Green Mars - Kim Stanley Robinson [180]
After that nothing moved but the column of smoke. Over the ventilator and engine hums they could hear a rumbling basso continuo, punctuated by booms that were timed to sudden explosions of smoke from the vent. The car trembled slightly on its shock absorbers.
They stayed on the hill watching, Nirgal rapt, Jackie excited and talkative, commenting at length, then going silent as chunks of lava broke away from the hill, releasing more spills of melted rock. When they looked through the car’s IR viewer the hill was a brilliant emerald with blazing white cracks in it, and the tongue of lava licking the plain was bright green. It took about an hour for orange rock to turn black in visible light, but through the IR the emerald went dark green in about ten minutes. Green pouring up into the world, with the white bursting through it.
They ate a meal, and as they cleaned their plates Jackie moved Nirgal around the cramped kitchen with her hands, friendly in the way she had been in New Vanuatu, her eyes bright, a small smile on her lips. Nirgal knew these signs, and he caressed her as she passed in the small space behind the drivers’ seats, happy at the renewed intimacy, so rare and so precious: “I’ll bet it’s warm outside,” he said.
And her head snapped around as she looked at him, her eyes wide.
Without another word they dressed and got into the lock, and held gloved hands as they waited for it to suck and open. When it did they stepped out of the car, and walked across the dry rust rubble, holding hands and squeezing hard, winding around bumps and hollows and chest-high boulders toward the new lava. They carried thinsulate pads in their outside hands. They could have talked but they didn’t. The air pushed at them from time to time, and even through the layers of his walker Nirgal could feel that it was warm. The ground trembled slightly underfoot, and the rumble was distinct, vibrating in his stomach; it was punctuated every few seconds by a dull boom, or a sharper cracking noise. No doubt it was dangerous to be out here. There was a small rounded hill, very like the one their car was parked on, overlooking the tongue of hot lava from a somewhat closer distance, and without consultation they headed for it, climbing its final slope with big steps, always holding hands, gripping hard.
From the top of the little hill they could see far over the new black flow and its shifting network of fiery orange cracks. The noise was considerable. It seemed clear that any new lava would run off the other side of the black mass, the downhill side. They were on a high point in the bank of a stream, with an obvious watercourse running left to right as they looked down on it. Of course a sudden great flood might overwhelm them, but it seemed unlikely, and in any case they were in no more danger here than they had been in the car.
All such calculations disappeared as Jackie pulled her hand free of his and began to take off her glove. Nirgal did the same, rolling the stretching fabric up until the wrist was exposed and his thumb free. The glove popped off his fingertips. It was about 278 degrees, he reckoned, brisk but not particularly cold. And then a wave of warm air buffeted him, followed by a wave of hot air, perhaps 315Âdeg;K, which quickly passed and was followed by the jostling cool air his hand had been exposed to first. As he peeled off his other glove it became clear that the temperature was all over the place, each knock of the wind distinctly different. Jackie had already unzipped her jacket from her helmet, and down the front, and now as Nirgal watched she pulled it off, baring her upper body. The air struck her and goose-pimples ran over her skin like cat’s paws over water. She leaned over to get off her boots, and her air tank lay in the hollow of her spine, her ribs standing out under her skin. Nirgal stepped over and pulled her pants down over her bottom. She reached back and pulled