon. Calling Brandon. Come in.”
Where the hell was Brandon?
“Possibly his suit radio is malfunctioning,” Tana said. “Maybe he hears you, but can’t respond.”
If his radio had failed, it didn’t seem likely that he wouldn’t return immediately, but maybe he had found something interesting. “Brandon, we’re not receiving you. If you’re hearing this, return immediately. Brandon, return immediately.”
In the worst case, even if his radio had completely failed, he would trigger his emergency beacon, which ran from a separate thermal battery, completely separated from the rest of the systems. The suit could fail completely and the emergency beacon would work.
But where was he?
The wind and the settling dust had thoroughly erased his footprints. Ryan had no guess even which direction to look. He had vanished without a trace.
“Brandon, come home,” Ryan broadcast. “Brandon, we’re here. Brandon, come home.”
There was no answer.
21
Coming Home Late
Brandon Weber wasn’t worried, not yet. He had been waiting for the call for him to return to the campsite, and enjoying the chance to walk during their delay. He mildly wondered what the others were doing that was taking them so long to get moving, and wandered a little farther than he had planned.
He checked the time, and with a shock realized that it was after nine. Where the heck were they doing? Where was that radio call, anyway?
He toggled his radio. “Brandon, ah, Whitman, checking in. What’s up, guys?”
No answer. He toggled his radio again, and then with a sinking feeling noticed that the red light didn’t come on.
Uh-oh. The suit radio wasn’t working. No wonder they hadn’t called; they’d probably been calling for an hour and were going to be as mad as hell.
He toggled it a couple more times. Was it was possible that it was the light that had failed, not the radio? “Hello, camp. Brandon here? Are you there?”
Nothing.
“Uh, I’m coming back. Wait for me, okay?”
They were going to be pissed.
A radio check was part of the space-suit checkout, but nobody else had been around when he went through the check list. He couldn’t recall if the red light had come on or not.
It didn’t matter now. He had better get back to camp, pronto.
They were going to be mad as hell.
22
Missing
Ryan started the search by climbing to the top of one of the mesa formations nearby. From that height, he could see much farther, but no Brandon.
The dust storm was continuing at full vigor, but the suspended dust barely impeded his visibility. The wind had completely vanished, and there was no trace of motion anywhere to be seen. The sky was flat, as uniform as if it had been spray-painted onto smooth plaster no more than an arm’s length away.
From up here the horizon must be four or five kilometers away, but it was only slightly blurred from the dust. Brandon was nowhere in sight. The countryside was like a maze, Ryan thought. There were almost a hundred of the little mesas in view, and lots of places he couldn’t see. Brandon could be behind any one of them.
He tried the radio again. “Brandon! Come in, Brandon!”
It was impossible that he could be lost. He had an inertial compass. And, if he got completely lost, why didn’t he trigger his emergency beacon?
“Brandon! Report immediately! Brandon!”
23
Walk
For the last hour, Brandon had been thinking, with rising uneasiness, the habitat must be just behind that next butte. No, it’s the next one. The next one.
At last he stopped. It couldn’t be this far. He must have, somehow, walked past it.
Okay, don’t panic.
For the tenth time since realizing that he was due back at the habitat, he scrambled up one of the little buttes and looked around. For miles around, nothing.
Don’t panic, don’t panic.
The dust was like a smooth brick dome over his head, circumscribing the world.
He must have gone too far. It was easy to get confused here. All of the little buttes looked so much alike. He should have paid more attention to the landscape. Don’t panic, it will be okay.
He must have gone right past, somehow missed seeing it. Okay, he wasn’t lost. He’d have to backtrack. He still had his sense of direction. He looked up at the sun, but it was little help, just a slightly brighter patch of sunlight almost directly overhead.
Maybe he should to trigger his emergency beacon, he thought. It wasn’t an emergency, not really, but the others would be worried. If he triggered his beacon it would show them that he was all right.
And it would give them a radio signal to locate him.
No, it wasn’t really an emergency, but it would be prudent to be safe, he thought. They wouldn’t blame him for being cautious, would they? The emergency beacon was mounted at the back of his suit, where his hip pocket would be, if it had a pocket. The thermal battery required that you break a seal, then pull a trigger tab that mixed the chemicals that reacted to power the signal.
He could feel the emergency beacon, right where it was supposed to be, but he couldn’t find the trigger tab. He twisted around to look. The socket that should have held the battery was empty. Don’t panic, don’t panic. Brandon Weber began to run.
24
Search Parties
They searched all day, fanning out in widening spirals away from the base. Over and over Tana or Estrela saw what they thought were footprints, that on close examination turned out to be just weathered depressions in the rock. The hardpan soil did not take tracks, or if it had, the wind and the gently settling dust had erased them. And dust had settled over everything, erasing contrast, making the rocks almost indistinguishable from the soil or the sky.
After they had searched for a kilometer in every direction from the dome, they searched again, this time more meticulously, checking each notch between rocks, every narrow cleft, every crack, fracture, or ravine where Brandon might be lying injured or unconscious.
He was nowhere to be found.
By nightfall they realized that Brandon was not coming back.
25
Sense of Where You Are
By nightfall Brandon realized he was not going to find his way back.
He had been walking for hours. He remembered running blindly and screaming, only coming to his senses when he tripped over a fracture in the sandstone. His sense of direction, always infallible on Earth, had betrayed him. He had no idea where the others were, one mile away or a hundred, or even whether they had decided he was gone and left without him.