Marsquake! by Brad Strickland, THOMAS E. FULLER Read Free Book Online Page B

groaned. Beside him Jenny did the same, and then she touched his arm in sympathy and commiseration.
    Standing in the doorway, his arms crossed, his scowl as deep as ever, was Dr. Harold Ellman.

CHAPTER 5
    “I Kate this, hate this,
hate
this.” That had become Mickey’s mantra, his endlessly repeated chant.
    Alex patted his shoulder. “It’s ice, man. Everybody’s got something that bugs him.”
    Mickey sat slumped at one of the tables in the dorm common area. He was staring down at his arms. “Marsport doesn’t bother me. The hangars don’t bother me. When we hid out in the storage areas, I was fine. Why can’t I stand to go in a stupid tunnel?”
    Sean said, “Tough break, Mickey, but Alex is right. Hey, nobody blames you. Claustrophobia is hard to fight.”
    “Not hard for everyone else,” Mickey said stubbornly. The teams had been training for a month now, and Mickey had washed out the previous day. They had entered one of the storage area’s lava tubes and had gone all the way through the modified part,through a recently installed airlock, and into the lava tube itself, a tunnel that, in cross-section, was a squashed oval about four meters in diameter from floor to ceiling, six meters side to side. It was big, nearly as big as a subway tunnel. The walls, hardened lava with a high iron component, glistened in the lights, black shading through the reds of oxidized iron, the greens of copper, and a hundred other colors. The way they had cooled made the tunnel walls and floor unexpectedly smooth, like the surface of a marble block.
    Mickey had toughed it out for a few hundred paces and then had panicked.
    Alex said, “Really, man, nobody blames you.”
    Sitting at the table, Mickey flattened his palms and shook his head. “I blame me. Screaming like a coward.” He looked up, his face twisted. “It was like I couldn’t breathe. I mean, my lungs were working, but the air I was getting wasn’t doing me any good. It was too dark, too creepy.”
    “It’s ice, Mick,” Sean said, echoing Alex. “Hey, you can fly a ship, you can drive an exploration buggy—andyou’re going to graduate after next term as a hydraulics specialist. That ought to count for something.”
    Mickey nodded, took off his glasses, and rubbed his eyes. “My claustrophobia never bothered me that much before,” he muttered. “Not until I was underground and in the dark.” He put his glasses back on, rubbed his nose, and said, “Hey, you guys, I’m gonna be okay. I’m sorry that I can’t go with you, but really, I’ll be fine. Mpondo’s going to let me work communications with the teams, so I’ll be in touch, huh?” He gave them a weak smile.
    “Sure,” Sean said. “Hey, let’s go to Town Hall. I’m supposed to meet Jenny and Nickie for lunch.”
    “I’m just going to grab something here,” Mickey said. “You go on. Really, I’m fine.”
    “Sure?”
    “Go, already!” Mickey said. He gave them a lopsided grin. “Just as well. Someone needs to stay back here, just in case you clowns get in trouble.”
    “Well depend on you to get us out again,” Alex said. “Later, Mick.”
    Mickey waved them off. As they made their way through the corridors, Alex said, “He scared me, man. You should have seen him.”
    “What did he do?” Sean asked, lowering his voice.
    Alex paused to open one of the heavy doors, a green-coded one—safe—because it was an interior door that had no close access to the surface. “First he kind of stumbled, and then I noticed he was falling back. I dropped back to see if he was having trouble. We were on full oxygen then because the deeper sections of the tubes aren’t pressurized at all—”
    “Sure,” Sean said. “Remember, I did the course Monday.”
    “Right. Anyway, I dropped back and switched my transmitter to his helmet frequency and asked if he was okay. He just looked at me.” Alex frowned. “His glasses looked all fogged up. I mean, you always get a little condensation on