While I was recovering from the embrace, while I was living through the awkward aftermath of it, the time when we were no longer embracing, he stood in the open door, allowing the frigid wind in, evacuating all the oxygen from the interior and wailing like some blues harp player summoning a distant freight train. As I made for the door, to close it, I watched as Jim picked up the Taser and struggled out onto the front step, and because of my abstraction, it didn’t occur to me that it was there, with his last bit of energy, that he would use the Taser on himself. It was nearly inaudible, because he could scarcely any longer groan with pain, not in the condition he was in. He gave it a good shot, on the way to delivering the lethal dose, and this seemed herculean under the circumstances. He probably didn’t need such a large charge in order to be brought down. Upon the Martian soil.
I went to him, naturally. I looked at the life-support information on the little LCD screen on his wrist. I put my head on his chest. But I knew there was little I could do. Jim Rose was dead. I decided to drag him by the boots to a spot where I could bury him later in the day. When I had cleaned myself up. This I did. I hauled him to an igneous boulder adjacent, and then I went and fetched a blanket to lay upon him. I held it down with some Martian rocks. The discharging of tasks and responsibilities was keeping me going. I felt like I was doing some good. And that was enough. Who was there left to tell?
I passed a long evening filling my veins with things from the first aid kit. While I was doing that, I pondered a next move. Have I properly indicated the route back to Earth in my diary? The route back to Earth relied upon our being able to blast off in a reassembled ERV, built, in a stripped-down version, from a modular portion of the Excelsior, and some spare pieces, with available fuel from the planet Mars. A lot of consideration, in the planning stages of the Mars mission, went into the discussion of when exactly to send along the spare parts, the extra fuel. One school of thought had it that you sent the orbiter a few weeks before the astronauts were intended to return. If for some reason the astronauts needed to abort the mission early, ahead of schedule, in this schematic there was no chance that the Martian colonists would be able to get off the planet.
Additionally, there was the oblong Martian orbit, and the fact that at its farthest elliptical point, in its six hundred — odd days around the sun, it was awfully far from Earth. The amount of food and supplies needed was significantly higher if you were flying an orbiter 100 million miles back instead of 36 million. However, an emergency was an emergency. I had to secure permission from NASA to break the seal on the return fuel stockpile and begin assembling the ERV. Which, I admit, was not terribly likely. But if my assumptions were valid, as they later proved to be, that Jim’s trip out to Valles Marineris had not ended felicitously for any of our antagonists, then it was the case that there were only a very few Martian colonists left whose blessing I required. So I attempted to radio to the greenhouse.
Meanwhile, it was only natural to spend some of my spare time in consideration of the germ as well, kids. Because if the germ was communicable, then I was one with the germ, I had the germ in me, how could I not? If the hemorrhagic mess that had been Jim Rose was an example of what the germ was able to bring about in a higher life-form, I had no hope of avoiding the illness. He had embraced me, he had kissed me, I had his blood all over me still, despite my efforts to rinse some of it off in a very short, cold shower with what water was left in the power station.
The question of when exactly Jim had been infected also troubled me. Had it been when he’d drunk the water out by the Argyre Basin, on that first flight? Or had it been present in him from some earlier point? And was Brandon suffering with it too, when he killed José? Later in the evening, to discuss these and other issues, I again tried to call the greenhouse, again without success. With a newborn Martian child, those two had a lot on their hands, and they just didn’t have time to respond to every communication that came through. I therefore suited up with what must have been one of Abu’s extra jumpsuits. It didn’t fit me well, which perhaps indicated just how much physical wasting had been going on here. I hadn’t eaten in days. I just didn’t much think about food. Another good reason to go over to the greenhouse.
I took a solar-powered robotic dolly. It wasn’t quick, but the tracks to the greenhouse were well worn down now, which made this, perhaps, one of the first roads on the planet Mars. I didn’t need to have a satellite tracking device to tell me where to go, and no compass would work here. I just followed the tracks, while there was still some light. In due course, I came to the door of the greenhouse. And at this point, you know what happened, right? I found the door locked. I had locked the door myself, according to the wishes of the inhabitants, the last time I was there, but it hadn’t occurred to me that I would be locking myself out. I knocked on the door; I pounded on the door. They had not yet been out, nor had any visitors in the days since delivery.
It would have been easy enough just to smash the plastic sheeting on the exterior of the greenhouse, but even I would not have gone that far, would not have sacrificed the frail plant life that had been induced to grow there with great difficulty, so I kept pounding. They were ignoring me; this was clear enough. They were hoping I would go away. And I tried calling out, “Arnie, I know you’re in there! Please answer the door!” Imagining that a feminine sensibility might be even more easily swayed by my predicament, I tried Laurie too: “Laurie, it’s me! Jed! Please! I have things I need to discuss with you!”
It was hard to hear with the helmet on, but I thought, at last, I heard some commotion within. Arnie’s voice shouted through the door.
“Jed, I’m afraid I can’t let you in.”
“What do you mean you can’t let me in?” I shouted through the muffling of the helmet.
“There’s the danger of infection, Jed. We have a newborn here, who has no immunological defense. Imagine what could happen to this newborn. She hasn’t been exposed to any Earth diseases at all. Except what insignificant bacteria we managed to bear with us into this nearly sterile environment. We don’t have any inoculations to give her, and we can’t allow her to be in contact with anyone who might be a vector of contagion.”