"Five minutes; five days. I don't know."
"No."
"Yes."
"Oh." She turned and went back inside.
I relaxed very slowly. Much too much talk again, and all about the
much too obvious. We could just as well have wound up at each other's
throats.
We still might.
I pulled off the outer layers of my gloves and turned up the heat in
the skin-thin layer remaining.
* * * * *
The bar was still jammed when I got it back together, sixty-seven hours
later.
"Well, disconnect the damn things and let's move out. We've wasted
enough time already." Helene's voice rasped tinnily inside my helmet,
barely audible over the gurgle of the air compressor on my back.
I already had the left brake actuator off when she spoke. For a
fraction of a second I wanted to go up front and slap her fool head
off, then I caught myself and disconnected the right actuator and
climbed onto the 'dozer. From now on, one of us would have to ride it,
braking with its own controls when necessary.
"Let's go," I said, and then, without thinking, I added: "And be sure
you give me plenty of warning when you're going to put on the brakes or
turn." I was getting as bad as she was.
She put the big tractor into gear and pulled out, unnecessarily
roughly, it seemed to me.
Of course, it could have been the bar.
* * * * *
The next day we hit the rough country. Rough for Mars, that is. Just a
lot of low, rolling hills, running at odd angles to each other, with an
occasional small outcropping of rust-red, eroded rock to make things
interesting. We'd known it was there; it was clearly visible through
the thousand-incher on _Goddard_. An ex-mountain range, they'd told us;
not enough of it left to give us any trouble.
They couldn't see the rocks, and they didn't know we wouldn't be
traveling according to the book.
It was obvious to both of us that riding the brakes on the 'dozer was
the rougher job, and called for the quickest reflexes, which I had.
Also, Helene had a hair-fine control over her voice, which I didn't
have. Long before we hit the hills, I knew exactly how much braking
she wanted from the way she asked for it. We couldn't have coordinated
better if we'd been married for years.
In spite of that, it was amazing how little ground we could manage to
cover in fifteen hours, and how little sleep we could get in the other
nine and a half.
Helene stuck to the "valleys" as much as she could, which saved the
equipment, but not the time. She couldn't avoid all the hills. Every so
often, we'd run into a long, gradual rise, which terminated in a sharp
drop-off. The tractor wasn't safe at an angle of over forty degrees.
It took anywhere from half a day to a day and a half for the 'dozer to
chew out a slot that the tractor could get down.
That was hard enough on us, but having to talk so much made it even
worse. We were usually all but at each other's throats by the time the
day's run was over. I usually spent three or four hours writhing in my
bunk before I finally dozed off. I very seldom heard Helene twisting
about in the bunk above me.
* * * * *
The hills ended as abruptly as they began, after less than two hours
driving on the thirty-fourth day. We still had almost eighteen hundred
miles to go.
"Clear ahead," Helene called back. "How fast?"
We both knew we couldn't possibly make it in the forty days we'd hoped,
and that if we did it wouldn't do us any good. We'd used up slightly
over six days' worth of fuel for the 'dozer cutting slots for the
tractor. There would be a balance between time and fuel that would give
us the most possible days to use the 'dozer, when and if we got there.
"What's the active tank reading?" I asked.
"Point four."
Add that to the three inactive tanks, plus the two in the 'dozer, plus
the auxiliaries, plus the one remaining salvaged "extra" strapped to
the 'dozer's hood. Split it all up in terms of average consumption per
mile at a given number of miles per hour. Balance it against miles to
the landing site, days left to L-day, and 'dozer average consumption
per day....
Ten minutes later I called her and asked: "Can you take an extra hour
of driving a day?"
"If you can, so can I. You've got the rough seat."
I knew it was bravado; I did have the rougher ride, but she was a
woman, and not a very big one, at that. On the other hand, I didn't
dare assume anything but that she meant it. She was just itching for a
chance to blow up in my face.
"Okay," I said, "sixteen hours a day, and average fourteen miles an
hour. If your fuel consumption indicates more than point two over
cruising, let me know."
We covered another two hundred and one miles that day.
On the thirty-fifth day, we covered two hundred and thirty-one miles.
On the thirty-sixth day, we covered two hundred and twenty-four miles.
On the thirty-seventh day, we had covered two hundred and seven miles
in the first fourteen and one-half hours.
There wasn't any warning, either in external physical signs or on the
tractor's instruments. One minute we were rolling along like a test
run at the proving grounds, and the next a four-hundred-foot stream
of mercury vapor under pressure was coming out the left side of the
tractor.
It lasted only a few seconds. That was all it had to.
I sat and stared for several long minutes, blinking my eyes and trying
to see something besides a pure white line. I heard Helene climb slowly
down from the cab and go up through the airlock, yet I really didn't
hear anything at all.
Finally I got down and turned on my suit light and took a look at the
hole.
There wasn't much to see. The hole was no bigger than a small lead
pencil, and I probably wouldn't have been able to find it in the dark
if it hadn't been surrounded by a slowly contracting area of white-hot
metal.
We were lucky. We were incredibly lucky. If that mercury had come out
at an angle either one degree higher or lower than it had, we'd have
been minus a tread or a chunk of the tractor's body.
I didn't let myself think of how much good that was going to do us,
without an engine, or what could keep us from each other's throats now.
I snapped off my light and went inside. There was certainly nothing we
could do tonight.
Helene hadn't even taken off her helmet. She was sitting cross-legged
in the middle of the floor, hunched over, with her helmet buried in her
hands as she might have buried her face in them if her helmet hadn't
been in the way. When I got my own helmet off, I could hear her muffled
sobbing.
* * * * *
I didn't think; I just reacted. I reached her in one short stride and
hauled her to her feet by her helmet. I twisted it a quarter turn
to the right and jerked it off. I caught her by the collar as she
staggered backwards and slapped her hard across each cheek; with my
open palm on the left, backhanded on the right. I let go of her and she
slumped back to the floor.
"Snap out of it kid," I said harshly. "It isn't that bad." I turned
away from her and began to pull off the rest of my suit, starting with
the heavy, armored outer layer of my gauntlets.