'We’re stuck,' he said.
Connors’s bloodshot eyes were wide with fear. 'Yeah. Looks that way.'
SOL 38: SUNSET
Vosnesensky was the last one to be tested.
The Russian was in no mood for having a medic punch holes in his skin. Connors had just reported that the rover was stuck halfway up the landslide. They would need a rescue effort. But how? And who? Dr. Li refused to allow anything to be done until he had consulted with mission control in Kaliningrad. Meanwhile night was coming on and the four people in the rover were as sick as dogs.
Not that the people in the dome were much better off. Toshima had suddenly collapsed at his workstation; they had had to carry him to his bunk. Patel, Naguib, even Abell and Mironov were not much good for anything except sitting around and moaning. Monique Bonnet, who had been playing the cheerful, motherly nurse for the past two days, was dragging herself around, hollow eyed with exhaustion.
'And how do you feel, in general?' Dr. Yang asked as Vosnesensky sat on the little white stool in the infirmary.
The Russian glowered at her. 'I have important work to do,' he said. 'We have a crisis…'
Yang was barely taller than Vosnesensky even though he was seated and she was standing. But she stopped him cold with a snap of her almond eyes.
'You will not be able to do anything about your crisis if your medical condition continues to worsen,' she said. She did not raise her voice, but there was cold steel in her words. 'Now please answer my questions and do as I tell you.'
Vosnesensky glanced at Reed, who was leaning against the patient’s couch in the corner of the tiny infirmary. Reed seemed to be in good health, his face pink. At least that damned superior smile of his was gone; he was frowning with puzzled frustration.
'The sooner you cooperate the sooner we will be finished,' Yang said.
Vosnesensky capitulated. 'What must I do?'
'Roll up your left sleeve and tell me how you feel. Exactly how you feel.'
The Russian pulled in a deep breath as he unbuttoned the cuff of his coverall sleeve. 'I am weak, my legs ache, I have no appetite.'
'Have you ever felt this way before?' Yang held a hypodermic syringe in one hand, its needle glinting in the overhead lights.
'Not that I can remember.'
'Are you coughing or sneezing? Does your chest hurt?'
Vosnesensky shook his head, then winced. The needle went in smoothly; Yang found a vein on her first
'Any rash on your body?' she asked.
Watching the syringe fill up with dark blood, Vosnesensky replied, 'No. Not that I have noticed.'
Yang pulled the needle out and slapped a plastic bandage on the puncture. Reed watched in silence, his arms folded across his chest. The diminutive Chinese physician asked Vosnesensky to strip to the waist. Wordlessly the Russian pulled down the top of his coveralls and slipped his undershirt over his head.
Yang looked at his back. 'No rash,' she muttered.
'Is that significant?' Vosnesensky asked.
'Perhaps.' She looked across the small cubicle toward Reed, then murmured absently to Vosnesensky, 'You may go now.'
'Thank you.' The Russian tugged on his coverall top and scurried from the infirmary despite his aching legs, carrying his undershirt in one hand.
Jamie fingered his bear fetish through the hard suit’s gloves. Thin and flexible as they were, the gloves still robbed him of the true feeling of the stone’s polished warmth.
He was standing on the lab module’s roof in the last slanting rays of the dying sun. He and Connors had barely been able to push the airlock hatch open; then the astronaut had slumped to the floor of the airlock, too weak to move any farther. Jamie had left him sitting there in a pile of loose dust that had drifted in, while he clambered up the ladder set into the rover’s side to survey their situation.
He had not dared to step out into the sand itself, for fear that he would sink through the powdery dust so deeply that he would not be able to extricate himself.
The mission rule book doesn’t cover this, Jamie had told himself as he slowly, carefully climbed the ladder. He had gone up as if mountain climbing, three points attached at all times. Move one gloved hand to the next rung. Grip it, then move the other hand. Grip, then one booted foot. Make sure it’s firmly seated on the rung, then pull up the other one. The dust frightened him. He pictured himself drowning in it like a man caught in quicksand.
Now at last he stood up on the roof. If you have any power to help at all, he said silently to the fetish, now’s the time to get it working.
'What’s it look like?' Connors’s voice came through his helmet earphones.
'Not good,' Jamie replied, surveying the scene. 'She’s buried up over the fenders, all except the last half of the rear module. Not enough traction to pull us out.'
Connors said nothing, although Jamie could hear his ragged breathing.
'How’re you doing?' he asked.
'I’m fine. Just can’t get up on my fuckin’ feet, that’s all.'
Jamie’s head was swimming with dizziness. His body ached all over and he felt so tired that it was tempting just to stretch out right there and go to sleep. The canyon was so wide that he could actually see the sunset; the cliffs on the other side were too far away to be visible, tall as they were. He watched the sun for a moment, saw it touch the rocky horizon, felt the shadows of deathly freezing night reaching toward him. Inside his suit he shuddered, almost like a dog trying to shake off water.
He looked down at the tiny stone bear in the fading light. The leather thong holding the miniature arrowhead and the feather had been lovingly tied by his grandfather. An eagle’s feather, Jamie thought. Symbol of strength. I could sure use some now.
Into his helmet microphone he said, 'I might as well come down. There’s nothing I can do up here and the sun’s going down.'
Tucking the miniature stone bear back into the pouch on the right leg of his hard suit, Jamie started slowly down the ladder. By the time he had painfully made his way back into the airlock it was dark outside. Connors was sitting in the heaped sand, his white hard suit coated with the red dust.
Jamie tried to sound cheerful. 'You look like a snowman playing in a pile of rust.'
'I feel like a goddammed snowman — in July,' Connors grumbled.
Slowly, like two arthritic old men, they shoveled most of the sand outside and then closed the outer hatch.
'Gotta clean off the suits,' Connors muttered.
'We’ve got to get you on your feet first,' Jamie said.
It seemed like hours of tugging and pushing, but finally Connors was standing again and they went through the motions of vacuuming the dust off their suits. The suits were still stained rust-red, though, as they struggled out of them. The airlock smelled of ozone so heavily that Jamie’s eyes burned and watered.
Finally they staggered through the inner hatch and half collapsed on the midship benches. Both women were up in the cockpit, Joanna with a headset clamped over her thick dark hair.
'Vosnesensky wants to talk to you,' Joanna called back to them, her voice hoarse, labored.
Ilona muttered, 'The Russian pig won’t trust a woman with his important messages.'
Jamie felt his temper snap. 'Jesus Christ, Ilona, knock off the anti-Russian crap! We’re in a bad enough fix without your bullshit!'
She smiled languidly at him. 'What difference does it make? We are all going to die here no matter what I say, aren’t we?'
