of course, it was another giant step for mankind, but fifteen astronauts had come to mars...and only ten would return TESTING, one, two, three, four, five.... Evans speaking. I will continue to record as long as possible. This is a two-hour capsule, but I doubt if I'll fill it. That photograph has haunted me all my life; now, too late, I know why. (But would it have made any difference if I had known? That's one of those meaningless and unanswerable questions the mind keeps returning to endlessly, like the tongue exploring a broken tooth.) I've not seen it for years, but I've only to close my eyes and I"m back in a landscape almost as hostile -- and as beautiful -- as this one. Fifty million miles sunward, and 72 years in the past, five men face the camera amid the antarctic snows. Not even the bulky furs can hide the exhaustion and defeat that mark every line of their bodies; and their faces already touched by death. There were five of them. There were five of us, and of course, we also took a group photograph. But everything else was different. We were smiling -- cheerful, confident. And our picture was on all the screens of Earth within ten minutes. It was months before their camera was found and brought back to civilization. And we die in comfort, with all modern conveniences -- including many that Robert Falcon Scott could never have imagined when he stood at the South Pole in 1912. Two hours later, I'll start giving exact times when it becomes important. All the facts are on the log, and by now the whole world knows them. So I guess I'm doing this largely to settle my mind -- to talk myself into facing the inevitable. The trouble is, I'm not sure what subjects to avoid, an which to tackle head on. Well, there's only one way to find out. The first item. In 24 hours, at the very most, all the oxygen will be gone. That leaves me with the three classical choices. I can let the C02 build up until I become unconscious. I can step outside and crack the suit, leaving Mars to do the job in about two minutes. Or I can use one of the tablets in the med kit. C02 build-up. Everyone says that's quite easy -- just like going to sleep. I've no doubt that's true; unfortunately, in my case it's associated with nightmare number one... I wish I'd never come across that damn book..."True Stories of World War Two," or whatever it was called. There was one chapter about a German submarine, found and salvaged after the War. The crew was still inside it -- two men per bunk. And between each pair of skeletons, the single respirator set they'd been sharing. Well, at least that won't happen here. But I know, with a deadly certainty, that as soon as I find it hard to breathe, I'll be back in that doomed U-boat. So what about the quicker way? When you're exposed to a vacuum, you're unconscious in ten or fifteen seconds, and people who've been through it say it's not painful -- just peculiar. But trying to breathe something that isn't there brings me altogether too nearly to nightmare number two. This time, it's a personal experience. As a kid, I used to do a lot of skindiving when my family went to the Caribbean for vacations. There was an old freighter that had sunk 20 years before, out on a reef with its deck only a couple of yards below the surface. Most of the hatches were open, so it was easy to get inside to look for souvenirs and hunt the big fish that like to shelter in such places. Of course, it was dangerous -- if you did it without scuba gear. So what boy could resist the challenge? My favorite rout involved diving into a hatch on the foredeck, swimming about 50 feet along a passageway dimly lit by portholes a few yards apart, then angling up a short flight of stairs and emerging through a door in the battered superstructure. The whole trip took less than a minute -- an easy dive for anyone in good condition. There was even time to do some sight-seeing or to play with a few fish along the route. And sometimes, for a change, I'd switch directions, going in the door and coming out again through the hatch. That was the way I did it the last time. I hadn't dived for a week -- there had been a big storm and the sea was too rough -- so I was impatient to get going. I deep-breathed on the surface for about two minutes, until I felt the tingling in my finger tips that told me it was time to stop. Then I jacknifed and slid gently down toward the black rectangle of the open doorway. It always looked ominous and menacing -- that was part of the thrill. And for the first few yards, I was almost completely blind; the contrast between the tropical glare above water and the gloom between decks was so great that it took quite a while for my eyes to adjust. Usually, I was halfway along the corridor before I could see anything clearly; then the illumination would steadily increase as I approached the open hatch, where a shaft of sunlight would paint a dazzling rectangle on the rusty, barnacled metal floor. I'd almost made it when I realized that this time, the light wasn't getting better. There was no slanting column of sunlight ahead of me, leading up to the world of air and life. I had a second of baffled confusion, wondering if I'd lost my way. Then I realized what had happened -- and confusion turned to sheer panic. Sometime during the storm, the hatch must have slammed shut. It weighed at least a quarter of a ton. I don't remember making a U-turn; the next thing I recall is swimming quite slowly back along the passage and telling myself: "Don't hurry -- your air will last longer if you take it easy." I could see very well now, because my eyes had had plenty of time to become dark-adapted. There were lots of details I'd never noticed before -- such as the red squirrelfish lurking in the shadows, the green fronds and algae growing in the little patches of light around the portholes and even a single rubber boot, apparently in excellent condition, lying where someone must have kicked it off. And once, out of a side corridor, I noticed a big grouper staring at me with bulbous eyes, its thick lips half parted, as if it was astonished at my intrusion. The band around my chest was getting tighter and tighter; it was impossible to hold my breath any longer -- yet the stairway still seemed an infinite distance ahead. I let some bubbles of air dribble out of my mouth; that improved matters for a moment, but, once I had exhaled, the ache in my lungs became even more unendurable. Now there was no point in conserving strength by flippering along with that steady, unhurried stroke. I snatched the ultimate few cubic inches of air from my face mask -- feeling it flatten against my nose as I did so -- and swallowed them down into my starving lungs. At the same time, I shifted gears and drove forward with every last atom of strength. And that's all I remember, until I found myself spluttering and coughing in the daylight, clinging to the broken stub of the mast. The water around me was stained with blood and I wondered why. Then, to my freat surprise, I noticed a deep gash in my right calf; I must have banged into some sharp obstruction, but I'd never noticed it and even now felt no pain. That was the end of my skindiving, until I started astronaut training ten years later and went into the underwater zero-g simulator. Then it was different, because I was using scuba gear; but I had some nasty moments that I was afraid the psychologists would notice and I always made sure that I got nowhere near emptying my tank. Having nearly suffocated one, I'd no intention of risking it again. I know exactly what it will feel like to breathe the freezing wisp of near vacuum that passes for atmosphere. No thank you. So what's wrong with poison? Nothing, I suppose. The stuff we've got takes only 15 seconds, they told us. But all my instincts are against it, even when there's no sensible alternative. Did Scott have poison with him? I doubt it. And if he did, I'm sure he never used it. I'm not going to replay this I hope it's been of some use, but I can't be sure. The radio has just printed out a message from Earth, reminding me that transit starts in two hours -- As if I'm likely to forget -- when four men have already died so that I can be the first human being to see it. And the only one for exactly 100 years. It isn't often that Sun, Earth and Mars line up neatly like this; the last time was when poor old Lowell was still writing his beautiful nonsense about the canals and the great dying civilization that built them. Too bad it was all delusion. Next Page Domenico Gnoli, Illustrator Reprinted from Playboy, January 1971. Copyright ? 1971 Playboy Enterprises, Inc. No part of this article may be produced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means -- electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise -- without the written permission of the copyright owner. [Previous Page] - [Next Page] - [January 1971 Table of Contents]
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