Alena flailed, trying to catch the rock surface as it skidded by. Glenn knew that soon they would be moving too fast to stop, and reached frantically himself. He slowed their fall, but didn’t stop it.
Where was the edge of the crevice?
He looked below him. Right here. But there was one outcropping that looked reasonably solid. If he could catch it…
He hit hard with his feet and felt a shooting pain go up his right leg. His knees buckled and his feet slid to the side, away from the outcropping, towards destruction.
One last thing. He reached out and caught the outcropping, keeping one hand around Alena’s waist. For a moment he thought their momentum was still too great, but he was able to hold on. Alena skidded within feet of the opening.
Glenn didn’t dare move. He could hear the harsh rasp of Alena’s breathing. Meaning they were both alive. Alive!
Alena looked up at him with something in her eyes that might almost have been gratitude. He looked down at her and smiled. For a brief instant, she smiled back and his heart soared.
They backed out of the crevice and continued on up the cliff face. Glenn’s right leg roared with pain, and he knew Alena could see that he was slowing down. But she didn’t run away from him. She didn’t take chances. She didn’t say anything at all until they had reached the top, and the last dying rays of the sun painted them both blood-red.
“I’m sorry,” she said softly.
He was about to say something, but the Can blatted in his ear. “What an image! Pan slowly across the sunset.”
“Thanks,” he said, bitterly, as Alena turned away.
“What the hell does Timberland know about making space suits?” Evan said. He threw down the thick ream of printouts and rubbed his face, pulling it into a comic mask of fatigue and frustration.
“They’ll pay to do it,” Jere said.
“Another prime sponsor.” Sarcastically.
“What, like you’re suddenly worried about our contestants?”
Evan shrugged and stood up to pace. “RusSpace finally got back to me.”
“And?”
“And we’re fucked.”
For a moment, the word didn’t even register with Jere. Then he heard the phrase like a physical blow. “Fucked! What does fucked mean, like they won’t do it?”
“No, no.”
“They want more money.”
“It’s 2019 now, not 2018.”
No. They couldn’t move it out again. GM and Boeing pulled out when the schedule last slid. So now it was Kia and Cessna for the Wheels and the Kites. Good names, yeah, but not blue-chip. Maybe it would boost the ratings, that bit of risk, that added chance…
Evan nodded. “Yeah, it’s a crap cocktail, all right.”
“We can’t do this,” Jere said. His voice sounded hollow and faraway.
Evan shrugged. “We have to.”
“What’s the problem this time? They lied again? They fucked up? What?”
“No.” A sigh. “It’s the testing that’s killing us. Five drop modules, five backout pods, five Wheels, five Kites, the big package of Returns, a ship with a fucking centrifuge, for God’s sake, goddamn, it’s a lot of shit to do!”
“So what do we do?”
“We push. Or we scale it back.”
“What? Take it to three teams?”
“No. Scale back the build and the test. Leave out the backout pods, for example.”
“What happens if the team can’t make it to the Returns?”
A slow smile. “Tough snatch, said the biatch.”
“What?”
“Before your time.” Another shrug. This one slow, lazy, nonchalant. “If they can’t make it to the Returns, they probably can’t make it back.”
“Will this get us back on track?”
“We could do more.”
“What?”
“Skip final test of the Kites and the Wheels. All they are is a bunch of fabric and struts anyway.”
“And?”
“Leave the spinner down on the ground.”
“How are the contestants supposed to stay in shape?”
“We’ll put in a whole lot of Stairmasters. They can exercise. Gets us another sponsor, too.”
“And?”
“And that might get us back on track. Or so say our formerly communist friends.”
“Will they guarantee it?”
“They aren’t guaranteeing anything anymore. But I think it’s a lot more likely that we’ll make the deadlines if you drop some of the fluff.”
Fluff. Yeah, fluff. Just a bunch of safety gear. Nobody will notice.
“We’re taking a big chance.”
“What’s a bigger chance? Going to ’19 or making a few changes?”
A few changes. Nothing big. Nothing major. Nothing we won’t be crucified for if it comes out.
“Can we do this clean? Can we make it look like we never had plans for the centrifuge, the backout stuff, all that?”
“I’m sure we can arrange something.”
Jere let the silence stretch out. Evan was watching him intently. In the dim light of the office, his weathered features could have been the craggy face of a demon.
“Do it,” Jere said finally, softly. Hating himself.
Wheeling had been easy back on Earth. The training had been out in the Mojave, nice smooth sand and little rocks that you could bounce over easy, and nice and flat as far as you could see.
But Wheeling was a bitch and a quarter here on Mars. Keith Paul gritted his teeth as he came to another long downhill run, scattered with boulders as big as houses and ravines that could catch the edge of the wheel and fuck him up good. He’d already dug the Wheel out twice, once when he swerved to avoid a slope that would pitch it over and ended up in a ditch, and once when he got to bouncing and bounced over a hill into a ravine.
And man, did it bounce! Whenever it hit a rock. Sometimes a foot, sometimes a couple, sometimes ten or twenty feet in the air.
But he was being strong on other things. He was making good time across the desert. He’d been up rolling at the moment dawn’s light made the landscape even dimly guessable.
And he was strong on the offers, too. Everyone had talked to him. Both the PA idjits, the associate director, Frank, everyone. They’d promised him everything but a blow-job and a hot dog, but the money hadn’t
