'Is that why you climbed down here?' Jamie asked as he tightened the harness straps.
'I started down… then I fell. I must have blacked out.'
'You’ll be okay. Just save your breath. Don’t need to talk now. Wait till we’re back in the rover.'
Slowly the two men at the top of the ravine winched the green-suited geophysicist up to them. Jamie heard Mironov order Patel to share his air with Naguib while the Russian worked the winch back down to the bottom. Jamie quickly slipped the harness on, shouted that he was ready, and let the winch motor pull him up.
Then they started trekking back to the rover, Jamie carrying the winch, Mironov and Patel supporting Naguib. The Russian was sharing air with him now, Jamie saw.
The sun was touching the horizon when they reached the crevasse that they had all jumped across earlier. The sky was already so dark in the east that stars were twinkling.
'We could go around it,' Patel suggested, sounding as if he wanted to be contradicted.
'It would take too long,' said Mironov. 'The fissure is many kilometers in length. We must jump across.'
'I’m not sure that I can,' said Naguib.
'We will hold your arms,' Mironov answered, 'and all three of us will jump together. In this gravity it will not be difficult.'
'I don’t know if I can,' Naguib repeated. 'My legs…'
Jamie saw that Patel had released Naguib’s arm and was stepping slowly, almost furtively, toward the edge of the crevasse. Mironov was sharing his air with the injured man. Jamie dropped the winch and came up on the Egyptian’s other side. He took Naguib’s free arm and lifted it across his own shoulders.
Softly he said, 'You got us into this situation; you’ll have to help us get out of it.'
Patel began to object, but he heard Naguib chuckle deep in his throat. 'True. Too true, James. I will do my best.'
Jamie smiled inside his helmet. 'Good. It shouldn’t be any trouble. Come on, Alex, let’s back up a bit and get a running start.'
Patel leaped across first, without a word. Then Jamie and Mironov tried to carry Naguib across the fissure. Their first attempt was nearly a disaster. Naguib’s strides did not match theirs, and the three of them nearly fell down trying to put on the brakes before they reached the edge. Jamie heard Mironov whispering curses to himself and the frightened panting of Naguib. The Russian’s air hose popped out of Naguib’s collar, so Jamie plugged his own in.
Vaguely Jamie recalled a myth about birds helping a Navaho hero to cross some impassable gulf. Or did he walk along a rainbow? We could use some help now, he said to himself.
Precious little daylight remained. The cold of night was seeping into Jamie, and he knew that Naguib must be even stiffer, colder.
They backed off again, with Mironov telling them to start on the left foot and keep pace. 'I will count cadence,' he said.
'Ahdyeen… dvah… tree… chyeetireh,' Mironov counted off. 'Ahdyeen… dvah…'
The three of them soared over the crevasse like a trio of armor-plated hippos and landed in a scuffing, skidding cloud of red dust on the other side. They managed to stay on their feet, just barely.
'Better than the Bolshoi Ballet!' Mironov beamed as they headed toward the rover, still propping up Naguib on either side.
'Too bad we didn’t get it on tape,' Jamie joked.
Naguib said nothing. Patel was up ahead, his helmet lamp on, a pool of light thrown against the dark ground as he headed for the safety of the rover.
Once through the airlock they sat Naguib down on one of the benches and helped him out of his hard suit, then Jamie cleaned up the Egyptian’s bloodied face while Patel vacuumed the suits and Mironov went up to the cockpit to report to base.
'I don’t think your nose is broken,' Jamie said. 'It’s not even bleeding anymore.'
'I banged it on my visor when I fell,' Naguib said.
'You could have been killed,' said Patel, his big eyes somber.
Naguib smiled weakly. 'I was never much good at field work.'
Mironov came back, unsmiling, grim faced. 'Reed wants to speak with you,' he said to the Egyptian. 'He will prescribe medication.'
Jamie offered to help him to the cockpit, but Naguib got shakily to his own feet. 'I can make it,' he said. 'I think you are right — nothing broken.'
Wordlessly Patel went to the galley and pulled out a dinner tray for himself. Mironov scowled after him.
'Nothing to be sore about, Alex,' Jamie said to the cosmonaut. 'Abdul’s okay. Just a bloody nose, that’s all.'
Mironov snorted and glared at Patel.
Reed confirmed that Naguib’s nose was probably not broken, and the four men pulled out the folding table and sat down for dinner.
'We have only two replacement backpacks in the stores,' Mironov growled as they ate. 'Please be more careful tomorrow.'
'I thought there might be a vein of uranium exposed down at the bottom of that fissure,' said Naguib, explaining and apologizing at once. 'My scintillation meter registered high levels of radiation.'
'Uranium?' Patel snatched at the idea. 'If we could get a uranium-lead ratio we could date the lava field with great firmness.'
Jamie said, 'We haven’t found any usable levels of radioactives anywhere else.'
'Something is there, at the bottom of that ravine,' said Naguib.
'Then we’ll have to go back there tomorrow and get some samples,' Jamie said.
Mironov hiked his almost invisible brows. 'Go back?'
'With the winch, Alex,' said Jamie. 'And we can even lay the extensible ladder over the fissure that we had to jump across.'
The Russian said nothing, but he looked across the table at Patel.
'Then it’s agreed,' Jamie concluded. 'Rava and I will go back and get samples from the bottom of the ravine.'
Abruptly, Mironov slid out from behind the table and strode up to the cockpit. They stared at his retreating back.
Patel blinked several times, then resumed their conversation as if nothing had happened. 'A uranium-lead ratio could give us absolute dating for this particular segment of the lava flow…'
'Excuse me.' Jamie pushed himself across the bench and got to his feet. Patel kept talking to Naguib.
Mironov was sitting in the driver’s seat, his fingers flicking across the control board, checking all the rover’s systems. Jamie slipped into the seat beside him.
'What’s wrong, Alex?'
The Russian took a deep breath. From behind them, they could hear Patel’s voice chattering away.
'Your fellow geologist would have let Naguib die out there, if he had his own way.'
'What? Rava?'
'I told him to bring the winch. He carried it as far as the fissure, but he refused to jump over. He threw the rig across the crevasse and then started back for the rover.'
Jamie fell silent, digesting the information. Rava must have panicked, he said to himself. And Alex is pissed as hell at him.
'But he did jump across afterward,' Jamie said at last. 'He came over and helped us out.'
'After I threatened to break every bone in his scrawny body,' Mironov grumbled. 'His yellow suit is an appropriate color. I even had to force him to share his air with Naguib.'
'He must have been pretty damned scared,' Jamie said.
'He is not dependable. Not in an emergency. I will not allow you to go out alone with him.'
Jamie shrugged. 'Then you’ll have to come with us, Alex. If there’s really a vein of uranium down in that ravine — any radioactives at all — it’s crucially important to us.'
The Russian made a curt nod. 'I will come. Naguib can stay inside and man the radio.'
'Okay. Now try to calm down. Patel may have panicked, but being sore isn’t going to help.'
