A red mist descended. For an Earth-dweller, that expression meant an anger so intense that it was as if they could see the blood in front of their face. For someone living on Mars, it meant the very dirt that made up the surface of the planet was coming to batter them. Mars didn’t have an atmosphere thick enough to create gale force winds like the ones which could knock someone off their feet on Earth, but it had enough strength to lift the dust into the air. Dust which was so dry and so small, having been ground down by millennia of storms, that it was easy to play with and throw at the humans. As if the planet itself was attacking the invaders from another world.
Driving through a dust storm was unpleasant, but it wasn’t dangerous. Satellite navigation would guide the rover along the well-worn Martian tracks and Julie only had to pay attention to make sure they didn’t encounter any unforeseen hazards.
Although, she would have preferred it if Bard had finished his negotiation when she had asked him to, not wait until the storm was at its height.
“I hope that conversation was worth it,” Julie said to Bard, who was sitting next to her in the passenger seat.
“Oh yes,” he said, and fell silent.
“Is that all you’re going to say?”
“Put it this way, both Anita and I got something we wanted.”
Bard peered through the windshield at the haze of dust reducing the visibility in front of them. The rover’s headlights were on, but all they did was shine light off the particles of dirt in the air which was reflected back at them. Like driving through mist on Earth.
“Can’t we sit here and wait for this to be over?” asked Bard.
“We don’t know how long the storm’s going to last. There’s always a chance it could last longer than the air and power that we have in the rover.”
“But you’re safe to drive in this?”
“This isn’t my first dust storm,” said Julie. Although, she had to admit to herself, she had never been out in one that bad. In the past, she had always done the sensible thing and driven back to the city at the first sign of the winds picking up.
She maneuvered the rover away from the canyons and onto the track which led to Tharsis City. She had hoped to be able to speed up a little once they were on their way, but the visibility was too poor and progress was slow. Bard eventually got bored of looking out at nothing and climbed into the back of the rover. After a while of listening to the sounds of him rummaging around, Julie glanced back to see what he was up to. Bard had one arm in and one arm out of his rad-suit. “What are you doing?”
“Getting out of this blasted suit,” he said, trying to extricate his second arm.
“You need to keep that on in the rover.”
“What on Earth for? The stupid thing is uncomfortable.”
“You’re not on–”
The rover jolted.
The front left side sprung up in the air like leaping off a ramp and came back down so hard that Julie was catapulted across the controls. Bard fell forward and banged his head against the back of the passenger seat.
The rover came to a complete halt and tipped over sideways by about twenty degrees so the whole cabin was at an angle. Julie pulled herself upright and turned off the drive motor.
“What was that?” said Bard.
“I don’t know,” said Julie, trying to sound calm. “I think we hit something.”
She put the vehicle into reverse and tentatively applied power to the motor. The machinery whirred and sent vibrations through her driver’s seat, but the rover didn’t move one centimeter. She changed to forward gear and tried again. Still nothing. Increasing the power did nothing either and the motor merely growled angrily as it propelled them nowhere.
“Weren’t you looking where you were going?” said Bard.
“Of course I was!”
Apart from that brief moment she had turned to look at Bard. She cursed herself for allowing him to distract her. “This is why you’re supposed to keep your suit on for the whole journey – in case we need to get out of the rover in a hurry, or something happens and the hull is punctured.”
Bard frowned. “We’re getting out?”
Julie got up out of the driver’s seat and leaned over to one side as she walked on the sloping floor to get into the main part of the cabin where she had left her helmet. It had rolled off the bench and was upside down in a pile of dust at the hatchway. “I need to see what the problem is. I’m going to have to depressurize the cabin before I open the hatch. So, if you want to breathe, I suggest you put your suit back on and secure your helmet.”
She helped Bard complete his suiting up, they secured their helmets, carried out disembarkation checks, waited for the rover to suck the air from the cabin back into its reserves and then opened the hatchway.
Julie stepped out into the storm of whipped up tiny particles which were so small they hissed rather than clattered against her helmet. The wind was blowing from the side strong enough for her to feel it, but not so much to knock her sideways. She walked around to the front of the rover where the headlights shone out into the dust. She had to shield her eyes from the glare as she looked back towards it, but it was obvious the rover was impaled on something. The front left side was suspended in the air, with the wheel dangling helplessly over the ground.
She crouched down to look underneath and, as her eyes adjusted to the relative dark, she saw the underside of the rover was resting on top of a rock. She stared at it for many moments and the horrible feeling in her stomach got worse as she realized they were well and truly stuck. She would have to go back into the rover and call for help, but no one would want to come out in the storm.
“That doesn’t look good,” came Bard’s voice over the comms.
Julie turned around and saw that Bard had followed her outside. “No.”
He crouched down beside her to see for himself. “How did you manage to hit a rock?”
“The road should have been clear,” she said. “We must have gone off track somehow. These tracks are only the width of a rover, so it’s not impossible if the satellite navigation was out by a meter or two. Either that or some idiot dumped debris in the wrong place – I wouldn’t put it past some of the corporation worker teams out here.”
Bard walked over to the corner of the rover and grasped its underside with both hands.
“What are you doing?” asked Julie.
“I think I might be able to lift it off. Everything on Mars weighs not much more than a third of what it would weigh on Earth, right?”
“That still doesn’t give you powers to lift it up like some kind of superhero.”
Bard bent his knees to get his weight under it and tried to lift. Julie could tell he was tensing his muscles, even through the bulk of his rad-suit, but the rover didn’t budge in the slightest. “Damn!” he said, as he let go. “My strength must have really atrophied on the journey out here.”
“Rovers are heavy. There’s the battery, the drive motor, not to mention the thick hull, and all the environmental controls inside one of these things.”
“Are you saying that to make me feel better?” said Bard.
“No, just helping you come to the inevitable conclusion that we’ll have to call for help and wait it out.”
“I’m not ready to give up yet.” He turned and walked back towards the open hatch. “There might be something in the rover we could use.”
“I doubt it,” Julie called after him, even though raising her voice wasn’t necessary over the comms.
“It won’t take a minute to look.” He stepped inside.
“Turn off the headlights while you’re in there, let’s not run down the battery any more than we need to. And bring a flashlight.”
Julie took another look at the rugged boulder on which the rover was resting. It appeared to be firmly embedded in the ground. Not only was the swirling dust gathering at its base, the weight of the rover itself almost certainly acted like a hammer and jammed it hard into the dirt.
It suddenly darkened all around her. Bard must have turned off the headlights. She stood back up straight and, as her eyes got used to the available daylight in the haze of the dusty atmosphere, she saw Bard approaching from out of the rover with the beam from a flashlight dancing about the ground in front of his feet. Under his arm was a pole about a meter and a half long, like the ones used to mark out land for surveying or development. Except, without the usual flag on top.
“I found this,” he said, stabbing the ground with the pointed end.
“A marker pole,” said Julie, wondering what he expected to do with it.
“If we can get some leverage, we might be able to lift the rover off the rock.”
She looked at the thin pole and then looked at the large vehicle. She didn’t hold out much hope, but figured it couldn’t do any harm. “Worth a try, I suppose.”
He went back to the corner of the vehicle, got down on his hands and knees, and shone the flashlight onto the rock. “Hold this for me, would you?”
Julie came up behind him and took the flashlight as he handed it back to her. She focused it on the rock as Bard maneuvered the pole so the center rested on one of the jagged bits at the top of the rock. Holding onto the other end, he flexed it up and down so it pivoted on the boulder. Julie could see that if he pushed down on the end of the lever sticking out from under the rover, then the other end would connect to the underside and lift it up. In theory.
Bard stood up straight again and grabbed hold of the other end of the pole. “Here we go,” he said, and pushed down.
But he pushed too hard and fast. The other end of the pole hit the underside of the rover so quickly that it bounced off its pivot point on the rock.
For the first time, she got the sense that his plan might have real merit and they could soon be on their way. “Nearly,” she said.
He tried again. This time, he took it slow. The far end of the pole connected with the rover, and he kept gently pushing as the sound of his heavy breathing was picked up by the comms.
The rover lifted free of the rock by only a couple of millimeters, but it was enough for both of its front wheels to hover in the air.
“That’s it!” said Julie.
But Bard couldn’t hold it any longer and, with a grunt, let go of the pole and the rover landed back in its impaled position. Anticipation turned to frustration as they were clearly back where they started.
He leant forward and rested his hands on his knees while he got his breath back. “I can lift it, but I can’t move it sideways. It needs to be shifted clear of the rock.”
“If you could lift it, maybe I could push it far enough so it’s free of the boulder,” she suggested.
Through the bubble of his helmet, Julie could see Bard smile at the idea. “That could work,” he said.
With the dust still swirling around them, Bard replaced the pole on the rock so the other end was touching the center of the underside of the rover. Julie walked round to the front left side near to where the wheel was dangling.
“Ready?” said Bard.
Julie wiped some of the dust off the bubble of her helmet and put her hands on the corner of the rover. It was difficult to grasp through the fabric of her gloves, but if she braced her palms against the flat metal sides and curled her fingers under the rim, she could get a firm enough hold.
“Ready,” she acknowledged.
“On three,” he said. “One, two, three!”
Bard grunted as he pushed down on the pole. The force vibrated through Julie’s gloves and the rover lifted a hairsbreadth above the rock. She pushed to move the vehicle sideways, but it was stubborn. With the front elevated, most of the weight had shifted to the back wheels, forcing them further into the dirt and resisting her efforts to move it. She dug her boots into the ground, leaned all her weight against the side and, at last, the rover begrudgingly began to turn. It was hard work because the more she pushed, the more the angle caused the underside to scrape on the top point of the rock. It was so frustrating – if it was just a little higher, she felt sure she could push the rover clear of the obstacle.
“Can you lift it up any more?” called Julie over the comms.
“I think so.”
Bard forced all his bodyweight down onto the pole with a grunt of effort so sudden and violent that the corner of the rover was ripped from Julie’s hands. It tipped up and lurched forward, heading straight for him. He jumped out of the way as the front end struck the ground where – moments before – he had been standing.
But it didn’t stop. The momentum kept the rover tumbling and Bard turned to run as the crashing machine flipped over and plummeted towards him. He had taken only two steps before the bumper struck the back of his knees, throwing him forward, and he went sprawling to the ground. The roof of the rover crashed down on Bard’s legs, and he screamed as the force of the impact rippled through the ground.
“Bard!” Julie cried.
“My legs! My legs!” he shouted in desperation and panic.
Julie stared at the horrific reality of what had just happened. Bard lay face down in the Martian dirt, the top half of his body sticking out from the rover and his bottom half trapped underneath.
She ran to him and crouched down where the bubble of his helmet was pressed into the ground. Through the side, she could see him grimacing in pain as the color drained away from his face.
“No, no!” he cried out, He wriggled the upper half of his body as he tried to scramble free, but he could only scratch at the dirt beneath his fingers. “I’m stuck!”
“Don’t do anything hasty,” Julie tried to calm him. “We need to assess the situation first.”
“I can’t stay here!” Bard put his hands in the dirt on either side of his chest and tried to push himself away. His torso lifted from the waist, but his legs didn’t move. They were completely trapped under the rover. With an exasperated gasp, he stopped pushing and collapsed back down.
“Breathe deep,” Julie told him. “Save your strength and let me take a look.”
With dust swirling around her, she craned her head to look under the upturned machine where Bard’s legs were pinned to the ground. In the reduced light of the storm and the shadow of the rover, the only thing she could see clearly was the beam from the flashlight radiating from beneath the vehicle’s roof. It shone out in the direction of Bard’s left boot and highlighted its grotesquely twisted angle with the toe pointing up and his leg turned unnaturally sideways.
“Can you move your legs at all?” she asked.
Bard let out a painful gasp as he tried. His right leg shifted a little bit, but his left leg stayed where it was. The pain was clearly too much, and he stopped trying.
She looked away from his contorted limb and tried to hide the concern from her face. “I think your right leg is fine.”
“But the left one? What about the left one?”
“It’s going to be fine,” said Julie, using a tone which she hoped was soothing. “Have you got any warnings coming through on your rad-suit?”
“Warnings? What warnings?”
“If the integrity of your suit has been breached, there will be an audible warning in your helmet. They should have told you about that in your training. I can’t hear anything over the comms.”
“No,” said Bard, breathing quick and heavy. “No warning.”
“That’s good,” said Julie. “That means your suit’s not been ruptured.”
“Good? You’ve got to get me out of this! Find the pole. Can you find the pole?”
Julie knew she wasn’t strong enough to lift the rover off him, even if she retrieved the pole, but she owed it to him to try.
She paced around the upturned rover and soon found the pole, which had been partially covered by accumulated dust and was half sticking out from underneath. She grabbed hold of the pointed end and pulled, but it was well and truly stuck and didn’t move even a little bit. It also looked like it had been bent where the rover had landed on top of it and, even if she could get it out, it would be completely useless.
Julie stepped back and glanced across at the open hatch. The entrance was upside down, but it would be easy enough to climb in. “I’m going to call for help,” she said. “I won’t be minute.”
“Don’t get in the rover!” said Bard in panic. “You’ll put more weight on my leg.”
“I’ll be quick. We need help.” Julie glanced back at his prone, stricken body for a moment, then put her hands on the edge of the upside-down hatch and hauled herself inside.
As she put out the distress call, she worried that rescue would not come quick enough, despite the eagerness due to loyalty or expecting a reward. There was no telling how bad Bard’s injuries were. He could be bleeding internally for all she knew, and without medical attention his crushed leg could be killing him from the inside. All she could do was express the urgency of the situation over the radio and hope that whoever heard it was willing to battle through the storm to save them.