The Tartarus Directive

Chapter 13

Early the following morning the storm dissipated. The hard, unsettling thuds of debris pelting the walls of the Hub became an almost unnoticeable tinkling of sand against the superstructure.

Shortly after the storm ceased, one of Chaudhry's men arrived, informing Griff that a crawler was ready to begin the journey. Harry and Darnie packed a few items, including Harry's levergun, and went with Griff to the awaiting crawler at the extravehicular activity port on the opposite side of the Hub.

The idling crawler had been stocked with food and supplies to restock its destination outpost. The outpost's location relative to the Hub meant that resupply trips were infrequent. Besides Griff, Harry, and Darnie, there was the operator, a grizzled woman named Karla, and her engineer Garth. No workers were to travel on this crawler to the outpost. The explanation given to Griff by Karla was that only a skeleton crew was working at Zoller's outpost and that relief was rare on the periphery of the zone.

Cargo was placed in the floor of the vehicle and covered with grates or placed in netting which hung from the ceiling. The sides of the crawler were lined with long upholstered benches which could be folded away into the hull when additional storage room was required. Small round portholes in the sides of the vehicle allowed its occupants to peer out into the vast wasteland on the other side. Bunks could be folded down above the benches, however they were only a slight improvement over the Hub's hammocks.

In the rear of the vehicle near its entry hatch was a lavatory which was neither comfortable nor private but was, at least, functional. The crawler was provided with a supply of fresh water for drinking and an inefficient scrubber to maintain a supply of breathable air. Just before the cockpit hung a set of aluminized EVA exosuits designed to protect the wearer from the harsh alien elements when working outside the protection of the crawler--a tiny depressurization chamber at the rear hatch served as the transition should such a dangerous action need to be taken. The cockpit's windshield was two large bubbles which made the crawler look like a massive insect from a distance. This whole contraption was powered by a compact, shielded radioisotope thermoelectric generator at the front of the vehicle beneath the slightly raised cockpit.

Karla shifted the vehicle into gear and began to slowly trudge away from the Hub. Griff looked out through the windshield at the desolate red desert which lay before them. The dormant landscape seemed at that moment peaceful to Griff, even beautiful. Great, sloping valleys swept across the planet's surface. Enormous craters and towering mesas dwarfed the tiny metal vehicle as it trudged through the rocky sand. To mistake the planet's inherent danger for beauty meant certain death.

Inside the crawler it was hot and humid--the kind of heat that makes someone lazy and drags them down like a weight vest. It was not long before the heat had taken effect on the vehicle's occupants. Their skin began to glisten with beads of sweat, and their clothes soaked through and clung to their bodies uncomfortably.

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Once the Hub was out of sight, navigation became difficult. The paths traveled frequently by crawlers had become highways over time. This allowed crawler operators to navigate visually and simply follow the roads carved out previously. After a storm like the one just then passed, the trails were often buried and left indistinguishable from the surrounding terrain. This meant that crawler operators had to navigate using a kind of radio frequency system, following signals emitted from beacons installed in the outposts.

While the storm buried some things, it uncovered others. Sand blown from some spots on the surface revealed the debris of downed gas condensers, derelict mining equipment, and even the occasional desiccated corpse. When such a thing was spotted through a porthole, nothing was said. For Karla and Garth, such sights were commonplace. For their three passengers, it was a reminder of the death that they were separated from only by a few inches of metal and polycarbonate.