Glory on Mars (26 page)

"Governor?" No response. Must be too close to the
cliff to hit the satellite. But she frowned as she looked out. The
cliff wasn't very high.

"Molly, my girl. We should get going." The mule
didn't react; it had no conversation algorithms.

Emma slid into the walkabout.

"Molly, undock the suit." That was a command the mule
understood. Emma tried Governor again.

"Show my position on the heads-up display." Still
nothing. Humph.

Emma moved with a bouncy gait into full sunlight in
the center of the valley. After a short walk she found a broken
section of cliff face and clambered up on all-fours. She turned
back to watch the mule slowly placing each foot, leveling its body,
placing another foot.

I should be recording this, she thought, but the
imager failed to engage. Humph again.

She tried to walk across the level stone blocks, but
the suit veered to the left. The surface looked solid; she saw no
reason for the suit to change direction. She was trying to start a
diagnostic when the suit walked towards the cliff.

"No! Stop!" The suit walked to the edge. She tried to
crouch for a jump, but the suit ignored her and stepped off into
nothing. It hit a slope of sand piled against the cliff, flipped
forward, and slid down. Emma barely had time to brace herself. Even
so she got a sharp bump on her head.

"What the hell."

The suit rolled on its side, righted itself, and
proceeded at an angle across the valley. The opposite cliff was
shear and unbroken. The suit ran into it, staggered like a drunk,
and continued walking, now moving parallel to the cliff wall,
sometimes bouncing off a protruding chunk of rock.

Emma struggled with the suit for a while before
giving up. It was ignoring her. She pulled her arms inside again
and tapped at the panel in front of her chest.

The Kamp channel was dead. The beacon channel was
dead, too. No one was tracking her. Emma found she could open
status screens and tabbed through. The walkabout should be sending
telemetry through the comm satellites to Governor, but no upload
was indicated. There should be a GPS download every few seconds in
fluttery bursts of signal, but the GPS chart showed a solid usage
line across the top of the screen. The satellites were continuously
downloading something to the suit. Emma tried to shut down the
receiver, but the suit had stopped accepting internal input.

The suit-to-suit channel was dead, too. If the other
suit was receiving the strange GPS download, Claude or Daan would
be in the same trouble. But she couldn't help them until she
regained control.

The suit lumbered along at a constant pace. Even
though Emma tried to relax, her legs cramped and burned. The suit's
motion only varied when it bumped into rock. The cliff's shadow
spread across the floor of the valley.

Eventually the valley floor tilted upwards. She
emerged on sand with the mule following. Ahead she saw a dark
shadow farther upslope.

There shouldn't be any shadows. The sunlight was
angled towards that slope. There must be an overhang.

The GPS usage line continued steady across the top of
the screen. Maybe an overhang would block the incessant
download.

She tapped the status panel and saw her link to the
mule was still active.

"Molly, dock the suit." The mule obediently reached
out. She felt the suit jerk backwards as its clamps engaged. The
suit's legs kept moving, scooping out a depression until they no
longer touched the sand. It swung its tail, searching for the
ground.

The mule, standing sideways across the slope, tipped
over. Inside, Emma fell against her shoulder. Still firmly
connected, the walkabout suit and mule slid down the slope
together. The mule began levering in one direction, then another,
trying to regain its feet.

"Molly, it's night. Camp in the dark." She had no
idea how the stupid mule would react, but "camp" was a standard
command and she thought "dark" was defined somewhere in its program
as a measure of lumens. The mule staggered and backed upslope
towards the shadow, telescoping its rear legs to level its body.
The walkabout suit hung above the ground, legs still pumping, tail
carving a furrow in the sand. Emma twisted inside the suit but she
couldn't see where the mule was going. She was panting with
exertion when blackness swallowed her.

"Molly, stop." But the mule had already stopped. The
suit went limp and Emma let out a thankful whimper. Looking
straight out her helmet, she saw a thick crescent of light
extending side to side, maybe sand, maybe sky. Now stable, the mule
lifted Emma's life support pack, sealed itself to the suit, and
opened the access doors.

Bruised and sore, Emma fumbled for handholds and
dragged herself out of the suit. She laid on her back briefly,
clasping her knees to her chest to ease her aching back. With a
groan she rolled to look into the suit. The status line on the GPS
chart lay flat at the bottom of the screen. There was no more
download.

Gradually her heart rate slowed to normal.

Out the side windows were rough rock walls a few
steps away.

"Molly, pivot front feet to the right, one step."
That was successful.

"Repeat." Okay again.

"Repeat." The mule scraped its rear airlock door on
something. Emma fumbled for a hand light and shined it out the
window. She was in a cave, and her light disappeared into
blackness.

***

A half-dozen times Emma started to
do something,
anything
. But she stopped herself. She ate, she thought. She
came up with a plan.

The walkabout's beacon was installed in the top of
the life support pack. Being a safety requirement, it was one of
the devices Colony Mars provided with a dedicated battery, and if
she could detach it, she could turn it on manually. Emma slid back
into the walkabout and tried to grab the suit's beacon, but it was
out of reach. There was still the mule's beacon, but she'd have to
undock the suit to reach it. A pale beam from the setting Sun fell
on the suit's feet. She was afraid of the mule losing its footing
in the cave, but more afraid of the suit going wild again. She gave
Molly orders, one foot at a time, to walk a body-length deeper into
the cave before she slid into the walkabout.

"Molly, undock the suit." Emma held her breath, but
the suit stood still when the mule released the clamps. She wiggled
the manipulator claws on the arms, shuffled the feet back and
forth. So far, so good.

"Molly, kneel." Emma popped the beacon off the mule's
front corner. It was no bigger than her fist, so hitting the manual
switch with a claw took a few tries.

It should be signaling now, she thought as she turned
to the cave mouth and paused, not wanting to risk a step closer to
the opening.

"Here goes nothing," she said out loud. The suit
responded as she sat, extending its tail for support. Emma tossed
the beacon underhand, harder than she had intended. It lofted over
the lip of the cave and disappeared into the twilight.

I've been missing all sol, Emma thought. Now Governor
will receive a signal again. Figure an hour to run a jumpship
checklist and Ruby will fly straight here.

She turned to look into the back of the cave.

"I've got an hour to explore."

Emma swept her helmet light across the cave. It was
as wide as the Plaza. Sand had drifted in, leveling the entrance,
but farther back were blocks of jagged rock. Beyond that was
darkness.

"Molly. Stay here."

Emma extended the walkabout's arms and knuckle-walked
over the broken rocks. Once past the uneven surface, the cave
extended left and right as far as she could see. The floor rounded
up into walls and there were ridges running lengthwise, like melted
shelves. Emma sat the walkabout on its tail and angled her light
up. The roof was arched, and drips and curtains of rock hung on one
side. The floor was clear to her left so she walked that way.
Crystals in the wall sparkled and the cave snaked in wide curves
first one way, then the other. It reminded her of something - a
trip she'd taken once as a kid, when her parents still vacationed
together. They'd gone to Hawaii, to Volcano National Park.

That was it, Emma realized. She was inside a lava
tube, and it was a big one.

Chapter Thirty-Three:
Rescue

Emma walked on slowly, but the lava tube never
varied. How far could it go? The center of the Peacock Mons volcano
was two hundred kilometers away. That far? But rescue was her
priority. After half an hour, she chose a flat section of wall and
scratched her initials with the walkabout's claw tip. The first
vandalism on Mars, she thought with satisfaction.

Then she walked back to the mule.

The tube continued in the other direction past the
mule, out towards the plain, but there was a lot of broken rock in
the way. Emma poked around the debris and selected a few fist-sized
samples - a couple with sharp jagged edges and one covered in
crystals. Half buried in the wall behind the mule were dark brown
rocks, with dents and dimples all over, but smooth.

That looks different, Emma thought. I bet Claude
would like some of those.

She pried out small chunks to add to her pile.

"Better get ready for my rescue. Molly, dock the
suit."

The mule's life support system interfaced with the
suit's batteries, but Emma didn't want to deplete them. She set all
systems to minimal, rolled up in a blanket, plugged in her pad for
company and scrolled through the folders, looking for something to
read. There were several unopened messages stored, including one
from Malcolm.

She stared at his name in the metadata. What could he
want?

Emma - you haven't called me - you've been bad, but
I'll give you one last chance. Don't leave the settlement. The
walkabouts will never be seen again. It's your fault I have to get
rid of them. If anything bad happens, it's your fault.

A chill spread through her gut. Malcolm was a GPS
controller and the walkabout went wild with a download from the GPS
system. She sorted her old messages and opened the last one Malcolm
had sent before the jumpship crash.

Don't let them disassemble the ship. I'll be back on
shift after the weekend to convince people here.

The chill crawled from Emma's gut up to her chest.
She shut off the pad and lay awake in the dark for a long time,
staring out the window to the cave mouth, hoping to glimpse a moon
racing through the sky.

When she woke, pink dawn light spread across the sand
and a cloud of dust billowed into the cave.

"Emma, do you read me?" Ruby's voice came from her
surface suit helmet.

"Yes. In the cave above the beacon." Emma jumped up
and banged her head on the mule's ceiling.

Ruby's helmet appeared at the cave mouth. Yin
scrambled up next to her, holding the beacon in one hand.

"Are Daan and Claude alright?"

"They're fine." Ruby had hopped inside the cave and
stood with her helmet against the window.

"Their walkabout. Did it go crazy?"

"Yeah. It tried to go tramping on its own. It's still
thrashing around, docked to the rover. They're on the way back to
Kamp."

"Why didn't you come looking for me after I missed my
call-in?"

"We got an 'all's well' text," Yin said. He was
peering into the deep shadows at the back of the cave. "So we
thought, no worries."

"I didn't send a text."

"Liz didn't feel right about it. When the other suit
went off its trolley, it sent a travel log that put it kilometers
away from the rover while it was still attached. She had me flying
crisscross patterns up this way yestersol, but I had to give it up
at sunset."

"So how'd you find me?"

"Ruby did it," Yin said. "She dug into the satellite
telemetry and found your beacon signal on a direct channel while
the GPS system told us you were a hundred clicks away on a
different heading."

"I think I know why." Emma told them about the
nonstop GPS download and Malcolm's messages.

"Bloody rotter," Yin said.

"Rattle your dags, Emma, and let's get back to Kamp."
Ruby's voice was hoarse when she finally spoke. "Everyone's in a
panic and my saying you're okay isn't enough for them."

"I'll come out in my surface suit." Emma rolled
around trying to tuck her toes into the compression layer. She had
to put the life support pack on the floor and lay on top of it to
get her shoulders in the straps.

"Molly, shut down life support. Purge interior
atmosphere." One nice thing about a stupid robot - it didn't argue.
Emma's helmet muffled the whine of air escaping and in a minute the
pressure was low enough for her to open the hatch door. Two pairs
of hands hauled her out and set her on her feet. Yin tossed the
mule's beacon inside.

"Hang on." She reached back inside the mule for her
pad and dumped out the supply sack.

"I've got a present for Claude," she said, dropping
rocks into the sack.

"Governor, open a channel to the mule."

"Channel open, Emma."

It was a relief to hear Governor's mild voice again.
Emma walked Molly out of the cave. Once clear, the suit's legs
began moving again.

"Governor, shut down the damn GPS satellites - EMP
safe mode," Ruby said.

Jumper One wasn't far. Emma had never entered a
jumpship from the surface before, so Yin went first. The vertical
ladder was easy to climb, but she had to sidestep along a lip to
the open airlock. Yin pulled her around the frame of the door. Emma
hurried to the controls.

"Give me a minute to open a channel to the mule -
move it out of that cave..."

Ruby hovered in a cloud of engine exhaust and snagged
the mule with the ship's grapplers.