“Juice will raise your blood sugar,” Joanna said. “That will be good.”
The orange juice was entirely gone. There was no other juice in the capacious refrigerator except tomato. Connors grabbed the plastic container and pulled off its cap. Raising it to his lips he took four big gulps, then handed it to Jamie.
Thinking that if whatever was ailing them was infectious it didn’t matter now, Jamie drained the container almost to the end.
“There are juice concentrates in the freezer,” Ilona called weakly from where she sat.
“Do we have enough water?” Jamie asked.
“Yes, we should,” Joanna said. “I’ll see to it.”
Connors shambled off toward the cockpit. But he got no farther than the benches halfway there. He sagged onto the bench opposite Ilona.
“My… legs… Jesus, they… won’t carry me.”
Jamie pushed past Joanna toward the astronaut, driven on a sudden spurt of adrenaline. Connors’s eyes looked frightened. Joanna’s, terrified.
“What’s the matter, Pete?”
“Can’t… I just feel… so damned weak…”
“Okay. Okay. Just sit there. Get your strength back.”
“But we got… to get started.”
“I can drive.”
“You?”
“I can do it. I know how.”
“Yeah… but…”
Jamie made a smile big enough for them all to see. “Just like driving pickups in New Mexico. No sweat.”
Wishing he truly felt that confident, Jamie made his way to the cockpit and slid into the driver’s seat. He had been trained to operate the rover as a backup, of course, and he had watched Vosnesensky and Connors for enough hours. He had even driven the rover under their skeptical eyes.
Can you do it all alone? Jamie asked himself. Hell yes, he replied silently. I’ve got to.
Taking his time, going deliberately slowly, carefully, Jamie checked out the control panel from one end to the other. Then he touched the switch that started the drive motors. Beneath his seat the electric generator whined to a higher pitch. Funny how you never notice the damned thing humming away until it changes its tune, Jamie said to himself. Or stops altogether.
“Here we go,” he called over his shoulder. Ilona made a weak smile back at him. Joanna was sitting beside Connors, holding a plastic cup in one hand. She’s turning into Florence Nightingale, Jamie thought. Will Pete be okay? Will Ilona make it? God, they could both die. We could all die.
The rover lurched forward, slewed slightly to the left, then straightened as Jamie eased off the accelerator and held the steering wheel firmly.
“We’re moving!” he yelped. “We’re on our way.”
Not a sound came from the three behind him.
Then Jamie thought, We’re heading in the wrong direction. The cliff village is the other way; we’re leaving it behind.
Despite his own pain and the terrible weariness that was sapping the strength from his body, Mikhail Vosnesensky grimly donned his hard suit. Abell and Mironov helped him, but neither of them looked any better than Vosnesensky felt.
It is the dust, the Russian told himself. It has to be. Outwardly he had dismissed the idea of some weird Martian infection as too preposterous even to consider. Yet deep in his heart he feared the possibility that they had all been poisoned by some alien bug for which there was no cure.
Although Dr. Li said it was not necessary for him to be outside when the lander arrived, Vosnesensky quoted regulations until the expedition commander reluctantly bowed acquiescence.
I may be sick, Vosnesensky told himself, but I still know my duty. The regulations call for a cosmonaut to be suited up and ready to assist the landing party once they touch down. There is a good reason for this rule and as long as I can stand on my own two legs I will not allow any rule to be broken.
So he tottered weakly out through the airlock hatch and stood waiting, a fire-engine red figure standing stolidly on the rusty soil of Mars. Exactly on schedule the L/AV streaked across the pink sky and deployed its parachutes. They billowed into perfect white hemispheres dangling the cup-and-saucer lander beneath them. At the precise moment the chutes detached the retro-rockets fired. The lander, with cosmonaut Dmitri Iosifovitch Ivshenko at its controls and astronaut Oliver Zieman beside him, touched the sands of Mars about two hundred meters away.