Adrenaline could take the co-pilot only so far. The temperature in the rover was already well below freezing. Even before she finished her report, Gwen started to shiver.
Luke handed her a sweater. "Here, you better put this on."
Gwen pulled the thick woolen garment rapidly over her head; it wasn't adequate, but better than nothing. "Thanks."
Luke glanced at the EVA stowage bin behind the front seats. "Maybe we should put on our Marsuits."
Still shivering, Gwen was tempted, but knew she had to reject the idea. "No. We can't fit under the console wearing them, and if we don't get that engine started, the suits aren't warm enough to keep us alive overnight. I'll need your help. Come on."
With that, Gwen put a flashlight headband on, grabbed a screwdriver and wrench, and slid under the engine again. Luke followed and lay down on his back next to her, squirming close.
With finesse, Gwen rapidly unscrewed the first three nuts from the cold machine casing, but the fourth one stuck. "I can't move it!"
"Let me help." The muscular geologist pressed closer to her, his warm breath next to her face. He added his strength to hers on the wrench, and the nut finally came loose. Their brief sense of triumph was muted by the increasingly frigid atmosphere inside the rover. Despite their sweaters and exertions, they both shivered hard; their breath fogged and formed ice crystals on the nearby plumbing.
"B-better hurry," Luke said, his teeth chattering. "Jesus, it's freezing in here. I think the air is starting to foul too."
With shaking fingers, Gwen removed the last nut and placed her hands on the casing to move it. At first touch, her hands recoiled from the bitter cold, then she tried again and pushed hard... but remained unable to budge it. "Help, Luke!"
He put his hands on the metal casing to push, but instantly jerked away from the freezing shock. Clenching his fists, he tried again; ignoring the searing pain, he pushed with all his might. The casing moved off its bolts, rising up about eight inches. "That's as far as it goes! Go for it."
On her back, Gwen put her hands through the gap between the casing and the electrical board. By the light of her headlamp, she tried to unscrew wires from their attachments. Her hands recoiled repeatedly when they accidentally touched ice-cold metal. Grimy with engine soot, her headlamp glowing dimly, she looked just like a miner as she worked. An odd thought came to her. If only Daddy and Grandpa could see me now. They had been miners. Now she was one too.
But they had both died in the mines. Dying in the fight for life.
The touch of frigid metal brought her back to the present, and she yanked out her hands. "Too cold!" The job seemed hopeless. It was so cold. She just wanted to pull in her hands close to her body, to somehow huddle and hide from the cold closing in all around her.
But then, a whisper seared through her mind; it was her father's voice. You can't give up Gwen. Never give up.
Then she started hearing a song. At first she didn't recognize it; then she knew it. It was the old Welsh battle song Grandpa had sung to her when she was a little girl. Only it wasn't just Grandpa singing this time, but many voices, as if innumerable souls from the distant past had risen to speak to her. Beginning faintly, their song grew louder. She couldn't understand the words, but she knew what the song meant.
Never give up. Never, ever, ever, give up. No matter what, we never give up.
In the cold darkness of the rover's sub-engine area, something warm moved through her blood. Moving like a stranger in her own body, she separated her arm from her chest, dredged up the will to reach down and pull her sheath knife out of her boot. Reentering the gap with her blade, she attacked the wire, madly hacking away with her knife.
"I can't hold this much longer, Gwen!" Luke's voice was filled with agony.
She used her knife to cut through the wire and then strip its insulation. Moving fast, she spliced one wire, then another. Then, bringing together two sets of stripped leads, she twisted them together with thick, numb fingers. She grabbed the final set and muttered a quick, silent prayer. Then she brought the ends together.
The engine started with a roar.
The effect of the revived ventilator fan was immediate. Breathable air flushed through the rover like a wind from heaven.
Her adrenaline gone, Gwen suddenly shivered violently, sagging against the big geologist. "Oh, I'm cold..."
Shaking with the effort and his misery, Luke lowered the casing back onto its bolts. Flushed with relief, he looked at Gwen with a deeper sense of closeness than he had experienced with her before, the desperate camaraderie of two people who had survived a terrible ordeal. The no-nonsense flight mechanic seemed so helpless there shivering in the cold. Instinct told him to grab her, to hold her close, to warm her with his body heat, even as she warmed him with hers.
Impulsively, he put his arms around her, telling himself he would hold her only until they recovered, only until they were both warm again. She did not push him away, and in a moment of intense relief, Gwen let herself snuggle close, the bodily contact unleashing a need she had never let herself feel.
Then another instinct started to grow in Luke. After so many months in intense training on Earth, and on the long trip and habitation on Mars, it had been a long time since he'd felt the warmth of a woman. Far, far too long. Before he knew what he was doing, Luke kissed her.
And, moved by a natural force that suddenly broke loose inside her, she kissed him back, deeper and closer, as the heater warmed the rover interior.
They did not speak to each other, did not discuss what they were doing. Gwen and Luke had both just been to the edge of death, and survived it together. Now there was an emotional bond between them, and it dissolved all barriers. He pulled her very close, and two sets of feverish hands worked at the fastenings of their clothing.
In and among the equipment on the vehicle, near the warm engine compartment, they found plenty of room to make love.
Shaken and silent, Gwen drove the now-functional vehicle home through the dust storm and into the Martian night.
Beside her, Luke snored, apparently exhausted by the near-disaster on the rover, their ensuing emotional response to the ordeal, and then the boredom of the dark drive back to base.
Gwen's thoughts were wild. She had sinned horribly, and she knew it. She also had no illusions about the Texan geologist. There was no commitment, nothing sacred for him. Just a woman in his time of need, and she had been there. He might have some affection for her, but it was mostly just lust—and she had given her virginity to him! There had been plenty of opportunities in Gwen's life, but she'd always protected herself, saving her first time for someone special. The right person.
But she didn't love Luke. How could she have let this happen? It just had. She herself was as much to blame as the geologist. No excuses.
Dark dust swirled around the vehicle, and her thoughts wandered back to another nightmare, nearly a decade before. The grinding gears of the rover transformed to the whack-whack-whack of helicopter blades slicing through steady desert wind. The Martian electrical storm sporadically illuminating the horizon now turned into the flashes of shells bursting all over the landscape.
She was no longer a thirty-one-year-old major, second in command of the first mission to Mars. Instead, she was a terrified girl in her early twenties, with second lieutenant's bars on her shoulders, flying a chopper filled with screaming, wounded GIs through a desert sandstorm. The dead pilot occupied the seat next to her. She flew low to avoid enemy radar, dodging dunes that became visible at the last second. Something loomed up ahead, and she squinted into the opaque dust, her teeth clenched together and her eyes half shut. Suddenly she saw it—an Iraqi pillbox directly in front of her at point-blank range. A rush of terror surged through her, as she braced for a fatal gunshot—