On Mars Pathfinder (The Mike Lane Stories Book 1) (8 page)

In The Wreckage Of The Airlock

I groaned as I slowly woke up. I felt like I had been hit by a car. My back hurt, my arms hurt, my legs hurt, my head hurt. The only sound was the hiss of airflow in my helmet, a sound that would be part of my day for the rest of my life, however long or short that was going to be. It was a sound that would come to mean life itself. I was still alive. That was a good thing. I knew coming to Mars that there was the chance I would die on the way or after I got here. I had never said to anyone that all it would mean to me was that I got be with Loreena again, sooner. Ah, well. I was alive. That was a good thing. Obviously the good Lord had a reason to keep me that way.

There was some light around me but not much, the internal lighting in the airlock wasn’t working. I lay there for a moment and took stock of my body. I was sore, but I didn’t think anything was broken. I was breathing okay, which was always a good sign. Slowly lifting my arms, I felt no pain in my ribs or my chest. I ran a diagnostic on my suit systems, everything was fine, and my oxygen tanks were still at 98.4%. I turned on the HUD to keep an eye on system readings, and then turned on the LED area light in my chest plate. It was too bright for the small space so I shut it off again.

“So what the hell was that?” I asked myself. It had to have been an explosion,
duhhh
. I was still oriented relatively upright in the airlock but I was lying horizontally on my back. I looked up at the internal airlock hatch which was almost directly above me. There was light coming in through the portal in the hatch, but it looked like it had been mostly blackened out by soot, by something burning. I groaned as I realized this meant I was probably lying on top of the outer airlock hatch. That meant that I could not fire the emergency explosive bolts on the outer hatch to open it, not if it was face down on the Martian ground with the bulk of the airlock on top of it. The blow back would probably finish what the original explosion failed to accomplish, killing me. I was very grateful at that moment that I had depressurized the airlock
before
whatever happened had happened.

I surmised that because the airlock was a late addition and reinforced in its construction, this must have kept the airlock mass intact when the explosion happened. I couldn’t tell if the whole Lander was on its side, or if the airlock had come apart from the Lander. However, the sunlight coming through the soot smudged interior airlock portal, almost directly above me, didn’t give me much hope that the Lander was intact. Either way, it was probably not going to be serviceable, in any fashion..

I looked upwards, but only saw the inside of my helmet. I had to slowly and gingerly re-orient my body and push back on the top of my helmet so that I could look up at what was the actual ceiling of the airlock. There was some light coming through holes in several parts of the ceiling. “Okay, definitely not going to be serviceable,” I muttered to myself.

I didn’t have any welding equipment big enough to handle ship repairs. The Habitat had a small TIG welder for small repairs to mechanicals and equipment, but it wouldn’t handle this much of a job. Of course, at this point I was still hoping the ship was mostly intact with some holes in it.

I rocked back and forth a bit, then a bit harder. It seemed prudent to test the stability of the airlock, to see if it would roll; but it wasn’t budging an iota. That’s promising. I gingerly moved so I wasn’t between the wall and transport bags, and tried to stand up. The airlock wasn’t wide enough to allow me to fully stand up though, so I crouched down, resting my butt on one of the transport bags. Reaching above my head, I rotated and pushed hard against the handle on the inner airlock hatch, which was now top-side. It only moved part of the way and then stuck. I pushed hard on the handle, and tried pounding on the hatch with my fist, but it wouldn’t budge. I changed my body’s seated angle a bit, and looked closer at the airlock door. It was deformed slightly.
Great
. It would never open again, not with what I had at hand to try and force it. The pulse-energy rifles I had put in the airlock just before closing the door would be useless, they didn’t work that way. Using them in such a confined space would probably backfire on me anyways.

I turned my attention to the “ceiling” of the airlock and the light coming through it in several places. There seemed, oddly enough, to be a bit more light coming through than I had originally noticed. I guess I was adjusting to the gloomy interior of the airlock wreckage. I shuffled around a bit, detached and moved a couple bags, and then braced myself in a semicrouching position with my back against the reorganized cargo. I pulled both feet up as much as I could and kicked hard. The ceiling panel buckled in the middle and moved outward about 10 centimetres. This pulled it away from the sides in a few places and let more light in. I hunkered forward a bit closer and then I kicked again, and then again. I was getting somewhere. I moved myself closer again, drew up my legs, and gave a massive thrust with them. The entire ceiling panel came apart from the airlock and fell forward, very slowly. I looked down through my feet and could see both of the Habitats in the distance. Between the Habs and my position, there was an extensive debris field of smouldering, twisted metal, and other smouldering things. I could see equipment bags half burned, and utility boxes smashed apart; contents bare to the atmosphere.

“Frak me”

I collapsed backwards and wanted to cry, part with relief and part with disappointment. Everything had gone so well. So why this? Why did the ship explode? The HUD showed all my suit systems were nominal, so I lay there for a few minutes going over in my mind the events of the last hour before the explosion. I went right back to when I closed up the tunnel from the MTV to the Lander. I recalled everything I saw, checked, did, and re-checked. I recalled all the readings as best I could, nothing was off. Using my helmets HUD display, I even replayed the video file of what I had been recording with my helmet cam at the time of the explosion. There was absolutely nothing from separation, descent, and landing that indicated any problem that would have caused an explosion. Well, that left two possibilities. Either there was a problem with the propellant system that didn’t surface until after engine shut down or it was sabotage … or perhaps a third possibility … no … I didn’t have time to think about that. There would be time later for speculation absent any evidence.

I was well aware of the security precautions taken by both the Corporation and the Americans. I doubted the Chinese or anyone else could have planted a device in the Lander. However, it’s said that everyone has a price. Perhaps they got someone who already had a security clearance, and a need to do it. There was undoubtedly going to be a big investigation back on Terra. However, my money really was on a mechanical fault. In fact, my money was on the primary and secondary couplings to the auxiliary RAD reserve tank. A lot of us thought it was useless, but the astronautic engineers had insisted on it.

“Oh shit, they probably think I’m dead.”

I detected the COM presence of the Work Habitat COM system, but I could not access it or pair with it until I was physically standing at the control panel inside the Habitat. The guest connection I had used previously would not process communications, only data exchange. The Lander system had automatically connected upon touchdown, but I didn’t have the Lander interface anymore. Same with the Mar-Sat and Jalopy-Sat signals, I could detect their presence but could not do anything with them until my suit system was authenticated via the Habitat system. The Landers COM relay was obviously not functioning. This suit was going to be effectively mothballed once I reached the surface. I guess no one thought it was worth putting an automatic pairing procedure in with the descent preparation procedure either. That would definitely have to be changed for future manned missions.

I started to shuffle my body downwards, to exit the airlock debris through the ceiling when one of my internal mantras came up in my mind,
economy of effort
. I started moving the other way, then worked slowly at detaching the large duffel/transport bags, the two foot lockers and the two weapons boxes. I then moved them a little awkwardly, but fairly easily towards my feet. G
ot to love the low-g
. I kicked the bags out ahead of me and shuffle-slid the boxes towards the opening. Last thing I grabbed was my tablet and the handheld camera, hooking them both to my utility belt. I finally went through the impromptu exit and was able to look up.

There was a large hunk of the Lander’s shell that looked like a dull can opener had pried it up. It had flipped over the airlock wreckage forming a canopy over my egress solution. I took a moment to check my HUD and other Activity Suit systems.

I crawled on my hands and knees from under the wreckage canopy and lifted my upper torso, still on my knees. My back twinged a bit, but I felt a lot better now that I wasn’t in the tin can that had almost become my coffin. As my eyes adjusted to the relatively bright Martian light, I rested in the kneeling position with my hands on my hips looking around. I could see the blackened crater that indicated where the Lander
had
been sitting. The airlock, as I suspected, had remained mostly intact and had been ejected about 30 feet from the Lander by the force of the explosion. I could see on the other side of the small crater that there was another large chunk of ship still intact. Dollars to donuts, it was the Head. I later found out I was correct in that assessment. Odd, the two safest places in a Lander are the airlock and the shitter. Damn.

For about 300 metres in every direction there were smoking hunks of metal and other ship components. There were no fires, although the scorching indicated there had been, at least briefly. I guessed they had burned out pretty quickly in the thin atmo. The debris was still hot enough that what would have burned was still smouldering, thus, smoke. I could see a lot of the supply bags and equipment boxes. It was also raining debris over the whole area, and probably would for several more minutes. The debris was small enough, falling slow enough, and far enough away that I could get out from under this canopy and stand up. I started crawling forward on my hands and knees but just as I was about to stand up, I took dizzy and nauseous all of a sudden. I stayed motionless on my hands and knees until the dizziness and nausea passed. It didn’t take too long. I didn’t think it was a concussion, but with head trauma that was a possibility.

I slowly stood up and then turned in a slow circle looking at the smouldering wreckage. Not so oddly, the sight of the wreckage was conflicting with the sheer beauty of the setting I was in. To the west was the ice wall. I could see it clearly, the reds and dark greys of embedded sand on the face of it. North was the flat, slightly rolling and rocky terrain of Chasma Boreale proper. To the west and east were the sand dunes of Hyperboreae Undae that stretched for hundreds of kilometres. The sky was the yellowish gray I had been expecting. The atmosphere had no thick ozone layer to make it blue when the sun was high in the sky. Blue sky didn’t happen until evening time on Mars. Since I was in the latitude of the summer long midnight sun, I wouldn’t see an evening sky for another two or three months. The rocky ground, of course, was red and brown.

It hit me again at that point, I was really here. I was really on Mars. I had done it. We had done it. God had done it; He had brought me safely across the dangerous expanse of space between the two planets and He landed me safely on
martis firma
. He had even kept me safe when the small world of the Lander blew up around me.

The time reading on the HUD brought me back to reality, with the realization that I had been on the surface for over forty minutes before emerging from under the canopy. I can’t communicate directly with Mission Control, but the Mar-Sat will undoubtedly be trained on the wreckage and looking for signs of life or signs of death. I leaned back as far as I could and looked up at where I roughly guessed the Mar-Sat to be. I clenched my hands into fists and raised them, then crossed my arms above my helmet. I held the pose for ten seconds then lowered my arms and surveyed the debris again. I raised the hand camera and slowly panned 360 degrees, so that I could record a POV (Point of View) shot of what I was seeing. There is nothing like boots on the ground to investigate an accident scene. I slowly shuffle stepped through the debris closer to the crater, and took some more footage of the blackened ground; hopefully the blast pattern would give some assistance in their investigation. There was a large, mostly intact hunk of the final RAD assembly, but with no sign of the engine nacelles; I guessed they had been pretty well vapourized by the blast. I took a minute to do an upclose recording of the remaining RAD components in the wreckage. Finished with this, I lowered the camera and strapped it to my utility belt on my jet-black Activity Suit outer shell. I left the camera recording.

I shuffle walked back to the impromptu egress point on the airlock. I picked up a weapons case, two of my duffel bags, and a metal foot locker; then set-off towards the Habitat, walking strongly and without hesitation. Of course, forgetting to shuffle step, I took only two Terran style strides before I was face down and sprawled on the ground. I laughed to myself, stood up, brushed the dirt off my knees and chest, and then checked my systems. All were nominal. I gave the Mar-Sat an impromptu hand signal to let them know I was still okay.

I had forgotten for a moment I wasn’t walking on Terra. I thought back to my Martian training sessions, using slings and fast-response servo’s to simulate walking in 38% of the gravity I was used to. I picked up my load of bags and boxes and then decided to do myself a favour. I went and picked up the other bag, foot locker and the second weapon box. It was really awkward, but it gave enough weight that I felt sort of like I was walking on Earth. That was a blessing because I was still feeling a little out-of-whack from the explosion, and from being back in a gravity environment. I stepped off again, more cautiously this time, and didn’t fall down again. I’d be in the Hab before that embarrassing bit of video reached Terra.