-Perhaps we could try to enable the emergency calls. – Perked up Mackliff.
Whitehouse shook his head:
– No need to hurry up, John. Yes, the SAU’s are neutral, but now we only have the information that we had before the collision with "Das Rein." But then we were attacked by the Arabs. And who knows, maybe another war broke out.
And when the war starts, you can never vouch for the neutrals’ position.
– Oh, shit! They brought it down them bastards, they brought down the container! – Dybal suddenly shouted, clutching his head.
– Damn it… What could a helpless container, an iron box hanging on the parachutes possibly do to them? Nasty freaks… Ah… – Whitehouse clenched his fists.
At this point, a little moan escaped from Von Conrad’s mouth. Dybal bent over him:
– What is it, Manfred? Do you need something? Water, a painkiller…
Von Conrad was in a very bad state. Despite the fact that his body had no serious injuries, the general condition worsened with each hour.
When the capsule with him Whitehouse, Mackliff and Dybal, released the aero braking shield at the estimated height it started buffing and the heat reached its maximum.
After thirty seconds of falling in the atmosphere at a speed of 1750 miles per hour the titanium seal around the hatch had depressurized, and the temperature inside the container went off scale.
The fireproof fabric of the suits got wrinkled and softened, like cellophane by the fire, and air conditioning systems continued to work by a miracle.
That was the end.
Mackliff gritted his teeth and said that his life was not lived in vain, that he has developed quite a few first-class control systems of various levels, invented a probe accumulation of solar energy reflected from the moon’s surface and had it affirmed by the NASA commission; made a spectrum estimation analyzer of orbital dust; said that he always liked the guys like Whitehouse and Dybal, and if he sometimes was grumbling and angry, it was only for the good cause.
He has also said that he had always loved only two women – his mother, Ann Stone Mackliff and his wife Dorothy, and all the rest were an accident, a passing moment though he could not say anything bad about them, they all believed him.
He shook his head in the misted pressure helmet, slapped Whitehouse on the shoulder, clinging to the cadmium fabric overalls with his glove, and said that he always wanted to have such children like he had: naughty boys Arnie and George; and sympathized with the pilot that it would be hard for them to stay out of bad company, drugs and juvenile prisons without a father.
Whitehouse did not get the rest of the flight engineer’s shouts, but he just subtly abused the designers of emergency suits for the fabric’s lack of heat resistance.
When the silicone zipper clasps began to smolder and tear at the seams, von Conrad pulled the tube of service module cooling, and liquid helium poured onto his chest.
Everything was shrouded in icy fog, the temperature dropped to normal, but through the vibration rumble and burning boarding you could hear the cracking sound of the colonel’s suit.
Forty seconds later the braking shield opened and the first pair of parachutes opened up.
Then the second pair unfolded.
They have been saved, but the colonel received a severe thermal burn; up on one elbow, he made hoarse sounds, either trying to address his companions or God.
Mackliff could hardly suppress the urge to hide from this terrible, swollen, bluish face.
Whitehouse was standing nearby waving a piece of parachute fabric over the colonel. Meanwhile Dybal continued listening to conversations of the SAU pilots with their base:
– Damn it, they know that there was another container.
They're looking for us.
They have just passed the information on the search sector and probable coordinates 15-2 and 15-3 to the pilot…
– Too bad. Sooner or later they will find us here. And I'm afraid they are not going to offer us coffee. We have to leave. According to the numeration of squares, used in the SAU Air Forces we are near the foothills of the Andes, somewhere in Medell;n, unless memory deceives me… Maybe we are standing on one of its former avenues…
Our plan is to put the wounded on the sledges and head to the mountains. There we can hide, find food and water. Even the Great Desert is still powerless compared to the mountains, – having stopped talking, Whitehouse began to chop off the straps of a flattened parachute and tore a white cloth, which Mackliff had notched previously.
Dybal started selecting things needed for the trip from time to time looking at the horizon and the sky through binoculars.
***
Infernal heat slowly subsided.
The merciless sun rolled down further to the west, gradually turning from dazzling white to crimson. The sky like an endless ceiling, painted in smooth, pale blue paint was faintly covered with smoky clouds.
A faint breeze appeared.
It was still hot like the sand, but it was the Ocean breeze that had rolled over the mountain ranges, and dissolved in the desert. The Dunes that were hardly noticeable at first became higher, wider.
Like sickles they bent towards the mountains, whose rocky tops were covered with snow caps, clearly outlined by the horizon.
The astronauts were on the fringe. They have already thrown out most of their equipment; individual first aid kits, a box of dried bacon, transmitter battery, signal lights and rockets, blades, bags of dry fuel, with regret they buried the cadmium absorber in the sand, a unique device they have saved from "Independence", Dybal even threw out his watch that became as heavy as chains.
They were carrying their wounded on sleds, sinking ankle-deep in the fine sand, no longer having the strength to speak, to think, to raise their heads in ridiculous turbans made of scraps of snow-white parachute fabric; watery eyes just looked down to the surface of glittering sand, at the dusty toes of their boots, watching their step – the fallen could have no strength to rise.
An hour ago, before they had thrown away the transmitter Dybal intercepted a message of one of the SAU pilots that two of his supporting aircrafts did not come out of a curve in the 15-2 square and hit the ground, and he saw strange air vibrations near his aircraft.
The base has ordered to stop the search of the second capsule until morning and return to the base.
A distant rumble which daydreaming astronauts assumed was the sound of thunder, turned out to be a roar of the patrol engine "Phantom-11-E-34A", which was returning to the base in Cerro de Pasco. Blades of the assault helicopters feathered the airfield, ready to deliver observer snipers to the foothills of the search sector.
The saving rocks were close, just a dozen miles away.
An average healthy person without luggage would cross this distance in two and a half hours, but this way was an insurmountable obstacle for exhausted people whose souls have almost left their bodies. On top of that their progress was slowed down by the mountain-like dunes and terrains of basalt boulders, beaten by sands and wind.
When the sun touched the mountain tops, Dybal who along with Mackliff has been hauling an unbearably heavy von Conrad, stumbled and fell on his face.
Having lost his balance from the jerk, Mackliff also fell down. They tried to get