For long moments nothing could be heard inside the cockpit except the frightened gasping of four sweat-soaked people and the creaking and pinging of overheated metal.
Connors swallowed so hard they could all hear it. Then he said, “Must have been an old crater filled in with loose rubble.”
“Or dust,” Jamie heard himself say in a hollow voice.
“Felt more like sand, sort of.”
“Are we stuck?”
Connors shook his head. “Might have to detach this section from the other two, but I think we can make it.”
“Without the fuel tank and the lab?” Ilona asked.
“Lemme try first…”
As gently as a mother caressing her baby Connors touched his toe to the accelerator pedal. The electric motors hummed in a low register. Jamie felt the rover shudder, inch forward ever so slightly.
“Gotta get all three sections straightened out or we’ll start sliding again,” Connors muttered. “Like driving a semi rig…”
Slowly, slowly they crawled. The astronaut’s long, serious face gradually evolved a tentative little smile. The electric motors whined to a higher pitch, the vehicle moved forward more assuredly, and Connors’s smile widened until they were rolling confidently and all his gleaming teeth were showing.
“Gracia a dios,” came Joanna’s breathless voice from behind them.
Another few bumps, little ones, and Jamie saw that they were on level ground.
“That’s it,” Connors said happily. “We’re on the canyon floor.”
“Good work,” said Jamie.
“Had a bad minute or two back there.”
“Tell me about it!”
Their plan was to stop at the base of the landslide, go outside and take rock and soil samples, then traverse along the north face of the canyon cliffs until nightfall. They would take more samples first thing in the morning, then move forward again until they came to where Jamie had seen his “village.” There they would see if they could climb up to the cleft where the rock formation stood. At the very least they could take more pictures of it and try to get a spectral analysis of the formation remotely, by using a laser to burn off a tiny amount of rock and photographing the spectrum of the cloud of gas that it gave off.
“I will take this first EVA with you,” said Joanna, after they had eaten a quick cold meal.
Jamie was at the airlock hatch at the back end of the rover’s command module. Connors had returned to the cockpit to check all systems and make his report to Vosnesensky.
“Ilona’s on the schedule,” he said.
“She does not feel well,” Joanna replied.
Jamie glanced at Ilona. She was sitting on the edge of the folded-up bunk, pale and visibly trembling.
Jamie’s own guts were still churning and he felt sweaty from the harrowing descent down the landslide. But Ilona looked really sick.
“Okay,” he said to Joanna. “Suit up.”
Making his way back to the midsection, Jamie leaned over Ilona. She looked up at him. Her eyes were watery, her face covered with a sheen of perspiration.
“Why don’t you go up front and ask Pete to let you talk with Tony? I think you need medical attention.”
“I’ll be all right,” she said, her voice weak. “I feel foolish.”
“Call Tony; get his advice.”
She nodded.
Jamie made his way back to the airlock. His own legs felt wobbly, achy. He put it down to the tension of the descent. Christ, I hope we’re not all coming down with something. If any one of us has the flu, we’ll all get it and that’ll be the end of this excursion.
Joanna was halfway into her hard suit. Jamie began the laborious task of getting into his. It seemed to take an hour, but finally they were both suited up, backpacks connected, helmet visors fastened down. Connors came back into the airlock and checked them both. It felt unbearably crowded with three of them in there, even though Connors was in his coveralls.
“Stay within sight of the rover,” the astronaut warned. “I’ll be watching you from the cockpit, once I get my suit on.”
Standard procedure. There must always be a backup person fully suited and ready to go out at an instant’s notice in case of an emergency. It was bending the rules to have scientists go outside without an astronaut with them, but the change in procedure had been okayed by Kaliningrad-for this traverse only.