The Wall: Eternal Day Read online

  Two legs in jeans came into the camera picture. They walked down the stairs, and with every step she saw more of Lisa. Soon all of her was there in front of her. She looked tired. Maybe Max had suffered another stomachache last night. Judith felt her face break into a smile. She couldn’t help it. She noticed her smile on the little video display of herself that the communicator superimposed on the screen down at the bottom right. Every morning and every night, Judith sat in front of a mirror and contorted her face into grins and smiles. It was a mental health technique that she’d been taught to do back when she was in training. But it looked much different than the smile she saw at that moment in the miniature picture.

  Lisa sat down and took a deep breath. Judith gave her some time. Her sweetheart had the more difficult job at the moment. Of course, Judith wished that Max and Peter would ask for her as often as possible, but at the same time, she hoped that she wasn’t too much of a burden on Lisa. Therefore, they had agreed that she would talk to the boys only when one of them explicitly asked for it.

  “Sorry that I wasn’t down here at the right time,” Lisa said.

  Judith shook her head. “Everyday craziness, I know what it’s like. Here I’ve got all the time in the world. Would later be a better time to talk?”

  “No, I’ve got time. Marcia’s watching both of them now. I’m happy she’s here. That was a good idea. Max threw up last night just after midnight.”

  “A virus? I hope Peter doesn’t get it too.”

  “I don’t think so. He was visiting with old Mrs. Reynolds at her place for half an hour yesterday.”

  “Did she feed him popcorn again?”

  “Looked like it. I’ll have to have another word with her today.”

  “Yeah, you’ll have to. I know the old lady means well, but if she can’t honor our agreements, Max shouldn’t be allowed to go to her house anymore.”

  “Yesterday I wanted to go to the store, and he wouldn’t get into his car seat no matter what I tried. Mrs. Reynolds saw what was going on and offered to watch him while I went. At the time I was just thankful for her help. Last night, not so much.”

  “I understand. I’m sorry.”

  “I don’t want to complain. Marcia’s been a big help. And the boys are getting bigger every day, and slowly a little more reasonable. So, what’s new with you?”

  Lisa was right. Max and Peter were growing and learning every day. She probably wouldn’t even recognize them when she returned in two years. Judith refused to cry. By no means was she going to let herself fall apart in front of the camera. This is what she had wanted.

  Judith swallowed. “Not much going on here. Mike’s had his moments, like always, François’s working on his muscles, and Giordi’s upgrading the ship.”

  “What’s Mike’s problem this time?”

  Judith looked around, but she was alone in the command center. Michael was probably still sleeping in his cocoon. He was off duty this shift. “The New York Times did a long feature story about us. He feels like he wasn’t shown enough recognition or appreciation.”

  “I read that yesterday before I went to sleep and thought it was very well-balanced.”

  “He thinks I put myself too front and center. Since then he’s only talked to me when absolutely necessary.”

  “You?” Lisa laughed. “I guess he doesn’t know you very well, then.”

  “I think it doesn’t matter what I do. He simply cannot deal with the fact that he’s not leading this mission.”

  “You’re probably right. I hope you’re able to not take it personally.”

  “I’m trying. And I’m setting the shift schedules so we have to see each other as little as possible.”

  “That’s a good idea, my dear.”

  “I just have to not overdo it. Otherwise he’ll notice and have another reason to get upset about nothing.”

  There was a high-pitched shriek from the loudspeaker. Lisa turned away from the camera. Marcia was apparently shouting something from upstairs.

  “Oh, now Peter’s crying too. Marcia thinks he might’ve stepped on a Lego.”

  “I guess you should get up there, Lisa.”

  “I know. Can we talk tomorrow morning? I’ve got a meeting at JPL later and don’t know how long it’ll be.”

  “With Whittaker? Tell him hi from me.”

  “I’ll do that.”

  Lisa turned around. “I’m coming, Marcia!” Then she turned back to the camera. “I love you.”

  “I love you too.”

  Judith tapped on the screen and ended the call.

  January 2, 2035 – Moon Base Unity

  Jonathan was kneeling on the ground. “He must’ve been here. Oh, look, he must’ve been kneeling right here. The tracks fit perfectly.”

  “No shit, Sherlock,” Wayne said, “but he’s not here now, is he?” The American, who was still sitting on the rover’s driver’s seat, turned to his left and then to his right.

  “The same thing that just happened to us must’ve happened to him too,” Jonathan said.

  “You mean he was as stupid as the two of us, and got stuck in this damn dust-filled trench?”

  “I warned you it might be too thick. The stuff really builds up here. We need to come up with a better solution. Maybe a bridge or something.”

  “Hey, who’s the engineer here?”

  “So, do your job, Mr. Engineer,” Jonathan said. “Then you won’t have to listen to any more stupid ideas from a dumb doctor.”

  “You’re right, Jon. Now come here and help me get this thing out of this stuff.”

  It took the two of them at least ten minutes to free the rover. Even without any load, the cargo rover weighed almost a ton.

  “Now what?” Wayne asked.

  Jonathan took a few steps forward until he was standing right in front of Wayne, whose face was no longer obscured by all the reflections from the sun and Earth. Wayne looked sad. He’d never seen the American look that way. He wasn’t giving up, was he? It was just after midnight. Maxim’s oxygen supplies would have lasted at least two hours—even longer if he were unconscious. And he had to be unconscious, because he wasn’t responding to their calls. Jonathan wasn’t going to consider any other reasons.

  “Earth to Jon, I asked you a question, buddy.”

  He winced. Of course. Where had Maxim gone from here? The tracks at the trench’s upper edge showed that he must’ve gotten his rover back on its wheels. Jonathan lit up the tracks with his flashlight. Then he knelt.

  “Are we gonna say a prayer now?” Wayne asked.

  He shouldn’t take him seriously. His colleague was only trying to mask his fear. Jonathan bent forward. The tire tracks began out of nothing. The moon had no wind or rain to wash anything away. This is where Maxim must’ve set the rover upright again. The tracks then went a few centimeters uphill. Then there was a slight shift. Ha! Here’s where Maxim got on, he thought. The tracks first continued upward toward the summit, but then they ended on the bare rock.

  “He didn’t make it to the top,” Jonathan said, this time thinking out loud.

  “You don’t say.”

  Jonathan opened the toolkit on his thigh and took out a plastic-coated map of the elevation lines.

  “A map? Why don’t you look on your display?” Wayne asked.

  “The data on this map wasn’t licensed to NASA. It came from a private Israeli supplier, probably wanted too much money for NASA’s budget people. Your digital version has much less information.”

  He could see Wayne coming closer out of the corner of his eye. He spread out the map so that the American could also see it. “You see, here you have the south side of Mons Malapert, our normal route. Completely safe, no incline greater than 20 degrees, no surprises.”

  “That’s why it’s our normal route.”

  Wayne was not understanding what he was trying to say. “By that, I mean that Maxim would have reached the top if he had taken the southern route,” he explained. “Conversely, that means—�
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  “He must’ve tried the northern side of the mountain,” Wayne interrupted.

  Jonathan wasn’t annoyed, just relieved. The main thing was that Wayne finally got it. “And now look,” he said and pointed to an elliptical, bright red spot. “There’s a small crater very close to here. Its slope must be almost ninety degrees.”

  “But couldn’t he have just gone around the crater?” Wayne asked. “The incline is only twenty-five degrees here at the top. Any rover could handle that easily.”

  “What if he was injured from the first fall and was having trouble steering?”

  “Then why wouldn’t he have just gone down again, back to the base?”

  “Maybe he wanted to call for help by radio. I’m sure you’ve noticed that we can’t contact the base from here.”

  “You’re good at this, Jon,” Wayne said. “If we find Maxim in that crater, I’ll build you a bridge.”

  “I thought you were an engineer, not a dentist,” Jonathan teased.

  Wayne climbed on the rover and invited him to take the seat behind him.

  The crater was not far away. They stopped at a safe distance. Jonathan got off the rover, walked to the edge, and pointed the flashlight beam downward. The beam didn’t reach the bottom.

  “Wait a minute. I’ll attach a rope to you, and then you can start climbing down,” Wayne said.

  Jonathan didn’t like major heights or drops, and the others knew that. He nodded.

  “Or do you want me to go?” Wayne asked.

  “No. I’m the doctor. If he’s hurt, it’d be better if I got there first.”

  He had spoken the last part to himself more than to his colleague, but Wayne nodded anyway. Jon hoped he’d still be able to help. More than six hours had passed since Maxim had left the base. Yue was the first to think that something must’ve happened to him. Maxim always followed the rules, so it had seemed very strange to her when he missed his hourly check-in call.

  Wayne’s long shadow moved across the gray rock, the projection so precisely defined that Jon was reminded of a shadow play. Wayne got the rope out of the rover’s side compartment and attached the end with a carabiner to a hook on the rover’s rear end. Then he gave the other end to Jonathan, who grabbed it and hooked it onto a loop on his belt.

  “The rover will hold you,” Wayne said. “But be careful.”

  “It’s only a hundred meters.”

  “Just a thirty-story high-rise.”

  “Thanks for pointing that out.”

  Wayne gave a short laugh. “My offer’s still good. But you’re right. It’d be better if you are the one. You’re the doctor. I wouldn’t be able to tell if we should move him or not.”

  Move him? That wasn’t even the right question to be asking yet, Jonathan thought. If they couldn’t find and get to Maxim, then he was as good as gone. He pulled the rope taut with his right hand and coiled the remaining length of rope in his left. Then, slowly, he backed over the edge and began walking backward down the steep hill, keeping the rope taut. He looked up and counted his steps so that he wouldn’t turn around and have to look at the long, dark way down. He only weighed 15 kilograms here on the moon, so the rope cut into his hand less than he had feared it would.

  He was making good progress. They had practiced rappelling in a canyon in Arizona during their training on Earth. It’d been the two worst days of his life. But here on the moon, he thought, he might’ve even been able to enjoy this—if the purpose of his descent hadn’t been this critical.

  “You’re doing well,” Wayne reported.

  “How far am I?”

  “I’m guessing twenty meters, about.”

  “Oh.”

  He had counted a hundred steps. Apparently they’d been smaller steps than he thought. He’d never make it to the bottom like this. He’d have to start taking bigger steps immediately. He gradually started to sweat. The ventilation fan turned on. The sensor must’ve noticed the inside of his helmet visor beginning to fog up.

  “Maxim, do you copy? It’s me, Jonathan.”

  No answer. He was now 80 meters down in the crater. Should he jump the rest of the way? He estimated how fast he’d be going if he jumped 20 meters. About 30 kilometers per hour—that was much too fast. The value surprised him. He’d always thought of the moon’s gravity as harmless. What did that mean for Maxim? If he had fallen from the top and was accelerated by the moon’s gravity at 1.6 meters per second squared, he would have hit the bottom at over 60 km/h.

  He really should stop doing so many calculations. A doctor who could calculate physical variables in his head had been deemed unacceptable by his boss at the hospital. But Jonathan had never understood why his boss thought it was better to just trust his gut instinct. Jonathan mentally replaced Maxim with an Olympic diver jumping into the water from the ten-meter platform. A good 50 km/h final velocity. Indeed, a nice thick layer of dust had collected at the base of the crater, and that could have cushioned Maxim’s fall. And maybe he hadn’t fallen from the very top. I should be concentrating on my own descent, he thought.

  “Wayne, can you still see me?”

  “Yeah, but you’re just about to disappear into shadow.”

  “Good to know.”

  It was getting dark around him. It seemed as if a ravenous shadow monster was climbing out of the depths to devour him. When the darkness reached his shoulders, Jonathan stopped briefly. It was a terrifying but also fascinating picture, just a head bobbing above a sea of shadow with a surface tilted by a few degrees. The shadow seemed to possess an almost physical force.

  Jonathan felt the urgent need to take a deep breath before he submerged himself into the darkness. “Wish me luck. I’m going into the shadow now,” he said into the radio.

  “You remember you’ve got a headlamp, right?”

  Of course. He’d completely forgotten. Jonathan quickly turned on the lamp on his helmet, and the ghostly effect disappeared. He took a few steps backward. The lamp wasn’t able to completely get rid of the darkness. Now he felt somewhat like a cave explorer. Wherever he turned his head, a path opened up like magic.

  Jonathan stopped again. It was time to face his surroundings. Slowly he turned around. The rope wrapped halfway around his body. He moved his head and scanned the bottom of the crater with the lamp’s beam. In the best case, he wouldn’t find anything at all. Maybe Maxim had already returned to the base long ago. Nobody would have been able to tell them if that were the case. They hadn’t been in radio contact for some time.

  Then he stopped—the scanning light beam had just illuminated a leg. Jonathan turned his head to bring the light back to the leg and lifted his line of sight slightly. Now his lamp lit up a body in a spacesuit. Maxim! He was lying curled up like a baby down at the bottom, with his right arm bent unnaturally outward to the side.

  “I found him!”

  “How is he?”

  “Just a minute.”

  Jonathan started running down the slope. Suddenly it didn’t bother him anymore to be facing the steep drop. Down below, his friend was waiting to be rescued—at least that was what he hoped!

  Jonathan knelt over Maxim. The suit appeared to have survived the fall, and the helmet glass didn’t show any signs of scratches or cracks. Carefully he took hold of the computer on Maxim’s wrist. It showed that the life support system was working. Maxim wasn’t moving and had his eyes closed, but he was still breathing and there was still oxygen.

  “He’s alive!”

  “That’s a relief,” Wayne said. “I was just imagining us wearing our uniforms and standing in front of Irina’s door to express our condolences.”

  They had met his wife during training, when every candidate had been allowed two visits from family. Jonathan remembered a graceful, thin woman with an almost ethereal radiance, who would see Maxim again. The life support data showed that his state wasn’t critical, but that didn’t rule out broken bones or internal injuries.

  Jonathan moved Maxim’s right arm in close
to his side. He wanted to get it into a stable position.

  “Mmm, carefurry... dere,” a voice suddenly slurred in his ear.

  Jonathan jumped in surprise. Maxim was conscious! He put the arm down, and Maxim groaned.

  “My righ...,” he mumbled.

  “I know, your right arm’s broken.”

  Jonathan looked at Maxim’s face behind the helmet glass. There was a thin, dark streak running down from the left side of his mouth. He must’ve been injured in the fall. In the best case, maybe he had just bitten his tongue. In the worst case... Jonathan didn’t want to think about it.

  “Wayne and me, we’re going to get you back to the base,” he said in the calmest voice he could muster. “Everything’s going to be okay. Is anything hurt other than your arm? I can’t examine you here.”

  Maxim moved his left arm and both legs, then shook his head.

  “Good. I need you to try to stand up. Very slowly.”

  “My righ... ar...”

  “I know. I’m going to help you as much as I can.”

  Maxim supported himself with his left arm and tried to push himself up, while Jonathan wrapped his arms around Maxim’s abdomen and pulled him up. After some effort, he was standing, wobbling, next to Jonathan.

  “Anything hurt now?”

  Maxim glanced at his right arm.

  “Nothing else? Man, you were really lucky!”

  Jonathan felt as if he could’ve run up the crater wall without a rope.

  “Now we just need to get you back to the top. Probably best if you go in front of me, then I can support you from behind.”

  “Okay, Wayne, we’re coming up now.”

  “I’m already sitting on the rover to add a bit more weight.”

  “Maxim? I’ll give the command,” Jonathan said.

  His colleague nodded.