Roger pulls his mask over a cheek. “Do you think a storm might come?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised. We’ve been lucky so far.” She replaces her mask and begins a layback, shoving the fingers of both hands in the crack, putting the soles of both boots against the wall just below her hands, and pulling herself out to the side so that she can walk sideways up one of the walls. Roger keeps the belay taut.
Mars’s prevailing westerlies strike Olympus Mons, and the air rises, but does not flow over the peak; the mountain is so tall it protrudes out of much of the atmosphere, and the winds are therefore pushed around each side. Compressed in that way, the air comes swirling off the eastern flank cold and dry, having dumped its moisture on the western flank, where glaciers form. That is the usual pattern, anyway; but when a cyclonic system sweeps out of the southwest, it strikes the volcano a glancing blow from the south, compresses, lashes the southeast quadrant of the shield, and rebounds to the east intensified.
“What’s the barometer say, Hans?”
“Four hundred and ten millibars.”
“You’re kidding!”
“That’s not too far below normal, actually.”
“You’re kidding.”
“It is low, however. I believe we are being overtaken by a low-pressure system.”
The storm begins as katabatic winds: cold air falling over the edge of the escarpment and dropping toward the plain. Sometimes the force of the west wind over the plateau of the shield blows the gusts out beyond the actual cliff face, which will then stand in perfect stillness. But the slight vacuum fills again with a quick downward blast, which makes the tents boom and stretch their frames. Roger grunts as one almost squashes the tent, shakes his head at Eileen. She says, “Get used to it—there are downdrafts hitting the upper face more often than not.” WHAM! “Although this one does seem to be a bit stronger than usual. But it’s not snowing, is it?”
Roger looks out the little tent-door window. “Nope.”
“Good.”
“Awful cold, though.” He turns in his sleeping bag.
“That’s okay. Snow would be a really bad sign.” She gets on the radio and starts calling around. She and Roger are in Camp Eight (the cave is now called Camp Six); Dougal and Frances are in Camp Nine, the highest and most exposed of the new camps; Arthur, Hans, Hannah, and Ivan are in Camp Seven; and the rest are down in the cave. They are a little overextended, as Eileen has been loath to pull the last tents out of the cave. Now Roger begins to see why. “Everyone stay inside tomorrow morning until they hear from me at mirror dawn. We’ll have another conference then.”
The wind rises through the night, and Roger is awakened at 3:00 A.M. by a particularly hard blast to the tent. There is very little sound of the wind against the rock—then a BANG and suddenly the tent is whistling and straining like a tortured thing. It lets off and the rocks hoot softly. Settle down and listen to the airy breathing WHAM, the squealing tent is driven down into the niche they have set it in—then sucked back up. The comforting hiss of an oxygen mask, keeping his nose warm for once—WHAM. Eileen is apparently sleeping, her head buried in her sleeping bag; only her bunting cap and the oxygen hose emerge from the drawn-up opening at the top. Roger can’t believe the gunshot slaps of the wind don’t wake her. He checks his watch, decides it is futile to try falling back to sleep. New frost condensation on the inside of the tent falls on his face like snow, scaring him for a moment. But a flashlight gleam directed out the small clear panel in the tent door reveals there is no snow. By the dimmest light of the lamp Roger sets their pot of ice on the square bulk of the stove and turns it on. He puts his chilled hands back in the sleeping bag and watches the stove heat up. Quickly the rings under the pot are a bright orange, palpably radiating heat.
An hour later it is considerably warmer in the tent. Roger sips hot tea, tries to predict the wind’s hammering. The melted water from the cave’s ice apparently has some silt in it; Roger, along with three or four of the others, has had his digestion upset by the silt, and now he feels a touch of the glacial dysentery coming on. Uncomfortably he quells the urge. Some particularly sharp blows to the tent wake Eileen; she sticks her head out of her bag, looking befuddled.
“Wind’s up,” Roger says. “Want some tea?”
“Mmmph.” She pulls away her oxygen mask. “Yeah.” She takes a full cup and drinks. “Thirsty.”
“Yeah. The masks seem to do that.”
“What time is it?”
“Four.”
“Ah. My alarm must have woken me. Almost time for the call.”
Although it is cloudy to the east, they still get a distinct increase of light when Archimedes rises. Roger pulls on his cold boots and groans. “Gotta go,” he says to Eileen, and unzips the tent just far enough to get out.
“Stay harnessed up!”
Outside, one of the katabatic blasts shoves him hard. It’s very cold, perhaps twenty degrees below Celsius, so that the windchill factor when it is blowing hardest is extreme. Unfortunately, he does have a touch of the runs. Much relieved, and very chilled, he pulls his pants up and steps back into the tent. Eileen is on the radio. People are to stay inside until the winds abate a little, she says. Roger nods vigorously. When she is done she laughs at him. “You know what Dougal would say.”
“Oh, it was very invigorating all right.”
She laughs again.
Time passes. When he warms back up Roger dozes off. It’s actually easier to sleep during the day, when the tent is warmer.
He is rudely awakened late in the morning by a shout from outside. Eileen jerks up in her bag and unzips the tent door. Dougal sticks his head in, pulls his oxygen mask onto his chest, frosts them with hard breathing. “Our tent has been smashed by a rock,” he says, almost apologetically. “Frances has got her arm broken. I need some help getting her down.”
“Down where?” Roger says involuntarily.
“Well, I thought to the cave, anyway. Or at least to here—our tent’s crushed, she’s pretty much out in the open right now—in her bag, you know, but the tent’s not doing much.”
Grimly Eileen and Roger begin to pull their climbing clothes on.
Outside the wind rips at them and Roger wonders if he can climb. They clip on to the rope and jumar up rapidly, moving at emergency speed. Sometimes the blasts of wind from above are so strong that they can only hang in against the rock and wait. During one blast Roger becomes frightened—it seems impossible that flesh and bone, harness, jumar, rope, piton, and rock will all hold under the immense pressure of the downdraft. But all he can do is huddle in the crack the fixed rope follows and hope, getting colder every second.
They enter a long snaking ice gully that protects them from the worst of the wind, and make better progress. Several times rocks or chunks of ice fall by them, dropping like bombs or giant hailstones. Dougal and Eileen are climbing so fast that it is difficult to keep up with them. Roger feels weak and cold; even though he is completely covered, his nose and fingers feel frozen. His intestines twist a little as he crawls over a boulder jammed in the gully, and he groans. Better to have stayed in the tent on this particular day.