The First Expedition Page 2

  Still, he’d quit his post and signed up. He’d gone to Mars. He’d been the first human to stand on the top of Olympus Mons. He’d already seen more of Mars, in the week since basecamp was fully assembled and operational, than the rest of the crew combined. And when they got the go-ahead, he had been the first to see Mars’ other pioneers.

  The first humans to die on Mars.

  *****

  Polly and Pete joined Matt in the staging room, and the three of them regarded the figures seated before them.

  “Was there any record that the two of them..?” Pete asked.

  “Not that I’m aware of,” Polly replied. “Of course, there was a reason they sent three men and three women on the trip. They clearly intended that they could take advantage of the situation, if they desired to do so.”

  “Would’ve loved to see the psych tests they put them through to determine that,” Pete muttered.

  Polly shot him an admonishing glance. “Anyway, this is hardly evidence of a relationship. Comrades, slowly expiring together, a last gesture of friendship…”

  “Or forgiveness,” Matt heard himself say. Pete and Polly looked at him, but instead of elaborating, Matt turned and walked to the ladder that led to the next level. Pete, who had taken out a handheld camera, began sweeping the room, the camera light seemingly giving more life to the room as it danced from wall to wall.

  Climbing the ladder from the staging level to the main living level was difficult, in the suits. But without working seals, Athena 1 could not be pressurized. So Matt picked his way carefully up the ladder, set himself, and used one hand to open the sealed hatch above his head. He detected a minor amount of resistance from the hatch, but he realized that it didn’t feel like the result of embedded sand, like the outer hatch. Bracing himself, he gave an extra effort and slid it aside.

  When the hatch was about halfway opened, Matt could see a gloved hand extending over the hatchway. Had the hand been attached to a living arm, it would have pitched downward into the hatch like something in a bad horror movie, probably scaring any unexpected visitor within an inch of their lives. But this hand simply remained over the hatch, stiffly defying gravity a few inches from Matt’s helmet.

  Pete had been watching when he opened the hatch. “Is that what I think it is?”

  “’Fraid so,” Matt replied. “One of the crew.” He slowly climbed the next two rungs, until he could see the inside of the living level, and twisted about to take it all in. Huddled together beside the hatch were three of the crew, in their indoor thermals, gloves and boots. They were lying on their sides, one against the other, like three books tumbled over on a shelf. The arm extending over the hatch belonged to the closest of them, and it had clearly fallen there when the person had finally lost consciousness, or been pushed over by the others. Matt gingerly pushed the extended arm aside, enough to allow him to climb in the rest of the way. Then he removed a portable lantern from his gear, switched it on, and set it on the floor a meter away from the hatch.

  Once the lantern provided some light, he turned and examined the bodies more closely. The two on the ends were male, the one between them female. For Pete and Polly’s benefit, he read the insignias aloud: “Park, Melrose and Ducane.”

  “Just the three?” Polly asked, and started for the ladder.

  “Yes, just the three.”

  “Where is the other woman, then? Arez? You don’t see her?”

  “No,” Matt replied. He stepped to the sleeping compartments, each of which had privacy doors, and slid each door aside. After he had checked all six, he said, “She’s not on this level.”

  Polly had climbed into the level while Matt checked the rooms, and Pete had just thrust his head up from the ladder. He swept his camera about, and stopped at the three bodies. “Why piled up in the middle of the room?” he asked aloud.

  “Probably huddling together for warmth,” Polly ventured. “I’m sure the outer areas of the ship probably felt colder as the ship lost power.”

  “So they went together, too,” Pete mused. He eyed the closeness of the three figures critically, and started to comment.

  Polly simply said, “Don’t.”

  “I was simply going to comment on their chivalry,” Pete defended himself.

  Before Polly could reply further, Matt cut them both off. “Clearly they all knew what was happening, and reached a point where they could not stave off the inevitable. So they accepted it, and let death come.” He was standing by one of the control consoles, its energy long depleted, so its wide non-glare surface was black as night. “No last surprises.” He ran a gloved hand along the dark console, as if he was more likely to get data out of it this way than with any of their equipment. Then he paused. “Arez,” he said. “She was the writer of the group, wasn’t she?”

  “Huh?”

  “Arez?” Matt repeated. “Didn’t they say she liked to write?”

  “I think so,” Polly said.

  Matt nodded, and looked around the living area. His eyes finally rested on the ladder that led to the supplies and flight command decks above. Without another word, he walked to the ladder, and started climbing.

  “You think Arez is up there?” Pete asked.

  “Writers like their solitude,” Matt replied. “If you were a writer at your last moment of life, where would you be?”

  Matt started up the ladder and opened the hatch to the supplies area. He barely spared a glance there, but instead kept climbing to the flight deck hatch. The flight deck was a place that the crew would have no need of, until literally the day they planned to leave Mars. It was designed to hold just the pilot and copilot, with no room for comforts or amenities. It was heavily shielded, so it was soundproof. It was a totally uninviting cubbyhole.

  It also had the only ports to the outside. Their arrangement allowed anyone seated in the pilot’s chair an almost panoramic view of the sky, and a bit of Mars’ horizon for good measure.

  Where else would a writer want to be?

  Matt opened the hatch, which hinged downward, and carefully let it swing aside. This time, nothing hung over the hatch, or fell out of it… not even anything so melodramatic as a solitary slip of paper. But as he stepped up one rung, he could already see a figure in the pilot’s chair.

  *****

  Matt was an explorer at heart. He loved Earth. So, before he left, he had spent as much time as he could in enjoying its many pleasures. He had gone off on hikes along his favorite local trails, through lush forests of pines and sequoias. He had swum in his favorite lake, not far from the city, and in the river that meandered through it, many times. Often he sat along the bank of that river, enjoying the sun on his face, the cool breeze, the birds winging by, the butterflies alighting on wildflowers around him.

  He was taking a catalog of all the things he loved that he would be leaving behind. The things he looked forward to returning to.

  He thought about San a lot, too. He could not tell her how he felt about her, but he silently catalogued all the things he loved about her, too. Maybe when he returned, when the mission was over, when he was no longer a Peacekeeper, he could tell her how he really felt.

  He desperately wished she could go to Mars with him. He wanted to share the joys of discovery with her, wished she could see the beauty of Mars as he did, not as a pale shadow of Earth, but as its own world, wild, exciting, inviting, demanding, and new. But she would not go, even if she could. To her, Earth was all. Nothing could outdo her incredible beauty and diversity, and so, no other planet had the slightest attraction to her. Still, maybe if he could have made her see through his eyes, if only for a moment…

  *****

  Matt looked up at the Martian sky, from his position next to the lifeless body of Specialist Natalia Arez, and imagined himself seeing it as she had… the last thing she would ever see. Arez was seated at the pilot’s station, the console pushed back and out of the way, and her face was directed upward. Straight at the stars.

  Then he directed hi
s gaze down at her lap. As he’d expected, a computer, not much larger than the palm of her hand, rested there. She had laid it down in her lap and removed her hands from it, then folded her hands peacefully in her lap just below it. She had no qualms about someone finding it, taking it, reading from it…

  Carefully, Matt reached over and lifted the handheld computer from her lap. He examined the old technology first, turning the device over in his hand. Did she turn it off when she was through? Did it turn itself off after so many minutes of disuse? Has it been cold enough to preserve the machine, as the rest of the crew had been freeze-dried? If so, the battery could still be alive in there…

  “Matt?” Polly interrupted his thoughts. “Is Arez up there?”

  “Yes, she is,” Matt replied. “Resting in peace, like the others. And she left us something.”

  “You found something?” Pete asked. “What?”

  “An old handheld computer,” Matt replied as he started back down the ladder and out of the flight deck.

  “Hm,” Polly considered. “You think we may be able to get something out of that?”

  “Well,” Pete said, “depending on the model, there may be solid-state memory that we can remove and plug into our own systems.” He looked up as Matt started out of the supplies deck and into the living area. “Does it look like we may be able to do that, Matt?”

  “Could be,” Matt replied as he gained the floor and turned to them. He held the computer up again. “And on the other hand, maybe we won’t have to.”

  Matt thumbed what he thought was the “on” switch. The tiny screen instantly came to life, bathing Matt’s helmet and the chest of his suit in blue-white light. For a split-second, Matt saw an image that filled the screen. It was of a rolling green meadow under a vivid blue sky… a spring day out of a dream, impossibly perfect, incredibly inviting, especially from a place like Mars.

  Then, as fast as it had appeared, it vanished, to be replaced by a white background and simple text.

  “Jeez, it works!” Pete breathed. He and Polly crowded close by Matt. “What does it say?”

  Matt obligingly held it up, so the three of them could read it together.

  “Tom and Wanda aren’t answering the intercom any more. That means I’m the last. And I won’t be much longer. “At home, I know people are arguing about us. We were not ready. We should have waited. We should have heeded the signs. ‘We should have turned back at the Moon.’ Yes, we heard that one, too. Don’t think we didn’t repeat it once or twice ourselves.

  “But for the record, NASA didn’t make us come. We decided to continue on. Because we knew we could make it. And even though we were sure, before we even arrived, that we would not make it back… we have never regretted our decision.

  “We are Human Beings, from the Earth, the third planet from the Sun. We are now on the fourth planet from the Sun… the only other planet in the Solar System to see human beings standing on it. And though we didn’t go far beyond our camp… just being here is reward enough. Just reaching here is reward enough.

  “We could have turned back at the Moon. But we continued on. We are Man, and that is what we do.

  “I’ve left a beautiful world behind me to come here. Mars does not compare to Earth. But it is not a fair comparison to make. Mars is its own world, with its own features, its own foibles, and its own beauty. Those who come here in the future will see this, and know: Mars is Mars. See it for what it is, and enjoy it while it lasts.

  “This message is dedicated to those who follow us.”When Pete and Polly indicated that they had finished reading the message, Matt turned the computer off. He carefully slipped it into his forearm pocket and zipped it closed. The three astronauts stood in silence for a minute, inside the dead space ship and among its entombed occupants.“Tom and Wanda aren’t answering the intercom any more. That means I’m the last. And I won’t be much longer.“At home, I know people are arguing about us. We were not ready. We should have waited. We should have heeded the signs. ‘We should have turned back at the Moon.’ Yes, we heard that one, too. Don’t think we didn’t repeat it once or twice ourselves.

  “But for the record, NASA didn’t make us come. We decided to continue on. Because we knew we could make it. And even though we were sure, before we even arrived, that we would not make it back… we have never regretted our decision.

  “We are Human Beings, from the Earth, the third planet from the Sun. We are now on the fourth planet from the Sun… the only other planet in the Solar System to see human beings standing on it. And though we didn’t go far beyond our camp… just being here is reward enough. Just reaching here is reward enough.

  “We could have turned back at the Moon. But we continued on. We are Man, and that is what we do.

  “I’ve left a beautiful world behind me to come here. Mars does not compare to Earth. But it is not a fair comparison to make. Mars is its own world, with its own features, its own foibles, and its own beauty. Those who come here in the future will see this, and know: Mars is Mars. See it for what it is, and enjoy it while it lasts.

  “This message is dedicated to those who follow us.”

  When Pete and Polly indicated that they had finished reading the message, Matt turned the computer off. He carefully slipped it into his forearm pocket and zipped it closed. The three astronauts stood in silence for a minute, inside the dead space ship and among its entombed occupants.Finally, Polly said, “Time to go. Ernestine can start analyzing the recording, and the computer, when we get back to camp. Then we’ll make plans for a more detailed sweep. Florian would like-”

  “Don’t really need one,” Matt said.

  Polly turned back to face him, and Matt replied to her unspoken question. “We know what happened. We now know how they died. Any other details are pointless.”

  “But we-”

  “I say we close it up,” Matt cut her off. “Let someone else worry about examining every atom of their deaths. We’re here to explore Mars.”

  He tapped on the arm pocket containing Arez’ computer. “Let’s enjoy it while it lasts.”

  Polly regarded him silently, while Pete looked at both of them. Finally she said, “Come on. We have other things to do. Let’s take our leave of the First Expedition.” They filed slowly down the ladder to the staging area and, taking one last look around, opened the unsealing airlock and climbed out of the capsule, one by one.

  Matt was the last one out. He closed the inner and outer airlock doors behind him.

  Copyright © Steve Jordan. All rights reserved.

  Fiction Book Description

  Title Info

  genre: sf

  author: Steve Jordan

  title: The First Expedition

  Document Info

  author: Steve Jordan

  e-mail: steve@stevejordanbooks.com

  program used: Book Designer 5.0

  version: 1.0

  Publish Info

  book-name: The First Expedition

  publisher: Right Brane ePublishing

  year: 2007

  This file was created with BookDesigner program

  bookdesigner@the-ebook.org

  3/20/2007

  LRS to LRF parser v.0.9; Mikhail Sharonov, 2006; msh-tools.com/ebook/

  Table of Contents

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