FEBRUARY 2,2018
THE NEXT DAY CRAWLED. MARC AND JULIA SLEPT LATE IN RED ROVER, exhausted and depressed. Breakfast was a silent meditation over acidic coffee and warmed-up instant oatmeal with hard knots of raisins.
Neither felt like waxing long over comm on the events in the vent. Julia made a brief report and they didn't answer the comm as they drove back south through the pingo hills.
When they reached the classy Airbus rocket, proud tower in the ruddy midday, there was nobody home. Or so it seemed.
Claudine saw them from the pingo two hundred meters away, where she had been hooking the hoses into the autodriller.
She came running. “I thought work was best, to keep from thinking,” she gasped over comm.
“It was …” Julia did not know what to say. “Strange. They died in some way we do not fully understand.”
“Viktor called, told me, last night. I wanted to be out in the open today.” She looked drawn through her faceplate, eyes hollow.
“At least Earthside can't reach you while you're in your suit,” Marc said. “Come on inside.”
Claudine walked around the rover with an awkwardness that Julia knew would go away within another week in 0.38 g. The blue-suited figure pointed toward the rocket. “Maybe I should go into the ship first. I want to shower, change—”
“Nah,” Marc said. “We'll take you to the hab. Shower there.”
When Claudine came inside she marveled at some of the rover's “customized” features—a scent catcher, cool water spigot, self-warming meal dispenser; all Raoul's retrofitting.
Only then did Julia call Viktor. “Let's have conference,” he agreed.
On the ride they spoke little, and mostly of Mars, of landscape, of the many small ways to adapt to a world that is always trying to kill you.
When they came into the hab Axelrod was on the screen.
“—hold steady there, guys. We've got a good horse to ride now, Airbus can't think they've got much in their hand. You should see how stiff their lawyers’ faces are now! And my engineers, they figure no way can she fly that package back alone—”
Viktor cut it off and turned to them. “Welcome.” Some ritual condolences, all in tones soft and hushed. Viktor embraced Julia. They moved to where Raoul had already prepared a high tea, appropriate for late afternoon. On the wall the big screen reverted to the exterior scene, shadows stretching across the cluttered landscape that was the human signature upon the rusty plains beyond.
“He is right,” Claudine said. “I cannot fly the ship by myself.”
“Chen, he must have talked about how severely the life-support apparatus is limited,” Viktor said.
“He did,” Claudine said. “We can take only four.”
“Not five, not at all,” Viktor said. It was a question.
“Not possibly.”
“Then he was telling the truth,” Marc said. “We weren't sure. I mean, where did he think you'd get the fuel?”
She blinked. “Why, the ice.”
Raoul pressed, “You didn't want the methane?”
“It is yours. And we would have to move the ship to land nearby … too dangerous, such a close landing.”
“So I believed,” Viktor said mildly, quite obviously not looking at Marc and Raoul.
“So one person must stay,” Claudine said dejectedly. “Unless we all do.”
“What?!” Raoul said loudly.
“To load the ship with water will take drilling, steam cycling, pumping … and we do not have Gerda.”
“I can handle that,” Raoul said quickly.
“Sure, we'll all pitch in,” Marc added.
“Of course,” Viktor said. “That is a given. I wish to discuss one principle, before we go to details.”
Claudine frowned. “I do not understand how we can plan the return flight.”
“Principle is,” Viktor said soberly, “we decide here all such matters. Not Axelrod, not Airbus. We.”
They all nodded.
They went back in force to recover the bodies.
Julia had made the case for it, expecting opposition, but there was none. “We can't let the mat get into the suits,” she said anyway. “It may find a way to breach them. Intermingling cells, who knows what damage that could do?”
Plus it could mess up doing clean science down there!
Only then did she think of the more humanitarian reason—the way Earthside would play it, of course: a decent burial.
Five Earthlings, two rovers, and three winches strong—the team of four prepared with aching detail. Viktor remained in Red Rover, to keep Earthside informed and to brood. His ankle was still not up to a major job.
They brought every spare air tank on the planet. Triple-checking every step, they planned meticulously and in the first leg of the descent made no mistakes. Raoul and Claudine unjammed the Airbus winch so they had enough lifting power to make the recovery possible. In the end it wasn't that difficult.
As she lowered into the vast main chasm Julia felt a prickly sensation returning, a feeling she had not had the time to register before. Not fear, not curiosity … something with wonder in it: awe.
The mat was dim, hardly glowing at all. Their beams did not excite it. “Maybe it's exhausted from the last time,” she said to Marc as the two lowered themselves gingerly. “Plants have a recovery time.”
“You said it's not a plant.”
“Right. But basic metabolic laws should apply. Anaerobes are not as efficient as oxy users.”
The big valve they had found open, and so left Raoul and Claudine above it. Insurance, and to handle what was to come.
“I sure don't want to wake it up,” Marc replied, dimming his hand beam.
The bodies did not seem to have changed at all. To all sides the mat lay like a dim, dormant rug. It did not seem to have swarmed further over the suits. The blue filaments were flaccid. The mist was less dense, and she got a clearer look at them. They looked more like giant tube worms than linguine. So much to learn.
But today was not for science.
Julia was cautious as they attached clasps and ties and stays to the Airbus lines, hovering over the bodies, but no awaking radiance rose from the surrounding mat.
They gave the signal. The Airbus winch labored to break free of the mat that encased the suits. They both came out with some hard pulling and the mat slithered away, collapsing below. Still no luminosity from it.
They rose together up into the misty atmosphere of the enormous vault. She longed to study it, watch its reaction to their breathing exhaust. As they neared the valve membrane some shifting colors came through the fog, as if from distant features. She still had no idea how far away the walls of this huge place were. It could go on for kilometers, part of an underground web of intricate implications …
They got the bodies through the narrow passage of the valve—and she was sure that term did indeed describe its function. Somehow the mat kept this region thick with vapor, and by ordinary gas dynamics that could not be sustained for long. The valve must cut off the losses to the surface, manage this eerie environment. A pressure lock.
But how did it know to close? How to respond to pressures and moisture densities? She was convinced that the glows and gas densities somehow carried messages, organizing this whole shadowy realm.
Raoul and Claudine were of great help in maneuvering the bodies around the edges and angles of the ascent. They were all careful of the bodies, working almost without speaking up through hundreds of meters of the vent. Sunlight beckoned above like a promise and she felt a surge of an odd, joyous energy. Still, when they got back to Red Rover, they were all exhausted.
“It's the spookiness does it,” Raoul remarked. “I never figured on that.”
“Who could?” Marc said tersely.
They rested and ate in the hab. Inevitably, reaction from Earth-side had to be at least considered, though no one felt in the mood. Billions were jostling to peer through the media knothole at five people many millions of miles away … who didn't much want to talk, thank you.
On her personal slate she saw that Airbus had accused her and a Consortium conspiracy of “driving the two to their deaths” because she wouldn't share her Marsmat samples.
Axelrod's PR people had been massaging the events, issuing a list of reasons to retrieve the bodies: salvage the suits; not contaminate the Mat; most featured: “It's just not right to leave them there.”
She glanced at the immense backup of files and shuddered. “ALIENS KILL TWO ON MARS!” screamed the tabloids.
In all, it was like reading a barely understandable foreign tongue.