Boundary 1: Boundary (49 page)

"Cool, fine, but what is it, and is it dangerous?" Madeline was a bit nettled by the uninformative reaction. Her instinct was that anything you didn't understand could be dangerous, so you needed to understand it fast.

"Corona discharge," Joe answered. "Mars' atmosphere is almost as thin as the pressure inside a neon light tube. Close enough that if you build up electrical charges, they'll jump long distances. It's not dangerous to us, though. The rover's insulated, and when you go through the lock those handgrips you're required to hold make sure that if you did build up a charge outside, it gets equalized. But it could be a pain in other ways. Also might give us some other phenomena to see later."

Momentarily they broke back into sunlight, looking up at a slice of bright pinkish sky surrounded by the spinning sand clouds. Madeline was not the only one to exhale in relief.

Somewhere in the middle of that, without her remembering having done so, she discovered that her hand was holding Joe's. It was the first time there'd ever been any physical contact between them in public. Even in private, there hadn't been much, since their reconciliation. For reasons that were still obscure to her, Madeline had not been willing to move quickly, in that regard.

Fortunately, Joe hadn't pushed the issue. Madeline wasn't sure why, since it certainly wasn't a lack of sexual attraction. As the days had passed and she'd gotten to know him better, she'd decided that the explanation was very simple. Joe was smart enough to know that he wasn't smart about things like that, so he was willing to let her take the lead and set the pace.

She felt very warm, for a moment, and gave Joe's hand a squeeze.

Then they reentered the storm.

"It sure looks impressive," A.J. said. "But it's just a bunch of hot air."

Helen slapped him playfully.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to shock you. I was just trying to make a comment about current events."

"Okay, that's enough," Joe said sternly. "Give him his discharge."

Madeline snatched her hand away. "God help us! Helen, we're doomed. Months of this, we're facing! Their jokes were bad enough, but now—
puns, too
?" She almost wailed the last two words.

Helen shook her head gloomily. "I know. We'll just have to breeze through it."

Ignoring the aghast look on Madeline's face, the paleontologist leaned forward and asked Bruce: "How far have we got to go?"

"We're in the home stretch, luv. Judging from the maps and all, we've got about fifty klicks left and we're knocking on the front door."

"So we'll be there sometime tomorrow?"

"Right around six, local time."

"Then day after tomorrow we'll be looking for the base."

"As long as we don't get in any more trouble. Keep your fingers crossed."

Madeline almost did cross her fingers, even though she was generally even more sarcastic about superstition than Helen was. But there really wasn't any reason to do so, that she could see, even if she were so inclined. Since their desperate juggling of rockets and fuel back at
Pirate
, they hadn't encountered any significant problems. The accurate intelligence from both ground and orbital sensors allowed Bruce to follow a carefully plotted course with minimal major obstacles. All he had to do was make sure he didn't run them into a gully or a too-big rock, and he was more than good enough to manage that even on the slightly hairier parts of the trip so far.

She decided a celebration was in order. "Then I say if we do make it all intact, we open one of Joe's special dinners and throw ourselves a party. It's been one hell of a trip, and we're going to be living pretty frugally for the next few months."

"I'm up for that," Joe agreed cheerfully. He took advantage of the thaw to snaggle Madeline's hand back.

His concussion had apparently had no lasting effects, fortunately. He no longer suffered from excessive sleepiness or dizziness, and the leg was already showing some signs of healing. Dr. Wu was a bit concerned about how strong the bone would wind up being, since it would be healing in one-third gravity throughout. But, obviously, there wasn't anything that could be done about that. At least Joe would be contributing to science in the process, being the first human bone injury healing in low gravity conditions.

"I think that's got a unanimous 'yes' vote coming, Madeline," A.J. said. "Especially from those of us who're going to be working lots of overtime."

"Then put it on your social calendars. First official rest day on Mars."

"I hope I can find a date."

"Oy, don't taunt those of us who know we won't get one," grumbled Bruce.

"Don't complain; you're a flyboy. Your problem's trying to get away from them."

"Right. Tell that to Tammy, would you? Make sure you do so from a distance. She throws a mean skillet."

A couple of hours later, darkness forced Bruce to stop for the night, still not far from the kilometers-high wall of the Valles Marineris. "Time for a bit of dinner, and then the last run tomorrow."

Joe distributed their strictly limited rations—enough to live on, not enough to get full on—and they ate. Madeline was deliberately slow in her eating. She wanted to give her body the maximum chance to realize that, yes, it really was getting fed, even if it wasn't getting as much as she'd like.

Joe had finished already and was looking out the south-facing port. Suddenly, he stiffened. "Hey, Bruce, kill the lights."

"Why? What's up, mate?"

"Just do it."

A chill ran down Madeline's spine. What did he see? There couldn't be anything out there that cared about lights.

Could there?

Reflexively, the hand she still had free went to where, in times past, she'd have kept a gun.

If she had one now, which she didn't—and a fat lot of good it would do even if she did. Was she going to shoot through the port, with nothing out there but very, very thin air, almost all of it carbon dioxide?

The lights went out and they were plunged into pitch blackness, only a faint glow to the west marking where the sun had gone down.

"What is it, Joe? What'd you see?" A. J. demanded. The tone of his voice showed that he, too, found the situation unsettling. "There's nothing out there!"

"Not quite. Take a look."

As her eyes adapted to the darkness, Madeline suddenly realized that it was not totally dark through the port. A phantom glow shimmered in the distance; then, seemed to move toward them.

"Holy . . ." she breathed, and heard some of the others mutter something similar.

"What the hell
is
it?" asked Helen tensely.

But Joe's answer seemed simply fascinated. "Look carefully."

Now Madeline could see several glows, like immensely tall distant columns, flickering faintly with a violet radiance.

Violet
. . .
?

"It's like the dust devil. But what's moving at this time of night?"

There was a sound of a hand smacking a forehead. "Dust falls! Of course! Dammit, Joe, don't scare us like that!"

Now that A.J. had named it, Madeline could see that the motion wasn't really toward them. That had just been an optical illusion, partly brought on by nervousness. Instead, it was a downward flow; a gentle and impossibly slow water-falling motion.

"A.J., if you let your imagination run away with you, I can't help it. There's nothing alive on Mars. Well, maybe some bacteria somewhere, but that's it. The dust falls through the air and picks up charge just like we did, and discharges it during the fall. No ghosts involved, just physics."

Joe's voice suddenly dropped an octave. "Although . . . There
is
the legend of Old Bemmie, who wanders these canyons in search of his missing tentacles . . ."

Children. That's what they are, overgrown children. Why am I falling in love with him? Why is Helen in love with that other juvenile delinquent?

Finding no logical answer, she sighed and continued staring out at the ethereal glow in the distance.

"Not ghosts," she said. "Fairies."

"That's a good name," A.J. said, seriously. "
The Faerie Falls of Mars
."

"Logged," Bruce said a moment later. "First tourist attraction to take anyone to see, I'd say. A beauty, that is."

They watched for a while in silence, as Mars put on a show for its first visitors in sixty-five million years.

They arrived in the vicinity of Target 37 right around the time Bruce predicted, but the next several days had to be devoted to unloading the rover and setting up a base camp before they could even think about searching for the alien ruins. The most pressing business was to bury the extra fuel tank they'd brought from
Pirate
in order to provide the container with insulation and keep leakage down. They'd probably lose some of the fuel to outgassing, no matter what they did, but this way the loss would be minimal.

Once the fuel was hooked up to
Thoat
's generators, they were assured of months of refrigeration and compression. Hopefully, they'd be rescued before they had to return to
Pirate
for more fuel.

Even more hopefully, the extra fuel they'd brought from
Pirate
would never be needed at all, much less a return trip to the lander. It would simply remain there as an emergency backup. As soon as the fuel tank was buried, they started setting up the most critical pieces of equipment they'd been carrying in the rover—the reactors initially developed by Ares Project which would use Martian raw materials to manufacture the water and oxygen they'd need, along with providing them with a self-sustaining fuel supply in the form of methane.

The reactors they'd brought with them, of course, were considerably more sophisticated—not to mention expensive—than the "Ruth, Ferris, Porky, and Ethyl" prototypes originally built by Project Ares. After NASA had more or less absorbed Ares into the drive to reach Mars as soon as possible, the powers that be at NASA had wisely decided to simply adopt Ares' designs rather than start from scratch. But, with the money NASA had available to throw at the problem, by the time
Nike
left orbit the reactors it carried on board were at least three generations more advanced than the originals.

Within two days, the reactors were up and running with no hitches—and all six of the humans on Mars heaved a collective sigh of relief. So, just as heartfelt, did the crew of the
Nike
. Whatever happened now, so long as
Nike
could figure out a way to provide them with food, the people stranded on Mars could survive indefinitely.

The next task was to set up the "bubbles." Those were the aerogel-insulated hemispherical tents that would provide them with far more living space than they'd had aboard the rover. They'd continue using
Thoat
's kitchen and sanitary facilities, of course, since the bubbles had no cooking provisions at all and "toilets" that were essentially just very high-tech chamber pots. But they'd have far more room and, even more importantly, personal privacy.

Finally, they removed the rest of the equipment and supplies and stored them in the bubbles. Only then, after working like beavers for five days after arrival, did they enjoy the little party they'd promised themselves.

By that time,
Nike
was relaying down what seemed to be a veritable avalanche of congratulatory messages from Earth. Most of them were not even from people and organizations directly connected to the space program.

After reading one message, sent by the faculty and student body of a university in a Chinese city that Helen had never even heard of, it dawned on her that they were famous. And not "famous" as in "tabloid meat."

Famous.

When she said as much to Ken Hathaway, in one of their conversations, the brigadier general just laughed.

"Are you kidding? Helen, I don't think you have any idea. The crash-landing of
John Carter
and your subsequent trek to safety at Target 37 has been the lead story in every media outlet on the planet since it happened. NASA tells me they think more people in the U.S. are watching the news about it every night than watched the Super Bowl."

"You're kidding." She stared at the screen, an empty feeling starting to come to her stomach.

Famous . . .
Really
famous . . .

"Nope, not kidding in the least. We're only sending down a smidgeon of the messages that are pouring in."

God help me. The tabloids were bad enough.

She had a sudden nightmare image of herself trying to conduct a dig somewhere in Montana—with a crowd of spectators surrounding the site.

"I'm a
paleontologist
," she half-wailed. "How will I be able to keep doing my work?"

"Um. Well, as to that . . . I can tell you, for sure, that at least you won't have to worry about collecting a salary any more. I haven't sent them down, since it seems pointless at the moment. But I can tell you that what looks to be every major garment manufacturer in the world is engaged in a bidding war to get you to be their spokesman. Last I saw, the top offer was fifteen million dollars."

He paused, momentarily. "Well, 'spokes
woman
,' I guess I should say. Emphasis definitely on the gender. Seeing as how the main interest seems to be—"

"Nooo—"

She
did
wail, that time—and felt her stomach fly south for the winter.

"Yup. Their new projected lines of swimwear."

"I'm almost forty-three years old, for God's sake!"

"Yup," Ken's cheery voice continued, relentlessly. "I guess that explains why—near as I can tell—every cosmetics company in the world launched their equivalent of World War Three too. Women entering into middle age are apparently the biggest clientele for cosmetics, at least measured in terms of the money they spend—and you just became the poster girl for all half a billion of them. Last I heard, the cosmetic companies' bids were up to—hold on, I'll check with Jackie—"

He was back in seconds. "Eighteen and a half million, she says. She asks me to pass on that she recommends the offer that wants to market the stuff under the title 'Helen of Mars.' I do agree with her that they came up with the niftiest slogan:
the face that launched the greatest ship of all.
"