But why wasn’t the air filling his helmet? In rising panic he checked the supply hoses. Both appeared to be all right. Quickly he unstrapped himself and scrambled up the side of the bike to reach the connections. He felt for the valves. They appeared to be secure.
His ears started to ring, the first sign of oxygen deprivation. With a practiced motion he switched to his suit’s emergency bottle and took a deep breath of the welcome flood of oil-flavored air. The bottle would keep him breathing for two hours, at least.
“Surra?” he yelled. “Surra, what happened? Are you all right?”
There was no reply. Fearing the worst, he forgot his air problem, climbed down, and raced around to the other side of the bike.
From what he could see, Haley’s helmet appeared to be intact; all her lights were green. There were no other signs of damage that he could see. He reached out to shake her shoulder.
Surra jumped as if he had shocked her. She twisted her head to look up at him. Taylor could see her lips move, but heard nothing. Damn, of course, how could he with the intercom disconnected? He switched on his suit’s radio. “Are you all right?”
“We hit something back there. Didn’t see it until we were right on top of it. Oh my lord,” Surra exclaimed and pointed toward the rear of the bike.
Taylor turned to see a plume of steam spraying from the rent in the fairing. “Fire?” he asked in a panic. No, that couldn’t be right, not in the near vacuum. But what…?
“It’s the ballast water!” she exclaimed.
A prospector bike normally held two hundred liters of water, enough to supply prospectors for the few days they’d be in the desert. Taylor’d filled the tank to capacity so they’d have the added weight for stability. When they got to the lower plains, where they would need the flat-out speed, he would vent it, lose the weight, and improve performance.
But now that the water was boiling away they would have to do without, which meant being a lot more cautious on the turns.
“Bad, but not a catastrophe,” he said with resignation. “We can do all right without it.”
He waited until the plume stopped and then walked to the rear to examine for further damage, checking the frame as he went. One of the side struts was badly bent and stuck out at an odd angle to the direction of travel. The radio dish had been ripped off and lay forty meters away. Its coaxial connection had been pulled completely out of the fairing and the torn end of the cable dangled uselessly, which meant that the dish was so much scrap metal, not worth repairing. There seemed to be no other damage that he could see.
The steam had come from a deep rent near the life support area. Looking inside, he saw a glint of rapidly sublimating ice where the water line had been torn. He opened the cover hatch. Just above the place where the line was severed were the broken pieces of the multi-tank oxygen regulator. Whatever had struck the line had sheared it off and vented not only his air, but the other two bottles—sixteen hours of air—as well. A quick check showed that they had lost half of their air tanks. A few centimeters farther and they would have lost the other four tanks as well.
“Look here!” Surra’s shout over the suit radio startled him. He turned around to see her holding out a large, wickedly bent piece of metal.
“Where the hell did that come from?” he wondered angrily as he turned it over in his hands. “It looks as if it had been machined yesterday!”
“Hard to tell. It could have been out here for years without changing—no weather, you know.” Surra didn’t sound convinced, but didn’t explain further. “How’s the bike?”
“Well, the running gear looks like it’s all right, but I’m afraid that we lost quite a bit of our air. We broke one of the regulators when we hit,” he explained. “My side of the bike can’t use the tanks.”
Surra looked into the compartment. “We’ll have to split the other tanks between us,” she said, and, matching actions to words, cross-connected their air supplies with one hand.
“What’s wrong with your arm?” Taylor asked.
Surra shrugged. “Think I broke it when the bike skidded. Didn’t have my straps tight enough, I guess. Hurts like hell, but I can hold out until a rescue team can get here,” she said as she finished.
Blacker pointed at the missing radio dish. “No way to call for help, Surra. The only way we can get more air is to reach Rescue Point.”
“That’s still thirty-some hours away, even if we make the time you wanted. Shit! What do we have left?”
“We’ve got a little more than four tanks left,” he said calmly. “But with two of us sucking on it we won’t make it in time. Not both of us.”
“So only one of us can make it to Rescue Point?” she asked flatly. “Want to flip for it?” she added and laughed nervously.
Taylor looked at her. “Didn’t you say that we could cut off some more time if we crossed that steep lower set of fissures?”
Surra paused. “Nobody’s ever done that,” she started to protest. “Besides, that way’s a lot riskier, especially with me not being able to drive. But what the hell; I guess that’s a better option than flipping coins to see which one of us can learn to breath vacuum. Let’s go!” With that she climbed carefully back onto her cradle and allowed Taylor to strap her in.
Taylor returned to his own side and secured himself, shutting off his suit’s bottle and reattaching the air lines. He started the bike moving the instant he was done.
What had they said about her being a jinx?
The ground had leveled out even more as they flew down the mountain, with the hounds of urgency nipping at their heels. Although he tried to stay calm, Taylor was close to panic. Each breath was a debit to their precious air, air that could not be replaced.
He cursed himself for his stupidity. What had started as a way of impressing his family had turned into a race for survival. It was amazing how his priorities had suddenly changed. Breaking the Chu San record suddenly became of secondary importance, if that high.
Damn, why had he let Surra talk him into going off the usual route? If they’d stayed with the others someone would have seen their distress and radioed for help. Why hadn’t he been more cautious, more concerned for what might happen? Of course, had they done that, they wouldn’t have hit the metal scrap. But why didn’t wasn’t a productive line of thought. He tried to think of something else.
Why, he reflected as he steered the bike around the frequent craters and scattered rocks, was this race so important to him? Was it all ego? If so, then he’d put two lives at risk for nothing. What a fool he’d turned out to be; trying this stupid, adolescent stunt to win the approval of his family, trying to prove that he was the equal of his father, his grandfather, and all of his greats.
He turned the bike to the right to avoid a moderately-sized crater and the bike started to swerve. “Careful,” Surra advised, “without the ballast we can’t take the sharp turns.”
“Right!” he bit back.
Was she angry at him for forcing her to come with him? Sure, she’d had the choice of refusing him, but with her financial situation had there been any real choice? No, he’d seduced her to this stupid race with money and the promise of the bike. Damn it, what had he been thinking? Did the approval of his family mean that much or was he just trying to prove something to himself?