“Thanks,” Jamie muttered to his freshly shaved image in the lav’s metal mirror. “I needed that.” The face that looked back at him was gaunt, red eyed, with hollows beneath the high cheekbones. You’re turning into a paleface, Jamie said to it.
Joanna seemed wearier, too, and Ilona barely managed to pull herself out of her bunk and make it to the lavatory. After a glum breakfast Jamie accompanied Connors outside despite the astronaut’s mild protests.
“There won’t be a media conference until the antenna’s fixed,” Jamie pointed out. “So there’s no reason for me to stay inside.”
He got the impression that the astronaut was too weak, too much in pain, to argue. Jamie himself felt ragged, and tired. The night’s sleep had done nothing to restore his strength. The achy feeling that had assailed him for two days now was worse; every muscle in his body felt strained.
Morning mists hovered as they stepped out from the airlock. Tendrils of cold gray fog drifted by, slowly as departing spirits. Where does the moisture come from? Jamie asked himself again. It’s being replenished every day. It evaporates when the sun touches it, and then more mist forms the next morning. How? Why?
Connors ignored the mist. “Looks like we’ve got some digging to do.”
The rover was piled almost roof high with sand on its windward side, nearly buried in dust so fine and loose that it blew up in powdery clouds when the two hard-suited men stepped in it.
“Good thing the hatch is on the sheltered side,” Jamie said.
“I don’t think the sand’s heavy enough to keep the hatch closed,” Connors said, as they walked through the powdery drifts, tossing up plumes of dust with each booted step. “We could’ve pushed it open with no sweat, I betcha.”
Maybe, Jamie said to himself.
Connors clambered slowly, awkwardly up the ladder set into the command module’s side just behind the cockpit canopy and began to examine the microwave antenna.
“Just what I thought,” Jamie heard in his earphones as he waited at the ladder’s base. “Goddamn dust wormed its way under the gasket seal… oh shit, I can’t believe I did that!”
“What? Are you okay?”
“Yeah. Just dumb, that’s all. I tried to blow the dust out of the gasket.”
Connors was grumbling to himself. Then Jamie realized, “With your helmet on!”
“Fogged up the faceplate real nice.”
“Turn up the blower.”
“Already have. It’s clearing up.”
Connors came down and went to the outside equipment compartment on the lab module for tools: a fine wire brush and a shovel. In a few minutes he had the antenna mount clear of dust.
Over the suit radios, they asked Joanna to check the TV link. They saw the antenna arm unfold; then the dish turned slowly until it locked onto their spacecraft orbiting over the equator. Joanna reported that she had contacted the dome without difficulty.
“Vosnesensky says the news conference will start in another hour, if we can be ready by then,” she reported.
“No sweat,” said Connors.
Jamie grunted to himself. In fact, he was perspiring heavily inside his suit and was certain that Connors was too.
“You go in now,” the astronaut said to Jamie. “I’ll go around the other side and dig out one of the wheels, see if we can get away without digging out the others.”
“I can help.”
“Naw, it’s okay. This stuff is so fluffy you can blow it away with a whisk broom. If I need help I’ll ask you. Maybe we’ll have a digging party after the media conference, all four of us.”
“You’re sure you’ll be okay out here?”
“I’m no hero, Jamie. If I need help I’ll yell, don’t worry.”
Reluctantly Jamie went back inside. It took much longer than usual to vacuum the dust off his suit. Leaving his helmet in the airlock, he tramped the length of the command module to the cockpit. Joanna was in the pilot’s seat, speaking into the display screen. Jamie recognized the face of Burt Klein, the American astronaut on Mars 2.
Klein grinned at him. “You guys have your antenna back on track,” he said.
Jamie mumbled an acknowledgment, then turned to the voice link with Connors. “Everything’s fine. We’ve got Mars 2 on the screen.”