Martian Valkyrie

woman to wash His feet, I remembered belatedly. But that woman was repentant.

“Very well.” In the end, Thy will, not mine, be done. “I shall do what I need to do to bring back as many of us and as much data as I can. Rest assured of that… Dr. Karinsdatter. Lopez out.”

“Lykke til, commander. Luck to you.”

We would have to do all our ground exploring by foot, I thought. I did not want to take Norwegian leftovers, so we would have to traverse new ground. That way we would gain unique data and perhaps, hope against hope, find something which they had not found.

I put it that way to Mission Control. They told me no, land where the people on the ground say.

Did they take me for a child? I appealed to the political level again and got my way. I had not yet learned humility. That came five hours later.

We came in north of the Norwegians, in an uncratered area that was free of their tracks. Our computer gave us a textbook, fuzzy-logic-smooth landing, and I congratulated myself for not having to touch anything. It was not so bad, I told myself. Eriksson had been five hundred years ahead of Columbus, Amundsen a month ahead of Scott, but we had closed the gap to a couple of days.

Then a patch of thin crust gave in under the weight of our plus-zed land-ing leg and our fuel-laden lander tilted, stopping sharply when the unsupported leg hit the permafrost under the dust crust. A strut bent upward under redline stress, snapped, and impaled an oxidizer tank with its upper ten centimeters. Red fuming nitric acid flowed onto the already well-oxidized Martian soil and reacted in a way that produced more smoke than heat. But it looked spectacular.

Without pressure in the tank to hold it against the lander cabin’s Earth-normal atmosphere, the lander floor bent down, and cracked. Our escaping air vibrated the sides of the crack like a monster oboe reed as it escaped, to be replaced by nitric acid fumes. It sounded, felt, and smelled like hell.

With the fortune of prudent and well-rehearsed planning, we were wearing our spacesuits so we were not immediately harmed. I blew the lock doors and led the crew out onto the red soil away from the lander, in case there was an explosion. But no, the oxidizer just ran out and fizzled as we watched.

“Enrico,” Mustaffa said later, in an unfortunate attempt to lighten my mood, “at least this makes you the first man to set foot on Mars.”

The spacecraft shuddered and settled again. We watched helplessly as our two-man aircraft pulled free of its upper latch and pivoted down, breaking its back when its nose slammed into the ocher soil.

My look must have been as cold as the permafrost outside.

“My apologies, commander,” he said quickly, after he saw my face.

Unfortunately, since the lander used the oxidizer to fuel its generator and the battery leads were cut when the floor buckled, our power was gone. Our communications plan did not call for spacesuit-to-orbit communications. The plan was to relay communications through the lander, which had triply redundant transmitters. In the impossible event of a triple failure on one lander, the backup was to relay through another lander—the one that was now on its way back to Earth in the Clarke.

Per Nordli’s Fram came in overhead as we milled around our stricken lander. We could actually hear the ticks of his sonic boom—reminding us that we were on a planet with some atmosphere. We waved up at him like mad monkeys, but he was gone in a moment, over our horizon, far ahead of his shock wave. So now there were three manned spacecraft on Mars. Even in those circumstances, I took time to wonder at what we had been allowed to accomplish, and give thanks.

It was into the early afternoon before we gave up on trying to revive any of the lander’s systems. We had suit battery power for about three more hours. We could walk in the suits without power for a little longer than that, straining against the air pressure in a kind of penguin shuffle. Our air could last a little longer than the batteries but not much.

The only choice we had was to try to trek to the Norwegian base. They couldn’t see our problem, because, of course, we had taken pains to land ourselves just below their horizon. We couldn’t radio them. No matter—our digital suit radios were encrypted for privacy. I briefly considered trying to telegraph some kind of primitive code by cycling my transponder— but I didn’t know one.

It was a long walk, even in four-tenths of a gravity. Our suits were heavy, and we had to be very sparing of the power assist. We were all tired, scruffy, and unwashed. A few were injured. Some of us exceeded the capacity of the waste management systems built into some of our suits. I shall not try to describe the way we smelled. We didn’t know if anyone else in the Universe knew we were still alive.

The historical parallels are endless, and great fun, I know. I led the bigger, more expensive, and more technologically advanced expedition, but I ended up seeing just what Scott saw. I think I understood the mixed feelings Scott must have felt as he approached the South Pole a century and a decade ago, when I saw the white- bordered blue cross on a red field painted high on the side of one of the Frames tanks.

That flag had signified both the failure to be numero uno, and the success of gaining his goal to Scott as well. It was in such a mental state that I approached the inflated plastic dome of the Norwegian base as the frigid Martian night began to descend on us. Our power was giving out, cold was seeping in, pride was gone, and there was only the business of survival.

The Norwegian base was half a kilometer from their ships, and it was a mess. Pieces of the partly disassembled supply landers lay strewn about. There were hoses going this way and that. Empty containers lay where they had been unpacked. They seemed to have put little time into being tidy. On the other hand, there may have been a pragmatic purposefulness about the seeming clutter—anything important was in plain view and could be reached directly from their dome’s air lock.

The transparent dome was doublewalled, and within that was a small white tent which seemed to be under positive pressure. It was also moving gently back and forth—clearly, we were not expected.

But we were running out of air, and there was nothing to do but bang very hard on the outer airlock door. A trillion dollars, twenty nations, thirty-two men, and eleven months in space had come down to this moment of low comedy as our group of five desperate beggars shuffled like arthritic penguins up to someone else’s door. I did not quite appreciate it then—I was freezing and tired.

The Norwegians thought that something was wrong with their equipment and responded to the noise immediately in hurriedly donned pressure gear, helmets in hand. Dr. Karinsdatter came out of the tent first. She clearly wasn’t expecting to see us and the power assisted hard suits look somewhat alien at first glance. It must have taken her a minute to close her mouth and open the outer air lock door.

I came through last, as was my privilege. Strangely, I did not start shaking uncontrollably until I was out of the frigid suit and into the warm air of the Norwegian base. But what keeps going through my mind is not the low comedy, but the sad, haunting melody I heard as I came in from their airlock to safety Grieg, of course. Solvejg’s song, which will always be Ingrid s song, to me. It matched my mood of remorse and humiliation.

By midnight, we had rigged emergency sleep sacks for my men from mylar blankets glued edge to edge, and settled them just inside the west perimeter of the dome. We ate a meal of reconstituted pasta and meat sauce that tasted extraordinarily good, as any meal will under such circumstances. I took a stimulant, notified our surprised colleagues in orbit that I was still alive, and began to analyze the situation and to evolve a course of action—but the next thing I knew, I was turning over under a blanket and it was morning. Dr. Karinsdatter was hovering over me with a communicator.

I found my embarrassment at begging shelter in the Norwegian s love nest was nothing compared to what happened on Earth while I was asleep. Dr. Worthing’s initial effort to have the UN take over command of Halvorsen’s mission was resolved when Secretary-General Ryskoff secured Dr. Worthing’s resignation and put Halvorsen in charge of both missions. Halvorsen found out which department heads could still fit into engineering hats and put them to work with their people to get us back safely. The others stood aside and watched.

Per thought that he had enough tools to fix our lander, if we could get fuel to it. But they were using carbon monoxide and liquid oxygen, while we were using hydrazine and nitric acid.

To find out that this had been a consideration of Halvorsen’s from the start was another suitable lesson in humility for me. He had designed the Amundsen and the Fram, as much as anything else, as a lifeboats for us, in anticipation of our failure. So much for