Glory on Mars (21 page)

"It's not the same as seeing with your own eyes,
Governor."

"Thank you, Emma. I will note that for reference
purposes."

Rover Two trundled northeast towards a break in the
ridge they would cross. It stopped occasionally so Emma could
analyze some unexpected discontinuity, usually a small impact
crater. She took the controls and maneuvered safely around each of
these until Governor got the hang of it.

"Ancient..." Claude said as Emma drove close enough
to a shallow crater for him to see its floor. "See how the sand has
coated the walls?"

Emma relaxed back in her seat and watched the scenery
go by. Scattered chunks of dark rock increasingly protruded from
the plain's rippled dunes. Around midmorning, she noticed the rover
tilt slightly to one side. They were traversing a low ridge tiled
with slabs of rock.

Claude pointed out fingers of something gray
radiating towards them. Ejecta - freshly exposed sand and chunks of
dark rock not yet rusted red.

Emma paused the rover. The crater wasn't far ahead.
It wouldn't have been hard to find from this distance, even without
Governor and the satellites. A plume of dust drifted up and hung
above the plain.

"Maybe we should leave the rover here. Go out and
reconnoiter on foot," Emma said.

Claude frowned as he stood at his walkabout's access
door. "It's like
becoming
a ship in a bottle."

"Once you're inside it's comfy as your favorite old
chair." Emma smiled at the imager. They'd agreed to stream the trip
live to MEX.

Emma pulled open the hatches where the walkabouts
hung on the rover's hull. Grabbing two handholds, she hopped her
feet up into the opening, bending her knees to slide into the
suit's legs. She tucked her head, folded her elbows against her
chest, sat up into the suit's torso, and stretched her arms into
the sleeves.

"Ready Claude?"

Claude, less limber, lagged behind, but soon
confirmed he was ready.

"Governor, open suit comms and seal us up." Motors
whirred softly as Emma's walkabout pulled the access hatch closed
at her back, the rover's docking clamps released, and the crane arm
above the suit lowered her to the ground. The suit's tail extended
automatically to form a stable tripod. The crane held her steady as
the life support pack slid down and latched against the walkabout's
back. With a gentle whoosh, the breathing air system activated, and
the crane disengaged with a clunk.

Emma bounced from foot to foot and felt herself
tilting backwards. The suit's tail steadied her. She kicked the
surface sending up a cloud with the divot of sand.

"Claude, I'm going to try the rapid travel feature."
She leaned forward and kicked off hard with both feet. Like pumping
a swing back on Earth, she kicked harder each time her feet struck
the ground, leaving a cloud of dust to mark each impact. Soon she
was flying between kicks. Inside the suit, the whisper of the
breathing air system never varied but the hum of motors cycled in
time with her movements.

"This feels strange," she said for the benefit of the
feed to Earth.

"The suit does the work, but even so my legs are
getting cramped. I must remember to learn to relax my muscles."

She stood up straight at the top of a jump and the
suit landed on feet and tail, taking the shock of the sudden
stop.

"Uff." Despite the walkabout's shock absorbers, the
landing rattled her bones. "Governor, note that maneuver's only for
an emergency stop."

Emma looked around for Rover Two. It was hard to
judge distance on the sand, but the bright blue rover looked very
far away with a small Claude moving deliberately at the back
bed.

"Hey, Claude. Did you see me?"

"Yeah, you were flying. How's the suit doing?"

"Just great. Coming back, now. Governor, rapid
travel." Emma leaned forward and kicked off, but this time she rode
the suit like a horse, not pumping with each hop, and stood up
little by little over a couple hops to make a more graceful
stop.

"Claude, where'd you go?"

Claude came around from the other side of the rover,
swinging both feet forward for each step while the tail supported
the suit. He towed a box on sled runners.

"Just hiding so you don't run me over."

Emma laughed and led the way to the crater. The
walkabouts were performing well and crossing the Martian sands was
exhilarating. Emma felt sure Daan would accept the walkabouts for
mountain climbing, and that her father would be pleased.

***

It took almost an hour to reach the edge of the
crater since Claude was looking for bits of meteorite and stopped
often to pick up rocks from the gray ejecta rays. He imaged each
one carefully and noted the coordinates with Governor before
dropping it in his box sled and moving on.

A pale cloud rose from the crater, fine as smoke, and
wafted around the rim above their heads.

"That's extremely fine dust created by the impact,"
Claude said. "In this low gravity, it'll take a long time to settle
completely."

"The ground slopes down into the crater," Emma said
as they circled the crater. "The meteor must have hit at an angle
from the north."

"A shallow angle," Claude said, following her down
the slope. "Less than twenty degrees."

Emma took a few short hops across the rocky crater
floor. It was a dozen hops long and half as wide.

"Don't hop too close to any of the walls," Claude
said. At its highest point, the far wall was twice as tall as a
walkabout. "The rock could collapse."

"So where's the meteorite?" Emma appraised the bare,
gray crater floor through the light fog of dust. Gray striations
splayed up the cliff on the far side like a frozen explosion.

"Gone, mostly. Vaporized. But Governor has the
crater's dimensions, and if I've got any pieces of the meteorite,
we can measure their density and calculate how big it must have
been to create this crater. I'll show you how."

Emma grinned, even though he couldn't see her. He was
still a good teacher.

"Let's bring the rover closer and deploy your
drill."

They hopped back on the path Emma plotted for the
rover, leaving their footprints to mark the way.

"It's lunchtime," Claude said. "I'm hungry."

"Me, too. Time for a break."

The rover retrieved them easily, clamped them to the
hatches, and opened the access doors.

"That's the best morning I've had in a long time,"
Emma said as she helped Claude slide out of his walkabout.

Emma turned to the cabin imager. "I hope you enjoyed
our first walkabout romp on Mars. Please join us later for more
surface activities. Governor, shut down the feed." Emma thought the
morning had gone well. The Earth Scan sphere should be spinning
happily.

Chapter Twenty-Seven:
First Date

They ate lunch with the settlers back at Kamp. Liz
gathered everyone in the north habitat and, while Governor drove
the rover along the path they'd marked, Emma and Claude sat in the
two front seats by a screen and imager. Emma grinned as she
described the kangaroo-hop for rapid travel.

"But I'm really looking forward to this afternoon
when we deploy the drill." He finished his extra-sweet tea and
plunked the cup down.

"Have any of you explorers looked at the weather
forecast?" Ruby asked.

"It's a beautiful spring day here," Claude said. "I'd
be working in short sleeves if I could breathe out there."

"I guess it's just a pilot thing. Ground pounders
never think to look up. There's a front crossing Olympus Mons
now."

"When's it supposed to pass us?"

"Three or four hours. The wind will pick up as it
runs downslope to the Tharsis Plain, so it'll raise dust."

"Okay," Emma said. "That shouldn't cause us any
trouble. With GPS guidance, Rover Two could bring us home in the
dark if necessary."

The rover stopped with a slight sway and Emma
switched off the video from Kamp.

"Before you start a feed to MEX..." Claude snagged
his duffle bag from the seat behind him. "I thought we might take
advantage of our privacy tonight. I brought a couple beers." He
fished a pouch from his bag. "One for each of us. I appreciate
gravity - I can pour my beer into a real glass - well, cup."

"I thought you drank the last of the beer for New
Year's."

"This came in my gift box."

Emma laughed. She had the tin of cheese and salami
her mother sent in her own bag.

"We can have a proper date - two kids out cruising,"
he said.

"It'll be the first date on Mars. MEX will hate to
miss recording a video." And miss it, they will, she added to
herself.

"Maybe we should leave a rover docked at Kamp all the
time - for dates." His mouth ticked up at one corner. A cute smile,
Emma thought, as a fluttery sensation ran through her.

Before the silence dragged out, she cleared her
throat.

"Let's set up the inflatable. It'll just take a
minute. I'll go out and you pressurize it before you join me."

The inflatable habitat was stowed on the back bed of
the rover next to the drill. Robotic assist from the walkabout made
it easy for Emma to carry it around to the rover's airlock. She
pushed the inflatable's seal ring into the channel around the door,
locked the clamps, and pulled packing straps loose. That took care
of the outside work.

"Claude. Go ahead and pressurize."

She watched as a shudder ran through the inflatable.
Air was flowing in.

The unit was cylindrical once inflated, a half-dozen
paces across and not very tall. It struck Emma as an overly fragile
structure to trust with her life, and the reflective coating didn't
block radiation. Someone as persuasive as her father must have sold
it to Colony Mars. She'd rather play with walkabouts.

"I'm going to try a turtle move," Emma said. "If this
doesn't work, Claude, you'll have to drag me up when you get here."
She hopped though the break in the crater rim, dropped the suit to
its knees on the slope, and tipped over to one side. The walkabout
slid a short distance, plowing up sand before it stopped.

"Governor, recover to standing position." She went
limp and let the suit work. The walkabout jabbed its tail into the
sand, rolled to its hands and knees, telescoped its arms, and stood
up.

"That wasn't bad," Claude said as he hopped over to
her. "Practically graceful.

"If you're done playing around, can we deploy the
drill now? I want to get it secured in case Ruby's weather front
blows up a lot of dust."

"Does Governor run these swarm-bots?" Emma asked as
they rolled two drums to the bottom of the crater.

"Yes, there's a transceiver in the drum. Hey, look.
My suit's got a fingernail." Claude pried open a panel with a thin
edge on his walkabout's claw and activated the unit. "There's also
an internal processor that runs the drill, tells the swarm how
often to retain a sample, and which drawer to dump the cuttings."
He slid each of the half-dozen drawers around the top of the drum
in and out, confirming their operation while Emma unfolded a small
power receiver.

Now that Claude's mind was occupied, he moved
gracefully in the suit. Emma knew obsession could do that, could
banish self-consciousness.

This was a great trip. Prospecting justified the
walkabouts and that should quiet her father's critics. Besides, the
swarm-bots were neat. She'd have to learn more about them.

"Now we add the anchors."

Claude opened the second drum, a set of nested
cylinders. They slotted each cylinder into a track on the drill
unit and Claude handed Emma a shovel.

"Why haul weights from Earth when we've got an
unlimited supply of ballast right here?"

There was no sand in the new crater, and shoveling
loose rocks was hard. The walkabout joints didn't have a full human
range of motion and Emma had trouble keeping the shovel level as
she swung it to a cylinder. She began picking individual rocks from
the floor and tossing them in. Despite the draft of cool air inside
her suit, she was soon sweating. They worked on silently until Emma
noticed her helmet was clouding up. She increased the air
circulation rate, but her helmet didn't clear. She pulled an arm
into the suit's torso and touched the helmet. The fog wasn't
inside.

"Hey, Claude. I'm getting a coating of something on
my helmet."

"Me, too. It must be dust. Really fine,
electrostatically charged dust," Claude said. "The front must be
capping this dust plume, pushing it down. Look around."

Emma turned the walkabout in a circle. She was
standing in fog.

"Hey guys, this is Ruby." The message sounded in
Emma's helmet.

"Hey Ruby," Emma said, still distracted by her hazy
vision.

"You know how I told you to watch the weather
forecast?"

"Yeah."

"Well, I told you to watch the wrong weather. We've
got a space weather alert now. A solar flare is rotating towards us
and they expect the particle stream to hit in about five
hours."

"Got it. Thanks." Emma swore on the suit-to-suit
channel.

"How bad is that?" Claude asked.

"These suits don't have much shielding, and I don't
fancy my guts dissolving from radiation. We need to get inside,
under the rover's roof shield. Back inside the nederzetting would
be even better."

"The ballast cylinders are nearly full. Let's finish
them and go."

Emma bent the walkabout's knees and stretched its
arms out, picking up the largest rocks handy to dump into a
cylinder. They struggled back towards the murky shape of the rover,
sliding on the loose gravelly slope, and stowed tools. The sky was
ominously brown.

"Governor, dock us to the rover," Emma said. She
heard the click as the crane snagged her suit and felt the
walkabout compliantly go limp as it was lifted. The clamps jerked
her slightly when they engaged. And nothing else happened.