"Going the Distance" by Jay Goemmer ("Centuri Guy")

Red sandstone in the southeastern Utah desert.

Mars reminded me of Arches National Park north of Moab, Utah... without the sandstone arches. The first time I stepped into the Martian sunlight, I flashed back to when I was sixteen years old.

One Friday afternoon after school, half a dozen teenagers from my church youth group--myself included--piled their belongings into the back of a borrowed motor home. Chuck, our youth leader, shared the driving duties with his wife Leann. We left the city limits of Twin Falls, Idaho, heading first east, then south on the interstate.

Leann finally maneuvered her sleepy cargo into Moab about 2 a.m. The guys collapsed into their sleeping bags on our host's living room floor, while the girls sacked out in the spare bedroom. Before breakfast the next morning, my buddy Tom and I decided to scope out the landscape, since Chuck had been raving about it for weeks. The first thing I noticed was where the green of the grass petered out at the edge of the lawn, the dirt was red! Not brown, like the farm where I'd grown up.

Evan Schmidt's voice crackling in my suit headset brought my awareness abruptly and immediately back to the present. "Hey, Gimbot. How about that scenery?"

I paused to survey my surroundings.

"The dirt's the wrong color, for starters," I pointed out. We both chuckled, since the two of us inexplicably shared that same spontaneous first impression of the Red Planet.

Evan and I were latecomers to Mars Endurance Base. Early on, TV journalists waxed romantic about MEB, likening the construction workers who assembled the base's prefabricated pieces to Oregon Trail pioneers. But I'm not much of a mountain man, I guess. I prefer walking into an operation that's already up and running--despite my upbringing.

I'd grown up "picking rock" out of the sandy fields in the spring before my dad planted seeds for each year's crop. Most of southern Idaho farmland is on a "lava rock" or basalt plain, and it's not uncommon to see the exterior of older farmhouses covered with black lava rock.

I signed up for geology in high school by default, since all of the other elective classes were already full that particular semester. Randy, a neighbor kid who was a year ahead of me in school, told me horror stories about how the geology students had to identify a hundred different rocks for the final exam. Actually, there were only forty samples, and I managed to get all but two of them right.

In college, I decided to pursue a degree that somehow tied in with geology. After graduation, I managed to wangle a job distantly related to my degree, just to make ends meet. But when advertisements soliciting workers for MEB hit the newsnets--I couldn't wait to find out if they'd accept me or not.

The selection computer scrutinized my childhood data, examined my schooling and subsequent work experience, and then finally stroked its figurative chin regarding my assorted neuroses. Apparently, my profile fell within acceptable sociopsychological parameters, because an electronic transmission from MEB showed up in my personal inbox. "Come now. Don't bother to pack," was the gist of the message.

The transport trip from Earth to Mars was pretty much a non-event, because it's cheaper to put the passengers into suspension. That cuts down on the need to feed, diaper, and entertain us on the way there. All the same, the transport's medical team started unfreezing us "icicles" about three days out of Mars orbit. Even with the automassage doing its job during the months I was unconscious, it still took a couple of days to work all the kinks out.

During the initial briefing session at MEB, I found myself standing at one side of the room next to a slender fair-headed guy in his late twenties. He noticed my ID patch with stylized Martian rolling hills, and whispered, "So, you like to play with rocks, huh?"

His patch--emblazoned with the name "Evan"--had the same scarlet landscape, so I shrugged. "Rocks. Dirt. It's all a matter of scale." We both grinned, and ended up getting to know each other over lunch in the base cafeteria.

Fast-forward to today, six months later. Evan and I were making our first trek to a new worksite about ten miles from base. Inevitably, an usually high number of the sturdier surface vehicles were in Engineering for repairs, so we were stuck using an electric dunecycle to get around. The 'cycle was beefy enough to transport the two of us, along with the tools we needed, provided the charge in the power cells lasted.

"So, Evan," I ventured.

"Yeah?"

"How does it feel to be a real, live geologist, millions of miles from Earth?"

"Areologist," Evan insisted. "Remember Ares, the god of war? This isn't Earth--or 'Geos,' to coin a ridiculous name."

"As opposed to 'Martian geologist?'" I countered.

"Naw, I don't really look the part," he replied.

"Well, you are a long way from 'dark they were, and golden-eyed,'" I admitted.

"Edgar Rice Burroughs?" Evan queried.

"Hardly. Ray Bradbury."

With Evan gently bouncing along on the seat behind me, the dunecycle's wide synthrubber tires absorbed most of the occasional bumps. We reached our destination about twenty minutes ahead of schedule. I stood and stretched after parking the cycle, but Evan was anxious to get started. He began scouting out the location, while I began unloading the survey gear.

Evan's sudden shout in my headset made me jump. Mars' gravity is a little more than a third of what it is on Earth--so while I'd definitely lost some muscle mass--my nearly two hundred pounds was only the equivalent of seventy-five pounds here. I shot at least a foot into the air, but the dose of adrenaline suddenly coursing through my bloodstream shifted my senses into high gear.

I dropped the equipment boxes, and set off in the direction that Evan's bootprints led. I followed them to the edge of a small crevasse. Evan was lying roughly ten yards below me, his moans filling my suit's comm channel.

"Are you okay?" I exclaimed. "Evan!"

He was breathing rapidly, but he didn't answer for about thirty seconds. Finally, the pain apparently subsided, at least so he could think well enough to talk.

"Hurts," he grunted.

"Anything broken?"

"I don't think so. But my left ankle is killing me!"

"You've probably sprained it. With a fall like that, you could've been hurt even worse back on Earth," I said.

"Some comfort you are," he muttered between clenched teeth.

I strode back to the dunecycle and hit the "Start" icon on the control pad. I maneuvered the 'cycle to about 5 yards from the crevasse and turned it off. Locking the wheels, I pulled a coil of synthline out of the storage bin.

Using the sturdiest knot I knew, I tied a loop in the line big enough for Evan to slip around his torso. Venturing closer to the crevasse, I peered over the edge.

"Okay, Evan, we're going to get you out of there, but I'll need to borrow your upper body strength to do it," I called.

"That's the best you can come up with?" he retorted.

"Come on, buddy," I pleaded. "It's your noble sacrifice for TV."

"Oh, well, in that case," he replied, wincing suddenly.

I dropped the synthline to Evan, and he wriggled into the loop gingerly. Pulling the slack taut, I walked back to the dunecycle and looped the sturdy cord twice around a convenient metal pipe on the cycle's carrier rack.

It was plenty of work, but Evan managed to find handholds on the way up, and after half an hour, he was standing beside me on level ground. I helped him limp to the cycle, and then we rested, consuming water and rations from our suit dispensers.

After picking up the tools I'd scattered earlier, I punched up the controls on the cycle-and noticed the battery level was very low.

"Evan? Did you bother to charge this last night?"

A horrified silence followed. "No," he realized.

"We'll get as far as we can before the batteries give out. Then we'll get home if I have to carry you there," I resolved.

So help me. I did just that. For the last two miles.

* * *

I ran on the track and cross-country teams in high school. I preferred cross-country, since the scenery on rural roads varied a lot more than when I was running in circles in a stadium.

But the one thing long-distance running hammered into my brain was the importance to keep moving--even when you don't think you can--and to finish what you begin--whether on Earth, or on Mars.

Going the distance. If we can keep that in mind, I think we'll do okay.