Red Desert - Point of No Return by Rita Carla Francesca Monticelli

I closed the airlock
door with a quiet thud and I locked it, knowing it might have been
for the last time. Outside it was still dark, just before dawn. The
instant the sun peeked out over the horizon its pale light would
hit the plains, creating long shadows.
    I stood for a moment
looking at the stars through the glass, while the valves let out
some air to equalise the pressure with the outside. My suit, which
at first almost adhered to my body, was now expanding, giving me a
clumsy look.
    The pressure balance
was reached and the exit door opened. Even though the suit was
heated, I perceived a huge difference in temperature. It could rise
well above ten degrees Celsius on a summer’s day, but it could drop
to minus ninety at night. And the hours before dawn were always the
coldest.
    I switched on the
torch and went out, moving with caution. I hoped nobody had seen me
leave. Robert was lost in dreamland and had certainly no intention
of getting up at dawn, but Hassan, in spite of all that had
happened, carried on with the mission, especially now that he was
in charge.
    He kept repeating that
in a few months more personnel and materials would arrive. I was
not convinced. Yet another major failure was looming and, at the
moment of need, those in Houston would come out with another
excuse.
    Despite the heavy load
I was carrying, I walked with ease. With gravity a little more than
one third of Earth, everything was lighter, and thanks to my
experience over the years I was accustomed to moving with skill on
a rough terrain, even when wearing that uncomfortable suit.
    I opened the hatchback
of a rover and loaded my provisions; then I climbed into the front
of the vehicle and activated the pressurisation. The life support
pumps pushed the gasses inside, creating the correct mixture for
breathing. When the green light came up on the dashboard,
indicating the process was complete, I removed my helmet and suit.
I laid them in the back, settled myself in the driving seat and
fastened the seatbelt. As soon as the engine started, an alarm
would go off inside the station, alerting them to the unexpected
activation of one of the two rovers.
    There was still time
to go back. I just had to don my suit again, return to my quarters
and climb back into bed. Nobody would notice. But, even if my act
might appear senseless, to me it seemed the most reasonable thing
to do. There was nothing more for me in the station, beside pure
survival. Perhaps not even that certainty.
    I studied the data
gathered the evening before on the on-board computer screen. It
wasn’t much, but it was all I had. I took a deep breath, and then
turned on the engine and put my foot down. I was moving towards
another certainty: that of my death. But I had started doing that a
long time earlier, when I accepted the invitation to join the
mission.
     
     
    “Twenty-nine minutes
to the point of no return.”
    The synthesised voice
of the on-board computer sounds again inside the rover. In about
half an hour I will pass the point of no return. The oxygen tank,
together with the carbon dioxide filters, provides breathable air
for one person for a maximum of fifty hours, and I’m about to pass
the twenty-fifth, this means that I won’t have enough to come back
to Station Alpha.
    Not that I care, at
this stage.
    I try to figure out
how to stop the alarm from beeping every minute, and wonder why
rovers aren’t equipped with an oxygen production system like the
one in the station. The chemical plant extracts this gas from the
carbon dioxide-rich air of Mars, releasing carbon monoxide outside
as waste gas. Why am I thinking this nonsense? Such an apparatus
would occupy too much space, reducing that available inside the
vehicle and making it even slower; it would also require excessive
energy.
    The main feature of
these rovers is their agility, to the detriment of the operating
range. On the one hand, fifty hours seemed a sufficient amount of
time for any sortie we had to make in