the Can, sprouting its ring and eleven pods.
They were in the Neteno boardroom, which had been transformed into a neomodern interpretation of a 70s NASA workroom, redone on a much greater scale and budget. A movingink banner was cycling though imagined Mars-scapes and the logo for Neteno’s
But there were a lot more people than the P &G guy in today. There was Altria, and J &J, and Foodlink, and a whole bunch of other guys who wanted to have product placed on the show.
So he was playing to an audience when he answered:
“Not really,” he said. He pointed at the ring. “Take the ring. It’s a standard component of the new RusSpace orbital hotels. And we’re saving four module drops by incorporating all the Return pods into a single big softlander. The transpo pods are as simple and reliable as they get, just a big bouncing ball. We’re actually using a lot of proven technology for this, just in new ways.”
“Probably what they said about the Titanic,” P &G shithead said, grinning at the other execs. “Once you drop them on the surface, you have a road course, or something like that?”
“Five courses,” Jere said, changing the graphics on the movingink banner. “All of them have three phases of travel: on foot, rolling on a Wheel, and flying in a Kite. We’ve picked routes that will highlight some spectacular scenery, like parts of the Valles Marineris…”
“What?”
“Think Grand Canyon. Times ten.”
“Oh.”
“And we have a vertical climb of 2000 feet set for one group. We’re hoping to get some extreme-sports aficionados in the audience.”
“Is that safe?” the P &G guy asked.
“We don’t claim infallibility.”
“Who’s signed so far?” shithead asked.
“That’s confidential. If you want to buy a prospectus package, we’ll discuss that further.”
“What you don’t see is the most important part,” Jere said. “The people who will actually make this happen.”
“You already have your team picked?”
“No. I just want to show you what the teams might look like. Because I know you have this idea of a bunch of spacesuit-clad guys hopping around on a dead planet. Boring, right? Well, no.”
At that moment, Evan McMaster entered the boardroom through the double doors at the back, accompanied by a trio of young women wearing cosmetic squeezesuits and headers. The suits hugged every one of their curves, making them seem impossibly perfect, unattainable, unreal.
There was a collective gasp from the execs, and Jere smiled. It always worked that way.
“I don’t see how it will work.” Not the asswipe. Another one. This one from Altria.
“Mars does have a thin atmosphere,” Evan said. “We can provide pressurized air through a small backpack only to the face. The pressure required to maintain body integrity is provided by the squeezesuit.”
“Showboating,” muttered the original P &G geek.
“Which would you rather look at-this, or some old Russian cosmonaut in a wrinkled-up body sock?”
“Your contestants may not look that good.”
Evan smiled. “The squeezesuit is of variable thickness. We can make a wide variety of body types look good. And it provides an excellent palette for logo placement.”
He snapped his fingers, and logos appeared at strategic spots on the suits. Spots with high visual magnetism, to use the geek phrase. One of the girls spun to reveal a P &G competitor’s logo emblazoned over her buttocks.
Oh, they loved it. Jere could see it in their eyes. They were sold. They would talk tough and haggle, but they had them. Just like Panasonic and Canon and Nikon fighting over the imaging rights, Sony and Nokia and Motorola fighting over the comms deal, Red Bull and Gatorade fighting over the energy drink part of it, hell, damn near every single nut and bolt was being fought over.
They were halfway up the sheer face, and the way Alena was climbing, they were going to die. Glenn watched her almost literally fly up the rock, making twenty-foot jumps from handhold to handhold, reaching out and grasping the smallest outcropping and crevice with fluid grace and deceptive ease.
Alena made one last lunge and scrabbled for grip in a tiny crevice. Her feet skidded and she slid down the face for one terrible instant before catching on another tiny outcropping. Tiny pebbles and sand bounced off Glenn’s visor.
“Slow down!” he said.
“We need to keep moving!”
“Alena…”
Labored breathing over the comm. “Listen to them!” Alena said. “Laci’s team is already rolling, and that psycho guy is, too!”
Glenn cursed. The voices from the Can, when they weren’t giving orders, provided a blow-by-blow of what the other teams were doing. To get you doing something stupid.
Glenn pulled himself up nearer to Alena. She resumed climbing, too.
“Let me get nearer,” he said. “So we can safety each other.”
“We have to keep going.”
“The others have more time to roll. We aren’t falling behind.”
Alena stopped for a moment. “I know, but…”
“It’s hard not to think it, yeah,” Glenn finished for her. He pulled himself even higher. She stayed in place for once.
“We’ll make the top before nightfall,” he said. “Then we shelter and wait it out. We’ve got a short roll and a reasonable flight. We still have the best chance of winning, Alena.”
Pant, pant. He was close enough to be her failsafe now.
Alena looked back, gave him a thin smile, and pulled herself up again. For a while it was all by the book, then Alena began stretching it a bit, leaping a bit too far, aiming at crevices just a bit too small. With the sun below the cliff, the shadows were deep, purple-black, and the cliff was losing definition in the dying day.
When they reached a deep crevice in the rock, Glenn thought things had begun to get better. But the rock was fragile and crumbly, and rust-red chunks came off easily in his hands. Glenn was about to tell Alena that they should get out of there when she reached up and grabbed an outcropping that broke off in her hand.
From ten feet above Glenn, she began to fall, agonizingly slow. Glenn felt his heart thundering in his chest, and had a momentary vision of the two of them tumbling out of the crevice to fall thousands of feet to the rocks below. He tested his handholds and footholds, and a small cry escaped his lips when he realized they probably wouldn’t survive the impact of Alena.
Glenn jumped downward, seeking better purchase. Slip and slide. Nothing more. Down once again. Nope.
Down again, and then Alena piled into him, an amazingly strong shock in the weak gravity.
