“I don’t think the rear module is in the stuff,” Jamie said. “I’m going to try to put its wheels in reverse.”
“Yeah. Maybe it can pull us out of this.”
The generator whined and they could hear the faint screech of wheels spinning without traction. Jamie shut them down before the bearings burned out.
“We’re stuck,” he said.
Connors’s bloodshot eyes were wide with fear. “Yeah. Looks that way.”
SOL 38: SUNSET
Vosnesensky was the last one to be tested.
The Russian was in no mood for having a medic punch holes in his skin. Connors had just reported that the rover was stuck halfway up the landslide. They would need a rescue effort. But how? And who? Dr. Li refused to allow anything to be done until he had consulted with mission control in Kaliningrad. Meanwhile night was coming on and the four people in the rover were as sick as dogs.
Not that the people in the dome were much better off. Toshima had suddenly collapsed at his workstation; they had had to carry him to his bunk. Patel, Naguib, even Abell and Mironov were not much good for anything except sitting around and moaning. Monique Bonnet, who had been playing the cheerful, motherly nurse for the past two days, was dragging herself around, hollow eyed with exhaustion.
“And how do you feel, in general?” Dr. Yang asked as Vosnesensky sat on the little white stool in the infirmary.
The Russian glowered at her. “I have important work to do,” he said. “We have a crisis…”
Yang was barely taller than Vosnesensky even though he was seated and she was standing. But she stopped him cold with a snap of her almond eyes.
“You will not be able to do anything about your crisis if your medical condition continues to worsen,” she said. She did not raise her voice, but there was cold steel in her words. “Now please answer my questions and do as I tell you.”
Vosnesensky glanced at Reed, who was leaning against the patient’s couch in the corner of the tiny infirmary. Reed seemed to be in good health, his face pink. At least that damned superior smile of his was gone; he was frowning with puzzled frustration.
“The sooner you cooperate the sooner we will be finished,” Yang said.
Vosnesensky capitulated. “What must I do?”
“Roll up your left sleeve and tell me how you feel. Exactly how you feel.”
The Russian pulled in a deep breath as he unbuttoned the cuff of his coverall sleeve. “I am weak, my legs ache, I have no appetite.”
“Have you ever felt this way before?” Yang held a hypodermic syringe in one hand, its needle glinting in the overhead lights.
“Not that I can remember.”
“Are you coughing or sneezing? Does your chest hurt?”
Vosnesensky shook his head, then winced. The needle went in smoothly; Yang found a vein on her first try.
“Any rash on your body?” she asked.
Watching the syringe fill up with dark blood, Vosnesensky replied, “No. Not that I have noticed.”
Yang pulled the needle out and slapped a plastic bandage on the puncture. Reed watched in silence, his arms folded across his chest. The diminutive Chinese physician asked Vosnesensky to strip to the waist. Wordlessly the Russian pulled down the top of his coveralls and slipped his undershirt over his head.
Yang looked at his back. “No rash,” she muttered.
“Is that significant?” Vosnesensky asked.
“Perhaps.” She looked across the small cubicle toward Reed, then murmured absently to Vosnesensky, “You may go now.”
“Thank you.” The Russian tugged on his coverall top and scurried from the infirmary despite his aching legs, carrying his undershirt in one hand.
Jamie fingered his bear fetish through the hard suit’s gloves. Thin and flexible as they were, the gloves still robbed him of the true feeling of the stone’s polished warmth.
He was standing on the lab module’s roof in the last slanting rays of the dying sun. He and Connors had barely been able to push the airlock hatch open; then the astronaut had slumped to the floor of the airlock, too weak to move any farther. Jamie had left him sitting there in a pile of loose dust that had drifted in, while he clambered up the ladder set into the rover’s side to survey their situation.