Ben made the connections himself and would not let Otto come near, even threatening him with the wrench when he tried to. One tank of oxygen blew the shelter up to a pudding-shaped mound. The second erected it to a firm dome and the pressure valve on the inlet sealed shut automatically. Ben knew that he was almost out of oxygen, but he could not stop before he finished this. He attached the green tank and left it alone to fill the insulating layer by itself. Now the heater. He was dragging it toward the airlock on the shelter. Letting go he staggered one step, two, then dropped unconscious.
"More soup?" Otto asked.
"A good idea." He sipped the cup empty and passed it over. "I'm sorry about the names I called you. Particularly since you managed to save my life right afterwards." Otto looked uncomfortable and bent over the pressure stove.
"That's all right, Ben. I deserved what you called me and more. I must have panicked. I'm not used to this kind of thing the way you are."
"I've never been to Mars before!"
"You know what I mean. You've been everywhere else. I've been to college and to the job and holidays in the Bahamas. I'm a city boy, a real urban dweller."
"You did fine when I blacked out."
"Without you there to back me up I suppose I had to. Your tank was empty and I was sure it was anoxia.
I knew the shelter had oxygen in it so I just dragged you in here as quick as I could. I pulled off your mask and you seemed to be breathing okay, but it was cold so I went after the heater, then the food. That was all. I just did what had to he done." His words trickled off into silence and he looked owl-like and frightened again behind his heavy-rimmed glasses.
"But that is all that had to be done. All that can be done." Ben leaned forward, hammering the words home. "No one could have done more. It is about time you stopped thinking of yourself as one more city boy and faced the fact that you are one of the only two Martian explorers in the whole solar system."
Otto thought about it and almost straightened up his shoulders. "That is true, isn't it?"
"Don't you forget it. The worst is over. We are safely through that box of tricks, which is always what troubled me, and we are at home on Mars. We have food, water, everything we need for months. All we have to do is take normal precautions and we do our job and go back as heroes. Rich ones."
"We have to set up the transmitter first, but that shouldn't he difficult."
"I'll take your word for it, thanks." Ben took the soup and sipped at it noisily because it was hot. "I have no idea why we even have to build another MT when we have one here. In fact I don't even know how the thing works and no one ever bothered to tell me."
"It's simple enough." Otto relaxed, on familiar ground, eager to explain, forgetting their situation for the moment. Which is just why Ben, who knew a good deal about MT theory, had asked him the question.
"The discovery of Bhattacharya space is what made matter transmission possible. Bhattacharya space — or B-space — is analogous to our three-dimensional continuum but nevertheless lies outside of it. But we can penetrate it. The interesting thing is that wherever we penetrate it, from whatever location in our own universe, we appear to come through in the same place there. So by careful alignment it is possible to have two screens sharing the same portion of B-space. The B-space in effect is allowed to penetrate into our space before each screen so that as far as we are concerned the screens no longer exist in our space-time continuum. Whatever enters one comes out of the other. That is it, simply, of course."
"Simple enough — as long as you leave out the details about how the gadget is built. But it doesn't explain why we can't leave Mars in the same manner that we came."
"There are a number of factors involved, but the more important ones are alignment power and physical distance."
"You told me distance doesn't affect the screens."
"It doesn't, directly, but it makes alignment much more difficult. The screen out there that was rocketed here to Mars has a two-foot working diameter, about the very largest we could send. Almost all of its power goes to holding its existence. The transmitter on Earth reaches out and — it is difficult to describe — latches onto it, holds it in shape, stabilizes it to receive transmission. But the same process won't happen in reverse."
"What would happen if something were sent back in the other direction?"
"There is no 'other direction.' Anything put into this transmitter would be converted to Y radiation and simply sprayed into Bhattacharya space."
"Doesn't sound healthy at all. What do you say we recharge our oxygen tanks and move the rest of the stuff in here that we are going to need? Then get some sleep."
"I'm with you."
They gathered only the immediate essentials — food, air-scrubbing equipment, and the like — then crawled into their sleeping bags. The next day they were both feeling much better and finished setting up the camp. On the third day the first pieces of the big matter transmitter were sent through.
It was a component engineer's nightmare. All the units, whatever their function, had to have been designed to fit through a two-foot hole. A number of compromises had been made. After a good many sleepless nights over the drawing boards it had been finally decided that a diesel-electric generator could not be modified enough to get it through Some nameless subengineer bestowed credit on his superiors by suggesting that enough high-charge batteries could he sent through to activate the big six-foot screen long enough to push the generator through in one piece.
The supporting frame had been set up and they had adapted a routine. Ben, who was in far better shape for the physical work, was doing most of the construction work, while Otto worked in the shelter assembling the electronic components. They helped each other when they had to. Ben finally tightened the last bolt on the steel frame, kicked it affectionately, and cycled through the airlock into the shelter. In the morning they could start wiring in the screen-face elements.
Otto was slumped over the work bench, his face flattened against a printed circuit module, his skin red and flushed. His hand was resting on the hot soldering iron and the air stank with the smell of burnt flesh.
Ben dragged him over to his bunk, feeling the burning heat of his flesh all the while. "Otto he said; shaking him, but the man was limp. His breathing was heavy and slow and he would not regain consciousness. Ben made a thorough job of bandaging the severely burnt hand and tried to order his thoughts. He was no doctor, but he had enough field training with medicine to be able to identify most severe diseases and traumatic injuries. This fitted no categories. His mind sheered away from any thoughts of what it really might he. He finally gave Otto a heavy shot of penicillin and made notes of the man's temperature, respiration, and pulse. Sealing his suit he went to the capsule and called Earth.
"I want this transcribed. I am going to give you some information. Do not answer until I am finished and when I am done do not radio but type copy and send it through the MT. All right. Otto is hurt, sick, something, I'm not sure. These are the details."
He sent what he had observed and what he had done, then waited the slow minutes until his message was received and the answer had arrived. As he finished reading it he crumpled the paper in anger and grabbed the mike.
"Yes, I have considered the possibility of a Martian disease and no, I will not research and send reports. Get a doctor through at once. Offer enough and you'll get a volunteer. Start sending his equipment now while you are finding and dressing him. Then you can send through your microscope and sampling equipment and I will be glad to look for microorganisms in the dirt or wherever you want. As we reported, we found some small plantlike growths, but we didn't bother them. The biologists can look into that. I'll look for your germs for you but only after you have done what I tell you."