The Season Of Passage Part 20

'Your instincts chose the proper course.'

'Huh?' Gary said.

'Your hearing has not been damaged, Major.' Bill addressed them all. 'Our instruments show we have enough fuel remaining to attain a shallow orbit. But we have come here for a purpose, and thanks to Gary, we can still hope to achieve it. We will a.s.sess our damage and begin repairs. We can use the living area for an airlock until we have repressurized the bas.e.m.e.nt. We are in no immediate danger. Questions? Lauren?'

'How far are we from the Russian landers?'

Bill stepped to the porthole and peered out at the snow-covered desolation. 'I saw one of them when we were coming down, but I don't see it now. How far would you say, Gary?'

'About a mile. Due north. Hey, Bill, I'm sorry for screaming at you like that.'

'I stopped listening to you long ago, Gary,' Bill said.

'Bill,' Lauren said. 'If they think we've exploded, shouldn't we repair our communications immediately?' Terry would be pulling his hair out.

'Each damage to the Hawk will be repaired in the order we see fit after an inspection,' Bill said. 'But our communications will naturally be at the top of the list.'

'Say we're unable to fix our communications,' Lauren said. 'We'll still be able to dock with the Nova, won't we?'

'Yes,' Bill said. 'It will be difficult, because Mark will now have to drop down and meet us halfway. But even without contact, it can be done. Friend will know where the Nova is at all times. Any other questions?'

There were none. They unfastened their belts and stood and stretched in the cramped quarters, while twilight deepened outside the windows. Jim patted Lauren on the back.

'We'll be all right,' he said. 'Mark won't go off without us.'

Carl's eye winked at her. The memory would die slowly, she realized, the same way Carl had. She rubbed her own eyes, trying to shove it away. 'I just hope he doesn't cut his throat,' she said.

NINETEEN.

There was good news and there was bad news. Lauren tried to focus on the positive side. Number one, Gary and Bill had been able to patch the tear in the Hawk's hull. Number two, communications had been restored with the Nova, and consequently with Earth. Lauren had sent a message to Terry complaining of the poor working conditions. Terry had responded with a tape saying that her biography was already exciting enough, and that no new material was necessary. He had looked worse than when she had left Earth. She hoped he hadn't started drinking again.

The bad news. The puncture to the bas.e.m.e.nt had sucked out a good portion of the available air inside the ship and had caused their one and only water tank to explode. Their filtration system, which allowed them to reuse their urine, had also been wiped out during the rough landing. They had only three one-gallon bottles of water, plus the small amount that was still lying in their pipes. Without water they couldn't steam-clean their suits when they came in from the outside. Without water they would be thirsty.

The morning after their second landing on Mars, Lauren searched in what was left of the laboratory for an aspirin. She didn't find one. The majority of her medical supplies lay strewn at the bottom of a mile-deep creva.s.se that lay but fifty feet south of the Hawk's landing pads. Gary had cut it pretty close. Lauren had a headache, another one. She had worked hard the previous day, and then had slept poorly. In dreams Carl told her how beautiful she was. He a.s.sured her that he had a good eye for women. She had awoken with a wretched taste in her mouth.

Lauren left the bas.e.m.e.nt and climbed into the living area.

'So it's definite,' Jim said as she came in. 'There's only one lander?'

'Yes,' Bill said.

'In the scopes,' Gary said, 'I can see a big hole where the other ship is supposed to be.'

'Interesting,' Jim said. He exchanged a glance with Bill.

'What is it?' Gary asked.

'Nothing, Major,' Bill said. 'Let's concentrate on the remaining Russian ship. According to Lauren, within two days our thirst will become unbearable. We will use these two days wisely. We will take the jeep to the Karamazov now.'

'Who's going?' Gary asked.

'Jim, Lauren, and myself,' Bill said. "There will be no discussion. Gary, you will remain with Jessie and continue with the repairs. Understood?'

Gary looked disgusted. 'Yes, sir.'

'Friend,' Bill said. 'Open the garage and start the jeep.'

[Yes, Bill.]

Bill turned to Jim and Lauren. 'We will take two laser rifles with us,' he said.

Given the rough terrain that surrounded them on all sides, the plateau where they had landed was a freak of nature. Covered with pinkish-white snow, its shape was roughly oval; two miles long and half that in width. They had been fortunate Gary was able to bring the Hawk down on the plateau. The nearby cliffs and peaks would have made the bravest of mountain climbers shudder. North, south, and west was no man's land. East stood Olympus Mons, its forty-mile-wide caldera invisible behind shifting ice clouds.

The bulbous wheels of the jeep spun briefly in the snowflakes and then caught, as Bill steered them slowly forward. Their vocals were open, and they could hear one another speak.

'It's flat here, and then it's so mountainous,' Jim mused. 'It was thoughtful of the Martians to provide us with such a nice landing strip.'

The Karamazov waited in the distance, standing twice as tall as the Hawk; a cold stake pointed at a desolate sky. It looked intact.

'What do you think of this place, Jim?' Lauren asked.

He was a long time in answering. 'It reminds me of when I hiked in the Himalayas. Yet, it's different, so alien.' He paused. 'To tell you the truth, I hate this place.'

His remark startled Lauren. 'I think we're all on edge after the last couple of days,' she said.

'Perhaps,' Jim said.

Soon the Karamazov filled their field of view. Bill parked the jeep in the shadow of the lander, and they climbed down onto the snow, huddling like insects at the base of the ship's landing pads.

'I a.s.sume you have the key to this castle?' she said to Jim. He held up a small metal box with three dangling wires.

'Gandalf couldn't have been better prepared,' he said.

A many-ranged ladder scaled halfway up the side of the Karamazov. At the steps, Bill stopped them, saying, 'I will go first. The metal may have weakened in the cold. Once I am on the platform before the airlock, you will follow, Professor. Then you, Lauren, after Jim has joined me.' Bill turned his radio on. 'Major Wheeler?'

'Gary here, sir. How might I help you this fine day?'

Bill glanced up the ladder and then to the west, where the missing lander had once stood. 'Listen to me, Gary, and listen good,' he said seriously. 'We're in now, and we will be keeping in contact. But if for any reason you do not hear from us in the next hour, begin preparations to lift off. If after two hours, you still haven't heard from us, you will wait for the next favorable opposition with the Nova and then leave. You will not under any circ.u.mstances come looking for us. Is that understood?'

Jessica wailed in the background. Gary said with a trace of humor, 'You can't be serious.'

'I am very serious,' Bill said.

There was a lengthy pause. 'As you say, Colonel,' Gary replied.

Bill broke the connection and said, 'Release the safety on your laser, Lauren.' He stepped onto the ladder.

Fifteen minutes later the three of them were gathered on the square corrugated platform before the Karamazov's airlock. They were pretty high up; Lauren was glad she wasn't afraid of heights. There were too many other things to be afraid of on Mars. Jim attached his fancy electronic gear and labored with the door for several minutes.

'Is the seal frozen?' Bill asked finally.

Jim tried to scratch his head and then remembered his helmet. 'Possibly,' he said. 'I tripped the lock but nothing's happened.'

'Maybe we should knock,' Lauren said.

To her surprise Jim did so. To her greater surprise, the door slid open. 'Must have loosened it,' he said.

Lauren gulped. 'I hope you're right.'

They stepped into the airlock. The door automatically closed behind them. Lauren put a finger on the laser's trigger. Fog crept up their legs as the chamber filled with air. They decreased the reception of their vocals to keep their whispers from sounding like thunder. Presently, a second door slid open, all by itself, and they stepped into a dark circular hallway, lit faintly by colored dials. They turned their helmet lamps on. Jim studied a computer board on the wall to their right, and decided it was a life-support terminal. It was still working. The atmosphere was intact, but slightly below freezing. The cold was a bad sign, and the dark; that is, if they were hoping to find survivors. Jim couldn't locate a light switch.

They pa.s.sed through an open door into the center of the Karamazov, and found themselves in an elaborate laboratory. Numerous frozen blood slides lay on a counter beside an electron microscope. Lauren picked one up. It looked as if the Russian doctor had been busy, and that his work had been interrupted.

A compact elevator lifted them to the next level, a living area. Sitting on a low table was a chess game, in remission. Lauren began to perspire in her suit. Black was playing black. There was no doubt who was going to win.

The living area branched into three tiny bedrooms. One for each of them. Welcome Earthmen. Bill said they should check them out. He disappeared into the one on the left. Jim took the one in front. Lauren wanted to chase after them, and plead with him that they shouldn't separate. But she was afraid to look stupid. They would only be on the other side of the wall, for G.o.dsakes.

Yet her short meeting with Carl had taught her a thing or two about being alone. Even an instant was long enough for the hand holding the jagged sliver of mirror to reach out and lay her open like a cow on a butcher's block. Yes, her meeting with Carl had been instructional in every sense of the word. He had put things in her head she was never going to get out. Whispered words of love. She was sure Carl would have tried to kiss her even when his blood was gushing out of his neck.

Lauren stepped quietly through the doorway that led to the right-hand bedroom. Almost immediately she let out a sigh of relief. The room was not much different than the bedrooms aboard the Nova, except that the Russians had had bunk beds. Both bunks were unmade, with the blankets piled indiscriminately on the lower bed. Best of all, the room was empty. She loved empty rooms that didn't have corpses in them.

Then Lauren noticed something odd. There seemed to be a lack of circulation in the lower sections of her suit. Cold was seeping from the floor into her legs. Quickly she consulted her suit indicators, but everything was as it should be. Then she noticed a bad smell, which should have been impossible inside her suit. The odor was both familiar and elusive at the same time. It was definitely a stink of decay, but whatever was rotting was totally foreign to her.

Lauren convinced herself she was just imagining things. She crossed to the desk and picked up a family picture. The woman was tall, of slight build, with long red hair and sad gray eyes. The children, a girl and a boy, were both dark-haired, and the man standing behind them was the commander of the Gorbachev, the first human being ever to step on another planet. She was in Dmitri Maximov's quarters, and the realization saddened her. Such a wonderful man, she thought. She sat in the chair by the desk and opened the top drawer. Inside she found a thick book. She leafed through the pages. It was Dmitri's diary, recorded in Russian, in a firm graceful hand. She decided to take it back to the Hawk and have Friend translate it.

As Lauren closed the diary and prepared to stand and leave, she caught the slightest trace of movement at the limit of her peripheral vision. It came from the lower cot, and it made her freeze so solid she could have turned to stone. It was just her imagination running away with her, sure, she knew that. But was there just a one in a million chance there was someone under the blankets?

Come look, come peek. You know you want to, Lori.

Lauren thought of calling Jim and Bill. They were just in the other rooms. She was having trouble speaking, though; it had something to do with her dry throat. And even if she could talk, she had to wonder whether she wanted to make a fool of herself again, as she had with Carl. Of course it was another Carl she was worried about. Good old Carl. He seemed to be with her now, giving her advice. There really was no other way to explain why she was standing up and walking toward the bed. There was no other way to explain the voices in her head. She was getting kind of used to them by now, although she knew they weren't really there. Still, it annoyed her the way they kept calling her Lori when her real name was Lauren. So what if Gary called her Lori? He was her friend. Carl wasn't.

Nor were Carl's partners.

The only light was from her headlamp. It filled the room with shadows. Lauren knelt by the bed. There was definitely something beneath the blankets. It could be another blanket. Or maybe a pile of clothes. Clothes were often put beneath blankets, she thought. She put them there herself sometimes. Once she put a whole pile of laundry beneath her blankets on Halloween in an effort to convince Terry that there was a body sleeping in their bed.

A body, Lori.

Lauren touched the blankets and began to peel them back. She told herself it was her duty to do so, and a voice said inside her head that she should enjoy her duty because it might just...

Get me killed.

Lauren dropped the sheets and sprang to her feet. She had to fight with every nerve in her body to stop trembling, and it was a fight she won for about two seconds. Then she began to scold herself, as was her habit when she was afraid. So the wind was blowing like it hadn't blown in a million years. So Carl had winked at her. So black was playing black. She was a f.u.c.king astronaut. She didn't believe in ghosts. If there was a body under the blankets, then f.u.c.k it. It was dead. It wasn't going to bite her. It wasn't going to drink her blood. Carl hadn't tried to drink her blood, even if he had talked about it.

Come on, Lori, we did a little more than talk. Admit it.

There is no one there!

Lauren put her finger on the laser trigger and aimed it at the bed. Using the tip of her right boot, she began to ease the blankets away. It was not so terrible. It could have been a lot worse. She knew that from experience. There could have been blood. There could have been dangling nerves, floating eyeb.a.l.l.s. Yuck! Here there was just blond hair, pale skin, closed eyes, a frozen grin, a bony chest, gray shorts, skinny legs, and a dead Russian.

Call Jim. Call Jim. Call Jim!

Lauren didn't call anybody. She was under a spell. She was no longer breathing, although blood roared in her head. She knelt beside the dead Russian. She touched his abdomen and studied the texture of his skin. It was not frozen. It was soft, too soft to make sense in the sub-freezing temperature. Increasing the reception of her vocals and tilting her helmet to the side, she pressed her head down and listened for a heartbeat. It was a dumb thing to do with a two-year-old corpse, she realized, and naturally she didn't hear a thing except her own pounding heart. She straightened up and then leaned over to study his face.

He opened his eyes and smiled at her.

'Jim!' Lauren screamed. She fell on the floor and scrambled away. 'Jim!'

The corpse sat up slowly and faced her, still smiling. Lauren ran backward into the desk. The corpse stood and looked down at her, then took a step toward her. Lauren shoved desperately back against the desk, but it had nowhere to go, and neither did she. The corpse took another step in her direction, and then another. Coming. Coming. Please, Mummy, tell me that it doesn't mean anything, that it's only a story.

Lauren found her laser - it was still around her neck -and aimed the muzzle at the Russian. She put four pounds of pressure on a five-pound trigger and swore in her mind for it to come no closer. Four hundred million miles to rescue you, buddy, but if you touch me, I'll blow your G.o.dd.a.m.n guts all over the wall.

The Russian's teeth glinted in her head lamp.

It bent over and reached out its hand.

Stop!

'Wait!' Jim called from the doorway. Bill crouched by his side, his own laser aimed at the Russian. Jim stepped into the room. He spoke softly. 'Wait.'

The pale Russian turned his outstretched hand in Jim's direction. They shook hands. Lauren thought she was going to faint. She was pretty sure she had wet the flannels inside her suit. That was OK. Pee smelled a lot better than the room did.

'You're Ivan Zossima,' Jim said, his voice no doubt clear to Ivan even through the faceplate of his helmet. There was plenty of air inside the Karamazov, even if it was cold. 'I remember your face. My name's James Ranoth. We're the American expedition. We're happy to see you're alive.'

Alive. Ivan nodded his head at the mention of the word. Lauren realized she had almost committed murder.

'h.e.l.lo,' she said gamely to Ivan. 'I'm sorry about my reaction. It's just that I thought you were dead.' Ivan smiled. She continued, 'My name's Lauren Wagner. Can you speak English?'

Ivan shook his head. Bill stepped into the room, his laser still held ready. 'Where are the other members of your crew?' he asked.

Ivan grinned. His irises were like green marbles.

Lauren whispered to Bill and Jim, 'He looks like he's in shock. When I found him he was lying so still. I ain't kidding, I thought he was dead.'

'If I'd been lying here for two years, I don't think I'd look much better,' Jim said. 'What temperature do you have in here, Lauren?'

'Same as the monitors said downstairs. Just below freezing. He must be cold.'

'He's not shivering,' Bill said. 'Could he have adapted to this temperature out of necessity?'

Lauren nodded. 'There have been cases where people have survived lengthy exposure to cold with little or no protection. Our physiology is remarkably adaptable.'

Ivan stared at them as they spoke. He was exceptionally pale, although he was not emaciated. His eyes were a puzzle. He watched them, yet he did not give the impression he actually saw them. He did not blink.