"Yeah, sure. But at least you didn't have to worry about bringing your own air supply."
"Shut up, A.J.," Madeline growled. "Besides, even that's really no big deal. I once spent four weeks in a camp so high up in the Himalayas we had to haul in oxygen. It was a pain, but not that bad."
She didn't start laughing until A.J. was choking audibly. "Just kidding. I didn't really spend four weeks on the slopes of Mt. Everest."
"Well, praise be for small favors," A.J. muttered.
"It was only eleven days—and it was on the slopes of Denali in Alaska, not Everest in Nepal, and it wasn't so high up that we needed oxygen tanks very often. I won't tell you which slope, though. That's still classified because my boss thinks someday the Athabascan Indians might—"
"I don't want to hear it, Madeline!"
Chapter 48
"Okay, people," Joe said, several days later. "I think your best bet is to use the 'ripper' on the door."
He and Bruce were the only ones remaining topside. With the alien base discovered and the strong possibility of new writing being found inside, Rich was now on site with Madeline, A.J., and Helen. Joe hated being left behind, especially since as an engineer the alien base no doubt held as many exciting possibilities for him as it did for anyone else. But dragging a broken-legged man through tunnels didn't appeal either to the others or even to the broken-legged man himself.
Helen felt sorry for him, but at least it kept him in the safer area. She didn't feel very confident about the safety of these underground mazes, no matter how placid Mars' geology was supposed to be.
Neither, to her dismay, did Chad Baird. "Be very careful down there, Helen," he'd said. "Yes, Mars is geologically stable compared to Earth. But that's just an average, on a planetary scale. Any particular spot on Mars might be far more dangerous than most places on Earth. And while I'm fascinated by what you've found down there, I really don't like the looks of it, from an explorer's standpoint. Whatever the mechanism is that created those ice caverns, it has to be a fairly active one or the ice wouldn't still be there at all. And now you'll be introducing a new disturbance. So be careful."
Unfortunately, A.J. had been there to hear the conversation. For two days thereafter, he'd gone around periodically intoning lines from an old science fiction movie: Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Joe thought it was funny.
Joe would.
So, Helen had insisted on delaying the operation until they could put whatever supports and braces they could design and make in that last run of tunnel that had cracks in the roof.
It wasn't much, since their material supplies were limited. Mars gave up no wood for timbering, of course. But at least they had a comparatively secure route from the door to their field camp and supply dump. They'd set that up at the base of "Melted Way," the odd path that led up from the large cavern.
Madeline and A.J. dragged the "ripper" towards the alien door. Unlike the sort of rolling-valve doors found on Phobos, this door seemed to be designed to split in the center and slide up and to the side. This made the "ripper," a bastard descendant of a forklift and the jaws of life and a few other gadgets, ideal for the job. It could insert its pair of flattened-tine lever arms into the crack in the door and pull it apart by main force, assuming the door wasn't stronger than a bank vault.
A.J. positioned the lever arms above and below the area where he believed there was a sort of bolt or other fastener according to his sensors. Then, he and Madeline braced the ripper—which he'd promptly nicknamed "Jack"—solidly against the rock walls with its built-in extensible supports.
"Okay, everyone clear back. We don't want to take any chances on being hit by something if either the door or Jack breaks."
No one debated that. All four of them returned to the top of Melted Way before A.J. sent the command.
"Okay, Jack—let 'er rip!"
They were able to watch the operation on a screen, from sensors left on site. The fuel-cell-powered ripper hummed, and there was a sudden screeching noise audible all the way down the corridor as the lever arms inserted themselves forcibly into the narrow crack between the door valves. The humming abruptly dropped in pitch and became louder as it began to force the doors open.
A.J. watched telltales on the sensors rising. The stress built up, started to edge towards the caution zone. "Stop."
"No go?" Madeline asked.
"Bah. I have not yet begun to fight. I just don't necessarily see that I have to do it in one pull. Repetition and overstrain, that's the key. The same way you break a piece of metal by continually bending it back and forth. I'm betting that after umpteen million years, even that alien material is subject to being fatigued."