“Which reminds me, we’d better send off some flares to let somebody know where we are.” Glen picked up some of the rocket flares and “drifted” out of the bubble tent. He set up a flare on its tripod legs, pointed it at Mars’ ruddy face and pulled on the release catch. But it wouldn’t move.
“It’s jammed!” Glen tried another rocket and got the same result. Then another, and another. They were all useless, all the catches warped, possibly from having been kept too near a heat source in the ship.
“How are we going to signal Mars now?” Skip asked.
“Anything we toss out will be drawn to the planet by its gravitation,” Glen was thinking out loud.
“How about throwing out some of the extra supplies we have?” Skip proposed. “We can attach a note.”
“It’s a million-to-one shot they’d be found. Don’t you realize that only a fraction of Mars has colonists? No, I’m afraid we’d wait here until doomsday if we had to count on that.”
“But what else is there to do?” Skip’s eyes were round with dread.
Glen fought down his own sudden despair. “It looks as though we’ll have to get to Mars on our own, Skip.”
“Now you’re crazy! We’d be smashed to pieces!”
“Not the way I’m thinking.” A plan was forming in Glen’s mind, as he scrambled into the bubble tent and came out with one of their engineering books. Skip watched in amazement as Glen began working math problems in the dirt with a piece of stone.