Mens (english version)

  18.

  I was in fetal position. Beh, in that that was a fetal position for my mind.

  The four arts were folded up on myself, that is on the dusty sphere that I was, they almost wanted to protect me from the outside according to proper wish.

  I was still connected to the hold of load, stretched out on a yelding surface and slightly in slope.

  The storm had not passed entirely but you/he/she was grown weak. I could look around: sand anywhere.

  Some irregular refolis and violent lifted to lines a beautiful dust cloud. The big one however it happened more aloft, to some about ten meters from the surface, where the winds rapidses spiraleggiavano gusts. Extemporaneous and indistinct eddies actually reached earth, immediately dissolved by breaths and parallel sudden breezes to the ground.

  Me godetti the immobility for a few minutes; then I detached me from the load taking back my identity of ragnetto. I had some problems to resolve, but I everything had to know where I was. I lay on the sand to extended legs questioning the exabyte; the telemetry told that the acute hilly crest that I had used as reference was more distant of the presumable one. And I had also diverted in unexpected way: the storm was not a constant flow as that of a river.

  Or I had been inclined out rout of quite a lot, or in my reasoning there had been something that made water. But at least I had a stroke of luck: the exabyte had memorized in precedence my position in comparison to the visible points of reference and you/he/she could identify the thick rocky that to lines it was glimpse among the passages of the snowstorm. I observed on the screen the place in which I was me as the maps brought him/it, calm and unreal, if compared with the situation to the moment: I was entirely on the slopes of a great sandy dune, to around eight hundred meters from where the ship of the missing was. A discreet walk.

  I mentally annotated the run to do for reaching her/it. I had to move me, now. I could not go behind my load of material; I memorized his/her position, then some instant that a more intense gust of the others appeased him attended.

  I saw that I would be due indeed to go down to the feet of the dune: this was easy. I closed again the legs around the body and with a pair of phalanxes diteggiai on the sand.

  I began to roll, plain; then my spherical body seemed to decide him and I came down from the hillock to rout of neck, partly skidding and partly tumbling as a top. It was almost amusing, until I didn't bump a pair of rocks bouncing with some well audible tocs. Slowly I stayed me.

  I was on an open space rich in pebbles of all the dimensions.

  There the wind was more dessert. According to the exabyte I would have had to take a kind of well delimited channel, similar to the bed of a dried up river. And it was exactly probably this: a channel of transudation from the subsoil, as they are often seen on Mars near craters and canyon, rich of the sediments produced by the movement of materials pushed by the waters that once they flowed on the surface of the planet.

  I explained my zampettes and I recomposed me; I would have had to walk enough and the thing didn't miss to worry me. I remembered too well also the admonishments of doctor Berliz.

  I wasted some second to communicate my intentions to the Earth. I doubted that you/they could receive me, with the storm, but perhaps the decrease of the wind made the least prohibitive conditions than that that I believed.

  «Strength Angel» I said.

  I moved a footstep in before making some test to sustain in equilibrium my body. I didn't have a return from the muscles, obviously: to judge as I got by I founded me on the touch of my four hands (or feet) and on the oscillations of my visual field. The limbs communicated me a feedback, a feeling of greater tension, it is true; but I had not gotten used to fully use this new perception yet.

  I sprang me on the gambettes, plain, trying to expand my senses. I mentioned a footstep; the leg stirred in before, but less than that that I waited. I was already moving the second leg and almost with this I stumbled on her/it before.

  I jammed me, pervaded by that feeling of impotence that I had also known well on the Earth.

  I had to have patience, but it was not easy. I was for an emergency there, distant from other helps, only; rather, he supposed that the help ditches me.

  "Calm" I told me.

  I retried. I brought a leg in before, I leaned well the fingers on the ground, feeling the wheats of sand that slipped you through; I brought the weight on the advanced foot, then, when I felt me sure, I used another leg lifting the foot of it. The tactile feeling of my earth skin struck me: I could warn very well the contact with minute particles, but I didn't have any thermal perception. I understood him/it: the physicians had done him he/she waits for, it is not simple to make to manage great excursions of temperature to the human ricettoris. You/they had invented qualcos'altro, that appeared rather unnatural to my eyes.

  My goodness. I had become distracted and I had slipped inserting me in the sand as an ostrich.

  I easily retired me on. I restarted. Before a leg, then the other; well I was firm. Now again the leg of first then the seco". eh, no, don't stumble!"

  I jammed me in time opening the four arts not to fall again. I stayed me a moment. I had walked for around a meter.

  Discouraging, I already felt me tired. I taken back the march, giving me a slow rhythm but to regulate; I didn't fall anymore, but I proceeded as an ill snail.

  After a few minutes notaries a certain improvement: I mostly risked, I used until now now the two arts unemployed to maintain the equilibrium, and, in the worse moments, to arrest the fall pushing me to the insù. I was compassionate, but it discreetly worked. I crossed the gully, that resulted briefer than the expectation, and while I was contemplating his/her fund happened something unexpected: a ray of sun illuminated me the walk.

  It didn't serve me, in reality, if not for the humor: to see around the almost clear of air and above of it did me me to feel better. I looked at forehead: there was a jump of few meters. It seemed a dry fall. I stayed me on the edge and I was amazed: for the first time in that day the sun beat on the vast depression to my feet; it was an almost rectangular area, apparently forty for hundred meters, and it smoked everywhere. Initially I didn't notice him/it: I was fixing down for appraising the entity of the jump that waited me. I looked with the whole range of the ghost, he/she is never known.

  It was then that I perceived me of something indistinct that left the surface of the basin something ethereal and evanescent that salivates dispersing more and more himself/herself/itself in the clear atmosphere.

  I saw the luccichìo above ditches and pits here and there, above the concavity of some rocks: dry ice. The sun struck him/it with its slim strengths; slim, but enough to produce its sublimation. They seemed ghosts shreded that they estranged from me, certainly disgusted by my way of walking.

  Beh, proclamation to the gossips: I jumped of under, refolding the limbs to avoid damages. It was a slow fall, in the low gravity Martian, that didn't bring consequences.

  I came to the calm ground and in the impact I produced a round concavity. I threw me standing.

  I started over walking consulting the exabyte.

  I saw the trace to follow on the screen; I reduced the image of it and I put her/it on one side, to be able to look at her/it in whatever moment. The position of the terrestrial ship was hooped in red. Settecentocinquanta meters, a little anymore. I slowly restarted to walk.

  I was not discouraged, contrarily; I started to feel well me. I had touched the ground Martian from few and I had already had my troubles. I was getting by and I was going to find me company. After all I had my motives to be optimist. And, after all it was correct to feel himself/herself/themselves pleased.

  This was a new thing that gradually budded inside of me, a sort of unusual feeling that I examined in the greatest diligence: with a certain amazement (but it was not this, the feeling in matter) and gratification (it was not even this), I taken to warn a kind of unconditional veneration (h
ere it was this,) toward my four extremities pentadattili.

  «But how beautiful' sti footsies!» I exclaimed.

  I had plunged them both and both to earth to be able an instant to balance me, and I was amazed from their valuable invoice. With one I grabbed another of it, remaining in equilibrium on the others two. I would have had to feel me to risk thud, and I did an instead jumps to the insù and I reverted on the feet. better, on the closed hands to fist. Flexed the braccias and I made the bending (if I/you had stretched her I would have made the stironis), as a good gymnast. But I was brisker and creative: I was standing on an alone leg, passing the weight of the body from a limb to the other, alternatively. This made to rotate the foreman anzichenò but my sight to everything field it made the irrelevant thing; then, instead of making motion on the place, I found more comfort to lean a manopiede thirty more centimeters in there, because there was no need to fold up the limbs. I repeated him/it with the other bracciogamba, and therefore. other thirty centimeters. Oh, I had made sixty centimetruccis without effort some. What a beautiful makeup! I was good, over how pretty.

  «You repeat. you repeat. you repeat.» The starteds; rather The repeated.

  I imposed me a quick rhythm but I don't molest. Even if it didn't make text I would have done soon. I did and I referred (not drawn aside himself/herself/themselves of repeated coprofilia) the exercise more times and I taken to grind meters on meters; in short I did, and I did again meters on meters, and it didn't deal with repeated coprometria.

  I was a wheel now, a beautiful ragnetto semirigido with the bracciogambes steccolite prepared as the rays of a rotellina; the push of the fingers was enough for contact with the ground to maintain the walk and ritoccar the trend: toward right or it misses, but since it misses her/it it missed, I could manage only. The rout was not a problem, I could repair her/it. And God knows if that were a topical moment and sorcino.

  I went to the great one.

  I taken to sing the hymn of Mars; then I realized me not to know him/it, not to have ever felt him/it, to never have known that one existed of it. To be certain that there was not.

  What was I singing, then?

  I had almost come at the end of the hymn of Mars that I had to use the limb of turn to jump a rock. Oplà!

  The bracciogambes were also good dampers. I continued. I reflected: finding me on Mars I morbidly hoped that pits Tuesday. I considered us: it was a thing of which to care.

  I still continued.

  I had the rout on the screen, a plays stupendous; while I was overcoming obstacles and slopes I saw the serpentello that brought to the red circoletto to shorten. The sky was serene, and also me.

  And I had of it well of so that: in the sea of sand there before there was a fantastic toy. Tuutto I polish. mah, burdens polverosetto was, however it was big and straight, with the paunch supported on the sand and four zampettones semischiuse to press on the surrounding rocks: the vehicle of future my companions of games.

  On the anterior portion he/she saw the name: Beatrice. I read him/it (but I was not a dog that returned home) with the tail of the eye, that wagged the tail. I drew near me in religious silence: it was an obviousness, usually who observes the Beatrice of tralice it doesn't tell him/it. The central porthole reached earth, luckily: I was piccoletto me. I came there in a lightning and bussettai. Anybody. You premise three times on the plate of entry and the piastrone it silently flowed leaving that some light penetrated inside the vehicle. I entered, walking as a stool fatato; I reserved me to make only the wheel if there was need of speed.

  Incappai immediately in the elastite. The invisible cloth enveloped me, extending himself/herself/itself; it was damnedly strong, it had to prevent the breathable air to go out. The adhesive surface dressed again me completely also reaching mine wipes away; the cloth lengthened, flowing through the guides that framed the porthole of access. I made a timid footstep to the inside and the cloth it detached him from my body, returning to be a tense membrane; however you/he/she had left me completely covered of the portion of elastite that had enveloped me entering.

  I was inside the ship and I had not wasted a crumb of oxygen. I got torn me the residual film of back and I distractedly threw her/it in an angle: I would have polished up later. The elastite slowly contracted him a becoming they put there translucent little ball for earth, entirely similar to a damp caccola.

  «Cuckoo?!» I did. Silence.

  Gatton crawls I slunk away away, as a cat quatto quatto behind a rape.

  I referred the wheel and runs the ship in long and in wide to my beautiful speed peering at everywhere.

  «How cancelled, the shuttle is empty!» I hooted.

  To go around to that way was boring, I hoped to find someone with which fruzzicare. As soon as I entered the places the lights they ignited. The principal room was the most interesting area. Circular, with a big round table to the center and the various organs of control to the walls. It was at the same time cockpit, room reunions and refectory. In the space the space is precious. I made some turn of the room to all speed, but by now my enthusiasm he was deflated. I, then I put me around four legs, thoughtful.

  «I/you/they have returned again» I told tall voice.

  This time however I remembered every thing of the playful discolo that I had been for some. I was almost present and aware also me in that moments. Or, at least, so it seemed me.

  To let him go had been a lot of profit: it seemed that the my effervescent alter ego succeeded in governing better my hardware of me. I tried to walk here and there: somehow, of reflex I had also become enough able of it me.

  I looked around me. The computers were active; they brought continuously the data on the surrounding world and the state of inside places and instrumentation. The reactor Williamson worked to the least one, correct to maintain the standard conditions of pressure and temperature in spite of the environment conditions Martian. What, besides, they were very you improve: the storm had disappeared, the sand he was ridepositando on rocks and beaches. It was cold as usual, there out, decidedly under the zero Celsius. The ship dissipated a beautiful po' of heat to the outside, even if the surfaces of the vehicle were realized with good insulating materials.

  What didn't result on the screens I could draw me him in other way. I connected me to the interface of the ship and I made the download of the diagnostic one and the file of log; there were no signalled damages, on board, and this was already something.

  The log contained all the meaningful events needed by the beginning mission, those of which the ship had realized, recorded with the time when you/they had happened: opening and closing portholes, lighting and turning off motor, consumption of oxygen, communications of the crew with the Earth. The real dialogues didn't appear, but there were a link that postponed to various files in audio format. There were also endless files video that you/they documented everything that that you/they had noticed the television cameras of the ship, inside and external.

  «Here Angel» I transmitted to the Earth. «They are on the ship. There is no anybody. The storm has passed. I will see to understand where the crew is found.»

  A normal man would have employed a lot of time to gather him: there were the recordings, gigabyte of material to be viewed and to listen to putting all together in handshaking and in chronological order. A mind seriale would have been busy a beautiful. I activated more mental operations in parallel: I began to view the contents of the log opening a window in formed text and flowing her/it rapid thanks to my fast reading; to the meantime I listened to all the recordings audio, not only those with the Earth, but also those among the astronauts themselves, both that these were found out in spatial overall the ship both that they were busy in peaceful talks to his/her inside.

  The third trial concerned the video: us n'erano seven, three from external television cameras, four from those inside. If I/you had been able to use my faculties with all calm, I would have employed the same time for which trip and permanenc
e of the personnel had lasted on Mars: different days.

  But I didn't have different days. I increased at the most this way the speed of reproduction of the whole possible files, over which intelligibility would have gone to make to also be fried for me. I overcame my record: I brought forth six trials accelerated in parallel, more a seventh that had to put all the data together, to syncronize them, to order them for chronology and obviously to understand them. What a work, boys!