The spacecraft shuddered and settled again. We watched helplessly as our two-man aircraft pulled free of its upper latch and pivoted down, breaking its back when its nose slammed into the ocher soil.
My look must have been as cold as the permafrost outside.
“My apologies, commander,” he said quickly, after he saw my face.
Unfortunately, since the lander used the oxidizer to fuel its generator and the battery leads were cut when the floor buckled, our power was gone. Our communications plan did not call for spacesuit-to-orbit communications. The plan was to relay communications through the lander, which had triply redundant transmitters. In the impossible event of a triple failure on one lander, the backup was to relay through another lander—the one that was now on its way back to Earth in the Clarke.
Per Nordli’s Fram came in overhead as we milled around our stricken lander. We could actually hear the ticks of his sonic boom—reminding us that we were on a planet with some atmosphere. We waved up at him like mad monkeys, but he was gone in a moment, over our horizon, far ahead of his shock wave. So now there were three manned spacecraft on Mars. Even in those circumstances, I took time to wonder at what we had been allowed to accomplish, and give thanks.
It was into the early afternoon before we gave up on trying to revive any of the lander’s systems. We had suit battery power for about three more hours. We could walk in the suits without power for a little longer than that, straining against the air pressure in a kind of penguin shuffle. Our air could last a little longer than the batteries but not much.
The only choice we had was to try to trek to the Norwegian base. They couldn’t see our problem, because, of course, we had taken pains to land ourselves just below their horizon. We couldn’t radio them. No matter—our digital suit radios were encrypted for privacy. I briefly considered trying to telegraph some kind of primitive code by cycling my transponder— but I didn’t know one.
It was a long walk, even in four-tenths of a gravity. Our suits were heavy, and we had to be very sparing of the power assist. We were all tired, scruffy, and unwashed. A few were injured. Some of us exceeded the capacity of the waste management systems built into some of our suits. I shall not try to describe the way we smelled. We didn’t know if anyone else in the Universe knew we were still alive.
The historical parallels are endless, and great fun, I know. I led the bigger, more expensive, and more technologically advanced expedition, but I ended up seeing just what Scott saw. I think I understood the mixed feelings Scott must have felt as he approached the South Pole a century and a decade ago, when I saw the white-bordered blue cross on a red field painted high on the side of one of the Frames tanks.
That flag had signified both the failure to be número uno, and the success of gaining his goal to Scott as well. It was in such a mental state that I approached the inflated plastic dome of the Norwegian base as the frigid Martian night began to descend on us. Our power was giving out, cold was seeping in, pride was gone, and there was only the business of survival.
The Norwegian base was half a kilometer from their ships, and it was a mess. Pieces of the partly disassembled supply landers lay strewn about. There were hoses going this way and that. Empty containers lay where they had been unpacked. They seemed to have put little time into being tidy. On the other hand, there may have been a pragmatic purposefulness about the seeming clutter—anything important was in plain view and could be reached directly from their dome’s air lock.
The transparent dome was doublewalled, and within that was a small white tent which seemed to be under positive pressure. It was also moving gently back and forth—clearly, we were not expected.
But we were running out of air, and there was nothing to do but bang very hard on the outer airlock door. A trillion dollars, twenty nations, thirty-two men, and eleven months in space had come down to this moment of low comedy as our group of five desperate beggars shuffled like arthritic penguins up to someone else’s door. I did not quite appreciate it then—I was freezing and tired.
The Norwegians thought that something was wrong with their equipment and responded to the noise immediately in hurriedly donned pressure gear, helmets in hand. Dr. Karinsdatter came out of the tent first. She clearly wasn’t expecting to see us and the power assisted hard suits look somewhat alien at first glance. It must have taken her a minute to close her mouth and open the outer air lock door.
I came through last, as was my privilege. Strangely, I did not start shaking uncontrollably until I was out of the frigid suit and into the warm air of the Norwegian base. But what keeps going through my mind is not the low comedy, but the sad, haunting melody I heard as I came in from their airlock to safety Grieg, of course. Solvejg’s song, which will always be Ingrid s song, to me. It matched my mood of remorse and humiliation.
By midnight, we had rigged emergency sleep sacks for my men from mylar blankets glued edge to edge, and settled them just inside the west perimeter of the dome. We ate a meal of reconstituted pasta and meat sauce that tasted extraordinarily good, as any meal will under such circumstances. I took a stimulant, notified our surprised colleagues in orbit that I was still alive, and began to analyze the situation and to evolve a course of action—but the next thing I knew, I was turning over under a blanket and it was morning. Dr. Karinsdatter was hovering over me with a communicator.
I found my embarrassment at begging shelter in the Norwegian s love nest was nothing compared to what happened on Earth while I was asleep. Dr. Worthing’s initial effort to have the UN take over command of Halvorsen’s mission was resolved when Secretary-General Ryskoff secured Dr. Worthing’s resignation and put Halvorsen in charge of both missions. Halvorsen found out which department heads could still fit into engineering hats and put them to work with their people to get us back safely. The others stood aside and watched.
Per thought that he had enough tools to fix our lander, if we could get fuel to it. But they were using carbon monoxide and liquid oxygen, while we were using hydrazine and nitric acid.
To find out that this had been a consideration of Halvorsen’s from the start was another suitable lesson in humility for me. He had designed the Amundsen and the Fram, as much as anything else, as a lifeboats for us, in anticipation of our failure. So much for one problem.
But once back in Mars orbit, we would have face the fact that we had, essentially, two and a half UN crews and two UN ships, one stuck out in an unuseful orbit almost out of maneuvering fuel. While Dr. Karinsdatter was seeing to my crew, I spoke to Per.
“My plan had been to take the lander back to the Zhang-Diaz and transship propellant from our supply depot. But that lander will not fly again. Can the Amundsen ferry fuel?”
“Nei. To go out to Deimos, circularize, then go back towing a large mass so we cannot aerobrake, and then burn back to Earth? We do not have enough fuel for that. The Zhang-Diaz has its nuclear engine; why not use that?”
“The design is for only two more restarts, maybe three in a crunch. It’s a thermal cycling limit—after six or seven cycles the inner frit starts to crack. It was a trade that let them make the engines lighter and more powerful— they only needed four burns. So a main orbit transfer maneuver would need two more restarts which would likely lead to an engine failure during the Earth arrival maneuver.”
“Ja.” Per smiled at me, this man whose only passion seemed to be this kind of technical problem, and that passion a mild one. “But you still have the reactor on the Leonov, powerful enough, I think, to get you all back. And you have the fuel and crew modules on the Zhang-Diaz. So, how do we now put all these pieces together?”