"He certainly would, Rich," Jane's voice came softly. She'd been following the informal service from orbit. "He'd say: 'Saa, let us waste no more time or fuel on me. I am no longer in need of it.'"
Rich's reaction was part laugh, part sob. "Yes. Yes, Jane, he would. And thank you for reminding me. So. Rest well, Ryu Sakai, under the sky and soil of Mars."
The others bowed their heads and waited a few moments. Then Rich picked up his shovel and began to fill in the grave. A few minutes later, it was done.
"And he has a hell of a tombstone," A.J. pointed out. "No one's moving John Carter from where it sits."
"No, I don't think they will," Helen said quietly. Then, shifting to a businesslike tone: "All right—everyone aboard. We're moving out."
That command necessitated first getting someone—Madeline, as it turned out—to load Joe in. She did it herself, to everyone's surprise—and Joe's voluble protest.
"Hey, be careful! You'll hurt yourself!"
"Don't be silly. In this gravity, you barely weigh seventy pounds."
The security specialist was such a small and very feminine-looking woman that people tended to forget how strong she was. The only one who didn't looked surprised was A.J.
Helen had to stifle a smile. His memories, of course, were considerably more vivid.
Once Joe was comfortably strapped in, the others quickly entered. To Helen's relief, Thoat's interior proved to be much less cramped than she'd feared. When she said as much, Joe shook his head.
"Rover's probably too humdrum a term. Don't forget that Thoat was designed as a long-term Mars exploration vehicle. That means it isn't just a sort of planetary bus, but has to have living facilities aboard. It was by far the largest piece of equipment we brought with us from Earth, except for the SSTO."
Bruce verified the pressure was back up. The others lost no time in removing their helmets and suits.
"Cleanup is definitely the order of the day," Madeline said, moving to the rear. After a quick inspection of the sanitary facilities, she announced: "Well, it's adequate. But I miss our cabins more every minute."
"Too right," Bruce said. "But I'm in favor of anything that'll let us get a bit cleaner after more than two days in those glorified body stockings."
As Bruce set the rover in motion, following the path marked out clearly on the Thoat's HUD, the others took turns using the miniature minimum-water cleaning facilities, and emptying the sanitary reservoirs of their suits into Thoat's recycler.
"God, that feels good," Helen said, coming out last. "I know these are top-notch suits, but—"
"We're all agreed on the 'but,'" Madeline said firmly. "I also think that sentence works best unfinished."
"Amen," Rich concurred.
Joe had presented a problem, since his suit was also his splint. However, Madeline had been able to improvise a temporary splint; Joe held his leg carefully still while A.J. released the suit, Madeline applied the temporary, and then helped him remove the suit.
"A.J., maybe I should just leave that on?"
"Can't hurt. We'll probably have to be getting you in and out of your suit quite a few times over the next few weeks."
Madeline nodded. "I agree. We'll just have to make sure it fits right, and keep a close eye on it for a while."
Independent, wide, tall tires made Thoat a relatively smooth ride, given the rocky terrain they had to cross. The lesser gravity helped also, of course. Still, jolts were inevitable, and Joe was heard to curse more than once.
"Sorry, mate," Bruce apologized, after one especially big jolt. "Even with the best route there's still a bloody awful lot of rocks around."
"I'm going to put in a protest to the Martian Department of Transportation. The roads here are just terrible."
"Hey, they kept shooting us down before," A.J. pointed out wisely. "What makes you think they care?"
"Well, they better get used to it. It's payback for what they did to England back in the 1890s."
Ignoring the byplay, Helen sat down near Bruce. "How long until we get to Pirate?"
"Rate we're going? Say around ten in the morning tomorrow, local time. I'm not pushing the girl over five KPH, even now while I can see well. It's going to be pitch dark out there when the sun sets, which is looking to be in a couple of hours."
"Now that you've had a bit of experience with the terrain, do you think we'll make it before the fuel runs out?"
Bruce shrugged, the motion visible though muted by the suit. "It's dicey. We're going to be right on the edge of our range. All we can do is hope."