Chapter One
On the side of the cliff, I hung from a thin metal cable. Hundreds
of feet below me, the jagged red rocks of the Martian
valley floor pointed up at me like deadly spears.
The temperature had risen from minus one hundred degrees
Fahrenheit to a nice, warm minus 20 degrees Fahrenheit.
Wind pushed at my body, making me sway from side to
side. But it could have been worse. I could have been stuck
in a sandstorm, with grains of sand hitting me at 60 miles
an hour, rattling off my titanium shell and blinding me completely.
As it was, I had a good view. On Mars, at midday, when
the sand isn't blowing, the sun is blue against a butter-scotch-colored
sky. The clouds are barely more than
stretched-out strings of fog, lighter blue than the sun.
I could look across the entire valley and see the oranges
and reds of Martian soil. Nearly 10 miles away, a gigantic
dome held all two hundred of the scientists and tekkies
who founded the first colony on Mars. Under that dome was
oxygen and water and warmth and food (all the things
humans needed to survive).
Out here? There was no oxygen. No water. No warmth.
And no food.
And, of course, those jagged rocks waited for any mistakes.
From where I was, it wouldn't matter much that gravity
on Mars is about a third of Earth's gravity. If my grip on
the cable slipped, those rocks would tear through my robot
body like daggers. What made it worse was that I had a passenger
strapped onto my back.
My job was to make it to the bottom of the cliff with both
of us undamaged.
At the top, the metal cable was attached to a long spike
driven deep into the soil. All three hundred feet of the cable
dangled from this spike.
I held on to the cable with a gripper in each hand. Each
gripper clamped the cable securely with much more power
than I could have gotten just by using my fingers.
The trick was to unclamp the gripper in my right hand
and hold on with the gripper in my left hand. Then I had to
bring my free right hand down and reclamp at a level below
my left hand. Once the right-hand grip was secure, I unclamped
the left and reclamped it below the right. And so
on. It was slow work that took a lot of concentration.
One thing made this easier. My lower body was on
wheels, so all I had to do was let myself roll down the cliff.
Slowly. Very slowly.
I was halfway down when it happened.
As I leaned against the cliff, my right wheel hit a loose
portion of rock. It broke away, clattering down the cliff. My
right side swung inward, spinning me sideways.
This wouldn't have been a problem if I'd been clamping
the cable with both grippers. But I was only holding with my
left gripper.
In panic, I grabbed at the cable with my right hand.
Because I was spinning, I missed the cable and jammed
my hand into the cliff. This pushed me away from the cliff
too hard. For a second, I was like a pendulum. With less
gravity on Mars than on Earth, my action shot me six feet
away from the side of the cliff and then banged me against
rock on the return.
It felt like I'd been slammed with a baseball bat.
Keeping my grip on the cable with my left hand, I fought to
find the cable with my right.
But I was out of balance. Especially with a passenger on
my back.
My wheels began to roll upward on the cliff wall as the
weight on my back pulled me upside down and backwards.
The cable twisted more.
Still, I tried to find a grip with my right hand.
Nothing.
Then .
Snap.
The buckle keeping the passenger on my back opened,
and suddenly I had no passenger.
"Rawling!" I shouted, as I watched the downward tumble
of arms and legs. "Rawling!"
Seconds later, there was an explosion of dust as the
body smashed into the rocks.
I had failed in my mission.
