that the dome was dimpling here and there as meteoroids struck its surface. Oh my god, if one of them breaks through…
One did. Jamie saw the transparent fabric on the lower level of the dome pucker for an instant, and then a small geyser of spray erupted into the dry thin air, like a whale spouting.
'The dome’s punctured!' somebody screamed.
The hole spread into a growing rip as moisture-laden air geysered out into the Martian atmosphere and the plastic fabric of the dome began to sag noticeably.
After that first moment of near panic Vosnesensky turned coldly calm. While the others rushed for their suits, he veered aside and trotted around the inner periphery of the dome, checking to see if the repair patches were in their proper places. He had checked the patches only a day earlier, part of his regular inspection routine. But now he checked them again, while a patter of pock, pock sounds rained gently over his head, almost drowned out by the fearful voices of Toshima and the fliers as they struggled to don their hard suits.
He never saw the dome punctured. The meteoroid that punched through both layers of the plastic was a nearly microscopic grain of dust. But Vosnesensky heard a different sound, like a sudden gusting intake of breath, the kind of sound a man makes when he’s been stabbed in the chest.
He felt the breeze as the dome’s air rushed toward the puncture. Books fluttered open in the wind; loose papers flew across the dome like a covey of frightened birds. The hissing noise grew louder, a moan, a rushing torrent of air.
Vosnesensky whirled and saw dozens of the lightweight repair patches lifting off the floor to be sucked up against the wall of the dome. They flattened there, edges fluttering madly as the air rushed past them to escape the dome. The plastic walls began to sag between the dome’s stiff supporting ribs. The surface of the wall was ripping faster than the patches could cover it.
Ears popping, heart triphammering, Vosnesensky rushed to the spot, bent down to scoop up more of the repair patches, and slammed them over the widening hole. They slipped down, would not stay. They still fluttered, and Vosnesensky could hear the dome’s air roaring now as it rushed into the near-vacuum outside. In a few minutes it would all be gone. The force of the escaping wind was tugging at him, trying to suck him through the wall and out into the deadly open.
Without a word or a call to anyone, he braced himself and began to struggle back toward the center of the dome, leaning against the wind, staggering like a drunk, threading his way painfully past the scientists’ workstations, dodging chairs in the wardroom carelessly left scattered about the floor. His ears were screaming with pain, as if someone had jabbed icepicks into them.
The life-support equipment. Pumps that sucked in the dry cold air of Mars. Separators that culled the scanty nitrogen and even scantier oxygen out of the native atmosphere. More pumps to make the nitrogen/oxygen mix thick enough for humans to breathe. Cylinders of spare oxygen, in case of emergency.
He had to reach the oxygen. Vosnesensky went down the row of green, man-tall oxygen tanks, twisting their valves to the full open position, overpressurizing the dome as quickly as he could with pure oxygen. Force oxygen into the dome; replace the air being lost. It was a race, and he had no intention of losing. Higher pressure might even push the repair seals firmly against the hole. At the very least it would buy them a few more minutes.
Yet even over the hissing rush of the escaping oxygen he could hear pock, pock.
He clawed his way back toward the tear in the wall in a blizzard of papers swirling through the dome. By the time he got back to the place where the meteoroid had broken through, Abell was there in his white hard suit, spraying epoxy over the repair patches as calmly as a painter doing a living-room wall.
'I have turned on the emergency oxygen,' Vosnesensky said, almost breathless, his chest aflame.
'Right,' said Abell. It was standard emergency procedure.
The wind had died down. The shriek of escaping air had quieted. Vosnesensky was panting, but from fear and exertion, not lack of oxygen.
'Are the others in their suits?'
Abell turned toward him, a faceless robot in rust-stained white. 'Uh-huh. You should be too, Mike.'
'Yes, yes.' Vosnesensky saw that the patches were no longer fluttering. They were glued flat to the curving wall. 'What about the people outside?'
'They’re coming through the airlock. Nobody’s been hurt, far as I know.'
'Good. Now, if we are not struck again…'
'You should get into your suit,' Abell reminded him.
'Yes. Of course.'
By the time Vosnesensky was fully suited up, though, he heard no more sounds of meteoroids striking the dome. He clumped awkwardly to the communications console and saw on the screen that Tolbukhin was still on duty up in orbit, and still in his coveralls. His armpits were dark with sweat.
Dr. Li stretched his long legs as far as he could, considering the pain, and wriggled his bare toes until the cramp in his left calf began to subside. Two hours in a space suit that had never fit his lanky frame properly was more than his body could endure.
He sighed as he tried to relax in the reclining chair. He sipped tea from the one delicate porcelain cup he had brought with him and gazed at the silk paintings on the walls of his quarters, waiting for them to work their calming magic.
No one was hurt, he repeated to himself for the hundredth time. All the emergency procedures had worked just as they were designed to; all the emergency equipment had functioned properly. We survived the meteor shower without even any damage to our equipment, except for one minor puncture in the dome that was quickly sealed and one strike on the Mars 1 ship’s main communications antenna, which the astronauts will go EVA to repair.
The odds against meteoroid danger had been carefully calculated on Earth; they were something on the order of a trillion to one. And this particular meteor shower had been a renegade, unknown and uncharted until it suddenly struck at them. At least we should not be bothered again for another hundred million years or so, Li told himself.
He almost smiled, realizing that he could claim discovery of a new meteor swarm, so small and insignificant that it had never even been noticed on Earth. But not so small and insignificant here. No, not at all. We are very vulnerable here, Dr. Li realized. Extremely vulnerable.
He had ordered that regular radar sweeps be made as they orbited around Mars. We cannot avoid meteors, but we may be able to give ourselves some warning time if another shower develops. And we can produce data on the density of meteoroids in the vicinity of Mars; that should please the astronomers back home.
He rubbed the back of his neck, still trying to relax after the long, terrible, terrifying day. No one was killed, he said yet again. No one even hurt, except for this damnable leg cramp. No equipment damaged, except for the antenna. The team on the ground survived without any problems greater than a single small puncture and a spilled bottle of vitamin pills.
Now to report it all to Kaliningrad.
It had taken hours to clean up the mess inside the dome. Mironov and Connors went outside to seal the rip in the dome’s outer wall, while Vosnesensky and Abell checked every square centimeter of the inner wall for damage. They found none.
Now all twelve of the team were sitting in the wardroom, physically and emotionally spent after the adrenaline surge of their wild afternoon. The schedule said it was time for dinner, but no one thought about food. Instead, Vosnesensky had brought from his quarters the bottle of vodka he had not touched since their second night on Mars.
'For medicinal purposes,' he said when Tony Reed arched a questioning eyebrow. The others immediately rushed to their quarters to ferret out their own stashed bottles.
The first toast was to Vosnesensky.
'To our intrepid leader,' said Paul Abell, his hand raised high, 'who ignored his own safety to turn on the oxygen tanks and save the dome from collapse.'
'At great risk to his own life,' added Toshima.
'And even greater risk to his own safety rules,' Connors joked.
Vosnesensky frowned slightly. 'We must modify the oxygen tanks so that their valves open automatically if the air pressure in here drops below a certain point.'
