Marooned! by Brad Strickland, THOMAS E. FULLER Read Free Book Online Page A

vanes are fifty meters long! Anything could happen out there!”
    “We’ll have safety harnesses,” Patrick said. “Really, it’s no big deal. And we’ll watch out for each other. Nothing’s going to go wrong.”
    “What if a storm sweeps up while you’re at the top of one of those towers?” Jenny demanded. “If dust tears your suit, you could die of oxygen starvation or freeze to death! This is crazy.”
    “I want to do it,” Sean said. “Look, I can’t just spend my time here going to lessons and running on treadmills. I’m not contributing anything. Mickey’s right—I’ve got no specialty, I’m dead weight. This isn’t much, but it’s something I can do for the colony. And anyway, I’d rather do this than have Ellman leaning over my shoulder telling me how stupid I am!”
    “But going out when—”
    “You went out and got yourself lost once,” Sean pointed out. “Mickey Goldberg said—”
    Jenny stiffened. “Mickey was wrong. I didn’t get lost. I just lost track of the time, that’s all. And anyway, that was completely different!”
    “I’m going tomorrow,” Sean said. “That’s settled.”
    Jenny got to her feet. “Boys can be so stupid!” She hurried out, her back stiff.
    “And girls are always so reasonable,” Patrick said with a chuckle after she had gone. “Don’t worry, Sean. I won’t say a repair crew isn’t dangerous, but we’ll be looking out for each other. Better get some sleep. We’ll have a hard day tomorrow.”
4.4
    The blue pressure suit was more confining than it looked. Sean had struggled into it—a three-layered suit, heated, with supplemental oxygen and a full helmet. He flexed his hands inside protective gloves. He had worn them to practice the repairs, but he still wondered how well he would be able to handle the tools when he was perched up on one of the towers. Sandy gave the word and all eighteen of the repair crew clambered into three surface rovers, six to a vehicle. Sean, Alex, Patrick, and Leslie were all in the last one to rumble out of the dome.
    The shrunken sun was up, low on the horizon, and pale shadows stretched out across the rusty red Martian landscape. The rovers traveled abreast because each one kicked up a cloud of dust from its treads. If they had gone single file, the last two in line would be traveling blind.
    Sean knew they weren’t really going all that fast, but to him it seemed they were racing across thesurface, swerving around large boulders and outcrops, then following a rough road that twisted up into the foothills. The towers of the windmills seemed to grow as they approached, larger and larger, tall open-meshed structures of steel and alloy polished to a gleaming finish by the punishing dust. It looked as if every third or fourth windmill was frozen, its vanes not moving at all. A half-dozen or so were already damaged, the vanes bent and twisted by the cruel dust devils.
    Patrick pointed at one of the twisted windmills and said, “We’ll just remove the vanes from those and leave them for the pros to fix.” His voice came crackling into Sean’s helmet, sounding distant and scratchy.
    Sean fiddled with the controls on his suit belt. The heat had been welcome at first, but he had overdone it. Now he was starting to smell his own sweat. He knew he would be in for an uncomfortable six hours if he couldn’t get the suit’s heater adjusted.
    The first rover stopped at the base of one of thewindmills, and a two-person team leaped out. Looking back, Sean saw them scrambling up the access ladder looking like spiders swarming up a web. The windmill was nearly a thousand feet tall—over three hundred meters. His stomach lurched. How would he handle a height like that?
    “Patrick,” Leslie said, “will you partner me?”
    “You’ve got it,” Patrick replied. “Alex, you and Sean will be okay with each other, won’t you?”
    “Sure,” Alex said, his voice tense.
    Sean realized he wasn’t the only one on edge
    Another