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Chapter 44

Thoat grumbled its way over a large set of boulders, causing Joe to grumble in turn. Then the massive Martian rover crested the small ridge. A.J., who was currently sitting up front with Bruce, gave a whoop that almost deafened them.

"Yeah! Ahoy, me hearties, here be pirates!"

Helen moved up to take a look. In the distance, a kilometer or less away, squatted a blocky silhouette which she recognized from long-ago discussions with Joe and A.J. It was reassuringly familiar and, so to speak, very down to Earth in appearance. Pirate was a modification of the so-called "tuna can on a platform" design. It was neither elegant nor awe-inspiring, but looked exactly like what it was: a machine designed to do a job as efficiently and simply as possible.

She was flooded with relief. They were going to make it.

Joe voiced her thought. "Looks like we're going to make it, after all."

At that precise moment, Thoat's engine gave a hiccup, and then died. The huge vehicle continued on for some distance, slowing all the while, its momentum only grudgingly yielding to the inevitable. It was assisted in this quixotic attempt by the gentle downward incline they were on.

Despite Bruce's best efforts, however, Thoat finally came to rest about half a kilometer from Pirate.

"I can't believe it," A.J. muttered. "Dammit, Joe, you had to go open your mouth!"

"Forget the superstitions," Helen said, though a small part of her had the same blame Joe thought. "It was physics we were up against. Not quite enough fuel."

"Now what do we do?" Rich asked. "I absolutely refuse to believe there's nothing we can do. Not when we could get out of this thing and walk over to Pirate in a few minutes."

Captain Hathaway's voice came over the ship-to-surface band. "Thoat, we see you have stopped short of the objective. What is the problem?"

"A day late and a dollar short on the fuel situation, Captain," Bruce replied. "We're trying to figure out what we can do at this juncture. I haven't got a clue, myself."

Helen's mind was a blank, also. But she noticed that Madeline was sitting perfectly still, her eyes closed. It looked almost as though she were asleep, but the faint wrinkle on her otherwise smooth forehead showed she was thinking.

"Bruce, how much cable is on the winch?" she asked.

"About a hundred meters, Madeline. Why?"

Joe understood immediately, with A.J. just half a second behind.

"Might work!"

"If we have enough juice," A.J. cautioned.

"Oh, right, there's a beauty of an idea!" Bruce said. "We haul ourselves towards Pirate, like the dying man crawling through the desert."

"Your simile is not particularly cheering, Bruce."

"Sorry, wasn't thinking."

"That's still a hell of a distance," Joe mused, his earlier enthusiasm fraying at the edges. "Will the batteries take it?"

A.J. was already checking. "I don't know. I'm calling up the data we had on power drain while we were using the winch to help lower Thoat. Practical data's always helpful. Hmm. Watts . . . battery capacity . . ."

A.J. ran the simulation several times. "Shit," he finally concluded.

"I take it the answer is 'no.'"

"'Fraid so, Madeline. Best-case gives us about two hundred and fifty meters before the batteries die or the winch does.”

“The winch?" Joe protested. "That thing was designed to be good for months of expeditions!"

"Some of my sensors are giving nasty readings. I think when Thoat did that drop-and-stop trick, it might have damaged part of the winch."

"And I don't suppose we have two hundred and fifty meters of refueling hose," Helen sighed.

"Less than a tenth of that, actually," Bruce answered. "We're off by an order of magnitude."

Helen stared in frustration at the familiar shape of the lander, so tantalizingly close yet impossibly far away. The situation was ludicrous. They'd crossed a hundred million miles in a few months, and now couldn't reach another ship that was not even a third of a mile away.

She suddenly realized what she'd been thinking. Another ship . . .

"Joe," she said quietly, almost afraid to voice a question which might simply result in another punctured hope. "Pirate is a rocket ship itself, right?"

"Yes, of course. How else would it—"

Suddenly he and A.J. looked at each other. "If Mohammed cannot come to the mountain—"

"—then the mountain can damn well come to Mohammed!" A.J. finished. He chewed on his lower lip. "Theoretically, of course. Still, that is a landing and takeoff vehicle over there. If we reprogram the systems . . ."

"Going to be one hell of a little jump. Fine-tuning will be the problem."

"That'll be my job. We'll need the whole area instrumented so we can watch performance, get her running right. We'll only have one shot at this."

"Don't bring her down too close," Bruce cautioned.

"A hundred meters, I'd say," Joe responded, nodding. "Well within range for the winch-crawling maneuver, but far enough that if we're off by a bit we won't roast ourselves to death. Or drop Pirate right on top of us."

"Less than a four-hundred-meter hop." A.J. shook his head, bemused. "Who'd have thought that the hardest job we'd have to program on an interplanetary spacecraft is getting it to go about one four-hundred-millionth of its prior distance farther?"

He started checking his suit again before going out. "Madeline, Rich, you guys come with me. We have to adjust some linkages on board Pirate and I have to play Tinkerbell all through the engines. Bring the tool kit."

"Don't need my help, A.J.? I turn a mean wrench."

"I know you do, Helen, but there's only so much room in Pirate. I only need two people, anyway. Next time you can take a turn doing my dirty work."

"She does that alread—"

"Kick him, Helen. On the broken leg."

The airlock cycled. After a moment, Helen could see the three figures making their way across the red-pink-orange sands.

Rich stopped at one point to examine a particularly light patch. "Poor Ryu. This is just what he would've been going nuts over. I think this is some kind of deposition, an evaporite, maybe a salt or something. Just one of the kinds of minerals colonists would need, and a hell of a clue to conditions here."

"He won't be forgotten, and the work won't be neglected," Helen said quietly. "Take a sample for the labs later, Rich. Let's get this job done first."

Back in his seat in the rover, A.J. watched the telltales climbing slowly. They'd done what they'd needed to do at Pirate and had returned a few minutes earlier.

"Navigation systems are up. We're not going to have all jets free, though; two years of crud blowing around seems to have fouled one. I've got compensation in the program for that. By the way, this work allows me to give a definite 'no frigging way' to the question of whether we could've gotten away using Pirate. She's deteriorated a fair amount. Takeoff-level thrusts just aren't in the picture. For that matter, I don't think she'd even hold together for a full-scale takeoff. Something critical would go in the middle of the burn."

"But you still think you can pull this off?" Madeline asked.

"Pretty sure. Not like we have much choice, anyway."

"You'll do it, mate," Bruce said, a bit too heartily. "It's just a little hop."

"True. But this ain't no kangaroo, either. 'Hops' are not really what it does." After checking a few more things, he said: "Bruce, I know you didn't have any direct training in this, but I'd feel real good about it if you'd stand by on controls to override. Just in case something blows."

"No worries, mate, I'm right here. Been running your little simulator the past couple of hours. Doubt I'll be needed, though."

Joe checked the readings also and recalculated the trajectory they would need. Then had Jackie and Gupta check it all again from Nike.

"You are cutting it fine indeed, very fine," Gupta pronounced. "But, as you say, you have no choice. Jackie and I both check you, and Nike herself concurs. Good luck."

"Thanks." A.J. took a deep breath. It was more than a little ironic, he thought, that the most critical mission Pirate had ever been given required only a fraction of the capabilities it had originally been designed for—and it still might not make it, because that specific task hadn't been anticipated. You really couldn't ask for a better demonstration of the inherent limits of unmanned spacecraft.

He, along with many others, had been advancing that argument for years—and, now, he might well prove his point in the worst way possible. By dying.

"Here goes."

Inside Pirate, long-dormant pumps whirred to life. Despite the attenuation of the Martian atmosphere near Pirate there was still the sound of continuous thunder as the multiton test lander launched itself into the sky at a very slight angle. It rose up, seeming to float atop a cushion of near-invisible flame, and then cut off thrust. The passengers of Thoat watched, transfixed, as the ship that was their single hope of survival drifted upwards, then downwards, on a path that would bring it near enough to reach.

Fire flared again from the rockets to cushion the fall and prevent the relatively delicate lander from cracking itself like an egg. One of the jets sputtered. Bruce nearly took control, but saw the jet catch again. A.J's program was already compensating.

Fifty meters, forty, thirty . . . At an altitude of two meters, the rockets cut off, and the lander settled gently to the ground.

Tension vanished into elation as A.J. once more nearly leaped from his seat. "Yes! Distance from Thoat is now . . . eighty-seven point two meters."

Bruce was practically chortling. "That's great! We can hook the winch cable right to Pirate and draw ourselves alongside."

"And," Madeline added, just as gleefully, "Joe and I have figured out a working coupler for our two hose systems. The fuel will be flowing in minutes, after we get these two together."

"Then let's not waste any more time," Helen said, getting up. "I'm going out to get that winch cable strung."

"Coming with you!" A.J. was up now, also.

"Most of us are coming," Madeline said. "If you remember the pain it was stringing the cable the last time . . ."

"Oh, yeah. I guess we leave Joe and Bruce."

"Living in the lap of luxury as we are, mates. See you whenever you slaves are done."

With four of them working to drag the cable and fasten it to Pirate, the job didn't take very long. The winch, despite some worries, did not fail on the way, and Madeline and Joe's coupling scheme worked.

So, a few hours after Pirate had made its extremely short flight, Bruce leaned back and grinned at Joe sitting next to him. "Thoat's right happy now. Fuel's coming in and it ain't gonna stop until she's full up."

The engineer didn't answer, as he was busy with further designs and computations.

"What's up, Joe?"

"Figuring out how we can separate one of the fuel tanks from Pirate and store it on or in Thoat somehow. It'd be silly to try to refuel by driving back out here, and I don't know whether Pirate will survive a longer hop. So if we can drag some extra fuel along somehow . . ."

"Makes sense. Certainly worth looking into while we wait."

By the time the Thoat was refueled, Joe was satisfied. "Okay, it's going to be uncomfortable on the ride over to Target 37, but if we clear most of the equipment out of the cargo bay we can put one of the fuel tanks in there. We'll have to live with a lot of clutter for the next couple of days, I'm afraid."

"That's way better than leaving fuel a hundred kilometers behind us," Helen stated. "We'll do it. Good work, everyone."

She leaned back in her seat, feeling the tension draining out of her. "Well, whaddaya know? It looks like we might actually survive long enough to—"

"Don't say it, Helen! Don't say it!"

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