The Ruins of Mars (The Ruins of Mars Trilogy Book 1) (23 page)

      “
Ready?” he said in a steady voice.

      “
Ready,” exhaled Harrison.

     
Pushing the handle down, Marshall swung the hatch inward, and the airlock instantly filled with blinding red sand. It billowed through the opening like the smoke of a raging fire, engulfing the two in a thick blanket of rusty haze. Harrison reached out ahead of himself like a sightless ant, feeling for the rim of the hatch while shuffling his feet along the floor to keep from tripping.

      “
Turn on your A-Vision’s
dimensional enhancement
ping,” commanded Marshall in his suit speakers.

     
Quickly obeying, Harrison engaged his Augmented Vision, and the face shield of his helmet glowed to life. The shapeless view of swirling brown and red was enhanced one hundred fold as computer-generated images, like the blueprints of a building plan, were imposed over the blurs of dust and sand. He could now see the airlock’s interior like a bat might see the curved walls of a darkened cave. The computer in his helmet sent out pings of high frequency radio waves, which bounced off of everything they touched to paint an illuminated diagram of his surroundings. Before him, the image of Marshall stood silhouetted in the open hatch.

      “
Come on,” he beckoned as Harrison made his way to the exit.

     
The two stepped out into the boiling Martian air and made a quick left, heading for the life-support station. Knowing it was just his imagination, Harrison still felt as though he could sense the radiation microwaving his organs.

     
Within minutes, they had reached the stocky life-support station, which glowed a brilliant green on the inside of their helmet glass. Kneeling in the sand at the base of the box, Marshall reached out and took hold of the two, bottom-corner locking handles. Applying a quarter turn to both levers, he waited until his Augmented Vision confirmed the action before quickly moving to the next set of panel locks. Nervously, Harrison watched a timer in the upper right-hand corner of his face shield tick off the minutes. So far they had been outside the dome for nine minutes and forty-nine seconds.

      “
There,” grunted Marshall as he turned the final two levers. “That’s the last one. Let’s open this puppy up.”

     
Taking hold of the panel’s top right-hand corner, Harrison helped Marshall lift the vented side-wall out of its track. Resting the flat sheet of steel and alloy on the ground, the two peered at the innards of the life-support station as they waited for their Augmented Vision to update and show them what to do next. The following twenty-five minutes were spent fastidiously removing all of the machinery and couplings that blocked their access to the fat cylindrical air scrubber buried deep within the belly of the life-support station. As Marshall worked his way further into the maze of connected systems, Harrison carefully applied digital labels to each piece of machinery handed to him. In this way, once their task was completed, Harrison and Marshall could correctly reassemble what they had disconnected.

     
As the driving winds hurled wave after wave of gritting Martian sand against their suits, the two explorers crouched low and moved quickly.

      “
I see it!” shouted Marshall with excitement. “I can almost reach it.”

     
Checking the clock, Harrison winced as they neared the forty-minute mark.

      “
Fifty minutes left, Ralph,” he warned.

      “
Okay, okay. I’ve got it. I just need to unplug one wire here at the end, and I’ll bring it out. Get the filters ready.”

     
Opening a large pocket on the front of his tool belt, Harrison ran a gloved fingertip across the thin filters within.

      “
Ready when you are,” he breathed.

     
With an almost childlike giggle, Marshall backed out on his knees from the inside of the life-support station, cradling the air-scrubber tube like a newborn baby. Huddling together, the two made a human shield against the violent winds as Marshall twisted the top free from the cylinder and extracted the contents slowly. A hard gust of wind shook the paper-thin filters in his hand, and the two exchanged a nervous look.

      “
Careful,” hissed Harrison as Marshall handed him the unprotected filtration unit.

     
A narrow copper pipe of thirty centimeters ran from the center of the cap to a plastic port on the opposite end of the tube. Attached to it like slices of onion on the skewer of a shish kabob, the delicate air filters sagged with two solid days’ worth of rusty sand and dust. Working his nimble fingers like a surgeon dissecting the vertebrates of a human spine, Harrison slipped the worn filters free from the copper conduit—one at a time. Letting the tattered remnants fall to the ground, neither man made an effort to collect them as they were spirited away by blasts of wind. Time was running out, and this was the first human trash to litter the planet since the Curiosity Rover of 2012. The timer on the inside of Harrison’s visor flashed red as they approached the forty-minute mark.

      “
Fuck,” spat Marshall as he impatiently waited for Harrison to finish replacing the screens.

      “
Almost done,” muttered Harrison. “Just two more.”

     
The computer-generated view of his hands as they worked at the scrubbers flickered, went out, then fizzled back into view.

      “
Shit, shit, shit shit!”

      “
What happened?”

      “
My A-Vision is cooking up. You might need to lead me back if it goes out completely.”

      “
Don’t worry about that. Just finish with the filters. We’re at thirty-eight minutes.”

      Forcing his shaking hands to steady, Harrison redoubled his concentration as violent gusts of wind threatened to tear the new filters from the conduit like the sails of a ship in stormy seas.

      “
Harrison,” came Braun’s voice in his helmet speakers. “I’m sure you are aware, but I have detected several problems with your suit’s CPU. I will continue to monitor the situation and inform you if things get any worse. Also, please do not exert yourself. Your vital signs show evidence of strain.”

      “
Yeah, no shit,” Harrison swore savagely. “Just do what you can to keep my suit online.”

      “
I will.”

     
Rushing against the clock, Harrison painstakingly slid the last of the thin screens into its place on the conduit line, wired it, then handed the part back to his eagerly trembling partner.

      “
Bing, bang boom,” laughed Marshall as he slid the backbone with its eleven new filters back inside the housing tube.

      “
Thirty-five minutes remaining,” echoed Braun in both of their helmets.

      “
Step on it, Ralph,” urged Harrison. “My suit is acting up pretty bad.”

     
Moving with the determination of a man possessed by the magnitude of his situation, Marshall hurriedly reconnected the air-scrubbing unit, then began piecing the adjoining systems back together in reverse order. As Harrison handed him part after part, his Augmented Vision repeatedly crackled out, only to jump back into view again as if some unseen force were flicking a light switch on and off inside his head. He knew the same thing was happening to Marshall, for the astronaut occasionally broke into subdued strings of savage cursing, which, despite their fervency, did not disrupt the pace of his labor. The minutes ticked by faster and faster, matching the driving intensity of the raging storm as it blasted the two men with unrelenting sheets of red sand. Humming nervously as he worked, Marshall screwed, bolted and wrenched the jigsawed life-support station back together with incredible precision.

      “
Time?” he demanded as Harrison handed him the last section of a crucial ducting line.

      “
Twelve minutes,” groaned Harrison, feeling an increasing uneasiness building in the pit of his stomach.

     
Marshall turned back to the life-support station with a nod and set about connecting the duct with a complicated compression line.

      “
Go grab the cover panel,” he ordered over his shoulder.

     
Shifting on his heels, Harrison scanned the rippling ground beside him for the vented metal sheet and could not see it. Standing quickly, he spun in a full circle, thinking that perhaps the winds had carried it off on a powerful gust. As he shuffled his feet in search of the lost cover plate, his boot clunked against something metal, partially buried by the driving sands, and he breathed a sigh of relief.

      “
Harrison,” said Braun in his helmet speakers. “I think you should sit down for a few moments. You need to conserve your energy.”

      “
What are you talking about?”

      “
Please, just follow my advice,” pressed the AI.

     
Ignoring Braun, Harrison leaned forwards to unearth the vented panel. As his hands worked to uncover the corner of the metal sheet, he was suddenly struck by a bout of unannounced nausea. Taking several deep breaths, he straightened up and calmed his rolling stomach. As the clock began blinking the ten-minute warning, a sharp stab in his stomach doubled him over and forced him to stumble back several paces. Grasping his thighs tightly for support, he bit back fruitlessly against an aggressive wave of dizziness, which spread over him like the spray of a tepid rain. Feeling suddenly sapped of energy, he dropped to his knees on the dust-covered ground and coughed violently, tasting the sour sting of bile as it quickly foamed up in the back of his mouth.

      “
Harrison,” announced Braun urgently. “Your vital signs show evidence of radiation sickness, and your suit is in critical condition. Please sit still to conserve your energy.”

      “
What?” choked Harrison in horror. “But there’s still time on the clock!”

     
Before Braun could answer, the view of his surroundings scattered like the static of a television screen. Slamming a hand uselessly against the side of his helmet, Harrison swore loudly and fought to keep his mutinous stomach down.

      “
Forget the panel!” yelled Marshall, his transmission badly distorted. “I’m done, but my vision is on the fritz. I can’t see you!”

      “
I’m here,” called Harrison as he waved his arms back and forth. “Braun says my suit is almost finished.”

      “
What?” crackled Marshall. “I can barely hear you. Stay where you are. I’ll find you. My A-Vision’s out, but I’ll find you!”

     
With a screech of electricity, Harrison’s Augmented Vision leaped into view, blinked several times, then went out again. In the frozen seconds when his face shield had been illuminated, he saw the figure of Ralph Marshall, hands outstretched, groping like blind man as he walked away from Harrison and towards the open desert.

      “
Can you hear me?” shouted Marshall above a burst of sharply-spiking feedback. “I’m fucking blind. Where are you?”

      “
Ralph, I’m here. I’m here! This way. Come back,” pleaded Harrison in a panic, bile dribbling from his lips.

      “
Harrison,” said Braun, his voice disintegrating rapidly. “I cannot maintain my connection. Your suit is shutting down. I miscalculated. I am sorry.”

     
As those final words flooded his helmet, Harrison screamed against the ocean of static in his ears, hoping the cry would reach Marshall and draw him back towards the dome. With a whine that grew into a shrill siren, the feedback in his suit speakers fizzled mechanically, then went silent. Deep red shadows filled the inside of his helmet, and the churning sickness within his stomach broke loose. Coughing up hot tendrils of acid and bile, he pitched forwards and felt the cold rough surface of the desert floor rush up to meet his heaving chest. The vomit pooled on the glass of his face shield, and the ragged gasps of his own breathing were the only sounds he could hear.

      As though all of the life within his muscles had been drained, he shivered feebly with the effort of movement. The world spun violently as he pushed himself to a kneeling position, trying in vain to see beyond the billowing clouds of sand, which enveloped him like blood red ocean. The condensation and streaks of bile that coated the glass of his face shield abruptly transformed into fragile ice crystals as his suit began to cool down. No longer was his internal CPU powering the life-support systems. No longer could he feel the continuous breath of circulated air. No longer did the warming blood of the chemical heating agents chase away the deadly cold of the Martian atmosphere. Braun’s presence within the suit was gone, and for the first time in his entire life, Harrison was completely alone.

Inside the dome

     
Sitting in the com room of the stagnant dome, Udo Clunkat absently watched the holographic images of the life-support station as they lit up like a Christmas tree—each system blinking brightly as it came back online. Communications with the two astronauts had been few and far between since they had exited the dome nearly an hour and twenty minutes before. In the storm, radio feedback was increased over longer distances as electromagnetic radiation played havoc with the communications linkages in each suit. Even though, physically, Harrison and Marshall were very close by, most of their brief transmissions to the base had been nearly indecipherable above the blanketed feedback of hisses and pops. Instead, Udo put his trust in Braun’s guidance to see the two through their difficult task.