Mars

With a light pen Reed began to check the bar codes printed on the lids of each jar, like a supermarket clerk checking out groceries. Damned silly busywork, he grumbled to himself. Yet if the computer did not show a bottle-by-bottle check of the inventory, Vosnesensky would be up in arms. All mission tasks must be accomplished, as far as the Russian was concerned, no matter how trivial or boring.

Then a new thought struck him. If Jamie has his way and returns to the Grand Canyon he’ll probably want to take Joa

Pock! The same sound again, only fainter this time. What could it be? Reed asked himself as he unscrewed the first of the vitamin bottles. Might as well transfer them to the smaller bottles while I’ve got them out. Tony grumbled to himself about the efficiency experts who had pla

Pock! Pock!

Reed jumped to his feet, knocking over the open bottle. Vitamin pills spilled across his desk, rolled onto the floor.

"Everyone into your suits!" Vosnesensky’s heavy voice roared through the dome. "At once! Into your hard suits! Now!"

Cosmonaut Leonid Tolbukhin was on duty in the command center of Mars 2 when the first pinging noise made him sit up rigidly in his chair. Cold sweat beaded across his upper lip.

My god, it must be me, he thought. I’m a Jonah, a jinx. First Konoye and now this.

But while his mind raced, his hands moved almost as fast. He flicked on the radar display and almost immediately, with the speed of a reflex action, he hit the alarm.

"Meteors! We’re ru

Will Martin, the American geophysicist, happened to be at the comm console, in the middle of taping a long report back to Earth.

"What is it?" he shouted over the hooting of the alarm. "Speak English, dammit!"

"Meteors!" Tolbukhin shouted back. "Get into your hard suit at once!"

Vosnesensky was at the dome’s command center, locked in an earnest conversation with Mironov and Abell about the logistics of the upcoming traverse to Pavonis Mons, while ostensibly monitoring the scientists who were outside with Pete Co

Both the dome and the orbiting spacecraft were double walled: the ships of metal, the dome of plastic. Although Mars’s atmosphere was almost vanishingly thin by terrestrial standards, it still offered enough resistance to incoming meteors to burn most of them to ashes long before they reached the ground.

The greatest danger, according to the mission pla

Tolbukhin’s warning blared in the dome’s radio speakers, as well as throughout the orbiting ships.

Vosnesensky stopped in midword and bellowed, "Everyone into your suits! At once! Into your hard suits! Now!"

Only after he started ru

Co

Another puff sprouted ten meters away.

"Jesus Christ!" he yelled into his helmet microphone. "Meteors! Everybody back to the dome! Double quick!"

All six of the geology and biology scientists were spread across several hundred meters of the rock-strewn plain, trying to survey in detail the depth of the permafrost layer beneath the ground. The mapping work was slow, since they were doing it on foot. All excursions in the rovers were on hold until the mission controllers decided exactly where the rovers would be allowed to go.

Jamie was holding a digging pole whose toothed bit end drilled into the ground. He jerked to attention at Co

Jamie took in the locations of the five other scientists with a swift glance. Co

"Now! Move it! Move it!" Co

Jamie angled off toward Joa

He reached Joa

The ground was erupting into puffs of dust, as if a squad of riflemen had them under fire. Something banged at the back of his helmet, just a tap, really, but it startled him as if he’d been shot. He looked up and saw that the dome was dimpling here and there as meteoroids struck its surface. Oh my god, if one of them breaks through…

One did. Jamie saw the transparent fabric on the lower level of the dome pucker for an instant, and then a small geyser of spray erupted into the dry thin air, like a whale spouting.

"The dome’s punctured!" somebody screamed.

The hole spread into a growing rip as moisture-laden air geysered out into the Martian atmosphere and the plastic fabric of the dome began to sag noticeably.

After that first moment of near panic Vosnesensky turned coldly calm. While the others rushed for their suits, he veered aside and trotted around the i

He never saw the dome punctured. The meteoroid that punched through both layers of the plastic was a nearly microscopic grain of dust. But Vosnesensky heard a different sound, like a sudden gusting intake of breath, the kind of sound a man makes when he’s been stabbed in the chest.

He felt the breeze as the dome’s air rushed toward the puncture. Books fluttered open in the wind; loose papers flew across the dome like a covey of frightened birds. The hissing noise grew louder, a moan, a rushing torrent of air.