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October 15th, 2000
Continued from Part
I last
week...
I reached down very slowly and gingerly touched my ankle. No doubt about it. Broken. And starting to swell. If that weren't enough, in addition to the air leaking out of the cabin, the next thing I hear is:
WHAM ... WHAM ... WHAM ...
It sounded like a boot kicking the cabin door. That was not good news. "Hey, Trip" I yelled. "What the frel are you doing?"
"I'm trying to kick the door open so we can get out of here."
"If you do that, then we'll be dead in about 10 seconds. Are you in that big a hurry to die this morning?"
"Huh? I was looking at the thermometer on the way. It said ten degrees Celsius."
"Probably true. But the air pressure is seven millibars."
"Seven what?"
"Vacuum to you, mister wizard."
"Oh. I didn't know."
While the quiz master reflected on this, I looked around. I was half way through the hatch, legs in the cargo compartment and my upper body in the cab. The rocket scientist who designed the rover gave me a flat floor, but I was on the ceiling, draped over the edge of the open hatchway, and it was digging into my stomach. There was just enough light coming in that I could see Trip sitting below the driver's seat. I reached out my arm.
"Trip, I can just barely see you. Here's my arm. Pull me forward, very gently. Very gently. My stomach is on this bulkhead, and my ankle's broken."
"Oh, shit. Broken? Okay. I'll pull you real slow. Lemme know if it hurts."
For once, Trip followed instructions and got me pulled into the cab. I reached up into the storage compartment, pulled out a flashlight, and started inspecting the controls. The main battery indicator was glowing green, but nothing else worked. It looked like the nose of the rover had collapsed and damaged most of the instrument panel from behind.
"What can I do?" Trip asked.
"Here. Take the flashlight. Crawl through the hatch. On the right side, on the wall, is a first aid kit. No. It's on the left side now. Bring it back here."
"What's that noise?"
"That's air leaking out of the rover."
"Oh, man... What are we gonna do?"
"We're gonna go get that first aid kit so we can patch my ankle and then put our space suits on. That's what we're gonna do."
"Oh. Right."
Trip found the first aid kit, and I was able to swallow something akin to a Vicodin, spray my ankle with a pain killer, and brace it with tape and several ball point pens. Fortunately the skin wasn't broken. With Trip's help, we got the storage locker between the seats open and out dropped two light duty space suits with a minimal head unit. They have about an hour's worth of air. It took me a few minutes to gently slide my legs into the suit and get zipped up. Trip figured out how to get the air flowing and waited for me. Then I showed him how to turn on the radio units.
"Now what?" Trip's helmet light was on, and he looked a little scared.
"It looks like we have battery power," I said, "but the instruments aren't working. That means the radio is dead. Wouldn't help anyway. The antennas, cleverly mounted on the roof, are now buried in the sand beneath us."
"Can we use these suit radios to call for help?"
"Nope. They only have a range of about a hundred meters."
"Do you know where we are?" Trip asked, his voice breaking just a little.
"I know exactly where we are. We were going 25 kph. That's a 24 minute trip. I stopped us at the 10 minute point. So we're on a line between the university and the observatory, just short of half way."
"So we're, what, four kilometers from the university?"
"Very good, Earth boy."
"How much air do we have?"
"Sixty minutes. Um. Fifty-five now."
"So if I carry you back, and I can average two and a half miles per hour walking, we'll just make it."
"You! Carry me? For an hour? Not gonna happen."
"Hey. I'm probably six times stronger than you. I'm used to Earth gravity remember? And you don't look like you weigh very much."
"Maybe not. But carrying me, your air won't last the full 55 minutes. And if you trip or hurt yourself, we'll just sit there in the sand and suffocate. Zero resources."
"Do you have a better idea? It seems if we stay here, we die in an hour anyway."
I thought for a second. What were our options? I had flares, but no one would see them out here. But we had a working battery and some equipment in back. Yes! Transmitters in the cargo bay! Just the frequency range that the radio observatory uses! "Trip. Go back into the cargo compartment and look for a box that says, 'Hewlett-Packard RF emitter.' Open it up and bring the unit back here. Look for wire, any kind of wire and bring that too."
"What are we gonna do?"
"We're gonna light up the radio observatory so bright, they'll think aliens are invading Mars."
Trip helped me pry open the circuit breaker bay, just behind the seats and we pulled out a pair of leads. The rover batteries are 24 volts D.C. I prayed that the RF transmitter used something similar. It was close but no cigar.
"Okay, Bruno. Ready to kick the door open? We're gonna take this baby outside."
"Why can't we turn it on in here?"
"Because, mister wizard, we're in what's called a Faraday cage. At the bottom of a crater. They'll never get the signal. Comprende?"
Trip furrowed his eyebrows. Then he rolled his eyes. "Do you hafta talk to me like that? I'm scared enough as it is."
Come to think of it, I had been kinda tough on the kid. I reached out and touched his arm. "Sorry. I won't do it again. Just kick the door open, will ya? And don't rip your suit." While he kicked, I opened the flare gun locker and tucked a gun in my waist band.
I used the extra wire to run a twin leader long enough to go outside and around top. In about ten minutes, Trip had the transmitter mounted on a large box on the bottom (now the top) of the rover. He gently pulled me up as I pushed carefully away from the tracks so as not to tear my suit. I bellied onto the tracks and rolled onto the bottom of the rover, keeping my feet together to protect my ankle.
It was time to get my bearings. The morning sun was still in the south east. I got the transmitter lined up roughly towards the observatory. Trip reported that if he stood up, he could just barely see distant mountains over the lip of the crater, so I had him hold the transmitter on his shoulder instead. I sat, leaning against the box and started touching the wires together.
DIT DIT DIT ... DAH DAH DAH ... DIT DIT DIT
There was a bit of sparking as I touched the leads each time. I was probably overloading the unit. I quietly prayed they'd pick us up before I burned the damn thing out. I touched the leads over and over, repeating the message. Every third time, I tapped out A-I-R- R-U-N-N-I-N-G L-O-W. H-U-R-R-Y in Morse code.
Trip watched me intently. "Okay, Kelly. Question. Those dishes are always pointed at the sky. How are they gonna pick this up?"
"We'll likely come in on the back lobes, " I shrugged. "Even then, our signal is probably a million times what they're expecting. At least, I hope so." At this point, Trip had nothing more to say and just starred at the edge of the crater holding the unit steady. Just as well. There were lots of "ifs" I didn't want to think about.
I tapped out the code for about ten minutes, then finally, there was an ugly, muffled sound. I looked up and saw smoke rise from the unit. I had pushed the limit of even H-P engineering and finally burned it out.
Trip and I looked at each other. I shook my head, frowning. He put the transmitter down on the box and sat next to me. I showed him how to dial in some opacity in his helmet to block the intense UV from the sun. Trip put his arm around me, and we watched the sun rise slowly in the red morning sky. I got the flare gun ready.
Then we waited.
It's been almost exactly a (Martian) year since the accident. Trip and I are driving the rover as a team now. ( I trained him. He's damn good.) Thanks to our adventure last summer, the university changed the rules. No passengers except observatory and maintenance personnel. We ride in teams. And now we carry two SatPhones and two solar/battery powered long range radios. And the emergency space suits were upgraded to three hours of air.
Trip will be a junior next semester, continuing his studies in Electrical Engineering and and I'll be a senior, still majoring in Quantum Physics. (We complete two school "years" each Martian year.) Prior to this summer's job, we had seen each other off and on throughout the year in common classes, and I had spent a little time tutoring him. Trip now seems to be weaned away from the adverts, has ditched his NetWatch, and now spends a lot more time in the teaching simulators. Now, when I talk to him about M-theory and Heterotic strings, he at least knows what I'm talking about. Also, I loaned him all of my James B. Twitchell books. Amazingly, Trip has adapted to the Mars technical culture in record time.
About a month ago, dad revealed to me that Trip's dad was adopted, so Trip and I may be cousins, but we're not strictly blood relatives. So that's when I thought it wouldn't be a bad idea for us to be on the same rover team.
Yesterday, on the way out to the observatory, I decided to take Trip up on his previous offer.
"Hey Trip."
"Don't bother me. I'm driving." But he smiled when he said it.
"Remember when you said you could carry me four kilometers in sixty minutes?"
"Yeah. So?"
"That's about where we are now. Wanna try it?"
Trip thought for a second. "You realize you're asking for trouble."
"Whatever."
"You don't think I can do it, do you?"
"Next week's pay check says you can't."
That was all Trip needed to hear. We called in our position, told the base operator the rover batteries had failed, and said we'd walk back with our SatPhones. No problemo.
Trip carried me all the way and wasn't even breathing hard when we got back. In fifty one minutes no less. You know, that could be good practice for the future. I mean ... carrying me over thresholds and stuff like that. Trip just doesn't know it yet.
Copyright 2000 by
John Martellaro, All rights reserved.
About the Author
John Martellaro lives in Colorado at 2,800 meters above sea level with a Ph.D. wife and two cats, Nikki and Data. He holds a B.S. in Astrophysics and an M.S. in Physics. His hobbies, include amateur astronomy, downhill skiing, bicycling, and listening to piano solos. His personal Macs are a B&W G3/400 with a flat screen Studio Display and a blueberry iBook.
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