"But you still think you can pull this off?" Madeline asked.
"Pretty sure. Not like we have much choice, anyway."
"You'll do it, mate," Bruce said, a bit too heartily. "It's just a little hop."
"True. But this ain't no kangaroo, either. 'Hops' are not really what it does." After checking a few more things, he said: "Bruce, I know you didn't have any direct training in this, but I'd feel real good about it if you'd stand by on controls to override. Just in case something blows."
"No worries, mate, I'm right here. Been running your little simulator the past couple of hours. Doubt I'll be needed, though."
Joe checked the readings also and recalculated the trajectory they would need. Then had Jackie and Gupta check it all again from
Nike.
"You are cutting it fine indeed, very fine," Gupta pronounced. "But, as you say, you have no choice. Jackie and I both check you, and
Nike
herself concurs. Good luck."
"Thanks." A.J. took a deep breath. It was more than a little ironic, he thought, that the most critical mission
Pirate
had ever been given required only a fraction of the capabilities it had originally been designed for—and it still might not make it, because that specific task hadn't been anticipated. You really couldn't ask for a better demonstration of the inherent limits of unmanned spacecraft.
He, along with many others, had been advancing that argument for years—and, now, he might well prove his point in the worst way possible. By dying.
"Here goes."
Inside
Pirate
, long-dormant pumps whirred to life. Despite the attenuation of the Martian atmosphere near
Pirate
there was still the sound of continuous thunder as the multiton test lander launched itself into the sky at a very slight angle. It rose up, seeming to float atop a cushion of near-invisible flame, and then cut off thrust. The passengers of
Thoat
watched, transfixed, as the ship that was their single hope of survival drifted upwards, then downwards, on a path that would bring it near enough to reach.
Fire flared again from the rockets to cushion the fall and prevent the relatively delicate lander from cracking itself like an egg. One of the jets sputtered. Bruce nearly took control, but saw the jet catch again. A.J's program was already compensating.
Fifty meters, forty, thirty . . . At an altitude of two meters, the rockets cut off, and the lander settled gently to the ground.
Tension vanished into elation as A.J. once more nearly leaped from his seat. "
Yes!
Distance from
Thoat
is now . . . eighty-seven point two meters."
Bruce was practically chortling. "That's great! We can hook the winch cable right to
Pirate
and draw ourselves alongside."
"And," Madeline added, just as gleefully, "Joe and I have figured out a working coupler for our two hose systems. The fuel will be flowing in minutes, after we get these two together."
"Then let's not waste any more time," Helen said, getting up. "I'm going out to get that winch cable strung."
"Coming with you!" A.J. was up now, also.
"Most of us are coming," Madeline said. "If you remember the pain it was stringing the cable the last time . . ."
"Oh, yeah. I guess we leave Joe and Bruce."
"Living in the lap of luxury as we are, mates. See you whenever you slaves are done."
With four of them working to drag the cable and fasten it to
Pirate
, the job didn't take very long. The winch, despite some worries, did not fail on the way, and Madeline and Joe's coupling scheme worked.
So, a few hours after
Pirate
had made its extremely short flight, Bruce leaned back and grinned at Joe sitting next to him. "
Thoat
's right happy now. Fuel's coming in and it ain't gonna stop until she's full up."
The engineer didn't answer, as he was busy with further designs and computations.
"What's up, Joe?"
"Figuring out how we can separate one of the fuel tanks from
Pirate
and store it on or in
Thoat
somehow. It'd be silly to try to refuel by driving back out here, and I don't know whether
Pirate
will survive a longer hop. So if we can drag some extra fuel along somehow . . ."
"Makes sense. Certainly worth looking into while we wait."
By the time the
Thoat
was refueled, Joe was satisfied. "Okay, it's going to be uncomfortable on the ride over to Target 37, but if we clear most of the equipment out of the cargo bay we can put one of the fuel tanks in there. We'll have to live with a lot of clutter for the next couple of days, I'm afraid."
"That's way better than leaving fuel a hundred kilometers behind us," Helen stated. "We'll do it. Good work, everyone."
She leaned back in her seat, feeling the tension draining out of her. "Well, whaddaya know? It looks like we might actually survive long enough to—"
"Don't say it, Helen! Don't say it!"
Gupta shook his head. "Too risky, Jackie, too risky by far. We have no opportunity for second attempts in this." He continued to study the design, but he was clearly more worried now than he had been when they first confronted the challenge. A workable solution was proving more difficult to find than he'd expected.
Jackie was just as discouraged. The problem wasn't getting something to deorbit. Gupta's original idea was sound enough, in that respect. They could unship one of the ion drives on the habitat ring and use its small but steady thrust to drop just about anything out of orbit in a few days.
The problem was the actual reentry—more precisely, surviving the impact with the ground. Parachutes were just not all that useful. They'd provide some deceleration, of course, but not nearly enough. The thickness of the Martian atmosphere was less than two percent that of Earth's.
True, most of what they intended to drop wasn't particularly sensitive to shock. But there was still a difference between an impact at twenty kilometers per hour and one at four hundred KPH. A critical difference, generally known as "crash and burn."
"What about reentry itself? How's the design there?"
Gupta's dark eyes brightened. "There we are in excellent shape. The simulations show that we have sufficient materials to make some quite large aeroshells, especially if we sacrifice some of the aerogel insulation to this important project."
"That's no problem," Jackie said, nodding. "Take it from the right places and we'll hardly notice. When you say 'quite large,' are you sure . . ."
"
Very
sure."
"Okay, just checking. I mean, we're not dropping a little rover onto the surface. We need to send them stuff measured in tons."
"I am aware that I am old and perhaps appear decrepit in your eyes, Ms. Secord, but I do not forget such simple points." Gupta's words were grave, but there was a spark of humor in his eyes.
Jackie smiled. "You're not all
that
old, Satya. And don't forget that young little me with the still-perfect neurons is the one who forgot the difference between white pipes and yellow pipes."
She turned back to the simulations. "Damn. It all comes down to . . . well, to coming down. We can get it out of orbit, and get it through the atmosphere, but we can't land it intact. Are you sure the rockets won't work?"
"No, I am not sure. But that is precisely the problem. They may work well. However, they may fail at some point, and if they fail at the wrong point . . ." He sighed. "I can guarantee a firing of a simple rocket for a short time, but this will not be so simple. There will not be time for extensive testing; perhaps only one, very small, preliminary design to be test-landed before we must land the supplies for real. A vehicle to be landed by rocket needs fine control, especially if we have no time for long prototyping. But we lack the resources of people and materiel to, as one might say, throw money at the problem, and if that control fails . . ."
"Yeah. Maybe we need to put in another call to Earth, bounce some ideas off of them, see what they . . ." She trailed off.
A poke brought her back to awareness. "Jackie? What is it? You stopped talking. Have you an idea?"
"Almost, I think. But I'm trying to figure out what it is."
What was it? Something about what I just said. Talk to other people. Bounce ideas off them—
Bounce?
The idea was at once so obvious and absurd that she burst out laughing. "I've got it, Doctor! It'll take a lot of the lining fabric in some of the holds, a hell of a lot of sealant, some carbonan reinforcement— probably have to rip some suits up for it—but we can do it!"
Gupta looked at her, one eyebrow raised in an expression of expectant amusement. "And, what, precisely, is it that we can do?"
"The third Titan probe! And what was it, um,
Mars Surveyor
? Cosmic bubblewrap, Doctor! We'll surround the thing with airbags and
bounce
it to a safe landing!"
The dignified engineer stared at her for a long moment. Then, startlingly, gave a high-pitched whoop and swung her around. "Yes! Yes indeed, yes! That is exactly the sort of thing we need! Design it well, design it strong, and it almost
cannot
fail. With a few rockets— of the simple sort—yes, Jackie! That will work!"
"Defacing the environment of Mars, sure enough," Joe stated, with all the grim satisfaction of a Cassandra. "I now have proof that we are conscienceless exploiters of this helpless planet."
Madeline smiled. "I demand to see your evidence, tree-hugger."
"Behold, o closet robber-baron." Her HUD lit up with images from
Thoat
's rear-facing cameras.
"Oh, wow," she said involuntarily.
Thoat
was crossing a flat area that looked dark gray from ground level, making its closest approach to the looming wall of the Valles Marineris. The cliffs here jutted out in a spur that
Thoat
had to skirt on its way to Target 37. The great towering ridge, scarcely a kilometer distant, threw back the sun's light diffusely, making the entire region brighter except for the dark sands.
But where
Thoat
's wide-treaded wheels had dug in, bright salmon-red-orange ridges and scalloped lines marred the ground. "Wow," she repeated.
"Interesting," Helen said. "That dark stuff is just a thin coating on the surface, it looks like. Maybe airborne dust from something else?"
"Or there could be alternating layers—maybe seasonal."
"True. Maybe the next expedition—you know, one that doesn't crash—will be able to look at it and figure it out."
"I'm sure there will be a lot of expeditions," Madeline said. She looked out the forward port. As usual, Bruce was driving, focusing most of his attention on the nearby features so as not to run into any surprises.
She raised her gaze, looking farther out. "What is
that
?"
The others looked up.
"Bugger me," Bruce said calmly.
A towering yellowish column swirled in the distance, huge, misty, threatening. As they watched, they could see it was approaching. Dust roiled about its base.
"That looks like a tornado!" The tension in Helen's voice was that of someone who had more than once found themselves in Tornado Alley during peak season.
"Sort of," A.J. said, his eyes viewing the scene through satellite and sensors. "It's a dust devil. Peak wind speed of this one appears to be about one hundred and eighty kilometers per hour, and she's about five kilometers high."
"A hundred and eighty kilometers per hour?" Bruce said. "Bloody hell."
Madeline felt the same way. Winds that fast could—
Both Joe and A.J. started laughing.
"What the hell's so funny?" Bruce demanded. Madeline glared questioningly at the two former Ares members—then at Rich, as he joined in the laughs. All of a sudden, Bruce started laughing also.
Madeline looked at Helen. "Maybe it's a male thing. You know, driving toward certain death? Like their idiot ancestors used to charge into battle naked, to show they weren't afraid."
That caused A.J., who had been about to say something, to laugh again. "Sorry, sorry, but—look, we're on
Mars
. The air pressure out there is less than a fiftieth of Earth's. That's how dense—or thin, rather—it is compared to our atmosphere. And it's how dense a fluid material is that really determines how hard it's going to hit you. Look at water: if you immerse yourself in water and even weigh yourself down with lead, just try standing against a current of a few kilometers an hour."
"Oh." Madeline felt foolish. She had a vague memory of reading something about this in one of the dozens of books and papers she'd studied during their training for the mission.
Helen stared out the port. "So what you're saying is that you could walk right out there into that thing and it'd feel like being in . . . "
Joe did the calculations for her. "About a sixteen kilometer per hour wind back home. A nice breeze, and that's about it. With a bunch of dust."
"So it's no threat?"
"None at all, not to
Thoat
. In fact, we should have all our sensors going as we drive through it. Might learn something. Though I'd slow down a bit in the fog."
"Don't need to teach me my business, mate. I don't drive faster when I can see less, rest assured."
Madeline still felt an involuntary tension as the swirling vortex approached. Towering as high as the canyon walls and spinning at over a hundred miles per hour, it did not seem harmless at all but a looming, elemental threat.
Then
Thoat
was plunging into the maelstrom. She thought she felt a faint vibration, and there was a slight hissing noise. But aside from the sight of the dirty yellowish haze streaming by and obscuring their normal vision, the huge rover simply ignored the formidable-looking dust devil.
A faint, almost subliminal flicker made her jump. "What's that?"
Bruce and A.J. leaned forward. "Hey! That's cool." Deep purplish light shimmered, barely at the level of visibility, on the few sharper edges on
Thoat
's nose. The violet light brightened and seemed to leap from one of the short sensor antennas toward the ground several times.