The Martian Race (26 page)

“There's sure as hell a lot of biomass here.”

“Wonder if any of it's edible.”

“Hungry, huh?” They both laughed, a bit tensely.

At turns in the channel the mats were the size of a man. She took a lot of shots with her microcam, hoping they would come out reasonably well in their lamp beams. Gray and translucent, under direct handbeam she could see her hand through one.

These forms owed their origin to the warm, moist eras of the Martian antiquity.

The mats—and what else?—lived in such labyrinths as this, all around the globe? They could harvest the moisture billowing from heat below, and perhaps melt the permafrost nearby. At the edges of Earth's glaciers lived plants that actually melted ice with their own slow chemistry.

The thermal vents and their side caverns could be extensive. With an exposed surface area as big as Earth's, there was plenty of room for evolution to experiment.

Marc whispered, “Nothing like this pale ivory cavern on Earth. For sure.”

Ruled as it was by boisterous, efficient aerobic life. Anaerobes had long ago retreated to inhospitable niches like hot springs and coal mines. In that infertile ground they survived, but remained as microbes, spawning no new forms. On Mars, oxygen-loving forms never evolved. The atmosphere escaped too soon.

Julia gently caressed a mat as it lazily floated on the vapor breeze. Plants, flourishing in the near vacuum. She could never have envisioned these …

She dropped down a few more meters, blinking. How much was she seeing and how much was just illusion?—the product of poor seeing conditions, a smudged helmet view, her strained eyes—

“Hey. Time.”

She felt her fatigue as a slow, gathering ache in her legs and arms. Experience made her think very carefully, being sure she was wringing everything from these minutes that she could. “How far down are we?”

Marc had been keeping track of the markings on the cable. “Just about one klick.”

“What's the temperature?”

“Nearly ten. Almost toasty. No wonder I'm not feeling the cold.”

“This vent could go down kilometers before it gets steam-hot. And we've just reached the cavern level.”

“Julia …”

“I know. We can't go farther.”

“It'll be a long, tough climb out. Soon be dusk up there.”

Be getting deathly cold on the surface, and fast, yes.

She was on a small ledge, about five meters below Marc. A strange longing filled her.

“I know. I'm not pushing for more, don't worry. Biologists need oxygen, too.”

Automatically she started to cut a small sample out of the closest mat, a thick hanging curtain suspended just within reach. It was surprisingly tough, like thick kelp. She found she was puffing with the exertion. Her suit exhaled with a slight hiss. Suddenly the mat whipped around, pinning her against the rock wall. She was in the dark, as if someone had closed a thick curtain in front of her.

Marc responded to her yell. “Jules, where are you? I can't see you.”

“Here!”

“You're behind that mat?”

“Yeah.”
Breathe deeply, speak clearly.
“Must be some kind of reflex reaction. I was trying to take a sample, and this hanging mat slammed against me.”

Training reasserted itself. Marc answered in calm astronautspeak. “What is your position? All I can see is the cable.”

“I'm standing on a small ledge, being held against the wall by a lot of mat stuff. Can't see anything.”

“Still got your scalpel?”

“Negative. Must've dropped it. It wasn't much good anyway. This stuff is tough.”

“You say it moved. Did it fall on you?”

“Negative. It swung around.” She had a quick thought. “It must be suspended from above. Can you see how?”

There was a short pause. “It's hanging from what must be a hinged branch just below me. The branch protrudes from a thick trunklike structure close to the wall.”

She struggled ineffectually. “Try to make it move away again. I'm pretty stuck. And I don't want to risk burning out my winch motor.”

“What do you suggest?”

“Kick it!”

She could hear his breathing over the suit radio. Reassuring, somehow. He was only a meter away, but she couldn't see a damn thing but the blotchy pattern on the mat.

“Unh! Unh!
Anything happen?”

“Negative. What'd you do?”

“Thunked it with my boot a couple times. Didn't seem to have any effect.”

“Well, something I was doing caused it to move.”

“How do plants move, anyway? No muscles, no nervous system.”

“Don't know that this is a plant. Still, even plants on Earth can move. Lots of ‘em track the sun, and some can instantly collapse their leaves in response to a stimulus.”

“Oh yeah, I remember that, uh, sensitive plant from botany class.”

“But there's a downside. They have to grow the leaves open again, and it can take days.”

“Cheery thought.” There was a short pause. “Say, there's another one of those brown spots forming on your mat. It must be your suit exhaust.”

The thought struck both of them at the same time.

“Hey, what about—”

“Yeah, I'll try a short blast from my intake.”

“Marc? Just tease it with the oxygen. We want it to twitch, not collapse.”

“Right.”

The seconds ticked slowly by. Then she heard, “Okay, I'm in position now. Ready to start. One-second jet coming up.”

The mat pressing against her shuddered.

“It just twitched.”

“I barely grazed it. I'll try a couple more short blasts—”

There was a sudden feeling of lightness. The mat heaved violently away from her. Her helmet was hopelessly smeared.

“Climb, Julia! Quick!” Marc shouted.

“I can't see. Visor's smeared.” She grabbed the lines to be sure they were unsnarled. A quick command to the winch cranked her up. “Tell me where I'm going.”

“Go! You're coming up alongside it. Good! Just keep coming up. Okay, you're level with the hinge. If you clear it you're home free— Yes! you're clear!”

She struggled on another couple of seconds, then stopped, sweat pouring off her face, suit fans humming. “Wow, hot on Mars. Surely a first.” She felt curiously exhilarated and exhausted at the same time.

“We've got a one-klick climb ahead of us.”

“I know. I'm okay. Just gotta clear my visor. I want to vid that hinge, then we can go. What incredible stuff we've found!”

She went into automatic drive on the way back. Run the winch, negotiate around the ledges and rocks, run it some more. Steady does it.

They stopped for new tanks at the ledge, took another food break, then finished the climb. They didn't say much. Astronaut training; talk breaks concentration, which you need all the more as you tire.

But she could feel her mind working in the background, processing and sorting all the new information. When she sat down to write her report, it would all be there.

It was dusk when they reached the surface. She climbed up into a ruddy sky darkening in the east.

The residual moisture on their suits froze to rime and fell from their suits as a dusting of snow. The flakes fumed away within seconds.

Marc dismantled and stowed their climbing rig as she carefully settled her precious samples, sealed safely away from their oxygen atmosphere. She was already planning how to culture them in the greenhouse.

Then they were off, Marc carefully following their tracks back to the hab.

They'd squirted the briefest of “we're back” messages before making final preparations for leaving. Now, a mug of hot tea in hand, she started to put in a call to base.

The radio crackled to life. “Company is coming,” said Viktor.

“Where?”

“They are being, what you call it?—coy.”

The next hour they were silent, letting Red Rover's sway massage them. Marc heated up a thick beefy soup and they wolfed it down. In the dark she moved the rover more carefully, following the microwave reflector telltales they had dropped on the way out. The pilot program kept her on track pretty well, so all she had to do as they approached the pingo hills was keep an eye out for really large rocks. The rover's ranging radar did a fair job at that, too, but they had had enough near scrapes during night drives to made her cautious.

She was peering out the forward port—calling it a “windshield” was too much of a compliment to Red Rover's speed—and so was the first to see it.

A hard, hot fire moving in the sky.

Marc had seen it too. “Airbus,” he grunted.

A boom slammed into the rover, startling her. “Shock wave?”

“Reentry profile, lessee—that puts them maybe twenty klicks up,” Marc said.

“Through their aerobraking, for sure. Pretty low, wouldn't you say?”

“Yeah. Bright as hell!”

“Nukes run hotter.”

“We're seeing the exhaust plume. It's squashed, see, pushed back by ram pressure.”

“Look, I can see its light reflecting on the ship.”

A shiny silver needle atop a ball of orange fire.

“It's close!” Marc stood up in excitement.

“Going to land at our base?” She thumbed on her mike, preparing to tell Viktor.

“No, look, it's—we can see it clearly! It's coming
here.”

“That's crazy!”

But true. The fireball came steadily down, slowing, prowling across the cold night sky sprinkled with unwinking stars. The plume's brilliance made the stars fade as it got closer. They craned to look up as the blaring light arced toward them.

“It's coming down wrong!” she shouted.

“They must be off-target. Shooting for the hab, but fifteen klicks north.”

“We copy,” came Viktor's voice.

“It's coming down in the pingos,” she spoke into the mike.

“Wait, it's stopped.” Marc pressed his face against the port. “Hovering there.”

Sand and pebbles rattled on the rover. A steady roar was getting louder—the sound of the rocket exhaust.

Julia realized that they were still moving, on autodrive. She turned to face directly toward the hard, fierce flame that hung on the horizon, then stopped the rover. The plume came lower, kissed the soil.

“It's maybe a klick away from us,” Julia called to Viktor. “You figure it somehow locked on our carrier wave, mistook it for the hab?”

“Dumb mistake, if so,” Viktor said.

“It's hovering,” Marc called. “Maybe they're confused.”

A big rock tumbled into view of their headlights. Hammering grit rained on them. Abruptly a loud
smack
rang out and she saw the glass before her face starred with thin white lines.

“Turn around!” Marc said. “It's blowing a lot of crap around.”

She steered them sideways, enough to still see through the small side window and not expose the forward port. “Viktor, it's still just hanging there.”

“No,” Marc said, “it's drifting to the south.”

“Looking for a landing spot?” Viktor called.

Pebbles sang against the roof. “Nobody would take this long to land,” Julia said.

“Look, fog!” Marc pointed.

“Clouds under the plume,” Julia reported to Viktor.

“Sure is not dust?” Viktor asked.

“No, it's white!” Marc shouted.

Julia remembered the fog in the vent. “Water!”

“They are using water rocket?” Viktor said. “Axelrod's agents, they say the fuel is something else—”

“There wasn't any fog before, not on the way down,” Julia said. “This is new.”

Big billows of creamy clouds boiled out from beneath the gemlike flame. They reflected the brilliant light upward and she could see the shiny ship holding steady, several hundred meters off the ground, coasting slowly away to the south.

The ship slowed, hovering over the crown of a hill.

“The pingos!” Julia cried. “It's blowing all the dirt and rocks off them, burning through, exposing the ice buried in them.”

Pebbles clattered against the rover skin, then eased away. Suddenly more fog burst from beneath the plume.

The roaring exhaust got louder. The ship coasted away again.

“It's opening up several of them,” Marc said wonderingly.

They watched, dumbfounded. Again, after a moment's intense blowtorching of a pingo, white clouds jetted up.

“It's moving again,” Julia reported. “No, wait—coming farther down. Dropping.”

The radiance spread out at the base of the ship. “Landing! It's setting down.”

The roar muted, abruptly fell silent.

Her ears rang. Even in the thin atmosphere, huge sounds could carry.

“They're here. Landed,” Marc whispered.

For a moment no one spoke. Julia blinked in vain to get the afterimages from her eyes.

Viktor said, “Solves a minor technical question. What fuel will they use to go back? Water.”

She was dumbfounded. “What?”

“They took the trouble to save labor. No need to drill, like us. Blow off top of pingo.” Viktor chuckled in appreciation.

“My God,” Marc said. “They're going to fly home on Martian meltice.”

Viktor said, “Is very intelligent. I will have to compliment their captain. If they let us come aboard.”

PART III

OUTPOST MARS

20

JANUARY 20,2018

S
HE SPLURGED ON WATER
. B
EFORE BREAKFAST SHE TOOK A LONG WARM
shower, even longer than last night's. Not exactly champagne, but a festive gesture.

The day down the vent in a cramped suit reeking faintly of old sweat—despite the new self-cleaning liners—had left her with aching muscles. Not so much from all the grunt work, but a suit never let you get the best leverage. The designers had never fixed the basic problem that most of the suit's weight hung on the shoulders. She had built hers up into hard slabs of muscle, these last 500 days, but they always wailed. Untended to, they got other muscle groups to join in the concert.

Long experience had taught her to pay attention to her lower back pangs. She had one big goal: to study the vent samples she had waiting outside in the greenhouse. Worrying hurts could throw off her pace and judgment.

She dialed for steamy-hot water plus blue-ion gouts to stimulate her. When she reluctantly quit, she stepped out into one of her thick towels (a personal mass expense) and onto one of the few sensual details worked into the otherwise Spartan bathroom. The bath mat was cleaning up when she came out, but did not mind being stepped on. It crawled with cilia-like fibers, sopping up droplets, tissue shreds, and emitted a little oxygen to boot. It was actually a hybrid creature: fibers in the top of the mat had embedded algae, much like a polar bear's furcoat. The algae were gene-engineered to photosynthesize maximally from the special full-spectrum lights in the hab. This produced more oxygen than the bottom fibers used in their cleanup work.