Why didn’t you wait?
You think you know what you’re doing, but you don’t. He shifted his body on the ground and winced.
Well now you’ll have to let me help you, I said.
He leaned on his elbows. I guess so.
The panel was like a slab of concrete and after straining against it for several minutes, I could move it only a fraction of an inch. I sat back on my heels and the wind buffeted my helmet. Are you hurt?
It was hard to see his face clearly through the swirling silt. I bent my head closer and our visors touched. Sweat had pressed his dark curls flat at his temples; his mouth was a thin pink line.
I’ll live.
I got up and slowly found my way to the rover, found a cable in the back, and tied it to the hitch. Then I returned to James and looped the cable around the panel.
Ready? I asked.
The angle’s wrong, he said.
The angle’s fine.
I got in the rover and took a minute to figure out the controls. Then I inched forward, its tires crunching slowly over the silty ground, until I heard a deep groan.
Outside I bent into the wind. A big gust of silt nearly tipped me backward, and then—all at once the wind stopped. The swirling silt fell to the ground. The sky was almost instantly, eerily clear.
Told you it would stop, he said. The ground sparkled in the sunlight.
I unhooked the cable from the panel and returned it to the rover. Then I crawled under the malfunctioning solar panel, unscrewed its back cover, and powered it down. In my mind I saw my uncle’s drawings of the solar field. His detailed pictures of each panel, stacks of circuits and twists of wires inside. I pulled out two connections and reconfigured them.
What are you doing? Don’t mess with that. He held his injured leg in both hands.
I turned the panel back on. The other panels in the row clicked twice and then hummed.
At the sound he turned his head. What did you do?
I bypassed the panel and fixed the row.
34
I half walked, half dragged him to the rover, his arm a bulky weight around my shoulder. The landscape had transformed. Now that the wind wasn’t blowing, everything was so still. So uniformly rose colored. Our labored breaths were loud in the quiet.
Hold up, he said. He turned and we nearly fell. Can’t leave it like that. He gestured to the panel that had pinned his foot. It was on top of a cable.
I walked back and tugged at the cable but it didn’t budge. I squatted and leaned back. It still didn’t move.
Is this something important?
Yes.
I sighed and pulled harder, and without warning it suddenly gave way, its metal connector hitting my head hard—so hard it knocked my helmet off. I closed my mouth, shut my eyes, and scrambled for my helmet with my bulky gloves. Salt stung the inside of my nose, the creases of my eyelids. Help me, I croaked. I crawled my hands through the loose silt and I found the smooth dome of the helmet and tried to put it on. But my hands slipped around the seal.
Calm down. I heard him crawling toward me, dragging his leg behind him. The air’s not going to kill you. Not that fast—
I cracked open my eyes. My throat was on fire; tears ran down my face.
Then the sensation changed. My lips went numb and my cheeks tingled. My vision wavered and the light shifted and turned strange. My hands fell away from my helmet. I watched James crawl along the ground, a refracted pink glow surrounding him. I watched him without emotion. My head felt hard and dense, a solid object. But my hands and feet tingled, and my aching molars were light as air.
Then he was right in front of me, his face huge behind his visor. His features were wrong. His nose, forehead, eyes. Like they weren’t in the right places. Like they’d migrated around his face.
He took hold of my helmet, pressed it down hard, and locked it into place, and I felt a rush of oxygen from my suit. I took big breaths and the numbness in my face faded. My eyes and nose watered and my throat ached.
I don’t understand. I struggled to form words. My tongue was gritty and raw; it kept sticking to the roof of my mouth.
It won’t kill you to take off your helmet for thirty seconds, or longer even.
His features had reoriented. His nose and eyes were in the right places. He pushed himself to standing and shifted his weight onto his good foot. With effort I stood up too and offered my shoulder for him to lean on.
I think you need me to help you more than the other way around, he said.
I blinked my burning eyes. I’m fine.
We walked to the rover. Slowly, haltingly. It seemed to take us hours. I scrubbed my tongue on the roof of my mouth, over and over, but it didn’t help. Tiny grains of salt rubbed at the corners of my eyes. When we finally got there he pulled himself inside, and I collapsed into the driver’s seat. We waited for the rover to pressurize, then took off our helmets and gloves, and the silt fell from our suits. I scratched at my neck and wrists, rubbed my nose and eyes with the back of my hand.
I feel awful, I croaked. I touched my lips. They weren’t numb anymore. They were on fire.
You’ll be all right.
He handed me a container of water. I unstuck my tongue from the roof of my mouth and drank it fast, splashing water on my raw cheeks. All I could taste was salt no matter how much I drank.
He took off his boot and pulled up his suit to inspect his leg. He tried moving his foot and made a low, uneven sound.
Broken?
Maybe.
It was stuffy inside the rover. I turned on the air, pointed the vents at my burning face.
Why’s it so hot—
Give it a minute. He unzipped the top of his suit and pulled the sleeves off. A mottled scar marked the side of his neck, white at the edges and pink in the middle.
I unzipped my suit too but kept the sleeves on, turned on the navigation, and buckled myself in. James leaned back in his seat. The interior of the rover began to cool and my eyes strayed to the scar on his neck. I wanted to ask how he’d gotten it, but instead I put the rover in gear.
When I hit the gas it jumped backward.
You’re in reverse, he said.
I changed gears and the rover jerked forward and the wheels spun.
Slower.
I tried again and we rolled slowly forward. According to the navigation screen we were headed in the right direction, north. We crested a ridge, crunching over the rocky surface, and the sunlight was bright. The controls were sensitive and I kept oversteering and then having to correct.
You’re not very good at this.
The rover veered right and I gripped the wheel.
What would have happened out there if you’d been alone? I asked.
I would have figured it out.
You were pinned.
Yeah. Maybe I wouldn’t have figured it out. He grimaced and shifted his foot.
We were nose down on a steep hill and the rover started to tilt to the left. I bent my body to the right and he did too, and I felt the solid bulk of his arm against mine. The silt-covered shape of something that might have once been a satellite or a probe rose up and I steered around it.
Can’t do it without you now, he said.
Do what?
Everything probably.
The rover slid down the hill in a slow zigzag, the wheel fighting me the whole way. But I got us to the bottom.
The air did something to me, I said. It was like I was drugged. Why?
He shifted his foot again. I don’t know.
What have you done to find out? I rubbed my eyes with the back of my hand. Have you reported it to NSP?