Ashton had just strapped back in. Then she looked crestfallen. “Fuck,” she whispered.
“Remember what I told you about profanity? Doesn’t mix right with all your spit and polish. And what are the pills? Don’t tell me Dexatrim ’cos I won’t buy it.”
“Low-dose Duramorph and MS-Contin,” she uttered. “I hate sympathy—I didn’t want to tell you.”
“Tell me what?”
“I’ve got bone cancer. Metastatic and inoperable…”
Wentz glanced at her with a trapped expression. “I— Jesus. I’m sorry…”
“Don’t be. I just said, I hate sympathy, sir.”
“Jill,” she said.
Wentz laughed. “No kidding? I love it! Jack and Jill went up the hill…to fly to
Ashton spared a smile herself. “And speaking of Mars, sir—er Jack… There it is.”
Wentz’s eyes glued to the port-side window. The red sphere grew exponentially, from pea-size in space until it took up Wentz’s entire scope of vision.
He pressed his hands back into the detents, then the OEV automatically began to maneuver into a perihelion-descent orbit.
««—»»
Mars was only red in a telescope, due to refractive occulation from the small planet’s diminutive atmosphere and wind systems blowing dust and sublimated vapors of frozen carbon dioxide. This close, the surface of the slightly lopsided planet appeared more like the hue of dull brass. Like streaks of fat through steak, ribbons of more frozen carbon dioxide looked like canals filled with water. Wentz had his hands back in the detents as he cruised the OEV smoothly over peaks, ridges, and crater edges. Wentz rode the planet’s jagged surface like a surfer over waves.
It was a good time.
The OEV’s system responses amazed him. He could do anything. He could alter trim by two degrees or one hundred and eighty just by a thought. He could turn to fly between crater peaks simply by looking out the window. And it happened.
From the Air Force gear behind them, something began to beep. “Slow to a crawl,” Ashton instructed. “It’s our SHF interception of the QSR4’s gamma beacon. You know what line-of-sight means. Start looking.”
All Wentz saw was the same brass-colored surface. The beeping behind them began to increase.
“Can you imagine if you
“Thank God we did.”
“It’s incredible that you could identify it all just through intercepted radio waves.”
“Not really. It’s just digitalized data based on photochemical analysis, spectrography, chromatography.”
Wentz figured he should stick with what he knew: flying. “How long till we find this thing and give it the eighty-six?”
“Right about…” Ashton leaned forward in her seat. “This should be it. We’re sitting right in the middle of the Tharsus grid-plat.”
They both squinted through the prismoid windows.
“There it is!” Ashton exclaimed. “See the treadmarks? Just right of center, one o’clock.”
“Uhhhh…yeah! Got it!”
Wentz slowed the OEV, then hovered. Treadmarks in the Martian dust ended at the QRS4 sample-collector. The mechanical probe was about the size of a golf cart on tractor treads. High-gain antennae spired from its top as a small radio dish spun lazily from the front end.
“What’s the safe-distance for the RDX charge?” Wentz asked. “A hundred feet?”
“A hundred
Wentz slowly backed up the OEV while Ashton held a portable rangefinder to her eye, focusing on the probe.
“You’re good,” she said.
Wentz took his hands out of the detents. He paused a moment, gazing out the window onto this otherworldly landscape.
“No time like the present, right?”
“Go for it,” Ashton said.
««—»»
Fifteen minutes later, Wentz hauled himself out of the OEV’s airlock, cumbersome as a tortoise in the bulky white EVA suit.
Once he got there, he almost felt disappointed. The probe didn’t look like much: a reflective box on treads.
“I’m here,” he radioed back to Ashton. “This thing doesn’t look like much of a big deal.”
“It cost the Russians and Japanese the equivalent of a hundred million dollars, and it cost fourteen
“Ouch!” Wentz replied. “And now I’m gonna blow it up with a demo charge that probably cost the Army ten bucks. This has to be the most outrageous act of vandalism in the history of humankind.”
“That’s right,” Ashton agreed in his earpiece. “And
“Thanks.” Wentz lowered to his knees, fumbling for his carry-satchel. “The ground here is sort of shiny.”
“Frozen noble gasses, sublimated argon, probably some good old-fashioned ice,” Ashton responded through crackles of mild static.
“Ice, huh? Too bad we didn’t bring some Johnny Black and a couple of glasses.”
His heavily gloved hands began to remove his demo gear. First came the cone-shaped, olive-drab bomb itself, the size of a coffee thermos. Stenciled letters read: CHARGE, DEMOLITION, SHAPED (ONE) 2.2 POUNDS, PROPERTY OF U.S. ARMY MUNITIONS COMMAND. Then he removed a short coil of wire connected to a standard Herco-Tube blasting cap, and a small box-shaped timer with a knob. He placed the charge on the probe, connected the proper wires.
“I think we’re ready for the show,” he said.
“Set the timer for thirty minutes, then come back.”
His bulky hand reached for the broad timer knob but stopped just short of touching it. He was looking up toward the nearest ridge.
Something glinted. “Wait a sec, I see something…near the—”
“It’s probably just carbonaceous deposits,” Ashton returned. “Forget about it. Come on back.”
Wentz squinted through the gold-flaked NASA face-shield. “No, no, it’s… I’m gonna check it out.”
“Negative, Jack!” Ashton objected. “It could be a plate crack! It could be an ice shelf! You could fall in!”
“I’ll take my chances.”
Ashton’s voice shrilled through the static. “Jack—damn it! No! You’re violating your orders!”
He bounced away from the probe, moving sluggishly toward the ridge. Once at the edge, he stopped completely, staring down.
“God,” he muttered when he realized what he’d seen glinting between the crags.
It was another OEV.
