The City and the Stars / The Sands of Mars (57 page)

There was another long silence. They reached the limit of the dome and stared across the glimmering Martian landscape, dimly lit by the radiance spilling out from the city.

“I’ll have to think it over,” said Hadfield, turning to retrace his footsteps. “Of course, a lot depends on how quickly things move.”

“Any hints yet?”

“No, confound them. You never can pin scientists down to a date.”

A young couple, arms twined together, strolled past them obliviously. Whittaker chuckled.

“That reminds me. Irene seems to have taken quite a fancy to that youngster— what’s his name— Spencer.”

“Oh, I don’t know. It’s a change to see a fresh face around. And space travel is so much more romantic than the work we do here.”

“All the nice girls love a sailor, eh? Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you!”

That something had happened to Jimmy was soon perfectly obvious to Gibson, and it took him no more than two guesses to arrive at the correct answer. He quite approved of the lad’s choice: Irene seemed a very nice child, from what little he had seen of her. She was rather unsophisticated, but this was not necessarily a handicap. Much more important was the fact that she had a gay and cheerful disposition, though once or twice Gibson had caught her in a mood of wistfulness that was very attractive. She was also extremely pretty; Gibson was now old enough to realize that this was not all-important, though Jimmy might have different views on the subject.

At first, he decided to say nothing about the matter until Jimmy raised it himself. In all probability, the boy was still under the impression that no one had noticed anything in the least unusual. Gibson’s self-control gave way, however, when Jimmy announced his intention of taking a temporary job in Port Lowell. There was nothing odd about this; indeed, it was a common practice among visiting space-crews, who soon got bored if they had nothing to do between trips. The work they chose was invariably technical and related in some way to their professional activities; Mackay, for example, was running evening classes in mathematics, while poor Dr. Scott had had no holiday at all, but had gone straight to the hospital immediately on reaching Port Lowell.

But Jimmy, it seemed, wanted a change. They were short of staff in the accounting section, and he thought his knowledge of mathematics might help. He put up an astonishingly convincing argument, to which Gibson listened with genuine pleasure.

“My dear Jimmy,” he said, when it was finished. “Why tell
me
all this? There’s nothing to stop your going right ahead if you want to.”

“I know,” said Jimmy, “but you see a lot of Mayor Whittaker and it might save trouble if you had a word with him.”

“I’ll speak to the Chief if you like.”

“Oh no, I shouldn’t——” Jimmy began. Then he tried to retrieve his blunder. “It isn’t worth bothering him about such details.”

“Look here, Jimmy,” said Gibson with great firmness. “Why not come clean? Is this your idea, or did Irene put you up to it?”

It was worth traveling all the way to Mars to see Jimmy’s expression. He looked rather like a fish that had been breathing air for some time and had only just realized it.

“Oh,” he said at last, “I didn’t know you knew. You won’t tell anyone, will you?”

Gibson was just about to remark that this would be quite unnecessary, but there was something in Jimmy’s eyes that made him abandon all attempts at humor. The wheel had come full circle; he was back again in that twenty-year-old-buried spring. He knew exactly what Jimmy was feeling now, and knew also that nothing which the future could bring to him would ever match the emotions he was discovering, still as new and fresh as on the first morning of the world. He might fall in love again in later days, but the memory of Irene would shape and color all his life— just as Irene herself must be the memory of some ideal he had brought with him into this universe.

“I’ll do what I can,” said Gibson gently, and meant it with all his heart. Though history might repeat itself, it never did so exactly, and one generation could learn from the errors of the last. Some things were beyond planning or foresight, but he would do all he could to help; and this time, perhaps, the outcome might be different.

CHAPTER

11

T
he amber light was on. Gibson took a last sip of water, cleared his throat gently, and checked that the papers of his script were in the right order. No matter how many times he broadcast, his throat always felt this initial tightness. In the control room, the program engineer held up her thumb; the amber changed abruptly to red.

“Hello, Earth. This is Martin Gibson speaking to you from Port Lowell, Mars. It’s a great day for us here. This morning the new dome was inflated and now the city’s increased its size by almost a half. I don’t know if I can convey any impression of what a triumph this means, what a feeling of victory it gives to us here in the battle against Mars. But I’ll try.

“You all know that it’s impossible to breathe the Martian atmosphere— it’s far too thin and contains practically no oxygen. Port Lowell, our biggest city, is built under six domes of transparent plastic held up by the pressure of the air inside— air which we can breathe comfortably though it’s still much less dense than yours.

“For the last year a seventh dome has been under construction, a dome twice as big as any of the others. I’ll describe it as it was yesterday, when I went inside before the inflation started.

“Imagine a great circular space half a kilometer across, surrounded by a thick wall of glass bricks twice as high as a man. Through this wall lead the passages to the other domes, and the exits direct on to the brilliant green Martian landscape all around us. These passages are simply metal tubes with great doors which close automatically if air escapes from any of the domes. On Mars, we don’t believe in putting all our eggs in one basket!

“When I entered Dome Seven yesterday, all this great circular space was covered with a thin transparent sheet fastened to the surrounding wall, and lying limp on the ground in huge folds beneath which we had to force our way. If you can imagine being inside a deflated balloon you’ll know exactly how I felt. The envelope of the dome is a very strong plastic, almost perfectly transparent and quite flexible— a kind of thick cellophane.

“Of course, I had to wear my breathing mask, for though we were sealed off from the outside there was still practically no air in the dome. It was being pumped in as rapidly as possible, and you could see the great sheets of plastic straining sluggishly as the pressure mounted.

“This went on all through the night. The first thing this morning I went into the dome again, and found that the envelope had now blown itself into a big bubble at the center, though round the edges it was still lying flat. That huge bubble— it was about a hundred meters across— kept trying to move around like a living creature, and all the time it grew.

“About the middle of the morning it had grown so much that we could see the complete dome taking shape; the envelope had lifted away from the ground everywhere. Pumping was stopped for a while to test for leaks, then resumed again around midday. By now the sun was helping too, warming up the air and making it expand.

“Three hours ago the first stage of the inflation was finished. We took off our masks and let out a great cheer. The air still wasn’t really thick enough for comfort, but it was breathable and the engineers could work inside without bothering about masks any more. They’ll spend the next few days checking the great envelope for stresses, and looking for leaks. There are bound to be some, of course, but as long as the air loss doesn’t exceed a certain value it won’t matter.

“So now we feel we’ve pushed our frontier on Mars back a little further. Soon the new buildings will be going up under Dome Seven, and we’re making plans for a small park and even a lake— the only one on Mars, that will be, for free water can’t exist here in the open for any length of time.

“Of course, this is only a beginning, and one day it will seem a very small achievement; but it’s a great step forward in our battle— it represents the conquest of another slice of Mars. And it means living space for another thousand people. Are you listening, Earth? Good night.”

The red light faded. For a moment Gibson sat staring at the microphone, musing on the fact that his first words, though traveling at the speed of light, would only now be reaching Earth. Then he gathered up his papers and walked through the padded doors into the control room.

The engineer held up a telephone for him. “A call’s just come through for you, Mr. Gibson,” she said. “Someone’s been pretty quick off the mark!”

“They certainly have,” he replied with a grin. “Hello, Gibson here.”

“This is Hadfield. Congratulations. I’ve just been listening— it went out over our local station, you know.”

“I’m glad you liked it.”

Hadfield chuckled.

“You’ve probably guessed that I’ve read most of your earlier scripts. It’s been quite interesting to watch the change of attitude.”

“What change?”

“When you started, we were ‘they.’ Now we’re ‘we.’ Not very well put, perhaps, but I think my point’s clear.”

He gave Gibson no time to answer this, but continued without a break.

“I really rang up about this. I’ve been able to fix your trip to Skia at last. We’ve got a passenger jet going over there on Wednesday, with room for three aboard. Whittaker will give you the details. Good-bye.”

The phone clicked into silence. Very thoughtfully, but not a little pleased, Gibson replaced it on the stand. What the Chief had said was true enough. He had been here for almost a month, and in that time his outlook towards Mars had changed completely. The first schoolboy excitement had lasted no more than a few days; the subsequent disillusionment only a little longer. Now he knew enough to regard the colony with a tempered enthusiasm not wholly based on logic. He was afraid to analyze it, lest it disappear completely. Some part of it, he knew, came from his growing respect for the people around him— his admiration for the keen-eyed competence, the readiness to take well-calculated risks, which had enabled them not merely to survive on this heartbreakingly hostile world, but to lay the foundations of the first extra-terrestrial culture. More than ever before, he felt a longing to identify himself with their work, wherever it might lead.

Meanwhile, his first real chance of seeing Mars on the large scale had arrived. On Wednesday he would be taking off for Port Schiaparelli, the planet’s second city, ten thousand kilometers to the east of Trivium Charontis. The trip had been planned a fortnight ago, but every time something had turned up to postpone it. He would have to tell Jimmy and Hilton to get ready— they had been the lucky ones in the draw. Perhaps Jimmy might not be quite so eager to go now as he had been once. No doubt he was now anxiously counting the days left to him on Mars, and would resent anything that took him away from Irene. But if he turned down
this
chance, Gibson would have no sympathy for him at all.

“Neat job, isn’t she?” said the pilot proudly. “There are only six like her on Mars. It’s quite a trick designing a jet that can fly in this atmosphere, even with the low gravity to help you.”