Ringclimber

Chapter 7 - First Wall

By the end of two days, base camp is established at the foot of the mesa. Sharon climbs solo fifty meters up a moderate grade crack on the side of the mesa to record the arrival of the last load. It is her first climbing on Mars in years, and she rejoices with the smoothness of motion and the lightness of her body.

Late in the day, they finally finish deploying their supplies in the three widely separated locations they are using as dumps. The separation of the supplies is insurance -- in case of a quake or a slide, some of the supplies might survive.

The four women are exhausted and they file into the central bubble, arms hanging loose, suits ochre from the omnipresent dust. They sink onto the floor one by one, peeling off their glass hoods and leaning back against the walls, or hunching forward, staring at the space just above the floor.

"Figures I'd have my period today," Pat gasps. "Fucking burn me out." Anne starts laughing, first in mild shoulder-shifting snorts, then breaking into a bright peal. Sharon looks over at her, and then at Pat. She shakes her head to hide an embarrassed smile. "No wonder you're dragging your ass," she comments. "I wonder what excuse the rest of us have."

Pat stretches her hands up against the bubble. "Tell you what," she said. "I'll think of one."

Sharon grins. "After you cook dinner, dear."

Sharon sits alone in her bubble, back up against her personal pack, watching the inferno point of the sun glare red then violet across the Tharsis plain. The rocks glint like a field of stars.

She closes her eyes in sudden pain, realizing that it looks far too much like the rings.

She opens her eyes and reaches for her pad. She calls up the mail Phil had sent, and reviews it once again.

His face regards her from the frame as he speaks. "... well, anyway, I love you, and I hope you're doing OK. All of us are following you on the net. I just wish we got to see more. Drop me a mail when you can."

Oh, I love you, she thought. But that's what I was trying to avoid. What I still want to avoid, because it might just not turn out. I hope you know what you're getting into. I hope you don't end up the way I did with Rael.

The ground shakes -- several items fall over with a crash and clatter. She looks around wildly and her eyes light on her hood. She pulls it on. The bubble shudders, its plastic rippling with the shock. Sharon scrambles to her feet and thrust her way out of the softlock, into the bitter cold of the Martian twilight. Frost sheets instantly across her synthetic skin, crackling with movement. She is falling back against the shifting surface of the bubble. She rises to wait, shivering, unsteady, staring around. Where is the others? There... Pat is out; Erin is crouches at the base of her bubble. It is getting harder to see. Where the hell is Anne?

The quake tapers off to the sound of sliding rocks becoming a faint and occasional clank of dislodged pieces. Anne pushes her head out of her bubble. She looks around and sees them all standing outside.

"It's just a quake!" she shouts. "What are you guys doing? You want to be hit on the head with a rock?"

They look at each other. Erin laughs ruefully.

The buttress rises several thousand meters, crinkled by faulting, seamed and smoothed by slides. Its debris flows away across the plain to the mesa, now kilometers behind and hundreds of meters below. This is the first obstacle, and it is where the prosthedons must be abandoned.

The day begins with a slow and awkward walk up the scree slope to the base of the wall. Sharon smiles in amazement at the sudden strike of stone against sky. The sunlight is pouring down the canyon cliffs to either side, reflecting onto the vast smooth wall ahead.

Their packs are enormous in bulk and mass, light in weight, shifting balance in strange patterns as they work their way up the hundred meter slope. The angle of repose is steep, and Sharon stumbles occasionally, catching herself against the larger stones in mid-fall as the smaller stones clatter away downslope. But she keeps turning her eyes upward, even while her legs seem to harden and burn with the effort of each step. The others do much the same.

At last the rubble ends as a small plateau joining the basalt wave. They pause for a look at the forbidding shape that shades them, swinging packs to the ground with an oddly pitched clank of metal and rustle of plastic in the thin carbon dioxide air. Sharon turns away to look outward over the sunlit valley and the mesa. Then she bends down over her burden and begins burrowing for harness and rack.

The women sit at the wall changing to slippers and looking at the view. If this were Earth, the icy wind in the shadow or the frigid ancient ground would kill their skin in an instant. But the insulation of the skinsuit is doing its job, and they are comfortable. If this were Earth, the air would be cold and thin. Here, it is unbreathable with carbon dioxide. But the membrane that stripes their individually colored suits takes stored heat and sun and uses it to split away the carbon into a fine and dusty soot that flakes invisibly away as the oxygen is withdrawn and passed into the suit.

Sharon stands first and taps Erin on the shoulder. "Join me?" she asks. Erin nods.

The faint rumbling of a morning slide far to the right can be felt through the stone as Sharon touches the rock for the first time. The slope starts like a steep ramp and gradually curves into verticality. She steps up slowly, recovering her grace, feet sticking lightly to the friendly roughness of the volcanic stone. The view unwinds beneath her. She trails the rope upward, not bothering with protection yet. Below, Erin, Pat, and Anne watch as she leads. Finally, Anne starts upward on a parallel track, a tiny figure moving smoothly and rapidly below. As Sharon pauses to place protection in a fissure, she watches Anne moving upward toward her and admires the smooth, economic movements. Then Sharon moves on, up the steepening wall.

The holds become smaller, and the moves more delicate. For a moment she fails to adhere, lighter weight, normal inertia and habit lifting her off the thin holds as she momentarily loses her careful cat-like sequencing. She scrapes and slides a bit before regaining her footing. Slower, she thinks. I'm overtrained. Her muscles are still too used to Earth gravity. The law is no different here, but the constant has changed.

At a stance a hundred fifty meters up, she rigs a belay and hangs lightly in her harness. "Okay, Erin, come on up. I've got you."

"Climbing," Erin replies. For a moment, Erin wishes she were in open air, enjoying the warm scents of earth - but then the texture of the rock is rough through her sensitive gloves, and she remembers all the different sights, smells and motions ahead. And she begins them.

At the third pitch, the difficulties begin. They had made slow work with two teams, each hauling and climbing. Finally they join together and send out one leader for the third pitch. One member leads, one belays, and two haul.

Erin starts the third pitch, which is severely overhanging through several roofs. Sharon belays. Twenty-five meters above the belay, Erin begins a series of frighteningly exposed falls high above her last protection as she probes for a weakness. The falls seem slow to earth born eyes, and to Erin they seem to take forever. Too long. Ten, fifteen slow meters of plummet, to rebound slowly at the end of the rope, and swing in to the face below. But again and again she goes up, sure there must be a way, a method of balance, a twist or a way of placing feet that will work through these vast roofs. She stems her legs and works up until she is once again horizontal under the rock. Beneath her back, the rust of Mars spreads a complex and hazy tapestry. The horizontal cracks in the layers are difficult and awkward, but suddenly her energy returns and she pushes through the second tier. A hook over an edge is her next pro. Her hand is shaking as she clips the rope to it.

Then she slips and falls. Her feet swing wide over hundreds of feet of space and the hook wiggles slowly in the crack... its motion is damped by the rope, coming to rest just before it springs into space. Her hands hang at her side. Finally, she gestures. "Take me down," she whispers. "I'm cooked."

Sharon stands staring up as Erin lowers on the rope. Pat bends over Erin and helps her clip in to the waiting anchors. Above, the hook pings off into space, and the rope slowly drapes downward, to a chorus of nervous laughter. Finally Sharon turns to Anne, who is studiously pumping at the lever to bring up the bags from the last pitch. "Anne?" she asks.

"Yes?"

"Give that to Pat, so you can pick up where Erin left off."

Anne grins behind the glass hood. "Sure." Pat smothers a smile and takes her place at the winch. Erin sits gasping, breath finally slowing, her hood membranes fighting the excess moisture and barely suppressing a fog.

Anne's hands are only slightly uncertain as she ties the rope to her harness. She takes the rack from Erin. For a moment she looks at her hands and thinks about the chances. This is a tough route. If Erin is falling, it must be at least an Earth 5.15c grade, Mars 5.12. Tough, but not impossible. And the rope has been pulled, but the protection remains, firmly anchored to the rock.

As she starts, her motions are hesitant. She is conscious of everyone watching her, and she can hear their breathing in her ears. The rock steepens then, and she is suddenly under the thrust of the multi-tiered roof. She clips the last pro before heading out beneath the roof. For a moment, she pauses, feeling her breath coursing, focusing her energy. She will not have the necessary endurance unless she moves swiftly and correctly. And as she begins to move, she forgets to worry about the others and their opinions. There is only rock, movement, and gravity.

The roof does not yield easily. But the inspiration that powers a climber at her peak is operating in her. It is as if the sight of each hold calls forth a movement through a direct connection with her knowledge of her body and its capabilities. The millions of moves she has made in her life come to her once again like a vast library and resource.

Like a strange creature, she crawls out under the roof, with the planet at her back. She clips to the hook, hand shaking as the carabiner gate keeps slipping away, but when it clicks shut, the rope is secure, and she continues, moving into the unknown territory of the next tier.

As she twists through a complex move, the sky is, for a moment, beneath her feet, and her toes are hooking the eaves of rock.

Suddenly the angle eases, to perhaps only one hundred twenty degrees. But the holds have become blockier, sloped and awkward, so it is no easier. Her breath rasps over the sounds of encouragement from below. There is no protection, not even by matilda. She tries not to think of the hook, now over thirty feet behind her. She tries not to think of the useless pro dangling at her waist. She looks up at the darkened aerosols above her, the flights of cloud past the edge of the roof. She moves harder, and feels the white glare of a series of movements so complex and hard that they nearly defeat her - or would, if there were any chance of her relenting in her effort. But there isn't.

And, at last, an incipient crack, but she cannot allow her anticipation to bring her to relax. A few more moves and the crack splits a block, deep enough for a cam, which she hurriedly inserts and triggers. Another move and the wall is nearly vertical. The crack reappears and she places a carefully chosen nut.

Finally. A ledge; a huge hold, and she climbs to it, gasping, hanging. But her arms are burning, and she has to move - a heel beside her shoulder catches the edge, and she pulls with her leg. She squats, and a final mantle brings her to the ledge. She looks over the rock curving away to hide below, waiting for her heart to return. And she thinks of the frightening moves, which nothing can now take away from her.

"I'm up," she breathes. Then she stands, gasping, for minutes. Finally, she turns to the business at hand. "I'm up!" she yells. "I AM UP!"

She sets some anchors and then calls for the second. Pat laughs. "Lady, you made that look easy. I can't wait!"

Wall Camp is tacked to the fifth pitch of the buttress wall as the shadow of Arsia Mons crawls beneath them and the sun glares on their glass hoods. The climbers, now largely acclimated to their vertical life, creep carefully over the wall secured by their anchors, transferring burdens from the haul bags to the wall bubble. Their movements are a careful contract as they pass objects across a thousand meters of empty space. Finally, they sit silently, exhausted, at the edge of the bubble, legs dangling, watching the sun burn toward the horizon.

There is a sudden moment when the light blinks away.

The next morning is cold, and Sharon stirs slowly amidst the bodies of the others. Her breath smokes a plume above her in the cold, iron rank air. For a moment, she remembers...

... camping. The day had passed slowly as they struggled with the problems of the wall, gradually becoming denizens of the vertical. The heat pounded their lightly clad backs, bare flesh, and the bright granite; their shadows strode across the softly crystalline planes - shock black. She cranked the stirrup and brought up the haul bag from the distant below, while Alan led out and up from the hanging stance where Peter belayed.

She remembers... The sound of carabiners clicking on Alan's harness, the soft echo of "slack" and "take" from the forest of terrifying flakes above. Later, her own hands probed the hot seams and cracks on lead, taking her life upward. It was a simple 5.11 pitch; the limit of the hard decades ago, now almost beginner standard...

She remembers... Fitting protection into the crack, carefully looping flakes, dark-wrapped feet dancing smears over the faint dishes in the rock... And hanging quietly under an overhang while the wind blew the slings and the clouds slowly thickened into cold...

They slowly erected the portaledge, with the wind tugging more and more urgently at the fabric. Then they slipped away from the rock into their fragile hanging shelter, with no more than a millimeter of fabric between them and the long falling death to the scree a thousand feet below. The wind blew horribly that night; the sun had set above the clouds and the movement of air was a restless howling animal outside. She awoke to it suddenly and lay there in a panic, knowing she dare not move, like the memory of sleeping with a kitten when she was a child. She heard the loud breathing of Alan and Peter, and smelled their bodies, laced with the changes of wind threading through the fabric. Rain pattered the shell, and she stared into the dark. Eyes open were no different than eyes closed. Slowly, quietly, she slipped a hand from the confines of her sleeping bag and gently, so softly, she moved the zipper of the doorway. The rush of air and rain was larger, and the smell of the wet rock swept in. She shined her tiny flashlight out the tiny opening, and watched the stars of thousands of droplets flicker and decay into the endless fall past its feeble ray. No one, she thought, will see this. I am so alone, and so free. She gasped without sound, as the feeling swept her. She brought the light back, and her hand came to her mouth so she could feel her breathing; then tugged at her braid to remind her that she was physical, extended in space as well as time. She pocketed the flashlight and curled up beside the gate, asleep in moments, lulled by her own power...

It isn't the same. Beyond the bubble, a lethal air, a distant, weak sun just shining over the top of the volcano at their back. But it isn't different, either.

Sharon and Erin are a pitch above, hauling the bag as Anne hangs in belay, bringing Pat up toward her under yet another fractured overhang. The sun is tiny and close to the horizon, and Anne can feel the urgency of being suspended and isolate in the moment before Martian darkness. They are running late. The sun winks over the horizon and rushes the shadow toward them. The shadow races up the mile of buttress below them, and then sweeps them under its cloak.

"How are you doing, Pat?" Anne asks. She feels a slight pleasure that her voice is steady.

"I'd like to be able to see the damn holds," Pat curses in that strange Belt accent. There are sounds of effort. "Guess I'll get the lamp."

Below, a star flicks into existence and paints the wall.

"That's more like it." Pat mutters. "Mars ten in near dark, and nobody cares. How can I be a hero?"

The light moves, and Anne watches, fascinated, trying to ignore the cold that seems to be seeping in from her back. Finally, the light flashes across her feet, and Pat's hand reaches the slight ledge. Shadows flick and surge as Pat traverses, and finally moves up to the protection. "Here's the clip," Anne offers.

"Nervous?" Pat asks, as they hand off the rack. The darkness is total except for the headlamps sharing their light.

"Good guess," Anne whispers.

"Well, you've climbed here, and I haven't. You're leading and I'm resting. Anything special, kid?"

Anne tries to laugh. "Oh, terror. You know. Nothing special."

"Sure I shouldn't do it?" Light casts Pat's face craggy and neutral behind her glass hood.

"I've got the experience," Anne replies. "This overhang will be a little tough, but I can handle it." Pat grins.

The start is the toughest. Moving off the ledge, no protection except the belay setup that Pat is hanging from. Moving into a darkness only penetrated by the lamp.

The light switches swiftly from above to her feet, then back. She slips a passive nut into a seam, peering at it carefully to make sure it is well seated. "Slack!" She draws the rope and clips it to the gear. As the angle steepens, her disorientation begins. The gravity pulls on one direction, the surfaces lean in another, and the light reveals nothing to discriminate.

After forty feet, she is starting to feel odd. The moves are hard, and she is climbing a hundred and twenty degree wall in total darkness except for the pool of light that flows with her eyes. Suddenly, in the midst of a hard counter-pressure move, she is away from the rock, flying into darkness. She feels as if she is falling slowly, with minutes to consider what will happen. At least I have clean air below, she thinks. Then she feels her protection ping from the rock somewhere above, and she is sweeping inward with gathering force. The wall is visible now in her headlamp. Pat is below her, but closer than before. Another yank, and then bang, and the second piece pings out, and she is dropping fast, heading right for Pat's back - no, below. She plummets past. There is only one piece left, and she is pleading with it to hold as she smashes against the cliff. She rebounds, slowly. The last piece has held, and she is gasping.

"Anne," Pat cries, "Are you OK?"

Anne stirs. "Yeah... yeah, I think I'm OK."

The rumble of a not-so-distant slide throbs the rock briefly. Sharon and Erin sit silently in the doorway to the bubble, listening to the transmissions from the darkness below. The lights inside the bubble paint the back of their hoods orange and hide their faces. The down wind is kicking up, and the bubble is vibrating gently with the force.

Anne can feel the cold seeping into the suits, eroding her power systems. Pat can feel it even more keenly, and she knows what it means as well as does Anne. In space, in a suit, cold is a serious warning. Here, where the convection of atmosphere and rock eat away at the heat store, the warning is even more serious.

"Well, what now?" Pat asks. "My turn?" Her voice is slightly weak, not entirely from cold.

Anne looks up and her light flickers across the steep wall. She wishes she could lie down, or be flown off. But that isn't an option. She feels shame at her failure to get them out. She needs to get up to the climbers waiting above. Because failing now is not something she can allow herself. Pat needs her. And it is getting colder.

"No, I want another shot. I was almost to some good pro, maybe a stance. Even if it's only twenty meters, we've got to keep working, making heat."

Pat's chuckle is forced. "Yeah, calories. Now if we just had something besides freeze-dried. Just don't make me stand here too long, OK?"

There is a hanging belay at twenty five meters, and Anne shines her light away from the face to avoid blinding Pat. Above, in the bubble, sealed away and warm, Erin makes tea, her dark hair floating gently in the orange light as the water boils and brings scent to the air.

"Belay on."

"Climbing."

"Climb."

The voices are shivering slightly, whether in the texture of the medium, or in the cold or fear felt by the climbers, no one can tell. But both Sharon and Erin know what is going through their minds. Sharon stares bleakly out the bubble skin. "I wish it wasn't so warm in here."

"I know, wish it wasn't so bloody warm, wish you were out on the face, don't drink the damn tea, the damn soup."

"Stop it, Erin," Sharon's voice is tired to exhaustion. "We've got to get some fluids in and then get out on some ropes and head down to them."

"I'm working on it," Erin replies. Her head is down, and her face is masked by her loose hair. But her expression is chagrined. Her cynicism seems to show at the worst times.

Pat is cold, and her fingers and toes are bitter as she starts to move. She climbs up the steep face, glad the protection will catch her, wishing she would not fall and ruin their chances for a free redpoint ascent. But she is so tired and cold that she can feel the defeat creeping into her limbs. It is not until she clips into the cordlettes at the belay that she actually realizes she has made it. Partway.

"Okay," Sharon cries, "Let's go. ROPE!" she shouts, tossing the knotted ends of the coil into the void.

"Rope!" Erin yells.

The two women slide down the ropes into darkness.

"I used to... wonder what winter was like," Pat mutters. "I'd go sleep out on the surface of our rock in my suit, and turn the controls down... not too much, you know, just enough to feel cold. Grandfather finally wondered what was going on. He caught me. Told me that I could die doing that." She laughs, a gravelly, mirthless sound over the communications link. "Suppose he was right?"

Anne's voice latches in her throat, but she manages to pull out a joke. "I imagine you won't be doing any dying, because you'll be leading. I'll be the one freezing at the belay. Are you ready?"

Pat clips a last matilda to her rack.

"Yeah."

"Tied?"

A pair of lights slide slowly toward them from darkness above. Unseen.

"Yeah. Clip look OK?"

Anne's light sweeps Pat's waist and the clip.

"You're hooked in. What do you suppose the others are doing?"

"Sitting up there warm. What else can they do? Honey, people get themselves out of jams."

"We should call."

"What for?"

"Yeah, what for?" comes a familiar voice, crackling with line-of-sight obstacles. Erin's. "Wouldn't you rather hitch a ride?"

"What the hell?" Pat snaps, her voice shivering with cold.

"We're just setting a belay about fifty feet above you. One more pitch and we'll be where you are. If you'll just bloody sit tight."

"Maybe we could just climb in place to stay warm," Anne mutters. Her voice is wavering, but it is with a strange combination of fear and relief.

They are bitterly cold as the morning arrives, piled in their sleeping bags, smelling the tang of iron and ice as their first waking experience. Lemon sun pours across the rusty distant space beyond the plastic. The faint sound of air moving within, and the tenuous wind without - both whisper seductively of sleep to their aching muscles and exhausted minds.

Pat is curled in the corner, headphones playing soft Belter music to hide from the thin air snoring. Her eyes are closed, and her masculine face reveals her femininity in repose. Anne smiles, stretching carefully. They are still alive.

She thinks of all the times there has been a life under her hands, laser or knife. How she would don the gloves and the AR and wish fervently that her work would go well. How close it had been to hold the rope for Pat, refusing the cold. Too close. She shivers in the stretch.

Sharon elects to lead a rope consisting of herself and Anne. The next pitch proves to be rust basalt flows richly seamed with obsidian and tuff. The climbers use their hands, jamming in the multitude of strong cracks, taking ballet steps along tiny holds that cross nearly blank faces, placing nuts, cams, and matildas to protect the leader.

"Belay on," Anne calls.

"Climbing," Sharon responds. The rope slips through Anne's palm. She leans back in her harness, watching the rope and the ochre sky beyond. She can hardly believe the sensations; there is above all the strangeness that had been with her since she was elected second. A small part fear.

The thin wind hisses against her clothing, futile. She watches and is cautious.

"Off belay" Sharon calls from somewhere above.

"Belay off," Anne replies.

"Right." Sharon acknowledges. Then, "Belay on."

"Climbing."

Anne starts to move. The rock is gritty and taut under her membraned fingers. Sun glows mistily over her right shoulder, etching each finger hold and seam. Sharon keeps the rope stretched lightly from the harness, and for too brief a moment, Anne is on the face, moving swiftly up a smooth face to the narrowness where Sharon sits suspended. They clip in and perch together, looking down over the distance they have come.

They drop their packs at the summit of the ridge. They are high enough that the curve of the planet's horizon is becoming noticeable. The rusty landscape fades away into the aerosol murk that is the planet's omnipresent vision limiter...

In their packs are the first light loads of supplies to be cached and marked. They hike a short distance from the ridge top until they reach an overhang that can be used as the storage site. They mark the cache with a beacon hanging from a balloon, in case a slide obliterates their markings. Then they are back to the face, speed rappelling to the camp below.

Anne and Pat take the next rope, Anne leading. They know time is at a premium; they will only be able to carry a limited amount of supplies above the ridge. But Erin insists on having only half of the team on the face at a time. She notices the thick red line on the horizon, and the weather reports indicate that it is a local dust storm. She needs to get Anne and Pat up the face as fast as possible, and then she and Sharon can follow with more supplies, and the team will bivouac in the supply cache.

But the storm comes in too quickly. On the ground, the wind stirs briefly, and then wisps of dust tangle past, sweeping with the morning wind up the wall. Erin gets into communication with the rope on the face.

"That dust storm is here sooner than we expected. You'd better get over the ridge and bivouac. Over."

"Understood," Pat replies. "It's definitely coming up this high? Over."

"That's right."

Pat is at the top of the ridge, leading. As she comes out over the ridge, she can see the opaque billows of the dust rising like fingers toward them. Anne is still a long ropelength below, as Pat anchors herself. "How's it look, Anne? Are you ready, or what?" she calls.

"Visibility's getting worse."

"Belay on."

"On belay. Climbing."

Anne clings to the thin face, spidering from one thin irregularity to another, pausing only to pick out the protection. She knows she is hurrying too much. The pump is hitting her forearms and her fingers are less and less capable of the extremely fine pockets that spot the face between the larger, rougher features. She still has a hundred twenty meters to go and the fine aerosol is coarsening and darkening, while the sun slides behind it. "C'mon, c'mon," she mutters. There... the top of the ridge is there... no, it must be further... no, it doesn't matter, just climb. The wind is pulling at her - weak with the thinness of the air, but strengthening with velocity and dust, tugging her off the face against the faint gravity.

"Yes, we've been listening." Sharon replies, staring at the vague ochre turbulence beyond the plastic. "There's nothing you can do except get back inside and wait until morning."

"No," Pat cries, surprising herself.

"What do you think?" Erin broke in, "that you're going to rap down the ridge into dust? You'll be in bloody great shape for tomorrow's work, eh? Cratered on the damn floor."

"But ..."

"You've got to," Sharon insists. "Just like Anne's got to. No climbing's going to be done before morning. Anne's in fine shape, a fine climber, and her air reservoirs were fully charged before the storm cut off the light. We can't have her wandering around in the storm on the ridge blindly. She needs to be anchored against the wind. She'll manage a night on the face like a professional. You will too. Now check those anchors. Make sure the rope's secured. Then get off to sleep. Keep your channel to her open all night, and call us if you hear anything we don't." She sighs. Is Pat coming apart?

Already the space beyond the ridge has become a swirled twilight, reddening like blood and darkening. Pat looks at the tied-off rope lowered over padding at the edge.

"We'll be listening to you, so if you need something, just use the open channel," Sharon continues.

"Right, and good night." Even through the suit, Pat fancies she can feel her heat ebbing away. After all, this is a cold atmosphere -- far different from cold vacuum -- ready to steal heat through convection. But she tries to force herself to relax. She will need her sleep tonight.

Pat sleeps badly, twisting and turning, sitting up suddenly, looking out into the opaque darkness. She leans against the plastic and feels the gusts. She rubs her face and leans back, eyelids sliding down, defeated. She stirs, shakes her head.

She dresses, finally, in full climbing gear. She sets her own tether near the tent and walks carefully to where the camplight glares over the edge into the snapping tendrils and whorls of dust.

The rope is where she had left it. She brings up the volume on Anne's personal channel.

There is only the sound of even breathing.

It is bitterly cold, even through the suit. She seals the bubble and sits down against the outside wall, listening to Anne breathe in sleep a kilometer above the surface of Mars, and she faces her fear of not being able to see.

At first, Pat thinks it is her eyes, overloaded with dust. The light seems to fade; not against darkness, but against the diffuse glow of the sun rising behind Arsia. She wipes the film of dust from her visor.

The land below glows. The vast shadow of the volcano thrusts across the Tharsis bulge, but beyond its limits the land, fiery and feathery with the aftermath of the storm, is like a plate of molten gold.

She is stiff and hungry; her bladder is full, but she is basically fine. She wriggles toes and fingers, making sure no opening in her insulation has frostbitten the sensitive extremities.

Everything is fine. She peers over the edge and calls Anne on the private channel.

"Hey, Anne, wake up. Time to go."

Anne stirs against the face.

"Anne! Wake up. Good morning, are you on this damn channel?"

Anne looks around, as startled as if someone present had rebuked her, trying to find her tormentor. Then she stares up into the void.

"Pat? Is that you? You're all right?"

"Yes, I'm fine. I'm ready to get on the rap, can we roll?"

"Oh, sure." She feels miserable, but Pat ignores this, calling "I'm waiting."

"Hang on, hang on," Anne pleads, rearranging her hood. "Okay, I'm coming."

"What the hell is going on up there?" Erin demands.

"Pat, you didn't call them?"

"Sorry, slipped my mind. Figured you'd be up in a few minutes, we'd be down; why wake everybody up, you know?"

"Thanks, Pat," Erin complains. "No flowers for you next time."

"Yeah, yeah. Don't distract me."

Anne leans back into the harness, and her breath comes in small gasps. The dry corners of her mouth hurt with salt. The edge of the ridge glares above her. Pat is invisible, waiting several meters past the ridgeline. Over to a narrow hand crack on a completely blank face, then toes on the mantle, hands wedged; next step, foot on the ledge, one hand releases, gear in. The final overhang begins. She pushes up into space, stiff muscles complaining at the load.

Then she is free, at the edge of the doorway, suspended by her arms on the huge sloping crystals; her pack pulls at her, tugging her into space. She waits for her motion to dissipate the inertia -- a familiar game. Then her hands are pulling her in, hanging by an exhilarating clasp over the abyss.

A last effort, and she steps carefully across the ridge toward Pat, two kilometers above the world below. Then she starts laughing.

Sharon and Erin hug, banging their heads suddenly on the dome of the tent. The noise is so loud that Pat, who deplores emotional outbursts, rolls up her eyes. Then Anne, exhausted and frozen, shrugs and seals the bubble, leaving the belay behind.

She flops onto the bedpad and starts taking off her boots.

"How are you Pat? Everything okay?"

"What about you?"

Anne rolls onto her back and stares at the dome. Then she turns her head toward Anne. "Best climb of my life," she replies, smiling. "Ever climb alone, Pat?"

"Out in the belt, always."

Anne nods, understanding. "The best climbs are always when no one's around."

Pat smiles slightly and touches the top of Anne's wrist.

For two days the team hikes back and forth across the lava wasteland, scarring the occasional millenia-old drifts of reddish sand with their footprints. It is two days each direction. They keep a cache of supplies at the midpoint, where they sleep in the tight quarters of a single personal bubble. They gradually dismantle the cache as they proceed to construct Camp 2.

Erin falls and gashes her leg on the fifteenth day of the climb. It takes only a momentary lapse of discipline on the jagged clinkers of the flow, and Erin is already tired; her boot rests for a moment on a fragile spire at the edge of a crack in the flow. The spire breaks and her boot slides into the crack. She falls forward, arms out involuntarily. Her boot wedges, and she twists with inertia. Lava slashes the fabric of the suit, spilling pressure into the hollow argon and carbon dioxide of the thin atmosphere. Anne flashes up the emergency bubble, and hastily drags Erin inside. The depress, the cut, the twisted ligament, and the pressure shock bruise have Erin cursing in a tight, low voice as Anne probes the slash in the suit.

Anne might have been disheartened by Erin's loss of control in the face of a mild airbreak. The tear is small. But when she cuts away the fabric and sees the size of the pressure bruise, she gasps: it encompasses the entire calf.

Erin notices the shock. She looks at Anne, bold and pleading at the same time -- a strange dark bird caught in the light of the medical lamp. "You may as well know, since you'll ask anyway. I'm sensitive to bruising."

"That's very sensitive. Any idea why?"

Erin frowns.

"Well?"

"You know about the Thirty-Day Famine? The wardrugs? You know, Blaine's scandal."

Anne looks away, unable to bear the events she sees reflected in Erin's dark eyes. "That was a terrible time," she replies; then, not wanting to have sounded like she had the experience to judge, she continues: "Of course, I wasn't there; I've only read about it."

"Be glad," Erin said, smiling with only a trace of bitterness.

Anne's professional interest is aroused. "All right, then. What is the name of the drug? What specifically are the side effects? Are you under treatment?... And what else is there you haven't mentioned about your medical history? I suppose you expect me to be able to treat you when you keep back this kind of information." To Erin, Anne's lean body, in stance reflecting its owner's emotions, is like a threat, or a rebuke.

She is almost angry, although she isn't sure whether she is angry at Anne, or at herself.

"Listen, the doctors almost always have to know. But I don't discuss this with anyone except the doctor - when we have one, and when they have to know. It's not serious. No side effects, other than this damn sensitivity. No treatments... any more, that is. OK...Three units of Trimescon, once every two weeks. Now, you and I know about this. I don't want them mother-henning me up the face, and I don't want you doing that either. You just keep this out of your mind as some kind of bloody debilitating disease, and forget about it unless you need it. Secret. Understand?"

Anne is mildly offended. "I don't reveal confidences."

"No," Erin said. Her tone becomes musing as the pain killers take effect. "No, I'm sure you don't."

Anne hikes with Pat the next day. She had found Erin to be a quiet and secretive companion, but Pat is an old friend by now.

The plain is a pale crust of old, bubbled lava, drifted with soil. They wade up and over a dune that must have been five meters tall -- very large for this altitude on the mountain, and probably millions of years in the building. Pat poses while Anne records her, and then they switch places. Pat clowns around, but Anne only smiles uncomfortably for the recorder.

"I'm much braver about writing," she assures Pat.

Pat plunks down beside her on the sunward face of the dune.

"Well, this is fun."

"It is."

They look out across the basin.

"Pat, do you know Erin much?"

"Does anybody? No, I don't, and I doubt if even Sharon does, for all the years they've been friends." She grins behind the glass hood. "Now look at you, poking around like any other team climber."

Anne smiles weakly. "Well, I... never mind."

There is a pause, during which she feels very uncomfortable. Perhaps Pat senses her distress.

"You know, I miss the stars." she remarks, staring upward.

Anne looks up at the pale sky. "You're talking about space, of course." She rubs her shoulder. "I don't know if I'd miss the sky. Maybe I don't think about it much."

"But you're a mountaineer..." Pat seems confused.

"You know much about Mars, Pat?"

"I get here about, oh, once an opposition, maybe twice. Business, you know."

"We spend a lot of time inside. Some of us are from Luna - no windows, I guess. Not me, of course, I was born earthside, but my folks came here when I was very young."

"Remember Earth?"

"No. Not really. But once you come here, you spend some time outdoors if that's your work. Otherwise, you spend a lot of time in one large building. A building with gardens, trees, holos of earth, but still a building."

"Funny, Mars is pretty hospitable."

"Of course it is. We've got pressure. Minerals, water, the best landscapes and dust storms on the nine worlds. There are people who say Martians are becoming isolate, introverted. It used to make me mad. How can anyone make a generalization about three million people?"

She observes her friend from the corner of her eye, and, greatly daring, asked: "What's it like, living in space, Pat? Not what you read and see, but really like?"

"You should come and see it, sometime."

Anne is flattered. "I'd like to. I've never been farther out than Phobos; and I've never even been there for very long."

"Only promise if you'll really come. Worlders are sometimes uncomfortable with us, and hesitate to speak their mind."

Anne considers, remembering the ruthless code of fidelity among the miners, and she feels a pang of fear that she might not live up to her friendship.

But she has so few friends - it has to be worth the risk to keep this one.

"I'd try it," she promises. "Tell me when you want me to come, and I will."

For a moment, Pat seems almost alien, her rugged face shot with the light of the declining sun. But she smiles quietly, and is Anne's friend again. "It's nothing like this. But maybe you'll like it."

"Is it really that different here for you?"

Pat looks out to the horizon.

"It's not like home. The ground drags at you constantly here, the sky is white. You know, though, I'm cosmopolitan. My work takes me around. You might find some of my family -- my father, for instance, he's never left the belt, and he's seen few non-spacers -- difficult to understand. Things are changing out there, hon. A whole new race is being born that know gravity only by choice. What they'll become someday, I wonder..." She is lost in her thought for a moment. "Rael used to talk to me about that in bivouac. I'd never thought much about it one way or the other until he brought it up..."

"He used to climb with you?"

Pat looks at her, surprised. "Yes. We did Saturn together."

"I remember," she replies, watching every word. "He was the one who died."

Pat sighs. "Sharon loved him more than anyone I've ever seen. A damn shame."

Erin awakens as the dawn light begins to glow through the top of the bubble with a deceptive milky warmth. She lies for a while, exhausted by sleep, looking around. She pushes her hands under her head and shifts, trying for a new position. Her leg clamps violently with the change in muscle stress, and she screams. She leaps from the bed, trying to flatten her foot, moaning with agony. Sweat trickles down her back, as she stands propped against the central pole, gasping. The cramp subsides.

Anne thrusts through the seal into the dimness of the bubble.

"Erin, what's wrong?" she demands.

Erin shakes her head slowly. Finally, she snaps, "A cramp." She looks ashamed as she sinks back onto the pad. "Fucking leg. Can't even move around."

Anne is at her side, helping her lie down, efficiently stripping the healskin from Erin's calf and applying anti-cramp dosage to the muscle. Erin hisses between her teeth, and then smiles suddenly. "Thanks."

"Don't mention it," Anne replies. "But you're not going to like the next part. You're out for today, and maybe tomorrow. You're not to get up for anything, and it's the bedsuit for you. Got it?"

Erin closes her eyes. "Yes," she replies with ill grace.

Anne helps Sharon rig for her trip with Pat. They are standing by Sharon's bubble when the slide begins on the wall, thirty kilometers away.

It is eerily silent as the tons of rock begin their collapse from the distant cliff. Minutes seems to pass as the rock fountains and cascades ever so slowly to the basin. Anne taps Sharon's back, and Sharon replied: "I see it."

Then the sound growls treble against the thin air in the protest of breaking rock. A vast cloud is rising slowly from the base of the cliff.

"How far do you think it will go?" Sharon asks.

"Ten, fifteen kilometers...? Not this far, anyway. That wall isn't high enough."

"Good."

Anne is startled by the relief in Sharon's voice.

Sharon turns back to her, settling the pack. "Well, tell me about Erin. Is she going to be able to go on?"

Anne sighs. "In a day or so, if she'll keep still."

"Good luck," Sharon offers.

"Then she'll be sent down, because she's not going to climb until she has a minimum of a full day's rest. And only then if it looks like she's capable."

Sharon looks away to the horizon. "I don't know. Don't be too strong about it. Erin bounces back quickly."

Anne bites her lip. Erin is far more vulnerable than it seems, but iron, too. "Maybe. I'll keep an eye on her."

Sharon realizes that she has been a little hard; she is tense with fear that Erin will turn back and that the leadership might then fall to her. Is it still Rael who makes her feel so afraid? Her eyes cloud and sting. She can't look at Anne, who notices her odd behavior without comment. "Of course, you're right, Anne. I'm sure you'll manage."

Anne relaxes, smiles a bit. "Thanks...-- Now, you guys be careful. Don't give me anyone else to take care of, please."

"We'll try," Sharon affirms, but here she feels her voice is weak.

Erin stares at the sky, datapad quiescent beside her on the bed. She had waved to Sharon and Pat as they had departed, but they didn't see her, and gave no response. She feels unnecessary, depressed. She rolls on her side and looks out over the basin. The climbers are now only bright-colored specks on the plain. She feels paralysed; drawn toward those tiny figures, yet unable to join them.

She curses her body and doubts her leadership. What kind of leader screws herself up so badly that she has to lie by while everyone else works?

She isn't going to give up. She could be listening to Sharon and Pat, but Anne had refused to let her use the radio until tomorrow. So she can sit on her ass and get better. Get better!

She tries to console herself with the thought that it is for this that she had wants Sharon on the team. It doesn't help. Foresight is no substitute for action.

Damn it! she thinks. Anyone else would have a light bruise and some stiffness from so minor a fall; why does she have to be so sensitive? She stares at her leg, swathed in blankets, and knows there is nothing to do. Nothing but wait.

Camp 2 is ruins.

They meet the outskirts of the slide two kilometers out; tumbled blocks form the flow front, mingling with newly frozen mud. The two women glance at each other. Then they start running across the talus.

The supplies are buried under ten meters of rubble. Sharon stares up at the balloon beacon with tears welling behind her eyelids.

Pat shakes her head in expressionless negation. She walks up to the base of the beacon, where its cord runs into the slide, and bends down beside it. She picks up a rock and examines it, as if its mineral content and structure is of some interest in the face of disaster -- then throws it, suddenly, violently, against a larger rock.

"Well, we've lost a week," Sharon states, coming up behind her. Pat whirls, thin lips taut against her teeth. She closes her eyes.

"We have only two weeks left before full dust season," she whispers in barely controlled rage.

Sharon looks up at the wall.

Content, Layout, and Images Copyright © 1999 by Mark Cashman except where indicated (NASA photos)