The Journey of Drew Billingsley
Damn the luck! His leg was obviously broken. He had fallen ten meters from the top of the gorge he was excavating deep into a crack in the canyon wall.
"Mo, I'm down!" Drew shouted into his transceiver, "You there?"
Brad Mohandie responded quickly, "Drew, you okay? Where are you?"
"One click south of the main excavation site. I'm not in danger, but I've broken my leg."
"I'm coming." Brad "Mo" Mohandie grabbed his pack and began the hopping uneven gait that characterizes fast movement on Mars.
"And Mo, be careful. This crack is in a shadow. I don't need you down in here on top of me." Drew Billingsley was already beginning to feel better. His Mars Surface Suit, the MSS, had already injected analgesic directly into the site of the injury. After the drug fully kicked in the suit would stiffen around the site of the injury to prevent further damage. But setting the break would have to be done in the tiny clinic back at home base.
Drew was less worried about his injury than how Mission Control would react to the news. He had the sinking feeling that this was going to end his mission on Mars. More than once Mission Control had warned him to be more cautious - less reckless. He appreciated their concern, but he was convinced that the best geological science that Mars could provide would come from the most rugged of Martian terrain; terrain that tended to be dangerous. If he didn't repel down mountainsides and take samples from the bottom of cracks like the one he was jammed in now, how could Martian geology advance?
If NSEA would show a little backbone, Drew thought, he would be back at work in a week. He turned on his helmet lamp to look around.
Mo looked down at the MPS incorporated into the forearm of his suit. It showed that Drew was just ahead – within shouting distance if we were back home, Mo thought. He began slowing as Drew had warned. Just ahead Valles Marineris cut a deep gash into the
Tharsis Bulge.
He began walking along the edge of the canyon. "Drew, do you see my light?" The half kilometer drop-off two meters to his right did not concern him as much as the hidden crack that Drew had fallen into.
"I just saw it," Drew shouted.
"Okay," said Mo, "And I see your line now. You mean to tell me you repelled into that crack on purpose? Without another team member?"
"Lay off Mo."
"I'm just saying…When NSEA hears about this."
Drew smiled through the pain. Mo insisted on pronouncing "NSEA" as "NASA."
"I know," Drew managed.
"Okay, I'm lowering another line to you. Can you help pull yourself up?"
"Yes, but give me a minute. I found an interesting formation down here."
"Jeez, Man," said Mo, "Can you give it a rest? You're stuck down a crack on Freakin' Mars."
"One second." Drew pushed his sampling bit into the side of the rock wall. The drill began to turn.
Back at the clinic Mo and Drew collapsed into chairs to wait for the doctor. It had taken almost two hours to get Drew out of the crack. Mo had helped Drew hobble toward base for another half-hour before a third team member driving an MUV met and drove them the rest of the way. It had been an exhausting day.
"Mo, can you make sure to turn my sample in? It looked sedentary."
"At this altitude? Not a chance." Mo saw that Drew was serious, "Yeah, man, I'll see that it gets turned in."
The doctor was not happy to be called away from his own excavation to tend, yet again, to Drew Billingsley. "You know, you're lucky to be alive. One tear in that suit and you'd be gone."
"Noone has ever torn a carbon-nanofiber MSS." Drew reminded.
"You'll be the first, no doubt." The doctor bent to read the computer diagnostic report. "Okay, we have a simple fibula break just above the right ankle. I'm instructing the unit to set and encase the fracture.
"What about nanorthobotic mending?" asked Drew.
Turning toward Drew the doctor replied, "That will begin as soon as your license to stay has been reaffirmed. I'm sorry, but I have to report this incident to NSEA."
There was no need to argue. Transmissions of much of the morning's activities had already reached Earth. "Of course. But you should remind them that of 42 excavators currently working on Mars, I'm the one that's turned in the best samples."
The doctor thought about this. It would be arrogant if it weren't so obviously true. "I will," he said finally.
Unhappily, Drew prepared to leave Mars. NSEA had not had a fatality on Mars since the very beginning of the program. Risk assessors well understood the politics of a dead astronaut. They had run the numbers and made the call. There would be no appeal. Drew was going home.
There were no bags to pack. He would be leaving the same way he came – but faster now that communications had improved. He sat down and carefully swung his broken leg onto the temperfoam treatment table. As he laid back the doctor began anesthesia.
Just before sleep he thought about his last sample. It had checked out "sedentary." That rock had been laid down by water at high altitude. The field of Martian geology would never be the same. Drew chuckled as he drifted away.
Ten days after leaving Mars Drew Billingsley opened his eyes at the Kennedy Space Center. On Mars his journey began with destructive scanning of his mind. Data compression and encryption took place within the clinic. The data stream was transmitted to Phobos, then to Promontory
Lagrange 5 Station, the Moon, and finally back home to Cape Canaveral. At each stage the data was checked for errors and preserved until the next station in the chain checked the transmission and reported back. Drew's specially adapted Martian body was unceremoniously recycled for valuable biomass.
Drew's mind was reassembled back into the cryogenically preserved body Drew had left behind three years earlier. The technician at the foot of Drew's hospital bed greeted him, "Welcome home, Colonel."
Though disoriented Drew managed a horse "Thank you." He sat up in bed and waited for the feeling to pass. After a moment he looked down at his right leg and smiled. It was perfect.
Posted by Stephen Gordon at March 4, 2004 03:52 PM
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