“Damn it.”
“Let me try.” She crouched down and picked at the corner of the hatch, where it protruded from the wall. Her gloves, of metal mesh and rubber, were clumsy; her hands felt huge and insensitive. But she managed to get a little flap of the hatch peeled back.
Through the sliver she’d opened up between the hatch and its frame, she could see ocher light.
“I think I broke the seal.”
Stone pulled at the handle, and this time the hatch opened easily.
York saw a little flurry of snow as the last of their air escaped into the Martian atmosphere.
They both had to back away to let the hatch swing back.
Then York could see the porch, the platform fixed to the top of Challenger’s squat landing leg, onto which Stone would back out in a moment. The porch was coated in brown grit, thrown up by the landing. And beyond the porch, she could see the surface of Mars: it looked like sand, and it was streaked with radial lines pointing away from Challenger, showing the effects of their descent engine’s final blast.
It was just a scrap of landscape; on Earth it would look so commonplace she wouldn’t even perceive it. But it was Mangala Vallis: and there were only a few feet of thin Martian air separating her from the surface she’d been studying all her adult life.
“Natalie,” Stone said.
She turned; in contrast to the brown of Mars, in the mundane kitchen-light of the airlock, his suit seemed to glow white.
“There’s something we forgot,” Stone said. “From the checklist. We didn’t fix these.” Stone had taken his red EV1 bands from a suit pocket. Stone, as the leader of the first EVA, was in charge of the operation; York was, officially, his backup, and Stone would wear the red bands around his arms and legs for identification by the TV cameras.
But he was holding the bands out to her.
“I don’t understand.”
He was smiling again. “I think you do. Put on the bands.”
She held out her hand, and he dropped the bands into her palm. Through her clumsy gloves she couldn’t feel the bands’ weight.
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
He said testily, “Look, I’m not asking you to land the goddamn MEM. You’ve done this in the contingency sims. All you have to do, on this first EVA, is to walk around and scratch a few rocks, and talk to the folks at home about it.”
She didn’t feel any pleasure, or pride, in his startling offer. All she felt was irritation. That damn roller coaster again. “This doesn’t make sense, Phil. You’re passing up the chance to become the first human to walk on Mars, for God’s sake. What kind of asshole does that?”
“This kind,” he said, annoyed. “This is important, Natalie. I discussed it with Joe Muldoon before the launch. We have to get this right — this first EVA most of all — for the sake of the future. The next few minutes are maybe the point of the whole damn mission. Even more than the science — though I don’t expect you to agree with that. Natalie, it’s going to be a long time before anyone comes this way again. But we’re changing history here; even if we fall back, now, people will be able to look up at Mars and say, yes, it’s possible, we can get there, live up there. We know, because somebody did it.
“Look, I know I’m no Neil Armstrong. You’re more — articulate. And this is your place; your valley. Your planet, damn it. You know your way around here better than anyone alive. I think you’d do a better job of communicating this than me. And besides…”
“What?”
He smiled. “I have this feeling. I might be remembered longer for being the man who passed up the chance to be first.”
“I hope she’s obeying orders,” Gershon called.
“About as much as she ever does.”
They’ve plotted this. I’ve been set up.
“And take this,” Stone said.
She held out her hand; Stone dropped into her palm a small disk, like a coin, less than an inch across. It was the diamond marker. “I think it’s more appropriate for you to place it. For Ben. And the others.”
He reached out with two hands, and closed her fist over the marker. He was looking into her eyes.
He knows, she realized suddenly. About Ben and me. He knows. They all knew, all the time.
She dropped the marker into a sample pocket on her suit. Then, numbed, she pushed the red bands over her arms and legs, and dropped her gold visor down over her face.
Stone held the hatch aside. York got down, clumsily, to her knees, and backed up ass-first to the hatch. She started to crawl backwards, out onto the porch.
“Here we go. You’re lined up nicely, Natalie. Come toward me a little bit. Okay, down. Roll to the left. Put your left foot to the right — no, the other way. You’re doing fine.”
She could feel where her sides scraped against the hatchway. Coolant tubes dug into her knees.
Blood hammered in her ears.
“Okay, I’m on the porch.” She reached out and grabbed the handrails, to either side of the porch.
She looked up. The white paint of the outer hull was stained with landing dust, and tinged yellow by the quickening Martian morning. She had gotten so far out that could see the whole of the hatchway before her; it was a rectangle of brilliant fluorescent light, set within the skin of Challenger. Inside the rectangle Phil Stone had crouched down, peering out at her, nodding inside his helmet.
She continued to move backwards, still crawling over the porch, feeling out with her right leg; eventually, her toe hit the top rung of the ladder.
Holding on to the handrails, she straightened up.
She was emerging into the shadow of Challenger, the rising sun was hidden by the bulk of the craft, and the sky above her was still black, though the stars were washing out. She turned, stiffly. To left and right she could see a flat, sharp, close horizon, delimiting a plain of dust and rocks. Everything was stained rust brown, like dried blood, the shadows long and sharp.
The change of scale was startling. She’d spent months inside the confines of the Mission Module, where everything in the universe had been either a few feet away — enclosed by the tight, curving walls — or at infinity. The sense of height and depth, of scales opening out around her, was profound, disorienting; nothing in her training had prepared her for this. For a moment she felt as if she would fall backwards, and she hooked her hands around the handrails of the porch.
“Natalie?”
“I’m okay, Phil. It’s just—”
“I know,” Stone said. “A big moment, right?”
“Yeah.”
Gershon asked, “Natalie, have you gotten out the MESA yet?”
The MESA, the Modularized Equipment Storage Assembly, was a panel on the descent stage, to the left of the ladder. York reached out and opened a latch; the panel swung down like a drawbridge, bearing a TV camera.
“Ralph, the MESA came down all right.”
“I copy that, Natalie. I’m turning the TV on now.”
The lens of the camera was dark, clean, watchful; she saw the camera swivel as Ralph worked its servomotors, focusing on her. She felt absurdly self-conscious.
Gershon said, “I’m waiting for the TV. Man, I’m getting a picture. There’s a great deal of contrast in it — it’s just splashes of color — and currently the damn thing’s upside-down. But I can see a fair amount of detail and — I’ve got it, it’s corrected itself. Natalie, I can see you at the top of the ladder.”
York nodded to the camera. But they can’t see my face behind this visor. She waved.
She made her way down the ladder, rung by rung. They were big steps, and in the stiff suit she found the best way to go was to let herself drop from step to step.
The last rung was three feet from the ground, and she pushed herself away from the ladder and let herself fall. Her descent was distinctly slow-motion; it took nearly a second, she guessed, to cover that last yard. On Earth, it would have taken half that.