Aurora (15 page)

The “eggs” gleamed dully.

Softly, as though they might wake someone, they moved over to the semicircle of ovoids. Each was nearly a meter and a half long and, while they looked as if they should be translucent, it was impossible to see anything of their contents—assuming there was anything to see, that they weren't just solid.

Beaumont wiped his hand over one of them as though clearing a misted or dusty car windscreen, but whatever was making the “egg” opaque was either inside or a quality of the material, for his efforts had no effect. There was no dust inside the ship except what they'd brought in with them.

Orlov, noting there was a faint line running around the midpoint of each ovoid, tried to pry one open. His efforts, too, were wasted.

He looked questioningly at Aurora.

Sighing, she placed her bare hand on the nearest egg. Soundlessly and smoothly, the upper half swung upward. They all stared, speechless.

Inside was a baby.

A tiny human baby, no more than a few months old, its eyes closed, its tiny hands clenched.

“
Close it!
” ordered Orlov sharply.

Aurora simply pushed the lid down, and it remained that way.

“We don't do any more until we have Robert with us,” said Orlov.

“Hibernation!” cried Beaumont. “It
has
to be. That would explain how the craft could be so small! It had no crew except that woman—the pilot—who was perhaps trying to get help after they crash-landed. But it carried lots of babies in hibernation so that when they reached a suitable planet....”

“Let's leave the theorizing until later,” said Orlov. “But you might like to consider how
human beings
came to be visiting Mars from another star. And there's still the question of what fuel this ship used. Look how much space is taken up by these...these incubators. Or deep-freezes. Whatever.”

“Well, that's obvious—” started Beaumont.

“Enough!”

The Russian put on his helmet, and it was obvious from his expression that he expected the others to do the same. As they left the chamber the light inside faded away behind them.

When all were fully suited up, he nodded to Aurora.

The band on the Beacon was an intense red-black that made Aurora think of infrared. The light hurt her eyes, as if it were shining far more brightly than she could see. She concentrated on thinking of the canopy open.

It did start opening, but then, like the door panel, it stopped. Even half-open, however, it gave them plenty of room to climb out.

Orlov looked back down into the cabin before he slid off the side of the vessel to the ground. “I was just thinking,” he said to no one in particular, “that this cockpit was open for quite a while before we came back and closed it—before Anne closed it. You'd have thought at least some dust and sand would have blown in and piled up on the floor.

“Interesting.”

* * * *

Lundquist, via the relay on the rim of the canyon, reported that Minako and Verdet had made good progress and were almost back at Base Camp. He had the impression that they had fallen out over something. Verdet was obviously curbing his comments.

Told about the discovery of the baby, Lundquist wanted to come straight out. But by the time they had returned with the one rover, grabbed new supplies and pliss packs, then turned around and came back to the ship, it would be sunset. Lundquist wanted to do it anyway, pointing out that the alien ship had its own lights; but Orlov vetoed the idea.

“Better to make a fresh start tomorrow,” he said. They all sat down to take some food and liquid before the trek back to the Igloo. Purple shadows crawled up the canyon wall.

* * * *

That evening, most of their time was spent listening to and sending messages to Earth. The public at large might not yet have heard about the discovery of the babies but it was making the most of what it did know.

The established churches were divided on Aurora's healing powers, some sects wanting to canonize her, others wanting to have her exorcised as an instrument of the Devil. The Church of Jesus Christ Astronaut wanted her to agree to be its new Leader, and was aggrieved when Aurora refused. They were said to be considering adopting the dead female astronaut in her place. Perhaps the spaceship had been Mars's own Star of Bethlehem—only it had crashed?

Many Christians saw no problem with the human appearance of the woman. Had not God created Man (and presumably Woman) in His own image? they asked. So wouldn't the people He placed on other planets also be in His image?

“Poor old Darwin must be turning in his grave,” commented Beaumont. “And what will the Christ the Astronaut lot say when they hear about our babies? A whole cargo-load of Baby Jesuses!”

To everyone's surprise, Orlov turned on Beaumont angrily and grabbed his shoulders.

“I've had about enough of your snide remarks!” he shouted, his cheeks red. “All scientists aren't atheists, you know. Me, for example. I'm not ashamed of my religious beliefs, even if I do usually keep them to myself. Do you really think our wonderful Cosmos came into being by accident?”

He subsided as rapidly as he'd erupted, his arms dropping to his side.

Aurora drew Beaumont away to sit beside her. “You know, you
have
been rather a pain in the arse today, Bryan,” she said. “Why don't you cool it now?”

His only answer was a glare.

Aurora knew something of Orlov's background; of how his father had been an elder of the Russian Orthodox Church, serving directly under the Patriarch of Moscow. The old man had kept his faith despite his life being made a misery during the attempted suppression of religion by the Communists, but lived just long enough to see the revolution that had taken place in the early 1990s, with the collapse of the Soviet Union setting millions of his fellow-countrymen once again free to observe their religious practices. The events of the past few days must have been very difficult for Orlov—especially having Beaumont's perhaps unintentionally tasteless remarks to cope with on top of everything else.

“Sorry,” said Beaumont barely audibly in Orlov's direction, having apparently thought all this through for himself.

They went to their bunks that night in a subdued mood. They squabbled among themselves often enough, usually half in jest, but serious flare-ups were rare. The Igloo seemed much smaller than usual, the walls encroaching, the air heavy.

“WE HAVE A PROBLEM....”

Next morning Verdet called in to say that all was well back at Base Camp. He and Minako had collected everything on their list, and were about to return. Orlov started to fill them in on what had been happening, but Verdet, oddly, interrupted to point out that they had seen and heard most of the exchanges with Earth on the main comm desk. He did not seem to want to elaborate, and he did not put Minako on the air to them.

Meanwhile Mission Control was still relaying the news and views from their home planet:

Anthropologists have so far been quite unable to come up with a tenable hypothesis for the presence of an apparently human female astronaut on Mars. The great public out there are not so restrained, though! One of the favorite theories is based on Erich von Däniken's ideas, first put forward in the nineteen-sixties. Sometimes these are modified so that the ancient “gods”—who were of course, according to von Däniken, alien astronauts—responsible for everything from the Pyramids to the lines on the desert at Nazca, which were runways for spacecraft, and who took away cavemen from Earth fifty thousand years ago. The descendants of those deportees have now returned, having grown up among and been educated by the aliens. Got that?

Another favorite is Atlantis. According to fans of the lost continent, refugees from the ancient super-civilization escaped in spacecraft just before their volcanic island blew its top and vanished without trace below the waves, leaving only the scattered isles of Thera. They found a habitable planet of another star, colonized it, and their descendants are now coming back to explore the Earth. Their first attempt, eighty years or so ago, may have failed—but they'll try again!

Quite why they went to another star instead of just moving to another continent on Earth doesn't seem clear.

None of these theories is being taken seriously by the scientific establishment, of course, but you have to admit there could be some seed of an explanation buried in some of them—and, as I said, no tenable “serious” ideas have come up yet. But you guys can rest assured that we're working on it. I guess you are too, huh?

Mission Control,

over and out

“I can think of another theory,” said Beaumont. He had regained his good humor, though relations between Aurora and himself were definitely strained. “It's not new, of course, but what if humankind—all life, even—was originally brought to Earth from another star system? It didn't have to come on a spaceship, it might have somehow “seeded” itself—spores drifting through space—that Martian meteorite even!—that kind of thing, anyway. There'd be no need for parallel evolution then. We'd all have evolved from the same stock.”

“I can't buy that,” snorted Lundquist. “Life in the near-vacuum of outer space, drifting between the stars?”

But Beaumont was warming to his theme. “Yes, why not? Suppose an Earthlike planet blew apart for some reason—a nuclear war or something. We know that life
can
exist in a vacuum, and at extremes of temperature—look at those still-viable spores that were found on
Surveyor
by the astronauts on Apollo—Apollo 12, I think it was. Yes, the second Moon landing. And how some desert plants and even animals, like that frog, can encapsulate themselves and remain dormant for years and years, until the rains come.

“Well, look, there has to be some explanation for what we've found, doesn't there? It's no use throwing out every suggestion just because it sounds a bit way-out!”

The others nodded tolerantly.

* * * *

This time all four returned to the alien craft, leaving the comm desk on automatic. Orlov, Lundquist and Aurora climbed in through the half-open canopy, leaving Beaumont outside as a safety precaution—though whether there was anything useful he could do if they got trapped inside seemed doubtful. He seemed happy to dowse a few areas he had so far missed. It was obvious to Orlov that Aurora was equally happy that Beaumont should be some distance away from her. The big engineer thought
Lovers' spat
to himself and made no comment.

The door panel was still open, just as they'd left it.

“See? There's still no trace of dust anywhere—not even what we must have brought in with us yesterday,” he said. “I think there has to be an automatic vacuum cleaner somewhere.”

“Now why doesn't that surprise me?” murmured Lundquist.

Aurora stripped off her glove and used the Beacon to close the canopy over them. After allowing time for the cabin to pressurize, they doffed their suits.

As they entered the chamber, the lights again brightened.

Orlov tried to see where the air had come from, but there was no sign of a ventilator or duct. He turned his attention instead to the floor, and started carefully pacing from the dully gleaming ovoids to the center of the cockpit.

“I thought so,” he said. “The cabin and chamber don't take up all of the space inside this ship. There's an outer ring. That would explain where the propellant goes. Or went. Or maybe it houses some sort of drive mechanism. There's room there for
something
, anyway.”

Lundquist made for one of the “eggs” and tried, like Orlov had yesterday, to pry the top open.

“I'm afraid Anne's the only one with the magic touch,” said the Russian with a smile.

Aurora put her hand on the first ovoid, and it opened as before. Lundquist at once peered closely at the infant inside, and applied various instruments.

“The baby's about three months old,” he said almost immediately. “But it's not hibernating, alas—it's quite dead. Perfectly preserved, though, as you can see. And the limbs are still flexible, the flesh soft.”

He peeled off the baby's one-piece garment, which was of a very soft grey-white material with a pearly sheen. “It's a he,” he said. Freeing the tiny foot, he pointed. “See? The toes—they're like the woman's. Stubby, and virtually joined together. And with hardly any nails. Strange.”

He frowned, then said: “Anne—could you open another egg, please?”

She did so. This time the dead body was that of a girl, of about the same age and in exactly the same condition as the boy.

She opened another five before they stopped. Of those opened, four contained boys, three girls. Their apparent ages varied between two and six months.

This puzzled Lundquist. “If this is some kind of starship, carrying a crew in hibernation, I'd have thought they'd be bred specially, and all be the same age. But then what do I know?”

“A crew of babies?” asked Orlov.

“Well, the usual thinking is that they'd grow during the voyage, even though ‘asleep', so that after, say, fifteen or twenty years at a speed somewhere near that of light, they'd be old enough to start colonizing a new planet. The ship itself would be almost entirely automated, of course.”

He moved one of the pathetically small corpses. Aurora fought back the urge to vomit as the tiny limbs splayed like those of a raw chicken on its way to the oven, but Lundquist seemed unperturbed as he leaned forward again to examine the interior of the empty capsule. He was about to speak once more when Beaumont's voice sounded tinnily from his helmet, lying nearby.

“I forgot all about him!” Lundquist whispered embarrassedly, picking it up.

“I said, ‘That wouldn't work',” Beaumont drawled. “I was thinking about it yesterday. Those—coffins—they aren't big enough to allow for growth. Unless we assume the containers are organic in some way and are supposed themselves to grow, or something really alien,” he added. “No. There isn't room in the chamber for that.”

“I was about to say the same,” muttered Lundquist, looking slightly aggrieved. “And also, apart from a sort of absorbent area below the babies, which seems to have acted as a sort of super-diaper, there's no sign of any waste-management system such as you'd need on a really long voyage.”

“I'll tell you something else,” came Beaumont's voice again. “If those babies were supposed to grow up...and, now that I think of it, why
didn't
they? Their age means the system must have gone wrong soon after they left home, yet that woman arrived alive and able to go out on the surface. Where was I? Oh yes, if they were supposed to grow older and be able to colonize some presumably uninhabited world when they arrived, shouldn't there be some sort of learning system along with them? I mean, I can accept sleep-learning, but I didn't see any sign of a gadget to do the educating. Can you?”

“Would we be able to recognize it if there was?” asked Lundquist.

Even so, he and the other two re-inspected the two babies and their opened capsules. Sure enough, there was no sign of speakers, electrodes, screens, or anything that might have represented a sleep-learning system. Lundquist told Beaumont as much—adding irritably, as he hefted his helmet yet again, that they would have to install a better communication method between the inside and the outside of the craft.

“They may be human-
looking
, but it's all so alien,” sighed Orlov while this exchange was going on. He'd been prowling around the chamber, prodding at the walls away from the row of cocoons.

“I've found another of those depressions,” he said suddenly, placing his palm in it. “Anne? Could you oblige?”

Aurora placed her hand in the little recess, and tried to visualize a door ajar. The problem was, she didn't know exactly where the door might open, or what it would lead to. She glanced through the open entrance to the cabin, where she could just see the Beacon, its band still glowing—though more faintly, perhaps? While the image of the open door was still in her mind, the panel under her hand vanished. In its place there was a suddenly large open rectangle.

She had a momentary view of brown rock and what appeared to be a sand dune—but at the same moment there was a thin howling sound as air started to rush out of the chamber. A freezing sensation numbed her limbs.

For a moment she panicked, and started to dart towards her spacesuit. The others, their eyes wide, began to pick up their helmets. Then, realizing what she must do, she created a vivid mental picture of the door panel closed.

And it was.

Within moments the air was back up at full pressure again. The temperature, thankfully, also rose. They had all started to shiver.

“Whew! That was close,” breathed Lundquist.

From the helmet he was again holding came Beaumont's voice, loud and anxious.

“Hey! Can you hear me? What's going on in there? Dust and sand suddenly started erupting from underneath the ship! Did you start up the motors or something? Are you all right?”

Orlov laughed, a little shakily. “Yes, thank you, Bryan. Sorry about that, but we just opened another door—and it led into the damaged section and nearly let all our air out!”

“Oh, is
that
all? Well, I guess that's a relief. I wonder what used to be in that space? We haven't found anything that would fit.”

“Hmmm. Good point. Keep looking!”

Turning to the others, Orlov said, “There doesn't seem to be a lot more we can do in here, apart from taking lots of video and stills to send back to Earth. Won't they just love this!” He gestured towards the control cabin. “But maybe we can get something working in there. Or perhaps Anne can. After all, there seems to be power somewhere. The lights and air still work.”

Beaumont's tinny voice said, plaintively, “Can I come in there with you? Honestly, I just can't concentrate on doing anything else out here. And it doesn't look as if I can be of any use outside, does it? The controls of that thing seem to be in Aurora's hands.” It was the first time he had called her by that name publicly, but nobody seemed to notice.

“We'd have to open the canopy and repressurize,” said Orlov. But the others agreed to take pity on Beaumont; if the controls could be made to work it would be a great pity for him to miss the fun. So the two men donned their helmets and Aurora put on her suit, her right hand still free.

She imagined the canopy open. The red band brightened momentarily, and the dome started to open, jerkily, seeming to dematerialize a few centimeters at a time. Air began to whistle through the gap.

Which got no wider than about eighteen centimeters, then stopped.

She tried again. The space doubled, but staunchly refused her efforts to make it any larger than that.

Orlov tried to push his way out.

The band went dull black.

“Damn! This is useless!” said the engineer, still trying to squeeze his chest through the gap.

Lundquist pushed the glove onto Aurora's hand.

Orlov cursed again, this time in Russian. “I can't get out through here!” he growled angrily at Aurora.

“It's not my fault,” she snapped. “It's all down to that thing.” She pointed at the now lifeless Beacon.

The Russian calmed down. “Yes. I apologize. Let's see if someone smaller can get out. You first, Anne.”

She pushed her helmet and shoulders through the gap. “No way,” she gasped.

Lundquist came to the rescue. “It's our plisses that are the problem. We can unclip them. There'll be quite enough air in our suits and helmets to get out—as long as we clip the plisses right on again outside. Bryan, it'd be good if you could help. We'll pass them out to you.”

Aurora and Lundquist were soon outside, plisses back in place. Then it was Orlov's turn.

As he had feared, his bear-like figure would not pass through the crescent-shaped space, no matter how he wriggled and pushed.

He tried one final heave and—

“I'm stuck!”

The combined efforts of the three others could not pull him through. At last they were able, however, to push him back in.

He sank into one of the control chairs, panting with exertion, and re-attaching his backpack with difficulty. “Now what?” he growled, sweat streaming down his face and dripping from his beard, his faceplate misted.