"EB - Edward L. Ferman - The Best From Fantasy & Science Fiction 23rd EditionUC - SS" - читать интересную книгу автора (Fantasy & Science Fiction Magazine)

Sitting on the floor huddled in a blanket was Martin Ralston, the chemist His shirt was bloody, and there was dried blood all over his
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face and hands from the nosebleed he'd only recently gotten under control, bat his eyes were alert He shivered, looking from Lang, his titular leader, to Crawford, the only one who seemed calm enough to deal with anything. He was a follower, reliable but unimaginative.
Crawford looked back to the newest arrivals. They were Lucy Stone McKillian, the red-headed ecologjst, and Song Sue Lee, the ex-obiologist They still stood numbly by the airlock, unable as yet to come to grips with the fact of fifteen dead men and women beneath the dome outside.
"What do they say on the Burroughs?" McKillian asked, tossing her helmet on the floor and squatting tiredly against the wall.'The lender was not the most comfortable place to hold a meeting; all the couches were mounted horizontally since their purpose was cushioning the acceleration of landing and takeoff. With the ship sitting on its tail, this made ninety per cent of the space in the lander useless. They were all gathered on the circular bulkhead at the rear of the lifesystem, just forward of the fuel tank.
"We're waiting for a reply," Crawford said. "But I can sum op what they're going to say: not good. Unless one of you two has some experience in Mars-lander handling that you've been concealing from us."
Neither of them bothered to answer that. The radio hi the nose sputtered, then clanged for their attention. Crawford looked over at Lang, who made no move to go answer it He stood up and swarmed up the ladder to sit in the copilot's chair. He switched on the receiver.
"Commander Lang?"
"No, this is Crawford again. Commander Lang is . . . indisposed. She's busy with Lou, trying to do something."
"That's no use. The doctor says it's a miracle he's still breathing. If he wakes up at all, he won't be anything like you knew him. The telemetry shows nothing like the normal brain wave. Now I've got to talk to Commander Lang. Have her come up." The voice of Mission Commander Weinstein was accustomed to command, and about as emotional as a weather report
"Sir, I'll ask her, but I don't think shell come. This is still her operation, you know." He didn't give Weinstein time to reply to that Weinstein had been trapped by his own seniority into commanding the Edgar Rice Burroughs, the orbital ship that got them to Mars and
had been intended to get them back. Command of the Podkayne, the disposable lander that would make the lion's share of the headlines, had gone to Lang. There was little friendship between the two, especially when Weinstein fell to brooding about the very real financial benefits Lang stood to reap by being the first woman on Mars, rather than the lowly mission commander. He saw himself as another Michael Collins.
Crawford called down to Lang, who raised her head enough to mumble something.
"What'd she say?"
"She said take a message." McKillian had been crawling up the ladder as she said this. Now she reached him and said in a lower voice, "Matt, she's pretty broken up. You'd better take over for now."
"Right, I know." He turned back to the radio, and McKillian listened over his shoulder as Weinstein briefed them on the situation as he saw it. It pretty much jibed with Crawford's estimation, except at one crucial point. He signed off and they joined the other survivors.
He looked around at the faces of the others and decided it wasn't the time to speak of rescue possibilities. He didn't relish being a leader. He was hoping Lang would recover soon and take the burden from him. In the meantime he had to get them started on something. He touched McKillian gently on the shoulder and motioned her to the lock.
"Let's go get them buried," he said. She squeezed her eyes shut tight, forcing out tears, then nodded.
It wasn't a pretty job. Halfway through it, Song came down the ladder with the body of Lou Prager.
"Let's go over what we've learned. First, now that Lou's dead there's very little chance of ever lifting off. That is, unless Mary thinks she can absorb everything she needs to know about piloting the Podkayne from those printouts Weinstein sent down. How about it, Mary?"
Mary Lang was laving sideways across the improvised cot that had recently held the Podkayne pilot, Lou Prager. Her head was nodding listlessly against the aluminum hull plate behind her, her chin was on her chest. Her eyes were half-open.
Song had given her a sedative from the dead doctor's supplies on
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the advice of the medic aboard the E.R.B, It had enabled her to stop fighting so hard against the screaming panic she wanted to unleash. It hadn't improved her disposition. She had quit; she wasn't going to do anything for anybody.
When the blowout started, Lang had snapped on her helmet quickly. Then she had struggled against the blizzard and the undulating dome bottom, heading for the roofless framework where the other members of the expedition were sleeping. The blowout was over in ten seconds, and she then had the problem of coping with, the collapsing roof, which promptly buried her in folds of clear plastic. It was far too much like one of those nightmares of running knee-deep in quicksand. She had to fight for every meter, but she made it.
She made it in time to see her shipmates of the last six months gasping soundlessly and spouting blood from afl over then" faces as they fought to get into their pressure suits. It was a hopeless task to choose which two or three to save in the time she had. She might have done better but for the freakish nature of her struggle to reach them; she was in shock and half believed it was only a nightmare. So she grabbed the nearest, who happened to be Doctor Ralston. He had nearly finished donning his suit; so she slapped his helmet on him and moved to the next one. It was Luther Nakamura, and he was not moving. Worse, he was only half suited. Pragmatically she should have left him and moved on to save the ones who still had a chance. She knew it now, but didn't like it any better than she had liked it then.
While she was stuffing Nakamura into his suit, Crawford arrived. He had walked over the folds of plastic until he reached the dormitory, then sliced through it with his laser normally used to vaporize rock samples.
And he had had time to think about the problem of whom to save. He went straight to Lou Prager and finished suiting him up. But it was already too late. He didn't know if it would have made any difference if Mary Lang had tried to save him first.
Now she lay on the bunk, her feet sprawled carelessly in front of her. She slowly shook her head back and forth.
"You sure?" Crawford prodded her, hoping to get a rise, a show of temper, anything.
"I'm sure," she mumbled. "You people know how long they
trained Lou to fly this thing? And he almost cracked it up as it was. I ... ah, nuts. It isn't possible."
"I refuse to accept that as a final answer," he said. "But in the meantime we should explore the possibilities if what Mary says is true."
Ralston laughed. It wasn't a bitter laugh; he sounded genuinely amused. Crawford plowed on.
"Here's what we know for sure. The E.R.B. is useless to us. Oh, they'll help us out with plenty of advice, maybe more than we want, but any rescue is out of the question."
"We know that," McKillian said. She was tired and sick from the sight of the faces of her dead friends. "What's the use of all this talk?"
"Wait a moment," Song broke in. "Why can't they ... I mean they have plenty of time, don't they? They have to leave in six months, as I understand it, because of the orbital elements, but in that time..."
"Don't you know anything about spaceships?" McKillian shouted. Song went on, unperturbed.
"I do know enough to know the Edgar is not equipped for an atmosphere entry. My idea was, not to bring down the whole ship but only what's aboard the ship that we need. Which is a pilot. Might that be possible?"
Crawford ran his hands through his hair, wondering what to say. That possibility had been discussed, and was being studied. But it had to be classed as extremely remote.
"You're right," he said. "What we need is a pilot, and that pilot is Commander Weinstein. Which presents problems legally, if nodiing else. He's the captain of a ship and should not leave it. That's what kept him on the Edgar in the first place. But he did have a lot of training on the lander simulator back when he was so sure he'd be picked for the ground team. You know Winey, always the instinct to be the one-man show. So if he thought he could do it, he'd be down here in a minute to bail us out and grab the publicity. I understand they're trying to work out a heat-shield parachute system from one of the drop capsules that were supposed to ferry down supplies to us during the stay here. But it's very risky. You don't modify an aerodynamic design lightly, not one that's supposed to hit the atmosphere at ten thousand-plus kilometers. So I think we can rule that out
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