sides of my neck and squeezed, strangling the life out of me.
FORTY-TWO
Still face down in the dirt, I brought my own hands up and tried to yank away the constricting ones, which were—
—which were naked, gloveless, exposed to the elements, and . . .
. . . and my vision hadn’t failed. Rather, someone had thrown some sort of bag over my head, then tackled me, driving me to the ground, and now these strong artificial hands were sealing the bag as tightly as possible around my neck.
I felt the bag inflating, filling out like a balloon, as air continued to flow through the tube from my backpack tanks. Pickover must have taken a fabric specimen bag out of his rucksack and thrown it over my head to create a makeshift helmet; it was him on my back now. “Alex!” he shouted, so that I could hear him without the radio, the headset for which had fallen away with the shards of my fishbowl. “For Christ’s sake, stop fighting me!”
I hadn’t been aware that I still was—but I guess panic had taken over. I took a deep breath in the darkness and was delighted that I could actually smell the musty bag. And although I couldn’t see anything, I could feel my eyeballs swiveling in their sockets again.
Pickover released his too-tight grip on my neck. The bag loosened, and I felt a blast of cold air, which was actually refreshing by this point. I brought my hands back to my neck, one to each side, and took over holding the bag in place.
“I’ll be back!” Pickover shouted, or at least I think that’s what he said; it was quite faint and muffled.
My cheeks felt like they were burning; I suspected they were getting frostbitten. And the sack did seem to be sticking to the top of my head, lending credence to my theory that I was bleeding there. It didn’t seem likely that any of the damage was life-threatening, but I wasn’t happy being out of the action. I lifted my neck and tried to pull the bag tight to my face, in hopes that I might be able to see through its weave, but there was no way to do so and maintain the air seal, and so I finally risked pulling the bag up off my face for a second and—
—and Pickover had run to Juan’s white-with-green-trim buggy. He was now in the driver’s seat, the canopy still up, and I saw him pound the dash, probably with balled fists, in frustration; the damn thing wouldn’t start.
I brought my left forearm up into the bag and spoke to my phone, telling it to transmit the ON sequence. Nothing happened; the bag had all but emptied of air, and my phone couldn’t hear me speaking, or, if it did, it didn’t recognize my voice. I tried with my one free hand to keep the bag’s mouth reasonably tight around my neck and wrist, and I waited for enough oxygen to be pumped out of the tube for the fabric to puff out a bit, and then I tried again. “Send the ON code to Juan’s buggy!”
I hoped I was close enough. I was still lying on the ground, and would have a devil of a time getting to my feet without using my hands. “Send the ON code to Juan’s buggy!” I shouted again.
The ground shook a bit beneath my chest. I thought perhaps Ernie was running—and that’s a sight I’d have paid to see—but then I heard the Mars buggy’s horn. I arched my neck and risked pulling the bag up enough to see out for a second. Again, there was a cloud of condensation and a blast of arctic air, but through the cloud, I made out Pickover in Juan’s buggy, about a dozen meters in front of me. He still had the canopy up. I pulled the bag down, held it around my neck again, and stumbled toward the vehicle.
I soon felt Pickover’s hands on me—he must have exited the buggy—and he helped me into its driver’s seat, and then he slammed the canopy down from the outside. I emptied my lungs, then pulled the bag up—tugging hard to separate it from the frozen blood on the top of my head—reached forward, hit the switch labeled “Pressurize Cabin,” and waited to breathe until I could feel and hear that there was enough air in the little chamber for me to do so.