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– Yes, Al, it is curious indeed… – Mackliff made it to the container and carefully folded his body in the shade.
– Ronnie says we are not far from the former eastern coast of Venezuela, in Caracas area, which had been covered with sands. Though his eyes tell that he hardly believes in what he says. And so to speak, where is the sea breeze? At the border of the sand and the ocean air currents are mixed constantly, and it must be blowing like in the wind tunnel. But here? Ah, what to say … – Dybal put the binoculars to his eyes and stared at the horizon. Standing on the capsule, he resembled a monument to some Ancient Mariner, who looked through binoculars at the squadron of enemy fleet…
-Well, the main thing is that we are on Earth. It is strange but we're still alive…
– Everything is relative, John. It seems to me that before the accident at "Independence", when there was light, a cold "Pepsi" and different kinds of sausage, we were a little more alive than here, where at best we can catch a weedy lizard and nothing at worst.
– Where is the second container? Where is Eichberger, Hoffman and all the supplies?
– Makliff leaned against the hull of the container, and suddenly pulled back, it was still hot from aerodynamic heating, and moreover warmed up by the sun. It was hot like hell.
– It's not clear yet. Either they landed too far from us, or did not land at all – said Whitehouse. He handed a flat jar of reactive water to Mackliff.
Flight engineer turned the release cover and gray powder filled the cap. In contact with air the powder turned into what looked like icy water in contrast to the red hot air.
Mackliff gently sipped this iron flavored liquid:
– What do we do next?
– We should at least find out our location to answer this question.
– Ronald, you said that we were in the Caracas area.
Whitehouse shrugged his shoulders.
Having had a good look at the surroundings, Dybal spent some time inside the capsule, and then climbed out red as a tomato, as if he has spent an hour in a Finnish sauna. But at the same time happy. He gently cradled a small box of a shortwave transmitter in his hands:
– Here you go. It seems to work. Now we can connect with the satellite-based positioning. We will send an emergency call and-and-and-and......
– Well-well… And who is going to show up for your call sign? – Sand cracked on the teeth of Whitehouse. He spat aside.
– What do you mean?
– Well then, no outgoing signals. First let's try to listen to the incoming signal. – Forestalling the hesitant navigator, Whitehouse clicked the tumbler and pressed the 100.00 Hertz button.
The transmitter responded with a bang and a howl of automatic tuning. An alarmed voice could be heard through the ethereal sound; it was mumbling so fast that you could hardly parse a word.
After a while, a few more voices joined in. Sometimes the signal was muffled by the trills of triggered aircraft "friend or foe" identification systems.
– I think they speak Spanish – Said Dybal lifting the transmitter right to his ear:
-Please give permission for military approach…
Go ahead…
Iglesias, cover me…
-Yeah right. They attack our second container with Eichberger and Hoffman… Coal-colored cylinder, about three feet in diameter, open aero braking shield, two parachutes…
They do not respond to inquiries; do not shoot off the signal flares.
– In Spanish? So we are still in the SAU.
These are their patrol fighters. The SAU is neutral.
-Perhaps we could try to enable the emergency calls. – Perked up Mackliff.
Whitehouse shook his head:
– No need to hurry up, John. Yes, the SAU’s are neutral, but now we only have the information that we had before the collision with "Das Rein." But then we were attacked by the Arabs. And who knows, maybe another war broke out.
And when the war starts, you can never vouch for the neutrals’ position.
– Oh, shit! They brought it down them bastards, they brought down the container! – Dybal suddenly shouted, clutching his head.
– Damn it… What could a helpless container, an iron box hanging on the parachutes possibly do to them? Nasty freaks… Ah… – Whitehouse clenched his fists.
At this point, a little moan escaped from Von Conrad’s mouth. Dybal bent over him:
– What is it, Manfred? Do you need something? Water, a painkiller…
Von Conrad was in a very bad state. Despite the fact that his body had no serious injuries, the general condition worsened with each hour.
When the capsule with him Whitehouse, Mackliff and Dybal, released the aero braking shield at the estimated height it started buffing and the heat reached its maximum.
After thirty seconds of falling in the atmosphere at a speed of 1750 miles per hour the titanium seal around the hatch had depressurized, and the temperature inside the container went off scale.
The fireproof fabric of the suits got wrinkled and softened, like cellophane by the fire, and air conditioning systems continued to work by a miracle.
That was the end.
Mackliff gritted his teeth and said that his life was not lived in vain, that he has developed quite a few first-class control systems of various levels, invented a probe accumulation of solar energy reflected from the moon’s surface and had it affirmed by the NASA commission; made a spectrum estimation analyzer of orbital dust; said that he always liked the guys like Whitehouse and Dybal, and if he sometimes was grumbling and angry, it was only for the good cause.
He has also said that he had always loved only two women – his mother, Ann Stone Mackliff and his wife Dorothy, and all the rest were an accident, a passing moment though he could not say anything bad about them, they all believed him.
He shook his head in the misted pressure helmet, slapped Whitehouse on the shoulder, clinging to the cadmium fabric overalls with his glove, and said that he always wanted to have such children like he had: naughty boys Arnie and George; and sympathized with the pilot that it would be hard for them to stay out of bad company, drugs and juvenile prisons without a father.
Whitehouse did not get the rest of the flight engineer’s shouts, but he just subtly abused the designers of emergency suits for the fabric’s lack of heat resistance.
When the silicone zipper clasps began to smolder and tear at the seams, von Conrad pulled the tube of service module cooling, and liquid helium poured onto his chest.
Everything was shrouded in icy fog, the temperature dropped to normal, but through the vibration rumble and burning boarding you could hear the cracking sound of the colonel’s suit.
Forty seconds later the braking shield opened and the first pair of parachutes opened up.
Then the second pair unfolded.
They have been saved, but the colonel received a severe thermal burn; up on one elbow, he made hoarse sounds, either trying to address his companions or God.
Mackliff could hardly suppress the urge to hide from this terrible, swollen, bluish face.
Whitehouse was standing nearby waving a piece of parachute fabric over the colonel. Meanwhile Dybal continued listening to conversations of the SAU pilots with their base:
– Damn it, they know that there was another container.
They're looking for us.
They have just passed the information on the search sector and probable coordinates 15-2 and 15-3 to the pilot…
– Too bad. Sooner or later they will find us here. And I'm afraid they are not going to offer us coffee. We have to leave. According to the numeration of squares, used in the SAU Air Forces we are near the foothills of the Andes, somewhere in Medell;n, unless memory deceives me… Maybe we are standing on one of its former avenues…
Our plan is to put the wounded on the sledges and head to the mountains. There we can hide, find food and water. Even the Great Desert is still powerless compared to the mountains, – having stopped talking, Whitehouse began to chop off the straps of a flattened parachute and tore a white cloth, which Mackliff had notched previously.
Dybal started selecting things needed for the trip from time to time looking at the horizon and the sky through binoculars.
***
Infernal heat slowly subsided.
The merciless sun rolled down further to the west, gradually turning from dazzling white to crimson. The sky like an endless ceiling, painted in smooth, pale blue paint was faintly covered with smoky clouds.
A faint breeze appeared.
It was still hot like the sand, but it was the Ocean breeze that had rolled over the mountain ranges, and dissolved in the desert. The Dunes that were hardly noticeable at first became higher, wider.
Like sickles they bent towards the mountains, whose rocky tops were covered with snow caps, clearly outlined by the horizon.
The astronauts were on the fringe. They have already thrown out most of their equipment; individual first aid kits, a box of dried bacon, transmitter battery, signal lights and rockets, blades, bags of dry fuel, with regret they buried the cadmium absorber in the sand, a unique device they have saved from "Independence", Dybal even threw out his watch that became as heavy as chains.
They were carrying their wounded on sleds, sinking ankle-deep in the fine sand, no longer having the strength to speak, to think, to raise their heads in ridiculous turbans made of scraps of snow-white parachute fabric; watery eyes just looked down to the surface of glittering sand, at the dusty toes of their boots, watching their step – the fallen could have no strength to rise.
An hour ago, before they had thrown away the transmitter Dybal intercepted a message of one of the SAU pilots that two of his supporting aircrafts did not come out of a curve in the 15-2 square and hit the ground, and he saw strange air vibrations near his aircraft.
The base has ordered to stop the search of the second capsule until morning and return to the base.
A distant rumble which daydreaming astronauts assumed was the sound of thunder, turned out to be a roar of the patrol engine "Phantom-11-E-34A", which was returning to the base in Cerro de Pasco. Blades of the assault helicopters feathered the airfield, ready to deliver observer snipers to the foothills of the search sector.
The saving rocks were close, just a dozen miles away.
An average healthy person without luggage would cross this distance in two and a half hours, but this way was an insurmountable obstacle for exhausted people whose souls have almost left their bodies. On top of that their progress was slowed down by the mountain-like dunes and terrains of basalt boulders, beaten by sands and wind.
When the sun touched the mountain tops, Dybal who along with Mackliff has been hauling an unbearably heavy von Conrad, stumbled and fell on his face.
Having lost his balance from the jerk, Mackliff also fell down. They tried to get up by scooping the flowing sand, wishing to move forward for an inch.
All in vain.
From the top of a dune, slowly, like in a dream, a landslide came down on their heads and a helpless colonel has almost been buried underneath.
But they fought, spending all strength they had; they were climbing up, further. Not seeing that his friends have stopped, Whitehouse has been going on for a while, head on his chest, stubbornly dragging Aydem, wrapped in a parachute as if it were a shroud.
Having climbed onto the next dune, he suddenly realized he did not hear the hoarse breathing of Dybal and Mackliff behind him.
He turned his stiff neck with great effort:
– Hey, guys… – a soundless whisper came out of his cracked lips.
He lost his balance and tumbled down.
Aydem was left on the other side of the ridge in a white bundle.
It took Whitehouse forty minutes to be back on the three-meter height of a continuously crumbling slope.
The sun had set.
The outskirts of the Great Desert slowly came to life; writhing lizards minced on the still-hot sand, large beetles scurried about their business, arrogant fat flies busily began exploring the wet sweaty faces of the astronauts which were covered with dust.
A desert jerboa galloped somewhere, wagging a fluffy brush tail and twisting its eared head. Right after it a viper flowed next to the face of Whitehouse. It was uninterested in people it wanted something that could be swallowed.
The wind became stronger and assertive.
Now it was blowing from the depths of the desert.
It was getting cold.
Myriads of grains moved along the crests of dunes, getting into the nostrils, eyes and ears; streamed into the collars, penetrated the tightly laced hiking boots, pockets, seams, hatchet sheath.
But Whitehouse was not paying any attention to it, he was falling asleep.
The desert drank all the strength of his powerful inexhaustible body, coupled by a handful of tonic pills.
The effect of anabolic steroids and acclimatization drugs taken after landing; was also over, and the invisible pressure of the Earth's gravity came over every cell of his body, which after three months of flight has become unaccustomed to gravity.
All at once the body was in agony, bruises and abrasions received in orbital collisions burned like fire, the sun burnt skin was stinging, and his head was aching.
Woozy from nonhuman overloads his brain filled with blurred colored pictures of the past: he is going to see "Star Boy" with his first girlfriend at 24th Avenue, then he is taking a test at the Academy and does not know how to calculate the RC characteristics, then he is playing tennis with Mackliff, ten dollars a game…
The wind force increased.
Heavy flies crawling on the face of a man as if he was already dead have been carried away by its blow; large grains of sand rattled like rain on the cloth of the overalls and the dunes started their invisible movement.
Whitehouse did not feel any heat or pain, or sandy rain on his skin, only the whistling and howling of a storm still penetrated his consciousness.
But something has subtly changed in a voice of the Great Desert, a faint vibrating sound, approaching and then moving away, mingled with the roar of the wind.
No, the desert could not make such sounds.
There, in a snowstorm, something was moving, and this something was mechanical.
