"Look on the bright side," Jackie countered. "At least you don't need any batteries that weren't included."
A.J.'s attitude was mixed. On the one hand, he was delighted to have the means to create a safe entry into the Bemmie base. On the other, he found the means themselves contemptible.
"I can't believe this. I was expecting some sort of high-tech wizardry from you people."
"Do not be childish, Mr. Baker," said Gupta. "In many respects, the ways of our grandfathers are still best."
"Still. We're going to stuff our way there. How undignified."
Undignified it might have been, but it worked. The half-shredded portions of the airbags that had enabled Care Package to survive the landing, when properly positioned and braced by the package's structural pieces, did a fine job of filling the tunnels so tightly that there was no chance of any further roof collapses. They left a passage just big enough to allow them to get through along with whatever drones they needed.
That still left the problem of the ice cavern, of course. The interior of the cavern was so immense that not even a hundred Care Package shells could possibly have filled it up.
But, to everyone's relief, Chad Baird pronounced that the cavern's size provided enough of a safety margin in itself.
"Look, even though it's probably a recent formation in geological terms, the emphasis is on the word 'geological.' On the scale of human lifetimes, that cavern is very old. It's been there for millennia, certainly. So, barring one of the very rare major Marsquakes, I can't see any likelihood that the cavern itself will collapse. The real danger is much more prosaic—those chunks of ice that it periodically drops on the floor below, as the stalactites shed some of their weight."
"And how do you propose they protect themselves against that?" Hathaway demanded. "I don't care if—theoretically—assuming the right position with the suits locked in rigid impact mode would shield someone well enough. Just because it worked for Madeline once doesn't mean it'll work every time."
"Don't need to," replied Baird calmly. "Ken, stop fretting for a moment and just think. Like a soldier, if you will. The ceiling of that cavern averages forty-five meters above the floor, and in no place they'd be passing through is it lower than thirty-five meters. In Martian gravity . . ."
"Oh." Hathaway cleared his throat. "Spotters, you're saying."
"Right. Unless a whole section of stalactites sheds at once—and that's not the way it normally works—all they have to do is pass through the cavern one at a time, with the rest keeping an eye on the ceiling to warn the person below if anything's coming loose. As slowly as any dangerous piece of ice will fall on Mars, with that much distance to travel, they can easily be out of harm's way by the time it lands."
There was silence on the radio, for a moment. Everyone listening in Thoat had their fingers figuratively crossed.
"Okay," the captain finally said. "It's a sloppier solution than I'd like, but . . . At least we won't be risking more than one person at a time."
"Just because we've used one low-tech solution for making the corridors safer doesn't mean we should suddenly go backwards in time, people." A.J. spoke up. "Spotting things is not a job for people. It's a job for machines. Smart sensors. I can tweak the sensors in the suits to watch for such events and display the alert, and even show you which way to go to escape. And unlike people, the sensors won't get distracted, sleepy, or fail to look the right direction at the wrong time."
Hathaway grunted assent. "Okay, that's a better solution. Go to it, people."
Three hours later, they were finally back to the second door. This time, all six members of the party were there. None of them wanted to miss this moment.
Impatiently, they waited while A.J. and Joe brought up and positioned Jack the Ripper, in case they needed the drone's services.
They didn't. The door opened almost as smoothly as if it had just been closed an hour earlier.
They passed through into the interior of the alien base on Mars.
Ten minutes of silence later, Madeline spoke the first "Oh my God" of the day. The three words would be echoed by all six beings who saw the installation for the first time in sixty-five million years, again and again, as the day passed.
Finally, their oxygen running as close to the margin as Helen dared, they returned to Thoat.
"Well?" Ken asked.
"Jackpot," was A.J.'s reply.
Helen's was more dignified. For a while.
"Captain Hathaway, we have uncovered an alien installation which, though most of it is in the state of ruin you'd expect from planetary as opposed to vacuum conditions, is still in good enough condition to be studied and investigated for . . . oh . . .