Red Thunder

“The… the striations, the layering,” Xu told us. “He was looking for a formation like this, but it is too far down, too steep. He is frustrated because of this.”

We all got out and looked down to where Xu was pointing.

The previous night I couldn’t sleep, so I went to the commons and cranked up the DVD reader. We’d brought along a pretty respectable reference library. I found some encyclopedia articles about the Grand Canyon in Arizona, and read and looked at pictures until I finally began to yawn.

It was easy to see that the Grand Canyon and the Valles Marineris didn’t have a lot in common other than both being deep and wide. The book said the rocks near the bottom of the Grand Canyon were about two billion years old. You could see the layering, like a million-layer birthday cake, from different stuff that settled out during different epochs. Then the land got shoved upward by the movements of the crustal plates, and erosion had begun.

Had Valles Marineris been formed like that? Nobody knew for sure. If it did, where did all the water go? Boiled off into space? Sunk into the ground? How much water? Enough to be useful if humans decided to come here in large numbers?

Most geologists-or areologists, as some preferred to be called-believed the Valles had been eroded by ru

That was about as far as I got. So I knew what Dr. Li was talking about, in general terms. The layering here was different. But it all boiled down to… or more probably, froze down to… water. So far Li had not found moisture-bearing rocks or soils, which was what he wanted to find.

“Down there at the bottom, you see it?” Li said, translated by Xu. “Layering, which was caused by a very ancient sea of water. Then… farther up, several more areas of layering, suggesting that seas once again covered this area, at very long… intervals. The water returned. The water must still be here… somewhere.”

[354] We could see the layering he was talking about a long way down the slope, which was about sixty degrees.

“One theory… which Li likes very much, is that water is still present about two hundred meters down. Pressure might keep it from freezing at that depth. As the pressure builds up, water might be forced… what is the word?… laterally along rock strata. Then, at a place like this, that layer has been eroded away. The water is forced into the air, where it freezes. A plug forms. When the pressure is sufficient, the plug blows out, and a slurry of rock, ice, and some water sprays outward, forming an apron of debris much like what we see spreading away from that layer below us, about two hundred meters down. Li wishes he could take samples from that area.”

“Well, heck,” Dak said. “Let’s just lower him down and let him chip some off.”

When Li understood that Blue Thunder was equipped with a powered winch and a thousand meters of heavy-duty poly rope, I thought he would hurt himself dancing around. Travis was dubious, but I think he was interested in helping the Chinese regain some lost face, so he agreed.

We secured Li to the rope and he went over the side, walking backward. In fifteen minutes he was down. He chipped for a while, and then our radios were filled with his excited chatter. Xu smiled hugely at us.

“He has found ice!” he said. “Just where he expected to find it.”

So, in the end, the crew of Red Thunder did get to do its little bit of discovery. Short of finding actual Martian life, it was as exciting a result as anyone could ask for.

WHEN WE GOT back, Kelly was in tears. I just held her for a while, until she could stop shaking and get herself back together.

“I feel so dumb,” she said. “Acting like I’m six years old or something.”

“That’s just how I felt,” Alicia said.

“With me, it was more depression,” I said.

[355] “Why didn’t you call us on the radio?” Travis asked her. “We’d have come back and got you, made some other arrangement.”

“That’s why. You would have come back. I kept telling myself I’d be okay, then I’d start shivering again. Couldn’t stop.” She blew her nose. “I almost decided to come looking for y’all. Follow the tire tracks.”

“That’s crazy, Kelly,” Travis said, not unkindly.

“That’s what I’m telling you, Travis. I was out of my mind. I’ve never been so scared in my whole life.”

Travis told us that, starting tomorrow, we’d operate on the buddy system all the time. No one would be left alone. Since he was adamant about having someone aboard ship at all times, that meant that only three of us at a time could go exploring.

“What the heck,” Dak said. “I’ll take my turn, too. Any of y’all can drive Blue Thunder … well, about half as good as me, and since I’m twice the driver I need to be, that ought to be all right.”

Alicia hit him with an apple core.

30

IT WASN’T UNTIL the next morning, Day M5, that we realized Travis hadn’t meant to include himself in the buddy system rotation.

“I can handle it, don’t worry about me,” he said.

Debate was allowed aboard Red Thunder until Travis cut it off. So we were still arguing about it when somebody knocked on the door. Whoever it was must have been pounding on the side of the ship with a wrench or something.

“I wonder who that could be?” Kelly asked.

“Marvin the Martian?” I suggested.

It was still half an hour until the Chinese were due to join us for another day of exploration. Travis frowned and looked at his watch. Alicia tapped a few keys on her board and we saw a view from one of our outside cameras. There was a single Chinese standing on our threshold platform. We could see the Chinese rover parked a few feet from the ramp, and no one else was in it.

“Who’s that knocking at our door?” Dak asked.

“Captain Xu, Mr. Sinclair. Captain, may I come in? This is an emergency.”

We all looked at each other, then Travis shrugged and made his way [357] down to the air lock. We heard it cycle, then voices too indistinct to hear. Travis shouted, “No!” and the rest of us scrambled for the ladder.

“It happened about eight hours ago,” Xu was saying. Travis looked at us.

“Xu says the Ares Seven blew up.”

Though the news was not entirely unexpected, it was still shocking to hear it.

“Apparently the crew had some warning,” Xu went on. “They declared an emergency and within two minutes telemetry ceased. But Ms. Oakley had indicated that at least three of the cosmonauts were still alive.”

“Holly’s alive,” Travis breathed.

“Well… that no longer seems likely.”

“Likely or not, we’re going after them,” Travis said.

This time it was Xu’s turn to be shocked. Red Thunder could fool longtime astronauts that way, at first. It could take them a while to realize, on a gut level, just how much Jubal’s baby had changed all the rules of space travel.

“Yes… yes, of course. If there is anything, that is, if I can help in-”

“Do you have any kind of maneuvering unit, a suit jet or a low-powered rocket unit we could use for an EVA if we can find-”

“Pardon me… what is this EVA?”

“Extra-Vehicular Activity-one of those NASA jawbreakers, this one means stepping outside the ship for a bit.”

“Yes, we have such a device, and I would be happy to give you one.”

“Can we go get it? Now? Time is critical.”

“Certainly.”

“Crew, I hope to lift from here in no more than one hour. Batten down all the hatches, secure everything, you know the drill. Captain Xu, let’s go.”

“I can get Blue Thunder stowed away in about an hour, Cap…” Dak saw the sad look on Travis’s face, and the air went out of him. “Sorry, Captain, I wasn’t thinking. I just hate to abandon her. Captain Xu, you’re welcome to use her when we’ve left.”