The inaugural ceremony was being piped sunward live for Earthside propaganda purposes. "Live," that is, if you discount the seven light-minutes our signal requires to bang Goldstone's ear in the far off Mojave Desert.
The Founding Fathers at Biblis Fons, 160 kilometers south of Olympic Base, where Jesperson and I had halted the crawler and ducked inside to watch the show on a small raster monitor, elected to open the proceedings with our new "anthem": the Mars theme from an astrology-inspired mishmash called The Planets by the English composer, Gustav Holst.
Or so Jesperson told me. Jess knows about such things; guess I tend to lean on his answers—up to a point. "You're joshing," I said. "An Englishman with a moniker like Holst?"
"Shush, Barney!" Jess put a finger to his lips.
Huh, some anthem! You could not hum, whistle, or sing the damned thing. The music is all brass and thunder; but compelling in a monotonous, grinding way. In that respect, I suppose it does typify Mars.
At the fadeout, our erstwhile chief medic, Deputy Director-elect Hiroshi Yokomizo, nervously cleared his throat at the rostrum. Yokie is a happy troop; even when arguing with someone, his rhetoric spills through a cherubic grin. Now, facing the camera and flushed with the dignity of his new office, I hardly recognized him. He tried to give the impression of addressing some large gathering rather than ninety leathery, half-starved Marsrats—those who bothered to stop work and turn on their video receivers, at any rate—and twenty-seven children . . .
Wait, make that eighty-nine Marsrats. Mrs. What's-her-name, that nice Eskimo lady, had been found frozen to death outside West Tunnel just last week, no? OK, eighty-nine, then. Counting Jess and me.
But twenty-seven kids there were—hardy, resilient little devils Victor Gonzalez likes to call Mars-ratons. One of them is mine—mine and Lorna's. Inflicting Mars on one child seemed crime enough; Lorna and I have made sure that we will never have another.
All but four of the children were born under the roofed crater of Biblis Fons, where the harsh, unrelenting, ocher plain of Mesogaea gives way to the harsh, unrelenting, ocher plain of Tharsis. As if you could tell the difference.
Step outside the ringwall—not forgetting your humidifier re-breather, summer parka, and UV cloak—and you'll see the wan sun standing in a sky that shades subtly from powder blue to sable only a few degrees above the too-near horizon. Should you be foolhardy enough to venture out into the bone-chilling night, best remember to wear thermal underwear and your heaviest parka; and by all means check the electrolyte level in your pack batteries before you leave, else be discovered lying stiff and brittle under the unwinking stars, like nice Mrs. What's-her-name.
Jesperson and I hung in there, attentive to what Yokie was saying, until he began trumpeting Vonex Corporation, the giant North American conglomerate who originally "sponsored" our brave, nonprofit new world (gleefully filing for hundreds of millions in tax write-offs the while). Yokie's pitch had been wrung from Vonex recruitment brochures: "—a self-sustaining bastion of humanity; a nucleus-society, protected from Earthly population pressure and the ever-present fear of Armageddon—" and so on.
Which earned him a flatulent raspberry from Jesperson. Jess and I had heard that "self-sustaining" crap once too often.
Except for exotic drugs, medicines and chemicals we can't yet produce, the colony today is totally independent of Earth—until the bolide with our number on it comes along, or the cold gets us, or the constant ultraviolet bath, or we run out of precious water.
Or until Nix Olympica wakes from ancient slumbers and blows its cloud-wreathed top again.
Jess and I were getting the fidgets. Doc Yokomizo made mention of the remarkable strides our engineering and agronomy staffs had made during the past year—our year: 686.996 E-days, to be exact. Without further preamble, he introduced Director-elect Scheierkopf.
"Ten-hut!" said Jesperson. "Our Leader speaks."
"Softly," I said with a grin. "Let's show some respect."
Jesperson snorted. Scheierkopf, an energetic, loquacious gnome, belongs in an emeritus chair of philosophy at some ivied university. He eased into his discourse the way a landlubber eases into chilly water—by way of a folksy anecdote (probably invented, because I recall no such incident) concerning the colony's clogged drains last fall. Scheierkopf laid it on even more thickly than had Yokomizo: pure Vonex party line, and a waste of breath. Nine out of ten Earthbound consumers think of Marsrats as freaks. They're probably correct.
The speech turned us off. Jesperson flinched when the old geezer dwelt on "humanity's bright future on Mars." And, dammit, he kept referring to us as "Mars-rationalized humans" instead of Marsrats, which for some reason grates on the ear like a hangnail on a blackboard.
When you finally leave the isolated processing ward at Bevvins Clinic in Christchurch, New Zealand, and they hoist your sealed capsule aboard the SST for the flight to the Pacific Launch Site operated by Vonex near Hawaii, they stamp "Mars-rationalized" across all your papers. It should be written in blood, or better, engraved on platinum foil and bonded to your forehead.
It's a one-way street, brother! You can't go home again.
The first Viking unmanned lander resolved all "Is there life on Mars?" speculation by hanging a nutrient-covered palette in the alien breeze. A few nosy microbes obliged, deciding they liked the glop. They multiplied and were fruitful, sending waves of telemetered ecstasy up the spines of Earthly scientists. Much later, Martian bacteria were found to be few and far between. They operate on a different wavelength from their Earthly cousins, and seem to want nothing to do with us. Which is maybe just as well.
Aside from microscopic bugs, a few lichens, mosses and such cling desperately to existence here and there in places sheltered from the ravening winds and the sand which flies before them, from constant, high-energy ultraviolet irradiation, from the abysmal cold. That's it—period.
Plus we Marsrats, of course. Or what's left of us.
One by one, the manned expeditions attacked Mars' hairy environmental problems: the -140° F winter nights—even here, near the equator—the intense UV blast, the utter absence of free water on the surface. Our skimpy atmosphere contains ninety-four percent carbon dioxide, with traces of oxygen, ozone and other gases—a honey of a problem for oxygen breathers, a problem whose solution demanded true genius.
Luckily, one came along. An obscure cellular physiologist named Bevvins was solely responsible for opening Mars to colonization. About fifty E-years ago, aboard a research satellite orbiting Jupiter, Bevvins gambled with an experimental enzyme he'd been developing under the cloak of government security—one of those projects which are often funded, then forgotten. Dr. Bevvins gambled and won. The wraps came off Bevvinase, the Miracle Enzyme which enables conversion of carbon dioxide to oxygen en vivo, the way plants do it. We now have Mars-rationalized trees, plants and stock animals. Not to mention a passel of useless, necessary dogs and cats.
The pets are also C02- breathers. Forever. A hell of a long time, forever. Any way you look at it.
"Had enough?" Jesperson glanced at me, one hand on the monitor's control panel.
"Kill it, Jess."
"We'll miss the pomp and circumstance," he said. "The UN Secretary General is going to swear-in Scheierkopf and Yokomizo by proxy."
"What a kick in the head! Come on; let's get truckin' for home. I'm tired." I was also disenchanted with Scheierkopf's version of Hearts and Flowers.
Jesperson hit the off-switch. He rubbed his jaw for a moment, stewing about something. Then he switched the monitor on again, diddling with the selector knob until the basalt curtain-wall of Nix Olympica's lower cliffs grew to fill the screen.
We were much too close to see more than a smidgen of the volcano, having just returned from inspecting the lower still pipe, and the windmills which power the heaters. The trickle of water we get from Nix Olympica's "still" (it's not really that, but we've called it a still too long to change) is what keeps Biblis Fons alive.
"I'll climb that mother some day," said Jesperson in a wistful tone. "I swear I will."
"Sure." I laughed aloud. "You'll sprout wings and fly, too."
Jess took no offense; we'd had this conversation before. He studied the image; the cliffs reared like a collage of landscapes from some King Kong movie—furled, ruggedly convoluted ropes of lava drip that had serpentined down ages ago from high above. The scarp at the volcano's base rises about sixteen thousand feet above a layered pediment.
"I mean it," said Jesperson.
And he did mean it. Jesperson speaks his mind. A hard guy to get acquainted with, he's a moody, intense, overeducated Marsrat; lean and UV-irradiated and parchment dry as everyone else on this dust-ball. His conversation—what there is of it—tends to be laced with acid.
Like me, Jess had had an unhappy Earthside experience. He would righteously deny ever confiding it to a soul, but he would be wrong. Some years ago, when in his cups, he'd babbled the tale to me. Employed by a "government agency"—the kind that never gets talked about—he had somehow come to do less than was expected of him. A girl was involved (aren't they always?) and a strip of microfilm which he'd let stray into the wrong hands; all very fuzzy and cloak-and-daggery. His boss had offered simple alternatives: a termination contract with prejudice, or Mars.
I know how Jess must have felt. The judge offered me a similar choice after the jury returned a guilty verdict. The other guy had provoked the brawl, so it was simple manslaughter, not murder two. At least I'd had no "termination" worries. But thoughts of ten years in the slammer when you're young ... I was young, and black, and a helluva lot more arrogant in those days. Hizzonor did not care for arrogance; he cared for black people even less . . . It's a dull story.
Jesperson had chosen the one-way trip to Mars—and found Nix Olympica.
In a few hours, after we had coaxed and wrestled the crawler down through the terraced uplands surrounding the volcano's base— which covers about the same area as the State of Nebraska, by the way—and rolled out onto the western edge of Tharsis toward home, we would be able to look back and see it all. Barring a sandstorm, we would see Nix Olympica's mighty summit lofting almost fifteen miles above the surrounding plains, wearing a perpetual crown of windblown water ice.
That's how the volcano got its name—Snow of Olympus. Sharp-eyed astronomers spotted the plume almost two centuries ago; someone of a classical bent—someone like Jesperson—hung the label on it.
The volcano obsessed Jesperson. It fascinated him the way a mongoose fascinates a cobra. He was aware that, by this analogy, he represented the snake, and that the mongoose never loses. I think that's why the challenge intrigued him so. He wanted the cobra to come out on top—just once.
The fact that Nix Olympica's forty-five-mile-wide caldera soared more than seventy-six thousand feet over our heads didn't seem to worry Jesperson in the least.
Don't misunderstand; many men have been up there. Thirty E-years ago, Vonex brought the big construction gang to Mars—two large manned vehicles, trailed by a staggered chain of radio-controlled freighter drones. Specially built VTOL Mars-landers dumped workmen and equipment onto the untrustworthy volcanic plug forming the caldera's floor. Another crew jury-rigged a small plant in the nearby desert and fused the sands of Mars into miles and miles of glass pipe. With heartbreaking difficulty, the upper pipe string was installed downhill from the catch basins and collection vats to meet the lower sections hoisted up from below. The pipeline dropped down the sheer fall of the cliffs, and ran out across Tharsis to Biblis Fons— our lifeline.
There is plenty of water in Mars, you see; almost none on its surface. Or in its atmosphere. Trouble is, Mars' free water is frozen beneath the deserts; we have no way of drilling for it—yet. Two principal exhalations of volcanoes are carbon dioxide and water; we certainly need both. Above all, water. The great shield volcano's deep inner fires melt subterranean ice; hundreds of thousands of gas-fed blowholes and vents dotting the southern slopes force water out where we can get at it. It freezes again, each night; the sun melts some of it—the little which doesn't evaporate—each day. The collection vats are filled with insulating tufa, so most of the catch stays liquid as it percolates deeper and deeper to the manifold system which feeds the main pipe.
It was a high-risk project. Altogether, fourteen men lost their lives on the slopes of Nix Olympica.
Later, the construction guys erected the UV roof-shield over our crater, dumped the tons of raw materials, Mars-rationalized seeds, cuttings, dry-frozen foodstuffs and suchlike inside, and went home-rich. They'd earned their bonuses twenty times over, accomplishing all this while wearing cumbersome pressure suits.
But no one before Jesperson had ever seriously entertained the notion of climbing the monster.
Jesperson had done considerable rock climbing before his misadventure: the Dolomites in southeastern Europe, the Alps and, of course, California's Sierra. He and two companions had once climbed the northwest face of Yosemite's Half Dome "clean," using chocks and hand-set aluminum wedges instead of hammered pitons, to avoid spoiling the rock for those climbers who would follow. That's the kind of Marsrat Jesperson is.
When you get to know him.
We didn't bother with re-breather masks or UV cloaks for the short trot to the crawler. The summer afternoon was mild—I'd guess the middle forties, Fahrenheit—with a light wind from the southeast. An Earthly gale, but a mere Martian zephyr.
Most times, the Martian wind is a paper tiger—all sound and no fury. It whistles and moans and howls around your ears, but there's little "shove" behind it—too few molecules of gas per cubic centimeter to exert much force. In the summer, however, global convection patterns begin to create the sort of winds which lift millions of tons of dust into the thin air. Then, look out! The highest wind velocity ever recorded at Biblis Fons is on the order of 360 kilometers per hour. That happened during the Great Storm four summers ago which lasted three and one-half E-months, cloaking the entire planet in reddish-brown misery.
I once stung Jesperson into a scathing lecture by making the simple observation that no matter how damned fast it zipped past, our skimpy air shouldn't be able to power windmills or do the damage it did during sandstorms. He put me down with complicated force diagrams, a lot of jazz about Bernoulli Effects, the specific weight of air, gas dynamics, and how the computer at Biblis fluted or feathered the windmill vanes in proportion to wind velocity, and blah blah! Jesperson can be maddening when he gets wound up, but I'm used to him. The wind can be maddening, too, though it gives us plentiful power—our single ample commodity.
I energized the crawler and drove the first leg, while Jess napped. The fuel cell gauges rode the green line; no sweat there. I found what was left of the ruts we had made coming out, day before yesterday, and turned south, hiking it up to fifty kilometers per hour until we reached the first declivity between terraces. The pipeline was a black line drawn across the desert; we passed whirling sentinel windmills powering the aqueduct's heaters.
Two hours later, Jesperson woke up and yawned. "What's for dinner?"
"Guess?" We agreed to stop and eat together.
Jesperson grabbed a pair of wineglasses from the cupboard with one hand, setting them on the collapsible table (everything which can possibly be fabricated from glass, is) then took down the remaining Zinfandel. We have wine, champagne and brandy; the grape cuttings processed in the San Joaquin Valley have done very well. But no beer or distilled spirits. Grains don't prosper here.
I dumped some of the goofy "Italian" dressing Lorna makes on a double handful of greens from the fridge, tossed them, and set the glass bowls on the table. Jess smeared bean spread on a few slices of ersatz bread and heated the onions.
Jesperson had just popped the glass cork, preparing to decant the wine, when the empty glasses began singing—a high-pitched, barely audible whine that made my pulse rate jump.
"Quake!" yelled Jess. "Grab hold of something!"
We didn't have time. A sledge hammer blow rammed the crawler sideways. I caromed off the edge of a forward foldbunk, then got knocked to the floor. The crawler danced and jittered for the longest time, accompanied by the crash of shattering glass and a series of frightful creaks and groans. Our crawlers were engineered for Mars' three-eighths G. I began to worry about whether this one would stay together.
Don't know how you feel about quakes. I'm agin' 'em; I grew up in southern California. My childhood memories are clouded by the helpless, choking terror that comes over you when the too, too solid ground you've taken for granted all your life begins to undulate like a shaken carpet.
The crawler finally quit pitching. The noise abated, leaving us canted about twenty degrees to port. In the sudden quiet, I was too scared to move.
Jesperson rose slowly across the cabin, picking pieces of my salad out of his hair. He cursed in a steady monotone. "You all right, Barney?"
I nodded. "I think so. Wh . . . why are we leaning?"
He went forward to find out. "Fissure! Quick, up here!"
I knocked my head on the table getting up, then scrambled into the right-hand seat as Jess energized the crawler. We were sitting a-straddle of a spooky-looking fissure that seemed to open slightly wider before it disappeared in the near distance. You couldn't see far; the wind had picked up loose sand and dust agitated by the quake and was whipping it hither and yon.
Our starboard track labored uselessly in midair; the other dug a sandy trench. The crawler lay stranded, bottomed on the lip of the crack. One portion of Tharsis now lay several feet higher than the other.
Jesperson tried rocking the crawler back and forth. No dice.
"We're stuck," I said inanely.
"An understatement, Barney." Looking very angry, Jess powered-down the crawler. "We'll have to dig the old girl out. Come along."
We were preparing to go outside when the second jolt hit—an aftershock of much less intensity or duration than the first. The crawler slewed to the left, coming to rest much nearer level than before.
Jess leaped forward and tried the controls again. This time, the tracks chewed and caught. We pitched down a bit, jolted once, then straightened and moved out into the open desert. The aft cabin was a mess, and smelled like a winery.
Jesperson kept to an easterly course for a minute or two, then swung around, heading back toward the fissure, and parked.
"Whew! Let's stay away from that bleeding crack," he said. "There may be more subsidence later."
"Uh-huh." I still had the shakes. "What now?"
"Try to raise Biblis and see how much damage they've taken."
"Right." I switched the transceiver to daytime frequency, cranked the topside horn around to face south, and called, "Biblis, this is Cee Two—Charlie Two. Jesperson and Barnes. Do you read?"
Nothing. I tried twice more, then gave up. "They're off the air."
Jesperson shrugged. "Don't get nervous; it proves nothing. They're probably running around like trampled ants, just now. Leave the channel open, and . . ."
He stiffened. He sat far forward, bending sideways to peer upward through the bubble. "Oh, Jesus-my-beads! Look at that. The old devil's come alive."
I looked upward. A huge funnel of jet black smoke was pouring from Nix Olympica's distant summit, blowing away to the northwest across Amazonis.
That spurred us. Jesperson poured the watts to the crawler; we covered fifty kilometers in little more than forty minutes, the trip punctuated by aftershocks that forced Jess to slow down.
The ringwall was in sight, a humped mesa on the southwest horizon, when our call finally came. The speakers crackled twice as the carrier wave banged our horn, then a voice with a Spanish accent said, "Crawler Two, this is Biblis. Come in, Cee Two."
"We're here, Gonzalez," I answered. "What's happening?"
"Hola muchachos!" said Victor Gonzalez. "You guys both OK?"
"Sure. How much damage is there in the crater?"
"Plenty damage," said Vic. "A couple of windmills are down up on the ringwall, and there were some injuries in North Slope—mostly sprains, bruises, broken bones and like that. Far as we know, thanks be to all the Saints, the roof-shield is intact. We didn't lose anyone, either. Least, I don't think so."
"Good. Glad to hear it, Vic. You can expect us at North Tunnel in about twenty min—"
"East Tunnel," said Jesperson from beside me. "Tell him East Tunnel; I don't want to cross the fracture zone if we can avoid it."
"As you were," I said. "Make that East Tunnel. Confirm."
"Got you, buddy," answered Gonzalez. "But you'll have to wait a little while in the lock at East. The inner doors are jammed; a crew with hydraulic jacks is working on them now. Want to come on around to South Tunnel? It's open."
Jess shook his head. "Negative. We'll wait."
"OK, compañeros. Hasta la vista."
"Speak English, you Beaner!"
"Biblis, out." Gonzalez was chuckling as he signed off.
At the entrance to East Tunnel, Jesperson wheeled the crawler in a half-circle and powered-down. He hurried aft without a word, broke out the eight-inch folded Casse-grain reflector, came back and snapped it into the mount between our seats, then attached an image-erecting porro prism eyepiece. He aimed the 'scope, turning the vernier focus slowly, and studied Nix Olympica for a long moment in silence.
"Forget your goddam pet volcano," I said. "Let's get inside; I want to check on Lorna and the boy."
"Since we must wait anyhow," said Jesperson, his voice dripping sarcasm, "I'm going to take a look. D'you mind?"
I cracked my knuckles. It's hard to act patient when you don't feel patient. Presently, an aftershock made Jess lift his head from the eyepiece.
"Well?"
"See for yourself," he said.
The summit stood out clear and sharp at twenty diameters magnification. The 'scope was achromatic; no color. But bright threads glowed just beneath the caldera's enormous rim—streams of lava flow. "Bad news," I said, straightening.
"We'll see, Barney. It might be just a dribble; we're looking at the low side of the caldera."
"But you don't think so. You're worried."
"Stop putting words in my mouth. We'll have to see what happens up there tomorrow, the next day, and the next."
Jesperson stowed the telescope, came back and energized the crawler, and we trundled through the tunnel to the outer lock. When the doors parted horizontally, we entered and parked at the loading dock, alongside Crawler Four. The outer doors closed; pressure rose to match the seven-plus psig Biblis maintains internally.
We jumped down and stretched, moving into the alcove adjacent to the inner lock doors by unspoken agreement. Years ago, some wag hand-lettered a sign and mounted it over the archway:
SMOKERS LOUNGE
It's a tired joke. All of us took the pledge upon becoming Mars-rationalized. The pledge is woefully simple: carbon dioxide will not support combustion.
Jesperson dropped on a bench, immersing himself in a dark brown study. I couldn't sit still. I prowled about aimlessly, inspecting the photomurals I'd seen a thousand times before—a deep Swiss valley, East Africa's Serengeti Plain, the Grand Canyon dusted lightly with snow. My favorite is London in the rain—all that pure, clean water just falling from the sky. I haven't smelled or felt rain for seven E-years.
I paused before another mural. "Got a minute, Jess?"
"What is it?"
"Come see the funny word."
"Word?" He got up with reluctance. The photomural depicted a grove of northern California redwoods. Across the bole of a foreground tree, someone had scrawled a single nonsense word:
CROATOAN
"A prophet of doom," said Jesperson, "is in our midst."
"How's that?"
He sighed. "A long time ago, Elizabeth I commissioned Sir Walter Raleigh to found an English colony in the New World. He did; at Roanoke, Virginia."
"And?"
"When the next sailing vessel arrived, no one was there. Just that word, carved on a tree trunk."
"Huh! What's the word mean?"
"It's a conundrum," said Jesperson.
"I don't use 'em, man; had The Operation."
It actually made Jess smile—a first! "An anagram, then. It could be an anagram of Roanoke, albeit a lousy one. No one knows."
"Well, dammit, what happened to the colonists?"
"No one knows that, either. Roanoke became known as the Lost Colony."
I frowned. It was a chilling notion. "I'd like to meet the cheery bastard who disfigured our mural," I said thoughtfully.
Then the inner lock doors rumbled open. We walked into a shambles.
Walls were down everywhere. Luckily, most were nonstructural privacy partitions which could be re-erected with relative ease. I left Jesperson with a wave and hustled toward our place, inspecting the section of roof-shield overhead as I walked.
It's a staunch piece of engineering, our roof-shield: interlocking, shell-thin glass panels whose ribbed supports form a shallow Fuller Dome. Internal overpressure helps support it. The computer can cause any or all panels to become translucent or opaque in varying degrees—some polarizing monkey-shine I don't pretend to understand—to either admit radiant energy while screening most harmful UV, or to retain internal heat at night.
Lorna and I live with the boy about halfway up North Slope—a good spot. The crater floor behind us steepens gradually until it meets the ring of anchor pilasters which secure the roof-shield. From our front door, you can look out across Biblis Fons—still mostly raw crater floor—to the far ringwall where the manufacturing sites are located. Not much, maybe; but it's home.
I entered quietly, finding Lorna mumbling under her breath as she swept up broken glassware. The place looked . . . oh, not so bad; Biblis hadn't taken the brunt of the quake that we'd felt out in Tharsis.
"Hello, babe."
"Barney!" She dropped the glass-fiber broom and rushed to hug me. "You're home! Where were you when it happened?"
"Out in the—"
"Was anyone killed?"
"No, I—"
"Oh, why did we ever come to this godforsaken place?"
"Slow down, Lorna. Where's the boy?"
"Out playing," she said. "Mrs. Chang dismissed school after the quake."
"Uh-huh. Think I'll grab a bite, then hit the sack for a few hours. I'm bushed."
"Haven't you eaten?"
"Our meal," I said, "was rudely interrupted. Jesperson ended up wearing the salad."
She looked unhappy. "Sooner or later, that bo will get you in big trouble." Lorna did not like Jesperson. She was at the end of a rather long line.
Next morning, I was in the John, washing my hands and face—carefully, using the customary cupful of water. Lorna yelled something I couldn't quite make out. She came to the bathroom door and repeated it. "Your friend is on the phone."
"Jesperson?"
"None other. Say the word, and I'll tell him to get lost."
"Tell him to hang on," I said, drying myself. I poured the dirty water into the reclamation drain and went into the hall, lifting the phone. "See? Things are never as bad as they seem, eh? No permanent damage that I—"
"Worse," he said. "Things are always worse than they seem—a corollary of Murphy's Law. The still has stopped running, Barney."
That made me pause. "No water?"
"Nary a nanoliter."
Jesperson always starts with the big words when he's upset. "Um, could be the heaters are out somewhere. Coming across Tharsis, probably; or at the base of the scarp."
"That so? Use your head; the windmills were turning all along the way when we came back. And it's summer—much too warm for water to freeze and block that insulated pipe."
I found it suddenly difficult to swallow. "Sonofabitch!"
"I'm betting the trouble's up there on the volcano," he said.
"Uh-huh." I calmed down a bit. "How much in the reservoirs?"
"A few thousand gallons, give or take. Call it five E-months' supply— if we ration severely and recycle wastes."
A word scrawled on a tree trunk rocketed past my mind's eye. I mentioned it to Jesperson, expecting commiseration.
"I die hard," he said. "Get your tail over here to the hall. They've called an extraordinary council session."
"But, Jess, I . . ."
He had rung off.
There were only about twenty-five Marsrats in the meeting room, but a hundred people's worth of noise and confusion. Director Scheierkopf kept trying to recognize someone; about fifteen rugged individualists were talking and shouting at once. Our new director was wearing out his gavel, while Dr. Yokomizo sat beside him, looking discouraged.
I found Jesperson slouched near the end of the third row of folding chairs. He didn't seem to notice when I took a seat beside him.
Then he sniffed, looking straight ahead. "Barney," he said in a monotone, "get Scheierkopf's attention. Make a motion that a sergeant-at-arms be appointed, then nominate that big, black buddy of yours. We don't need this free-for-all."
I must make a wonderful stooge. I stood up, holding one hand aloft. "Mr. Director!"
The Chair tried to recognize me, but couldn't make itself heard.
I put two fingers in my mouth and let out an ear-bending whistle. In the short silence afterward, I said, "Mr. Director, I move that we elect a sergeant-at-arms to maintain order."
Jesperson bounced to his feet. "I second the motion."
The motion carried. Scheierkopf looked grateful as he asked for nominations.
I nominated Black-like-me, an oversized, sullen cat who's got to be the finest glassblower in the known universe. About two years ago, Black-like-me and Jesperson had had a tiff which was due to end in what would have been a very one-sided mismatch. I think.
Brawls are uncommon in Biblis Fons; most of the time, everyone is too tired to bother. But Black-like-me had arranged to meet Jesperson the following Sunday and, quote: Tear 'is pinhead off by th' roots, unquote. I'd visited the glassworks the following afternoon. "Listen here, blood," I'd said, "you're black, like me; but touch my friend and you and me'll tie up on the spot."
"Fight th' li'l white devil's battles for him, do ya?"
"Nope. But having him hurt wouldn't suit me. He's my pal."
"That mouthy, skinny white devil's your pal?"
"I like mouthy, skinny white devils," I had explained.
More bewildered than coerced, Black-like-me had agreed not to savage Jesperson. When I'd mentioned this, Jess had said, "A noble act, Barnes. You've probably saved his life."
Black-like-me enjoyed his new role. After he had been "ayed" into office, he sat in the row behind us, muttering, "I bus' a few heads, maybe."
Scheierkopf began discussing the damage suffered during the quake—mostly superficial. He seemed reluctant to bring up the topic of water.
Jesperson was patience itself. He relaxed until all of the egocentric questions regarding damage to "my" quarters and "my" breakage dwindled.
At last, he casually held up one hand.
"Er, yes, Mr. Jesperson?"
"Mr. Director, I understand that our still is no longer functioning. May I ask what's being done about it?"
"Done?" The Director's spade beard waggled; he coughed politely into his cupped hand. "This problem has just arisen and, er . . . it's impossible to make a realistic evaluation of what must be done based on such minuscule data . . ."
"Then, sir," said Jess, "I move that a crawler be dispatched at once to inspect the pipeline and windmills out through Tharsis to Olympic Base, and up the escarpment."
"Up the cliffs?" Scheierkopf's eyebrows rose.
"Telescopically, of course, sir. Learning as much as possible about any problem is the first step toward solving it."
"I agree completely; an excellent suggestion. Do I hear a second?" It was seconded immediately. "Mr. Jesperson," said the Director, "since you seem to be most concerned, perhaps you would be willing to undertake the inspection tour personally."
"Ordinarily, I'd be delighted, Mr. Director. But Mr. Barnes and I returned from Olympic Base just yesterday. We were, in fact, severely shaken up by the quake. We are very tired."
Scheierkopf nodded. "I see, I see. Someone else, then."
"Yes, sir," said Jesperson. "I would, however, also like to move that an action committee be appointed to research and recommend ways and means of restoring the aqueduct to usefulness."
Before I could second the motion, a baritone from the rear called, "What's the rush? Let's clean up Biblis first, then worry about the damned still."
Jess leaned backward, whispering something. Black-like-me promptly got up and stalked the loudmouthed Marsrat, telling him to either address the Chair, or get out. He was most undiplomatic about it.
Trusting Charlie that I am, I seconded the motion. After another five minutes of parliamentary manipulation, Jesperson managed to get himself elected chairman of the committee.
On the way out, a bit later, I asked Jess why he had declined the opportunity to learn the pipeline's condition first hand.
"Let someone else go," he said. "It's probably a waste of time. The break is high up on Nix Olympica."
"How can you be so sure?"
"I'm omniscient."
"Don't smartass me, old buddy."
"Go home and get your place in order," he said kindly. "Then get a good night's rest. We're going to have a strenuous day tomorrow. Meet me at North Tunnel about seven-thirty, and wear your hiking boots. We have to start getting in shape."
"Oh, yeah!" I grabbed his arm. "Jesperson, you've been scheming for years to climb that bloody, hulking volcano. Now that an excuse has come along, you're figuring to drag me with you. Well, thanks; but no thanks. Forget it. Include me out."
He grinned that snide, know-it-all grin of his. "Which will it be? Would you rather sit here on your duff and snivel with the others while the reservoir runs dry, or help me save our collective tails by climbing the volcano?"
Half-heartedly, I allowed that I wasn't much of a sniveler.
"Barney, the 'if we do it' has been settled for us," he said slowly. "The 'when' and 'how' are all that remain to be decided. I've got the 'how' about three-quarters doped-out; there are some glitches, but nothing we can't solve." 'When' will be a matter of how long it takes to convince the braintrust that there's no other way. No other way."
"Uh-huh, or . . . Croatoan."
"You've got it," he said. "See you at seven-thirty—sharp."
Jesperson walked away, leaving me with egg on my face and the sinking suspicion that he would always be about ten moves ahead of the rest of us.
It's still mighty cold outside that early in the morning. Wearing humidifier re-breather masks, UV cloaks and summer parkas, Jess and I climbed the northern ring-wall, starting slowly, then picking up the pace bit by bit.
Jesperson is part Renaissance man, part mountain goat, and part pack mule. He lugged the eight-inch Cassegrain reflector he'd swiped from another crawler as if it were nothing. True, it does weigh only about what your lunchpail would Earthside, but the 'scope's case is bulky, cumbersome. I offered twice to spell him. He just made negative grunts and continued plodding uphill.
When we crested, an hour later, I still felt fairly strong. The wind keened and stung my cheeks; but it had warmed considerably since we started out—to maybe +20° F. Sunlight reflecting from the faceted roof-shield was blinding, making us face away. Nix Olympica's upper slopes hung above the horizon line like a still life done by some artist with a headful of acid.
Jess set up the 'scope on a hump of rock, sending me to collect a few chunks of scoria to anchor the stubby tripod legs. Taking turns, we surveyed the volcano as best we could from that distance. No more lava seemed to have issued from the east lip of the caldera, but strong billows of smoke and ash continued to cast a smoggy pall far out over Amazonis.
Jesperson tried a magnification of fifty diameters, then switched to a 70X eyepiece. He studied Nix Olympica for the best part of an hour.
On the trail down, Jess began to loosen up. Our re-breather masks and pressure suit helmets are integrally equipped with voice-actuated mikes, headphones, and a few grams of walky-talky circuitry.
"I did some homework last night in the microfile," he said. "I think we're in luck."
"Yeah, luck," I said. "All bad."
Jesperson chuckled, radiating sudden enthusiasm. There are times when he reminds me of my five-year-old. "First of all," he said, "we don't have to climb a seventy-six-thousand-foot volcano."
"That's a relief."
"Listen, dammit! We go up the south face of the cliffs, using the electric winches Vonex left behind. We cross-connect the heater windmills to the winch electrical system at the base—a cinch. That cuts out about sixteen thousand feet."
"Bully!" I said. "Except that those cables and winches have been freezing, thawing and corroding for almost thirty years. Even if they're still usable, it leaves around sixty thousand feet to climb, no?"
"No," he surprised me by saying. "Let's get back to that in a minute. The electrical windings on those winches are sealed, according to the specs I saw in the microfile. The cables are high tensile wire rope, designed to hoist thousands of heavy glass pipe sections. Surely they're still dependable enough to lift a few men and equipment."
I ruminated. "OK. I'll buy that, I guess."
"Now, think about your sixty thousand feet," he said.
"I am. That's twice the height of Everest."
"Horsepocky!" Jesperson made a disgusted snort. "Everest's summit is just shy of thirty thousand feet above sea level; the Himalayan plateau humps to around eighteen thou.
"Barney, Nix Olympica's collection vats are scattered down to about twelve thou below the summit, and the manifold system runs down another six—which lops off around eighteen thou, altogether. I'd say we'll have to do no more than forty-two, total."
I thought that over while we negotiated a particularly steep stretch of trail. "But, what if the break is higher?"
"Extremely unlikely," said Jesperson. "There are too many collection vats on the south slope—not to mention manifolds—for all to have been clobbered by the eruption. Consider this: Nix Olympica is a shield volcano; a monolith of solidified magma. Hell, as a lump, it's bigger than Phobos. It's shot with blow-holes, vents and fractures, sure; but logic says nothing much has happened to the water collection system. There's been a break, or blockage, in the main pipeline, despite the dampening struts on each support pylon. I'd bet a year's ration of wine on a break."
"Upper pipe's frozen, maybe?"
He turned to look back at me, disgust written on what I could see of his features. "Get with it! Ever see a swiftly rushing mountain stream freeze back on Earth? The upper pipeline is triple-insulated. Gravity keeps the water liquid; it flows too fast to freeze—molecular agitation, Barney. We don't have to use heaters until this side of the holding tanks at the base of the scarp. It's gravity feed all the way to Biblis, sure; but at a gradually decreasing grade."
"Oh. But, what if a mile or two of pipe's busted up? What the hell do we do about that? Glass is brittle stuff."
He shook his head. "The pipeline is visibly intact," he said with assurance. "I traced it downhill in the telescope all the way to the horizon line. And those pipe sections were annealed in an electric furnace; the Vonex engineers felt the same way you do about the mechanical properties of glass. But it was the only readily available building material around, without setting up a complex mining-smelting-foundry operation to work metals. Vonex wouldn't sit still for that kind of expenditure."
"Jesperson," I said, losing my cool, "do you honest-to-God believe we can hoist ourselves up the scarp, waltz forty-two thousand feet uphill in a semi-vacuum, fix the break—or breaks—and skip back down to drink hearty forever after?"
"Uh, no," he said. "I don't. That's the catch."
I sighed. "There always is a catch, isn't there?"
"Always. I haven't figured out a way to get us down again."
"I think you're crazy," I said. Some goddam catch!
I must be just as crazy. I climbed the ringwall with Jesperson for a week to "get in shape" before the council summoned the action committee to an evening session.
Director Scheierkopf attended to other business before getting around to Jesperson, which included listening to one recent arrival on Mars. The lady announced her intention to file a "damage claim" against Biblis Fons Colony, naming Vonex Corporation as co-defendant, in order to recover losses incurred in the quake.
"Madame, really; a damage claim?" The Director waggled his beard in perplexity.
Jess was mightily amused. "How Byzantine!" he muttered under his breath.
It got a sight more Byzantine the longer the lady talked. At last Scheierkopf, who can be a courtly old codger when the mood strikes him, lost his patience. "Madame, I'm sorry," he snapped. "I consider the unpleasantness recently visited upon us to be an act of God. If you wish redress, you must petition Him."
To an accompanying chorus of titters and jeers, the woman left the meeting room in a huff.
Suppressing a grin, Dr. Yokomizo leaned toward the Director, pointing out the next item on the agenda. "Ah, yes; Mr. Jesperson's report," said Scheierkopf, looking up. "Has the committee something to tell us?"
Some committee! The "committee" was Jess and me.
"Yes, sir," said Jesperson. "Shall I come up front?"
"Please do."
Jess took some notes from his coverall pocket. He went to stand beside Doc Yokomizo. "The committee's findings," he said, looking around the room, "indicate that unless something is done to restore our water supply within six E-months, every single one of us will be either dead, or dying."
Perhaps thirty-five sleepy-eyed Marsrats had attended the session. They all sat a little straighter in their chairs.
A buzz of conversation made Scheierkopf rap his gavel twice. "Come to order, please. Mr. Jesperson, I assume that you've gotten full shock value from that outrageous statement. You have most assuredly gained our complete attention. Please tell us what prompted such a declaration."
"Gladly, Mr. Director." Jess referred to his notes. "The eventuality I've described is inescapable; we must, I'm sure you'll all agree, have a continuing supply of potable water in order to survive. The eruption of Nix Olympica has somehow damaged the aqueduct; we know definitely that the break, or breaks, are not to be found between here and the base of the escarpment, nor in the optically inspected vertical section of pipeline.
"Ergo, we must either obtain water from other sources, repair the aqueduct, or die. Neither of the first two alternatives would seem feasible at the moment."
Again, a murmur of hushed comment traveled about the room. Yokomizo said something to the Director. Scheierkopf nodded, looking more than a little stunned. "I'm afraid I hadn't realized the extremely grave nature of our situation, Mr. Jesperson. It might be wise to contact Earth immediately and, er . . . I'm certain that a relief mission would be organized at once."
Jesperson cleared his throat. "There are only three things a relief ship could accomplish, Mr. Director. One, they could bring us a VTOL Mars-lander with which to make a very risky touch-down on the volcano's steep upper slopes— the caldera is probably a lake of molten lava just now—and attempt to repair the aqueduct. Secondly, they could rescue the colony as a whole; take us away to safety. Thirdly, they could bring us drilling equipment with which to search for subsurface ice pockets.
"Unfortunately, there are conditions and infeasibilities which preclude all three. Only two Mars-landers were ever built; one is—or was—sitting up in Nix Olympica's caldera. The second lifted the homeward-bound construction men to orbital rendezvous with the mother ship, and was then jettisoned into the sun as a menace to navigation.
"As to 'rescue'; it is an impossibility. We are all Mars-rationalized. We can never live on Earth again.
"Drilling for ice might be accomplished successfully—if we had enough time, or the mobility to search planetwide for ice deposits. We have neither."
Jesperson waited for several heartbeats during the glum silence, then turned to look down at the Director. "Sir, in your inaugural address, you described Biblis as a self-sustaining colony. I think we must prove, once and for all, our ability to truly sustain ourselves. It's the only future we can possibly have."
Out of the subdued gathering of Marsrats, a voice called, "Why cain't they bring us watah? We got a right to live." There was a chorus of vocal agreement.
"That is an absolute impossibility," said Jesperson. "Water is heavy, bulky cargo—even frozen. It would require incredible amounts of money and effort to supply us with a bare minimum of water. Even if those resources could be found, there are times when Mars and Earth are on opposite sides of the sun, when interplanetary schedules could not be met. No, shipping water to a distant, waterless world is not possible, even as a stopgap measure."
A deathly stillness had fallen over the meeting room. I watched Jesperson gauge their mood. When the first angry grumblings began, he hit them with it, and hit them hard. It was quite a performance.
"Ladies and gentlemen, it would seem that our salvation depends upon whether or not we can equip and man an expedition to climb Nix Olympica's upper slopes."
At first there were despairing catcalls and hoots. Jesperson directed a stern look toward Black-like-me. The sergeant-at-arms rose slowly and scowled at the room as a whole. Man, that cat should patent his scowl; it would curl wallpaper. They simmered down fairly fast.
In exactly a quarter of an hour, Jesperson had them cupped in the palm of his hand. He went through the geography bit, much the same as he'd done for me, except that now his material was organized. He embellished the lecture with a blackboard sketch of the volcano.
When he finished, a few guys acted ready to grab their longjohns, pack batteries and boots, and tackle Nix Olympica there and then.
Dr. Yokomizo asked how many men Jess intended to use on the climb.
Jesperson's eyes narrowed. "Doctor, have you ever read an account of a wolf chase?"
Dr. Yokomizo allowed that he never had.
"It's interesting," said Jess. "A pack of ten or twenty timberwolves will take out after a reindeer, or whatever. One or two will run hard, harrying the stag; the rest of the pack will hang back, loping easily to conserve energy, sometimes remaining miles behind the point. When the lead wolves tire, they fall back and rest; two or three others drive hard after the animal, and so on. Eventually, the quarry either runs itself to death, or is cut down.
"I propose lifting sixteen men to the top of the escarpment. Four will carry or pull the load—some lightweight sledges might be appropriate—through the first day, exerting themselves in an all-out effort while watching for the break in the pipeline. Caches of pack batteries and supplies will be dropped off at specific intervals.
"The second day, four others will work, while the first four return down the mountain, and so on. On the fourth day, if no break has yet been discovered, the remaining four will climb to the absolute limit of their strength, establish the uppermost cache of supplies, and stay overnight. Two will start downhill at first light; the other pair will take whatever patch materials they can carry and go the last leg. What I've described means climbing ten thousand feet each day, I'm afraid. But that's not an unreasonable goal now, in the summer, when we have more than fourteen hours of daylight.
"With luck, we can reach the base of the manifold system. With a bit more luck, we'll find the break much lower."
After a short pause, there was a scattering of applause; even a few cries of enthusiasm. Director Scheierkopf beamed. "Ingenious, Mr. Jesperson. There are undoubtedly many knotty problems to be overcome before the attempt is made, but it sounds a workable plan. Congratulations, sir; you have given us hope."
I collared Jesperson the minute he finished shaking hands with a gang of Marsrats who were eagerly volunteering to go with him. He had escalated himself to instant-hero in one awesome leap.
"Wonder Boy," I said, "I've a sneaky hunch who you have in mind for those last two high-climbing jokers."
He looked at me, poker-faced. "Give the gentleman a cigar!"
"Well, pardon my inquisitiveness, but does your plan now include a way to get us forty-two thousand feet down off that monster?"
"Sure," he said. "We'll use parachutes."
An hour later I said, "I'd rather die of thirst."
Jesperson had gone through the whole pitch: the gossamer-thin glass-cloth chute he had already designed; how Mars' slow terminal velocity would help our rate of descent; how the perpetual winds would make it a snap to get off the volcano's slopes, and on and on. And on.
"Knock off the salesmanship," I said. "What the hell do you know about designing parachutes?"
"I once did some skydiving," he said.
"And rode to Mars in a spaceship, yeah; but could you design and build one?"
He shrugged. "If the need arose, I suppose I'd—"
"That's crap, Jesperson! Can you walk on water, too?"
He grinned that dazzling, put-down grin of his. "Find me some, Barney. I'll give it a try."
For the next two weeks, while the water level in our reservoirs sank steadily lower, Jesperson worked us night and day. Now, twenty-five of us climbed the ring-wall daily—Jess, myself, fourteen hand-picked volunteers, and nine stand-bys.
One night after dinner, Jess phoned to ask what 1 weighed.
"Here, on Mars?"
"Where else, for Chrissake!"
"Uh, about seventy-eight pounds," I said.
"You're fat."
He hung up before I could pry an explanation out of him. Fat, he calls me! I'm skin and bones; I once tipped the scale at two-thirty, Earthside.
Next day, climbing the ringwall, Jess packed a bundle; two Marsrats behind him carried an empty glass box. He led us west along the ring-wall's rim until he found a spot he liked—a block of ejecta that never quite got ejected, with a sheer drop of maybe seventy feet on the other side. I'd twigged, by then, of course; he was going to test his homemade parachute.
Two guys set down the empty glass box; the rest of us scrounged rocks and pebbles and began to load it. When it was all but full, we closed the lid, tipped it on end, and shoved it to the brink of the precipice.
Jesperson attached his parachute to some eyelets high on the box's sides. He stood back. "There; that's you, Barney."
"I'm going to take the fall?"
"Right."
"How, pray, are we to recover me?"
He tapped a bulge in the chute with his gloved index finger. "Transponder. Vic Gonzalez jiggered it up for me. Vic's out there now." Jess pointed.
Sure enough, a crawler was sitting about five miles to the northwest, on the fringe of Mesogaea.
"Here goes," said Jess. "Stand back; it might swing sideways when the chute pops."
The wind wasn't too strong—no more than eighty knots, I'd judge. Jesperson looped a length of glass rope through the chute's D-ring and tied it. He looked left and right to make sure everyone was clear, then stepped back and jerked the lanyard.
The pack came open leisurely; then a small bottle charged with compressed CO2 ballooned the parachute with an audible whoup! The glass box was gone.
The chute was a wide, shallow-dished, translucent half-bubble that looked like an airborne Portuguese man-of-war. Its rate of descent was not very sharp, nor did it oscillate much in the wind. Jesperson called it a "ring-sail" adaptation, featuring an annular opening near the perimeter, as well as the center vent.
We watched it drift like a thistle out toward Mesogaea. It went a good bit farther than Gonzalez had anticipated. The crawler turned and chased it practically out of sight.
On the trail down, I asked Jess whether we might not drift halfway around Mars from high on Nix Olympica.
"Not to worry," he said. "I'll teach you a trick—how to spill air with your risers and sharpen the rate of descent. There are worse things than that to worry about."
"Such as? I'll get busy worrying."
"Freezing is by far the worst danger," he said. "Staying out in the open night after night will put a tremendous strain on our pack batteries. But, we've no choice."
"Uh-huh. What else?"
"Sandstorm," he said. "Wind velocities of three hundred knots are common during big storms. And we'll be climbing the windward slopes. A major storm could screw up the climb but good. Unfortunately, the season's just beginning."
"Cheerful thought." I got the impression that he was leaving out one or two minor items.
"Forget all that bad jazz," said Jesperson. "If the weather holds, we go next week."
We lost a man before we even got started—a lousy omen.
Two crawlers crammed with water, food, pack batteries, spare boots and so forth, had gone ahead a couple of days before we were due to leave. The Marsrats beavered most of the payload, and both of the spindly sledges that had been arc-welded together from bits of handrail stripped from the crawlers, to the top of the scarp without incident. The lift goes up the cliffs in five steps, with a platform and a seventy-foot boom to allow for the setback at each level. A slack cable hoist is unsafe on Mars; operating on a long moment arm, the mild force of the wind would tend to warp the payload into the cliff face. As the topside winch drives the takeup reel, a drag spindle keeps the cable taut from below. Each step lifts you about three thousand feet.
One of the Marsrats had leaned out too far when hustling a netful of gear onto the platform. He had lost his footing. They never recovered the body.
We spent the last night crowded into Olympic Base's two smallish rooms. Doc Yokomizo checked over each of the sixteen climbers, pronounced us fit, and turned us over to Jesperson. Jess made his lecture short; he stressed one directive, repeating it twice for emphasis: we were to stay alongside or beneath the pipeline at all times. Always. Vonex engineers had surveyed the southern slopes exhaustively; though the going might look awful ahead, he assured us that the pipeline took the best and safest route. Besides, we had to maintain a sharp watch for the break.
Yokomizo gave us each a sleepy pill shortly after sundown. Next thing I remember, Jesperson was shaking my shoulder. "Up and at 'em, Barney." We ate a more-than-hearty breakfast, shook hands all around, and suited-up.
We went up in the dark, with that day's four sledge men riding the first net. Black-like-me was one of them. It was -74° F, and windy—a nice summer night.
Later, I was glad of the dark. Thoughts of being hoisted three thousand vertical feet at a crack in an open-weave cargo net are bad enough without being forced to look down and see what isn't underneath you. I recall watching Phobos roll by, a sweeping arclight among the unwinking stars, and praying that my pack batteries would continue to hang in there. The wind sang in the rigging; no one said much of anything.
The spooky part is when you end up dangling seventy feet away from the platform's lights like a spider on a string, an arm lowers from the boom to grab the cable, and they warp you in. That part is nasty.
As we ascended the last leg, it was beginning to get light enough to see below. I was sorry; looking down makes you want to vomit. To me, it seemed we had already reached the summit of Mars.
The uppermost platform lies about three hundred feet below the curling lava lip at the brink of the scarp. You climb in a narrow canyon—a cleft in the lava flow—and the pipeline climbs beside you, rising quite steeply near the top. It was a weird procession. A Marsrat wearing a partially distended pressure suit, with the monk's cowl of his UV cloak tied around his bubble headpiece and the skirts of his cloak flapping around his boots, makes quite an apparition. We looked like teddy bears on our way to church.
We had to lower our visor-filters when the sun hit us. It made the going tougher, what with deep shadows everywhere underfoot. When we crested, I scrambled away from the edge quickly. Above us, the first sun bathed the gray-black slopes. The view was about what a gnat would see if he lacked the sense to climb a huge, slate-colored iceberg.
We started trekking uphill without fanfare; Jesperson allowed no pause, swinging an arm to wave us on. Black-like-me, his mates and their sledges, were already a cluster of dots a mile or two above us.
Gigantic bulges of viscous, slow-moving lava had congealed on the lower slopes. This layering isn't pitched very sharply—maybe a thirty percent grade. But I began to appreciate that forty-two thousand vertical feet meant seventy, eighty or more miles of lateral travel.
The morning went by swiftly. I sipped intermittently from the water and liquefied food tubes, fell into a steady rhythm and began to swing along easily. We hit the first abrupt rise in late forenoon, a point where gluey lava had hardened into a tumbled, thousand-foot massif. The pipeline pitched up with it; we climbed alongside the pipe, laboring a bit now. The surface was better than I'd expected; the southern slopes had been sandblasted over the eons to a pitted, grainy texture. Raw lava would have cut our boots to ribbons during the first ten miles, so this was a blessing.
Talking about climbing Nix Olympica is one thing; actually doing it is a different program. It's an exercise in endurance and agility. Mostly endurance.
The lead team failed to stop at dusk. Seeing the way ahead to be clear of obstructions, they pulled their sledges another mile or so uphill by starlight, then collapsed from exhaustion. We marched on and caught up with them quickly.
Jesperson allowed an electric lantern to drain the single fuel cell we carried long enough for us to close the valves, decouple our body waste bladders, and slip in fresh ones. Likewise for liquefied food and water bladders. It was a hasty operation.
Everyone was too tired for much conversation. Jess went around, warning us to make certain we plugged-in fresh pack batteries for the nine-plus hours of extreme cold and darkness. When he got to me, he motioned for me to switch off my radio and touched helmets. "How goes, Barney?"
"It was fun."
"Yeah? Well, it'll be more fun tomorrow. Remember: you and I are scheduled for the main event. Pace yourself; save something for the stretch drive."
"Will do," I said. "How much ground did we cover?"
"Not all that much, dammit," he said. "I estimate that we're about nine thou above the lip of the scarp. Maybe a little less. I expected better; we were fresh today. Tomorrow, everyone will be stiff and sore. Get as much sleep as you can, and mind the pack batteries."
"Check."
I watched him move on to bend over Black-like-me, then the next man. Pretty soon, the light went out. We were alone with the wind and the stars. And our thoughts.
It's awfully lonely, lying there on hard lava, with your UV cloak wrapped under you to protect the flimsy pressure suit from puncture. Our suits were ballooning quite a bit now; down on the desert floor, there is less than two percent of the "air" Earth luxuriates in at sea level. Up where we were, it gets mighty thin. I had unslung the CO2 bottles and laid them beside me. I cranked the feed down a little, watching Phobos sail by. One advantage of being a C02-breather is that in an emergency you can live for quite some time on your own exhalation before the waste products build up to toxic proportions. I decided to watch Phobos crawl all the way to the horizon . . .
Jesperson was pulling my arm. The light on the sledge was glowing; I could see Jess' grim mouth under the helmet's bubble. A thin gray wash had been borne along the eastern horizon, and a cluster of Marsrats was silhouetted against it; they were kneeling and standing around a prone figure.
During the night, Black-like-me had frozen to death. Scowling. He had either been too spent to charge his pack batteries despite Jesperson's admonition, or the batteries had failed. The black population of Mars was thereby reduced by about ten percent.
We had to leave him there. There was no choice, but it hurt. His three companions spent a moment encouraging the rest of us, then waved and headed back down the volcano's gray-black flank toward home.
The second day was dull, plodding misery. We went up and up; the shield layer's sand-smoothed surface was like a tilted dinner plate, rising forever into the black sky.
We overran the sledge-haulers in late afternoon. Ahead of us, a broken, fissured wall formed by a bulging bedding plane of lava jumped up several thousand feet. The sledge teams began climbing one behind the other, having a bitch of a time negotiating bends. Worse, terrain surfaces in the canyon had been protected somewhat from windblown sand. Sharp corners began to shred our boots.
The sledge teams slowed to a crawl, setting their feet down with extra care; a fall there in the canyon would have meant writing someone off.
At first, Jesperson waved us back when we tried to help the sledge guys. He was thinking about conserving our strength for tomorrow and the day following. As the westering sun neared the horizon, he changed his mind. Had darkness overtaken us there in the ravine, it would have meant a tough, uncomfortable night. The eight of us who were climbing unburdened took turns boosting the sledges from behind.
We went over the top as the sun dropped into Amazonis. Dark falls on Mars with unbelievable swiftness, like a cloak being drawn over a lantern. We changed food, water and waste bladders by the glow of the fuel cell light, but this time Jesperson went around and personally plugged-in fresh pack batteries for everyone. When he touched helmets with me, I said. "How'd we do?"
"Lousy. Not more than seven thou. Get some rest."
I did, believe it or not—flaked out on a stony bed of lava, with a howling ghost wind stirring the flaps of my UV cloak. That's how tired you can get.
At earliest light, we waved to the four lucky cats who were homeward bound, turned and plodded uphill, up the endless flank of that never-to-be-sufficiently-damned volcano.
The going wasn't too terrible in the morning, but I was dragging tail when we halted at noontime. I decided to change my lacerated boots then, when it was warmest. Earlier or later in the day, disconnecting your boot heater plugs invites frostbite.
The afternoon was a hypnotic monotony of fatigue and bleak lava; lava and fatigue. Jesperson drove us hard.
That evening, the self-encouraging chatter on the intercom system petered out rapidly. Jesperson flashed a weary grin, not bothering to keep our conversation private. "An honest ten thou today," he said. "We'll get there."
We went through the bladder-change ritual, ate, slept fitfully, bade good-bye to the descending foursome, and got into the sledge harnesses. I quickly found out what a piece of cake those first three days had been.
The crude sledge runners crimped and hung up on every rough edge of lava. And the sledge tended to yaw away from you; two guys can never pull with equal force. There was a sort of horse-collar, too, which we threw over our shoulders to cut down chafe after hours of tugging the glass-fiber rope. I suppose it helped.
By late afternoon I was semiconscious, going on willpower alone, when my partner passed out. He slumped forward to his knees, then sagged on his face. He rolled downhill several yards before I could drop the tow rope and grab him.
I checked his CO2 bottles; the feed was normal. Jess and his partner, who had been following us, came up quickly. My partner was unconscious for about ten minutes. I could see Jesperson's worried squint dimly through the filter-lens of his fishbowl.
The Marsrat came around, acting pretty game about going on. He seemed OK for a while, but a quarter-mile farther on he staggered and dropped to his knees.
Jess talked briefly with his partner, then came over to me. "He's through, Barney. Saddle up; we go it alone from here."
"Right," I said, but didn't really mean it.
"I want to get to the top of 'that' before sundown." Jesperson raised his gauntlet. "That" was a huge, tumbled battlement of lava. The pipeline snaked into a canyon and disappeared. I couldn't see the top of the blasted thing, it was that huge.
I followed Jess' example, unzipping my UV cloak. I shrugged it off. We strapped parachutes low on our backs, chest-slung the CO2 bottles, and struggled back into the cloaks. The other men unshipped the prepared back packs from the sledges and helped us seat them high on our shoulders, resting on the chute pack bulges and bouncing a bit when we walked. It was an ungainly arrangement; balancing yourself on a steep climb would become a helluva problem.
We were ready to travel. My partner tried to make a thumbs-up gesture with the mitten of his p-suit. I clapped his headpiece to make him feel he hadn't let us down, grabbed the other Marsrat's gauntlet briefly, and hurried after Jesperson.
In five minutes, we were all by ourselves—Jess, me, and Nix Olympica.
Getting rid of that sledge made me feel spry for a short while. We covered some ground, going up that cliff one-two-three. But we failed to make the top before darkness closed in with a rush.
It was a rotten night, spent in an alcove in the canyon wall that we found before it got completely dark. We took turns digging into each other's packs for supplies. I managed to change batteries in the dark with no hitches, but the bladder ritual almost did me in. At the last instant, I caught myself in the act of turning a valve the wrong way. You can't imagine how inutterably weary, stiff-muscled and discouraged you have to be to do that. It would have meant explosive decompression, and bye-bye Barney.
We more or less leaned against the rock wall through that awful night. Tired as I was, I never managed more than a fitful doze.
Morning found us groggy, but determined—me groggy, Jess determined. He roped us together, banged me once on the helmet in lieu of a pep talk, and we took off.
We climbed for an hour—tough going up a very steep cliff face. Jesperson was about ten feet ahead, and six feet above me, when he fell. By now second nature, I'd been scanning the pipe for signs of the break; he put his weight on his right foot and his feet went right out from under him. He landed sideways, on his butt, clawing for a purchase with both hands. The back pack overbalanced him; he came down on me.
If I had turned even a little bit, we would have spun together and gone down and down, caroming from shelf to shelf to splatter on the lava bed about two thousand feet below. I flexed my knees and caught Jess around the waist, but his pack was jammed into my visor, forcing my head back. We almost went over backward.
It was a near thing. My heart drummed paradiddles and my knees went soft. Then I noticed Jesperson's excitement. He pushed his helmet against mine aggressively. "Ice!" he yelled. "I slipped on ice."
We clambered downward a dozen yards to a spot where two men could stand, took crampons and ice axes from each other's packs, and strapped on the crampons. Now Jess knew what to expect. But ice still makes for tricky going on a steep cliffside.
Jesperson waved an arm, pointing. A miniature glacier peeked over the brow of the cliff on our left. Ten minutes later, we scrambled over the lip and beheld the most disappointing sight I have ever seen, or hope to see.
Not frozen wash from a break in the pipeline, the ice fall was the product of a volcanic vent such as those feeding the collection vats higher up the mountain. A frozen Niagara cascaded downhill in a widening fan of ice.
Jess said, "All in the game, Barney. But we're getting close; I can smell it. Let's hike."
And, as God is my witness, we hiked, removing the crampons after crossing the ice fan. Then we climbed and hiked and climbed some more to a layer of lava flow which pitched up discernibly sharper than any we had previously encountered. We trudged up the forty-five-degree incline for hours, keeping the pipeline to our left, the wind to our right. In early afternoon, Jess called a halt. I collapsed against a large boulder.
I began to notice the wind for the first time. Strange, but its howl had risen in pitch; it exerted force that you could feel as you walked. I mentioned this to Jesperson. He nodded, saying nothing. Had I had the strength left to enjoy it, I would have thought the view spectacular. Biblis Fons was a bright dimple marring the ocher plain of Tharsis, seemingly a stone's throw beyond the brow of lava. Way off to the southeast, toward the can-yonlands, the summit of North Spot, the second largest volcano on Mars, peeked over the horizon.
We used the last of the food, water and waste bladders. With luck, there were enough pack batteries to last the night and a bit of tomorrow, no more.
Despair was setting in. Neither of us wanted to admit it, though we were both thinking it, I'm sure. Nix Olympica had won; the dice had rolled, coming up snake eyes; the mongoose had whipped the cobra one more time.
I shielded my eyes against the sun and looked out over Amazonis. Somewhere far out there, in the lee of the winds whirling around this great, black monolith we were sitting on, were three invisible dots. The crawlers were to have stationed themselves at fifty-kilometer intervals; the two-man crews would be listening at their receivers, hoping to hear the bleep-bleep of our chute transponders as we were yanked from the unforgiving flank of Nix Olympica.
Our friends would wait in vain. I knew that as long as he could crawl, Jesperson's demons would drive him upward, up the volcano's endless slopes. Failure was a word Jesperson had never learned; it was simply not a part of his nature.
And I knew I'd be right behind him, staggering up through that devastation of ropy lava flow, with the gray-black shoulder of the upper heights forever looming against a black sky.
Jess had been studying the terrain ahead. "See this stuff above us, Barney. What's it remind you of?"
I shrugged. "Hell. The geographical center of Hell."
"Wrong," he said. "Some of those boulders, like the one you're leaning against, look just like the blocks of ejecta around Biblis. See them?"
"And?"
"That's not the edge of another layer; I think it's the tilted ringwall of the large crater I pointed out to you in the photos. Remember?"
"Uh-huh. So what?"
"So the crater's only about fifteen miles across. A few thousand feet above the far side is the manifold outfall."
I perked up. "You mean we're almost there?"
"That's what I mean."
"Jess, you wouldn't feed me a ration of crap just to egg me on, would you?"
"Certainly I would, Barney. But I don't have to; it's the straight skinny."
"Really?"
"Really. Come on; let's hike."
We climbed through the afternoon underneath the pipeline until it disappeared through a notch in the broken lava near the top of the rise. The footing was treacherous on that stretch. I began to think that Jess knew what he was talking about; chunks of scoria and jagged boulders were everywhere. Brick-sized rock rolled under your boots if you were careless about where you stepped.
The damned wind had teeth in it now, making it more and more difficult to keep your balance. It was a new experience; except during sandstorms, I had never before felt the Martian wind as a tangible force. I suppose I was too tired to appreciate what was going on at the time. But Jesperson knew.
Jesperson reached the crest ahead of me. He spun around clumsily, shoving up the visor-filter of his fishbowl, and did a kind of jig. He was grinning like a cheerful skull.
My heart fluttered once and rose into my throat. I clawed my way upward and crawled to the top.
My heart plummeted right back down into my boots. The break was a dozen yards away, with nothing but fifty feet of moaning wind beneath it. We couldn't get near it.
In some bygone age, a meteor had smashed into Nix Olympica's nose, leaving a jagged-walled crater floor that tilted sharply upward with the terrain. The pipeline emerged from the ringwall just beneath us, jogged up at perhaps ten degrees for a dozen yards, then pitched upward precipitously to follow the contour of the crater floor, supported by a series of spindly pylons at fifty-foot intervals.
Just beyond the knee, a lower chunk of pipe coupling had let go. The eruption probably swayed the relatively unsupported section too far laterally; the fractured section swung gently in the wind, dangling by three thicknesses of unbroken insulating material. Beneath the break, a stalactite of frozen water had all but joined a huge stalagmite of ice rising from the crater's inner wall.
I turned toward Jesperson in dismay. He was busy shucking off his back pack and CO2 bottles. As I watched, he unzipped his UV cloak and shrugged out of it, setting three or four rocks on it. In his raw pressure suit, he looked naked.
I said, "What do you think you're doing?"
"Getting set to tackle the damned pipe. What did you think?"
"How?"
"I'll show you."
"Jess," I said, "you'd better wait until morning. Only about two hours of daylight are left."
"We can't wait, Barney." He gestured. "Look down toward North Spot."
I turned. And almost fell down. I actually had to lean into the keening wind. Long, reddish-brown tongues were licking swatches from the far-off desert floor. The northern horizon was obscured by a murky brown overcast.
"Sandstorm!" I yelled. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"Extra worries never helped anyone," he said. "But, we've got a problem. Watch." He scraped a handful of dust from the lee side of a rock, holding it aloft. The wind snatched it from his gauntlet immediately. "Two hundred and fifty knots, maybe more," he said. "It's got to be now or never, Barney."
I looked at the pipe, hanging above the windblown gulf, and swallowed with difficulty. "You're thinking to crawl out there and fix the break?"
"How else?"
"Want me to go?" I heard myself say.
"You've got four thumbs," he said, grinning. "Don't be silly."
"But . . . God! It's chancy, Jess; if there's any moisture clinging to that pipe, you'll freeze your suit to it and stay there forever. And the wind ... If you fall, it's . . ."
"On Mars," he said, "every drop of water that doesn't freeze, evaporates. I'll watch it; I think we can beat the wind. It isn't that strong."
He looped the twenty-foot length of line we'd used to rope ourselves together around his waist, then tied it loosely. He slid an ice ax into his belt holster, plugged both patch kit heater elements into his pack battery outlets, then slung the bulky kits on either side of his belt.
He had me tie the length of light line to his belt padeye, wound it twice around his torso, then once around his neck dam, handing me the coil.
"Get windward, down the slope, and guy me as I go out. Don't pull; just keep the line taut. Can do?"
"You betcha!"
He took a whiff of CO2 by snapping the bayonet fitting of his air hose into the bottle's socket, disconnected, and gingerly climbed down to straddle the two-foot-diameter pipe.
I slowly picked my way down the inner slope, paying out line until I reached a good spot to stand, then pulled the line taut.
Jesperson began shinnying out along the pipe, sitting torso-erect to let the guy line take the strain caused by wind pressure on his p-suit.
I tried to stay abreast of him, but the ground fell away too steeply and ruggedly. I had to be doubly careful not to stumble; Jesperson would have had difficulty keeping his balance without the guy rope.
He reached the knee just this side of the break. I was still upwind of him, but quartering—not the spot I would have chosen. Jess didn't like it either. He leaned forward, supporting himself with his hands, crossed his booted feet under the pipe, and laid his fishbowl against its curved upper surface. With one hand, he made a choppy downhill gesture, then clutched the pipe again. Not letting the line go entirely slack, I picked my way down through the jumbled mess until I was directly upwind of Jesperson. I gave two light jerks on the line, then held it firm.
He went to work. Knees still locked around the pipe, he slowly drew out the ice ax, looped the thong around his right gauntlet, and began chipping away at the large icicle hanging from the break.
Jess worked steadily, carefully. When most of the ice was gone from one side, he switched hands and chipped at the other.
I won't soon forget the picture Jesperson made, silhouetted by the lowering sun, straddling a slick, black glass pipe in a hurricane that was blowing ten miles high across the biggest damned volcanic pile in the Solar System, while showers of ice crystals flew away from his ax.
He chopped a concave hole in the break itself; from below I could see the cavity better than he could. Then, lying flat once again, he used the tip of the ax to scour the inner lip of the fixed coupling section. He returned the ax to his belt, reached around with both hands and felt underneath to make sure that the lower lip, where the broken coupling had nested, was free of ice.
He inched forward two feet and untied the line he had wound around his waist, passing one end under the pipe. The wind obliged, blowing the free end over to where he could grasp it with his other hand. He straightened, tying a thick-fingered loop around the fixed line.
Jess fiddled with it, shinnying backward, finally managing to get the loose, flapping loop under the forward end of the dangling coupling section. He pulled upward; the broken section rose almost enough to close the gap. Jess tugged harder. Each time he pulled, the gap narrowed. Eventually, it closed.
He tied the line off, backed up about two feet, and opened the patch kit slung from his left side. The foot-wide glasscloth roll came wound around a spindle. Jess kept the flap short, holding the spindle against the pipe with one hand; with his other, he opened the warmed patch pot and daubed a brushful of gunk—some kind of special, quick-curing epoxy, I think—over the end of the glass-cloth roll to start it. He stuck the brush back in the pot and snapped down the cover.
The epoxy air-cured in no time in that wind; he started winding a shroud of glasscloth around the break. It was slow work; my arms were aching badly from holding the line taut, but Jesperson's arms must have felt like they were falling off. I was prepared to die cheerfully before letting go of that line.
It was the coolest, most methodical piece of work I've ever seen a man perform. Jess got the roped pipe wound tightly, ending on the far side of the break. Then he inched backward, gunking the shroud liberally, top, bottom and sides. He did it quickly, neatly, as if he were sitting at a work bench in Biblis Fons.
Then he surprised me. Before the near end set, he let the wind have the first patch kit entire, and started the second roll of glasscloth. Typical Jesperson! If he did it at all, he would by God do it right!
Fifteen arm-aching minutes later, he was done. He came inching backward while I climbed slowly to stay windward of him. When Jess got to the ringwall, he relaxed, slumping against the rocks in exhaustion.
I scrambled up, wanting to hug the beautiful bastard. Instead, I helped get him into his chute. The sun had fallen behind the crater's ringwall; darkness was one scant hour away.
I said, "You looked real good out there."
He nodded wearily. "Tomorrow's sun should melt the ice block inside the pipe."
"Sure," I said. "They'll be drinking the snow of Olympus tomorrow in Biblis. Let's get the hell out of here."
"Great idea, Barney. By rights, we should trek around the shoulder of the volcano a ways to quarter the wind. But, there's no time. If we wait till morning, there's the sandstorm and . . . who knows?"
"I'll follow you, Jess. Whatever you say."
"Then we might as well chance it from right here," he said. "Remember, once you clear the badlands at the base and want to spill air with your risers, be careful not to collapse the chute."
"Can do. I hope those guys are waiting out there."
"They'll be waiting," he said. I took off my UV cloak and doffed the C02 bottles. We fought the wind along the crater's rim to a spot Jesperson thought might do. We faced each other, the wind screaming around us. Then, without ceremony, Jesperson stuck his mittened hand through the chute's D-ring and tugged.
I was right behind him.
After the first rude jolt that made my testes ache, it was like the dreams of flying we've all had. Jesperson and I were borne across the lava bed beyond the crater at a helluva clip.
But something was wrong; we weren't dropping, but rising.
The lava bed fell away beneath us. Just beyond it appeared a cleft perhaps ten miles across. Three-hundred-knot winds, laden with floury dust from the plains far below, were being channeled up that gigantic canyon like a flume. The roaring river of air carried us along like a pair of thistles in a wind tunnel. We were borne higher and higher.
And higher! I couldn't see Jess' chute; he was above and slightly to the right of me. When I looked ahead, I got scared in a distant, second-handed way, as if it were happening to someone else. We were being swept directly toward the looming massif of Nix Olympica's summit at phenomenal speed. Some justice!
Suddenly, it was like being in an express elevator. I felt my stomach churn. We were carried up and up. Tired as I was, I nearly flipped at the sight.
For an instant, we were higher than the summit of Nix Olympica. I was looking down into the angry red throat of Mars himself—a seething cauldron of magma that had boiled up from the planet's bowels, filling the immense caldera from rim to rim.
The wind blew us away to the northwest, under the hundred-mile streamer of windblown water ice that had given the volcano its name.
When we were clear of the badlands, I grabbed the windward risers and spilled air, dropping fast, following Jesperson's floating chute down toward the floor of Amazonis.
I was dragged a thousand yards or so before I could catch the whipping risers and dump air. I banged my shoulder, cracked my fishbowl, almost had one leg torn off on a boulder, and lost some meat from both forearms before I got loose. I was too tired and beat up to move for a few minutes after that.
The sandstorm was picking up steam; windblown sand made the setting sun a bit of orange fuzz to the west. But you could still see, more or less, for about thirty yards. I limped downwind, searching for Jess. I'd seen his chute disappear into the reddish-brown murk just ahead of me as we came down. He couldn't be too much farther ahead.
In the failing light, I came upon some drag marks that were rapidly abrading as the sand blew away. I followed the furrows for a hundred yards, then whooped and charged toward Jesperson.
And stopped. His chute was billowing behind him like a spinnaker sail, weaving and jibbing in the gale. He was wedged between two thrusts of a small rock outcropping, not moving.
I put my back into it, hauling on the lower risers to spill air. I tore open his chest latch, eased off the harness, and let the parachute blow away.
I was on my hands and knees, trying to figure out what the trouble was, when a crawler rolled to a stop beside us. Vic Gonzalez and Dr. Yokomizo jumped down, leaning into the wind. Both wore sand masks and goggles.
Jesperson's back was broken.
Yokie injected morphine from the crawler's first aid kit. Then Victor and I broke out the litter and, handling Jess like a crate of eggs, put him aboard the crawler. After I took off my helmet, I told Gonzalez that if he bounced Jess around even once on the way back, I would feed him his own cojones. The crawler rocked gently in the wind as it circled to head back toward Biblis Fons, then found what was left of its own ruts and churned along smoothly.
Yokie wouldn't say much. He wanted to get Jess on the X-ray table, then consult with Dr. Klein, who's had neurosurgical experience. But he didn't appear overly hopeful.
Jess opened his eyes, later. He tried to grin at me. His lips moved; I had to bend way down to catch what he said.
"We . . . climbed ol' Nix."
"We climbed the mother," I said. "Rest now. Just rest."
He's going to make it. I know he's going to make it. Jesperson is a tough monkey.
He's got to be. He's a Martian.