It was nearly impossible to sleep, and they huddled together, too tired to move, too tired to complain. With the continuous sunlight, there was no sense of time. After six hours, without any discussion, they put their suits on.
When they got outside, they saw that the waste heat from the sausage habitat had sublimed the ice away from under it, and the sausage had settled into a hollow half a meter deep.
They continued north.
For the first three days, snow geysers burst forth unexpectedly all around them, and they constantly worried that at any moment one might open beneath them. As they worked farther north, the snow geysers got smaller and less frequent, until they stopped being a threat.
In some places, the ice was just a thin crust suspended above a layer of gas below. The first footstep to touch it would trigger a collapse, and with a rattling crunch, an area as large as a soccer field would suddenly fragment and fall a distance of two or three centimeters.
They would walk on the rough ice, and ski across the snow, until Ryan called a break. He inflated the sausage, and they crawled into the cold, stinking interior. It was a relief to take the suits off, even briefly. After a month of nearly continuous wear, every wrinkle and irregularity of the suits was rubbing their skin raw.
But in the constant light, none of them could really sleep. They took to resting only for three-hour naps, huddling in a semiconscious stupor that was neither sleep nor wakefulness, until Ryan told them it was time for them to put on their suits and push onward.
They came to cliffs of ice and laboriously hacked steps into the ice to climb. The route was upward, ever upward. Twice they came to immense crevasses, hundreds of meters wide, crossing their path. The depths were misty with a white fog, fading into darkness as far down as they could look. It was impossible to cross them, and so they detoured around, cursing at the delay.
They continued north.
15
Across the Ice
Estrela Conselheiro had experienced snow, but never so much of it. In the years she had lived in Cleveland, the winters had been mild, and snow was a rare thing, something that came once or twice a winter, melting in a day or so. Some of the older people in the city told stories of how in the last century it had been different, how the winters had been cold, and snow a meter deep, but no one really remembered.
Now she was surrounded by it.
In places the wind had sculpted the snow up in ridges like frozen waves. Other places the ice was swept clear of snow and glowed almost blue in the pale sunlight.
In all directions, as far as it was possible to see, there was only ice. Estrela had to confront the secret that she had never shared with any of the crew: The immensity of Mars terrified her.
They moved in silence. Estrela felt as if she were alone on the face of an uncaring planet. She seemed to be walking in a narrow cavern, a knife-thin slot between the blue-white ice below and the dirty yellow sky above. She felt that she was small, an insignificant speck crawling across the wrinkled ice.
But, to her surprise, she realized on the second day that it no longer terrified her. The ice was just ice, the sky just sky. Neither ice nor sky cared who she was or what she had done. She didn’t have to explain herself to them, didn’t have to pretend to be anybody. She could forget the others, forget even João, in the presence of uncaring immensity. It was as if she weren’t even there at all.
Estrela walked as if hypnotized, half-numbed from cold, numbed from lack of sleep, ignoring the others, alone inside her suit.
Alone between the ice and the sky, Estrela Conselheiro felt free to be nobody at all.
16
The Buried Spaceship
It took them eight days to reach the pole.
They came over the ice ridge, and Jesus do Sul was visible. Or the top half of the spacecraft was visible.
Jesus do Sul had sunk into the ice.
Estrela stopped abruptly, as if suddenly waking from a long trance. “Jesus do Sul,” she said softly, as if it were some puzzling words she were trying to understand, and then, more firmly, “Jesus do Sul.” Then suddenly she screamed and ran toward the ship. “João! João!”
Around the spacecraft, the snow was clean and undisturbed. Not even a ripple marked the locations where the two Brazilian explorers had fallen.
Ryan started to go to her, and Tana held him back. She switched over to the private channel. “Leave her be,” she said. “I think she needs to be alone for a while. Let’s go check out the spacecraft.”
They were desperately in need of the supplies. They had eaten the last of their ration bricks two days ago and were living on nothing but one liter of recycled water per day. It wasn’t enough, and they were all suffering from the effects of dehydration.
There was a habitat module at the base of the Jesus do Sul. Ryan knew where it had to be—he had watched the tapes of the Brazilian exploration hundreds of times and had memorized all the details of the base—but nothing was visible. It was buried beneath the snow.
Estrela was looking around frantically. “João!”
Tana ignored her own advice and went toward Estrela. “Estrela?” she said. “Are you all right?”
Ryan turned to the rocket. They had to get into the habitat, and they didn’t have any extra time.
The Brazilians had taken a much more streamlined approach to the design, and the part of the rocket that protruded from the snow looked like the spire of an onion-domed cathedral, with two smaller domes, the tops of the two first-stage boosters, to either side.
The dome at the top of the spire of Jesus do Sul contained the Earth Return Module, the uppermost stage of the Brazilian rocket. Ryan climbed the ladder to reach it. The hatch was over his head at an awkward angle. He pulled at the latch.
It didn’t move.
It’s locked, Ryan thought, and then immediately, no, that’s ridiculous. Nobody would put a lock on a spaceship hatch. It’s just stuck. He put his full strength against the latch and pulled. Nothing.
He paused to think. Cold. Cold, and dry, sitting in the cold and dry for eight years. The hatch had sealed solid against the rim. He went down the ladder back to the snow where he had left his skis, picked up one of the makeshift metal skis, and returned to the hatch. Using the end of the ski as a hammer, he methodically pounded, working around the edge of the sealed hatch. The metal of the ski twisted; he ignored it and kept working, moving clockwise around the seal once, twice.
He used the ski as a lever to pry against the hatch handle and tried it again. No success. He put both hands on the lever and pulled with his full strength against it, and felt something, a slight, almost infinitesimal give. He jerked it again, and then began to rhythmically pull with a succession of quick jerks. With an abrupt sucking, the bottom of the hatch pulled open, and then the top. He nearly fell backward as it opened.
The interior had two couches and a control panel. It was completely dark.
If even the emergency batteries were dead, they were in trouble. But no, when he switched over to emergency power, a feeble cockpit light came on, enough for him to see the controls.