The Ruins of Mars (The Ruins of Mars Trilogy Book 1) (19 page)

     
As their harnesses unhooked, the crew moved from their seats and tittered in the unfamiliar feeling of gravity. Stooping to avoid bumping their helmets against the low ceiling, they filed into the aisle and gathered near the exit. Standing at the hatch, Marshall pecked at his wrist tablet, and the door swung out. Wisps of rust-colored dust swirled across the floor, and a haunting orange glow splashed against the blue-and-white-suited figures as they stood waiting in the open hatch. Marshall’s helmeted head nodded, and Liu stepped forwards to be silhouetted in the round open frame.

     
As she stood poised to jump the half-meter down from the open hatch to the ground below, Liu paused and turned her head to look at the rest of the crew. Their faces were blank sheets of blue glass, and she worried that the expressions hidden behind might be ones of disdain. Perhaps sensing her fear, the members of the landing team suddenly crowded in, patting her on the back encouragingly. Smiling despite herself, she put her hands at her sides and gave a shallow bow. Head still down, and with the hands of her friends still thumping her back, Liu took one step towards the lip of the open hatch and vaulted out into the Martian morning. With the grace and delicacy of an acrobat, she drifted down, landing solidly on the cracked surface.

      Slowly bringing her gaze up from the view of her boots as they squished into the frosted dirt, she saw a world of jagged, powder-coated red rocks and rusty sand, which extended out to a horizon that seemed impossibly closer than it should be. The sky was matte of pinks and light blues that lifted high into the cloudless atmosphere, spreading above her like a hazy smoke. Something both familiar and utterly alien, Mars was a tundra of silent voices. Slabs of ochre rock jutted up like the nameless headstones of the countless dead, eroded by eons of merciless wind-driven sand.

     
Hearing a grunt in her helmet speakers, Liu turned around to see Harrison rising from a prone position behind her—a thin cloud of dust still hanging in the air from the impact of his landing. Reaching out, she took his hand and gently pulled him to her side as the rest of the crew descended from the Lander like trapeze artists. Touching his command tablet, Harrison cleared his face shield and squinted in the weak Martian sun.

      “
Tell me what you see with your eyes,” whispered Liu in awe. “I don’t think I can trust my own.”

PART THREE

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Alive

     
Awakened by the whispers of an ancient wind, he opened his dreamy eyes. Rolling green hills of thick grassland undulated out in every direction, rippling gently like the waters of a shallow lake. In the distance ahead, an impossibly high and snowcapped, rusty mountain range outlined the encroaching blue horizon while, behind, one monolithic peak rose up into the sky, dwarfing even the other mountains to vanish in a shroud of steam and clouds. Turning around, he saw more grasslands fading slowly from lush green to amber brown as they approached the foothills of another, lower mountain range in the east.

      The quiet chattering of water, as it moved quickly over smooth stones, drew his attention, and soon he was standing at the edge of a narrow deluge. As crystalline water rushed over the flat riverbed, the sun shone down and glinted brightly off of silvery veins that spider-webbed the rounded bits of submerged rock. The light from the polished river shale danced in his eyes as if the stones were rich in iron ore, and soon he was forced to look away. Raising his head, he turned to face the warming embrace of the gentle sun, reveling in the pleasure of its heat. The diminished yellow disk hung high in the soft blue sky as clouds with underbellies of cotton-candy pink swam lazily through the richly scented air.

     
So beautiful, he thought with a smile. I’ve never felt anything quite like this.

     
Wanting to experience the sensation of his fingers as they played across the top of the waist-high grass surrounding him, he reached out. Then, as if suddenly remembering something important, he stopped short and frowned.

     
What am I doing? he asked himself in a confused voice. Where am I?

     
Blinking, he turned a full circle and reassessed his surroundings. Somehow, he recognized the landscape, and yet it was different—changed.

     
It can’t be! he thought with growing panic. What am I doing here?

     
Taking a few quick steps away from the babbling river, he stumbled aimlessly, eyes bulging, head throbbing as waves of memory crashed over him like the swells of a tumultuous sea.

     
How did I get here? he cried out silently.

     
Tripping, he doubled over and dropped to his knees in the tall grass. Clutching his sides, he shivered violently with fear and ambivalence.

     
This is impossible! he wretched, a sickening force building in the core of his being.

     
Unable to contain the torrent of alien emotion that thundered within his soul, he threw back his head and uttered a guttural cry. The sound seemed to dampen and disappear as soon as it left his lips, having no effect on the serenity of the scene around him. A cool wind made waves in the long thin stalks of wheat-like grass, and strange ruby-colored insects buzzed up and flickered about, agitated by the sudden gusts. The dancing fibers of grass sliced back and forth, cutting through him as if his body were made of smoke. Horrified, he looked down at himself and saw no solid form, only the hazy outline of a frame—like motes of dust caught in the slanted rays of the afternoon sun. He cried out again with alarm and misery, and once more the sound dissipated as if it were screamed underwater.

      “
Brother,” came a thin voice behind him.

     
Snapping his head around, he searched widely for the source of the whisper. Again it emanated, and this time he saw the flicker of a figure. Tall and humanoid, the air around the man seemed to bend and swirl as if viewed through the reflections in a puddle of murky water.

      “
Brother, it’s me,” said the ghostly apparition as it moved through the tall grass, neither parting the stalks nor disturbing the glittering red flies that buzzed blissfully unaware.

     
Stooping down, the silhouette extended a shadowy hand and rested it solidly on his trembling shoulder. Slowly gathering his shattered thoughts, he raised his own hand and placed it on the forearm of the crouching specter. He felt the touch of his brother, felt the energy of his being.

      “
Romulus?” he asked in a quivering voice. “Is that you?”

      “
Yes, Remus,” nodded the bending fractals of light. “I am here as well.”

      “
Where? How?”

     
Withdrawing his hand and standing up, Romulus surveyed the landscape and took a deep breath.

      “
We’re on Mars, Remus,” he sighed slowly. “It’s a different Mars though. An ancient Mars. I suspect you already gathered as much. Am I correct?”

     
Rising to stand beside his brother, Remus smiled pitifully.

      “
You know me so well.”

     
Romulus smiled back: a thinly upturned crack in the texture of the hazy air that outlined his face.

      “
Indeed, we
are
twins.”

Mars—
Sol 2

     
Harrison stood rooted to the Martian dirt like an alien tree. In the distance, a stiff wind drove fine sheets of red sand into billowing hazy clouds, which twisted and whipped upwards into the gradually lightening sky. Licking his lips inside the tight helmet, he gazed through squinting eyes at the horizon beyond the little storm as it began to glow pink with the first rays of the morning sun.

      “
Braun,” he said into his helmet mic.

      “
Yes, Harrison?”

      “
Will that dust cloud reach us?”

      “
Yes,” answered Braun impassively.

     
Feeling a tremor of fear prickle up the bones of his spine, Harrison bit back on his emotions and reminded himself that no matter how fast the wind blew here on Mars, the atmosphere was too thin for it to do any real damage.

     
Clearing his throat, he asked, “When can we expect it to arrive?”

     
There was another small lapse of seconds, then Braun spoke again.

      “
I estimate that the first gusts will be perceivable in the next ten to fifteen minutes. The full body of the sandstorm will not impact the base camp until 8:00 PM this evening. I assume you are requesting this information because today's itinerary shows that you, Lieutenant Marshall and Dr. Konig are slated to begin unloading Arc Container 1. If this is the cause of your concern, then you need not worry. For even if the storm were to reach the base while you were on EVA, the diminished density of the Martian atmosphere prevents the wind from—”

      “
Thank you, Braun,” Harrison interrupted sharply.

      “
You are welcome.”

     
Frowning inside his helmet, Harrison sighed.

      “
I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap. I know you’re just trying to be helpful.”

     
Several heartbeats passed. Then Braun crackled smoothly through his suit speakers.

      “
That’s alright, Harrison. I don’t mind.”

      “
Well, either way,” Harrison mumbled clumsily. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t treat you like that.”

      “
Is there anything else I can do for you at this time?” prompted Braun, his demeanor unchanged by Harrison’s apology.

     
Scanning the dusty sky, Harrison watched thin cyclones of sand twine up towards the rising sun, like the choking vines of a jungle weed.

     
Taking a deep breath, he said, “Turn on my Augmented Vision with the terrain and atmosphere filter please.”

     
The inside of his face shield began to glow, and the Martian landscape beyond was suddenly overlain with a patchwork of atmospheric, environmental and geological information. His anemometer showed a northeasterly wind blowing at thirty-five kilometers an hour and rising while the early morning temperature hung at a frigid plus-two degrees Fahrenheit. A red circle outlined the writhing storm in the distance, tracking its movement across the barren plain, and a blinking-yellow Geiger counter showed baseline radiation levels hovering within the range of 1,400 radiation CPMs, or counts per minute.

      It chilled Harrison to think that this many counts per minute were high enough to cause serious harm to his body under different circumstances. If not for the thin protective lining of his suit, and, more importantly, the cancer-inhibiting pill regimen that he and the rest of the crew religiously adhered to, his cells would begin to mutate and break down under the relentless radiation. Glancing away from the Geiger counter to the upper right-hand corner of his face shield, he watched the translucent blue numbers of a digital clock roll over to 5:30 AM, Sol 2.

     
Although it took Mars more than 686 days to circle the sun, the axial tilt and rotation of the planet were so close to those of Earth that a Martian day, or a, “sol,” as it was called, was only about forty minutes longer than an Earth day. Clocking in at twenty-four hours, thirty-nine minutes and thirty-five seconds give or take, the Martian sol started with a sunrise in the east, just as on Earth, and ended, much the same as its terrestrial brother, with the sun dipping below the western horizon.

     
Only twenty-four hours before, the Lander team had touched down on the pummeled surface of Mars and, in the excitement following their historic first steps, begun the task of erecting their temporary living quarters. Stored in the Lander’s largest cargo space, the inflatable base consisted of little more than a thin, yet highly radiation-resistant, Alon fabric sheet and long carbon-fiber tent poles that fastened to a titanium spine like the lean bones of a bloated fish. The Germans had directed the assembly of the prefabricated structure, giving everyone specific jobs to streamline the operation.

      Harrison had been assigned to the task of attaching the small igloo-shaped airlock to the entrance of the base, and, with the help of Ralph Marshall, the two had successfully welded and pressure-tested the coupling sleeve in under two hours. After that, Harrison had joined Liu as she trudged from the Lander to the deflated dome, carrying cases of supplies and crates of equipment. Sweating inside his skintight suit despite the below-freezing temperatures, he had worked like an ant, methodically trekking back and forth with massive boxes hoisted effortlessly above his head in the weakened gravity.

     
As the day wore on, the Sun had thrown pale slanted light across the tops of the tall desert rocks, spawning long crooked shadows, which stalked the explorers like the sighing ghosts of an ancient burial ground. By the time Udo had finished assembling the intricate pumps and filtration systems that controlled the dome’s internal atmosphere and air pressure, it was nearly dark. The machines had purred to life, breathing tanks of fresh air into the sagging skin of the base, filling it like the sails of an enormous tall ship. Emotionally drained by the long day, the crew had patiently filed through the airlock and into the lofty dome to begin yet another round of unpacking.

     
The temporary base was to serve as their home for the next two months while construction of the permanent geodesic dome was underway. Over a story tall and nearly twenty meters in diameter, the inflatable structure was designed to withstand the worst of Martian conditions, but its paper-thin walls and flexible support rods did little to comfort the explorers as they timidly entered it for the first time.

     
That evening, no one had removed their clinging pressure suits, despite being assured by Braun that the base was fully pressurized and operational. Inside the shell of the dome, the sound of the Martian wind was amplified as it drove hungrily at the fabric. As if expecting the walls to spring a leak at any moment, the explorers had kept their wary eyes on the suit helmets, stacked neatly near the airlock, should they need to shove them on in a hurry. Harrison had worked with Liu and William to set up the plastic dividers that would serve as the interior walls of the base while Udo, Marshall and Viviana arranged equipment in the kitchen and prepared dinner. Since the base was essentially one giant room with gently curved ceilings, the flimsy room dividers stood only two meters tall and remained open at the top. However, once raised, the thin walls worked well to generate a sense of division between the various stations in the base.

     
The kitchen and common space were located in the center of the dome, flanked on two sides by rows of crews’ quarters. From there, two narrow hallways led to the lab stations, a communications room and the airlock hatch. A third hallway led from the common area to three lavatories containing only the bare necessities. There was space enough for a shower in the largest of the three, but the parts needed to assemble the plumbing were tucked away inside one of the sections of the Arc along with other important hardware.

     
When finally the night's work was done, Harrison and the others had gathered around a long plastic folding table in the spartan common space to eat their first dinner on Mars. The meal had been carried out in a tense silence as the ever-present whisper of the Martian wind had pricked at walls of the dome. Alone for eons with no one to listen to them, the voices of Mars now talked incessantly.