"Garrett, I don't know how you've stood up to all this," Erica said. "I'm exhausted." She came over and put her arms around me. I held her close. We kissed, then again.
"I thought you were exhausted," I said.
"Not that exhausted. Who's outside?"
"Don's in the main room -" "Close the door. Then come here."
For a moment I thought about Eileen and I felt like a bloody heel, but then I wasn't thinking about anything at all.
SEVENTEEN
We got our gear packed up and ready so we could run. After that there was nothing to do but wait. Erica and I stayed in the blockhouse. We had decided we wouldn't leave until the bomb went off. Later, Dr. Drury came in to have supper with us, while Doug sat in Erica's room with the detonator.
"It will be a magnificent thing," Drury said. "Magnificent. Making over a whole world. We can all be proud to have been part of it."
"It will take a long time," Erica said.
Drury nodded. "But we can speed it up. Melt off the polar caps -"
"They melt every summer anyway," I said.
"Not all of them. One melts, the other forms. But there are ways to keep them melted. And there are layers of both poles that never melt at all. We've studied this extensively. The Project can be speeded up enormously - and will be, when the Federation gets out of the way." “I’m glad we've got you people on our side,” Erica said. She waved at the blockhouse. "This would be a building to be proud of back home. Here it's just a temporary thing at a research camp. You've got enormous capabilities at the university."
"Thank you," Drury said. He raised his glass. "To the Project!"
We all drank to that.
"Of course," Drury said, "not everybody at New Chicago U is a Project enthusiast-"
"I'd have thought they would be," I said.
"Well, some think we don't understand Mars yet. They want to study it the way it is. They have a point; there's a lot to learn, a lot we can learn about Earth by studying Mars. We'll lose most of that information when the atmosphere begins to build up."
"How long do they want to wait?" Erica asked.
Drury shrugged. "They don't say. But have you ever heard of a research project being finished?"
We laughed at that. I had two glasses of wine, then switched to coffee. "I still won't feel right until that damn thing's set off and we see the gusher," I said.
The party broke up about eleven. Drury went to his quarters and I got a nap. I relieved Doug about 2:00 A. M.
"One day and night after this," I said. "Get some sleep. I'll catch Plemmons for the next watch."
"Right."
I made sure the inner door of the air-lock was open. I was wearing my suit, and had my helmet beside me. With that air-lock door open nobody could get in without blowing out the blockhouse, and we could still trigger the bomb. It would go of early and spoil the Skipper's big speech, but it would still show Earth we knew how to make nukes - and show Mars that we were serious about the Project, too.
The Project was the big thing with the labor clients. All our agents told us that. With the Project under way there was hope for anybody. A lot of workers would probably choose to stay with the big companies. We were telling Mars' industries that if they didn't help the Federation against us, we'd let them keep everything they had except labor contracts; if they could hire workers, and they probably could, they could go on mining, refining, selling to Earth, and making big profits.
Actually we were going to need the companies. If they closed down there'd be no employment for most of our people.
I'd been sitting in the main room, thinking about what I'd do with my valley and wondering if I could get coffee beans to grow. After about an hour the air-lock speaker was activated.
"Garrett?"
Eileen. I didn't want to see her. I felt ashamed of myself for ever getting involved with her.
"I couldn't sleep," she said. "Let me in."
Oh hell, I thought. I couldn't argue with her while she stood out in the cold, and I did owe her something - I could hardly tell a girl I'd been sleeping with to get lost. I closed the inner air-lock door and waited for the lock to cycle.
"Cold out there," she said. "Hi."
"Hi yourself."
She sat down on the other side of the room. "It's a long night."
"Yeah. Tomorrow will be longer."
"This one's long enough." She bounced up. "I'm restless. Got any coffee?"
"Sure."
"Here, I'll get yours too." She took my cup and filled it and one for herself. "Everybody asleep?"
"Yeah. If you're going to drink that, you'd better take your helmet off. It dribbles inside if you try to drink through the faceplate. Or it does for me."
"In a minute. I almost froze out there." She sipped at the cup. As I'd warned, she spilled some inside her helmet. "That's good. Aren't you having any?"
"In a minute. I'm about coffeed out."
"I guess I will take off this helmet. Give me a hand?"
"Sure." I went over to help with the thing. As I got to her, she raised a little cylinder, about the size of a lipstick, and a small cloud of spray came out into my face.
"Wha-" I tried to shout, but I couldn't. My face was paralyzed. My vision began to go, not so much dark as that nothing made sense. I vaguely saw that she'd slammed down her faceplate and was sealed up.
I couldn't do anything. I gradually felt my knees giving away and knew I was falling, but I couldn't do anything about that, either. I tried to get a deep breath but nothing happened, and now things began to get darker and darker, and she was going back into the blockhouse toward Erica's room and there was nothing I could do about it, nothing at all.
I thought I was back in Baltimore Undertown, because I heard sirens and gunshots, and I tried to fight the Hackers who'd jumped me but I couldn't move. Then I passed out.
"Garrett! Garrett, O God let him be all right! Garrett!"
Someone was shouting in my ear. Part of my mind knew it was Erica and wanted to answer, but I couldn't answer because I couldn't control my lungs. I felt my chest expand and contract. It was a curious feeling, because I hadn't told it to do that.
I opened my eyes. They wouldn't focus on anything. There was a big white blur above me. The blur had blue eyes and red hair. It moved away and there was another blur that looked like Doug, only his face was clearer, and after a moment things swam into shape.
Doug was bending over me holding an oxygen mask over my mouth and nose. He was manipulating an oxygen bottle to force air into my lungs, then he'd turn it off and shove hard on my chest. He kept doing that.
Don Plemmons held guard on the air-lock with an automatic rifle. The inner door was open. On the other side of the room Eileen stood flattened against the wall, as Erica alternately slapped her and shook her.
"What have you done to him?" Slap. "Tell us!" Shake. "If he dies, I'll - " It went on like that.
She said some horrible things. I don't remember most of them. I don't want to remember them. I didn't know Erica knew that much physiology.
Eileen was white with fear. She tried to talk, but Erica kept slapping her. Finally Erica let her alone. "I don't know what it was," Eileen sobbed. "It was some kind of gas, they told me it wouldn't kill anyone, just paralyze him. I don't know!"
"Nerve gas," Doug said. "Don, there's stuff for that in the med kit. Get 'em and a hypo."
Don vanished. I couldn't turn my head to see where he went, but after a while he was back again.
I felt a stabbing pain in my thigh. Then another in my neck. "Maybe that'll do it," Doug said. "It's supposed to be a remedy. All we got, anyway." He kept on working with the mask. "Can you hear us, Garrett?" he asked.