Labyrinth of Night (24 page)

She immediately opened her mouth. ‘No, don’t bother to deny it,’ he added quickly. ‘I spotted you…but not before you heard everything that was discussed. I suppose.’

The astrophysicist glared at him and didn’t say anything for a moment.
‘So you caught me, Mr Nash…’
she began.

‘Damn straight.’ It was pointless to tell her that he had been bluffing; the fact that she had used his real name was confirmation enough. ‘So why don’t we end this charade and you tell me why you’re here?’

Sasaki thought it over for a few seconds.
‘All right,’
she replied at last.
‘Not now, though. Once we’re underway and we’re alone together, we can talk.’

‘Fair enough. At least we’ve got that part settled.’ The dust was almost gone now. Nash glanced at the indicator panel and saw that the LED bar was creeping closer to the green line; he clapped his hands a couple of times and noticed that the sound wasn’t quite as muffled. The pressurization cycle was nearly complete. ‘Switch back to One,’ he said as he reset the comlink to its original channel.

Boggs’ voice came over the comlink at once.
‘Hey, where did you guys go?’

‘Over to another channel,’ Nash said. ‘I wanted to tell Miho a dirty joke.’

‘Won’t work, buddy. I’ve told her all my best ones and she wouldn’t laugh or anything.’
Nash noticed that Miho blushed when he said that.
‘As soon as you two get out of there, come straight to the flight deck and get yourselves strapped in. Don’t even bother to take off your suits first. The wind’s still rising and I’m getting itchy.’

‘We copy,’ Nash said. At that instant the airlock buzzed; the panel lights flashed green. Nash and Sasaki unlatched their helmets and removed them, storing them in lockers along with their gloves. Miho pulled off her Snoopy helmet and shook out her hair, then undogged the hatch to the passenger section and shoved it open.

The passenger compartment was about the size of a mobile home. A narrow passageway brought them to the gangway leading down to the gondola; Nash caught brief glimpses of the bunks, the galley, the wardroom and the miniature laboratory before Miho led him down into the flight deck. Boggs was sitting in the forward left seat, a headset clamped over his trademark George Dickel cap; he barely looked up as Nash squeezed past him and plopped into the co-pilot’s seat on the right, while Sasaki took the passenger seat behind Boggs. ‘Took you long enough,’ he grumbled. ‘I was beginning to wonder if I was going to have to come back there with a bucket of cold water.’

‘Waylon…’ Miho began.

‘Sorry, kiddo. Don’t mind me. I’m always an asshole before I fly.’ Boggs carelessly dropped the clipboard he had been holding onto the floor. ‘Listen, Nash…shit, I mean Andy…’

‘Don’t worry about it.’ Nash found the straps and buckled them around his waist and shoulders. ‘That’s what we were getting straight back there.’ He glanced over his shoulder at Sasaki. ‘Right, Miho?’

‘Right…August.’ Again the slight, quickly-vanishing smile.

‘So we’re all friends here. ‘Bout time.’ Boggs looked as if he had eaten lemons for breakfast; Nash wondered how
his
hangover was treating him. ‘Okay, I didn’t expect you to know how to co-pilot the thing on your first go-round, so it’s all programmed auto on your side of the bench. Sit back and enjoy the ride…if we get out of here, that is.’

As he spoke, Boggs’ eyes were sweeping across the myriad digital and analog dials on his dashboard. He glanced at a board beneath his left elbow and swore under his breath. ‘Hey, Skip!’ he snapped into his headset mike. ‘Skip, you hear me?’ He paused, listening for a moment. ‘Listen, man, I got a red light telling me the rear maintenance hatch is still open…yeah, that one. You want to get somebody back there and close it or what?’

He cupped his hand over the mike and cast a sour glance at Nash. ‘Ground crew,’ he muttered. ‘They’re always leaving the blamed hatch open. I swear, if I didn’t have idiot-lights to tell me what’s going on…’ He stopped and listened again, looked down at the board to verify that the warning light had gone off, then unclasped the mike. ‘Okay, thanks. I owe you one.’

Boggs grasped the twin throttle bars next to his right thigh and pulled them down one-quarter. There was a slight vibration and a rising drone as the turboprops revved up. He glanced again at the center flatscreen, which showed an overhead computer simulation of the airship on the landing grid, then touched the lobe of his headset.

‘Akron
to Arsia
TRAFCO.
We’re vectored for launch and ready for cast-off, you copy?’ He listened for a moment. ‘Thanks, Jeri. We’re on our way. I’ll bring home some M & Ms. Over.’

Through the wide wraparound window, Nash saw the forward mooring cable detach from the pad-wrench beneath the airship’s bow; it was quickly dragged across the hangar floor and pulled upward as it retracted into the bow spindle. There were similar lateral jerks as the port and starboard cables were released. Skinsuited ground crewmen were hastily backing out of the airship’s shadow; one of them bent, released his ankle bracelets, then straightened and did a forward somersault, alighting perfectly on his feet.

‘Showoff,’ Boggs grumbled. ‘Ted’s going to hurt himself doing that one of these days.’ He grasped the yoke firmly with his left fist and gradually pushed the throttles all the way down to the floor with his right hand. ‘Hang on, now. Here we go…’

As easily as if it were an elevator, the
Akron
ascended from its landing pad. Through the window, they could see the sloped walls of the crater falling around them. Up, up…

The rim of the crater approached, sunlight glinting off the edges of the retracted roof. Then, all at once, the massive airship cleared the hangar and rose into the pink Martian sky.

Wind immediately buffeted the airship. The blunt prow pitched sharply forward; for a second it seemed as if the
Akron
would plow into the ground. Through the gondola windows, Nash glimpsed skinsuited people below stopping, staring up at him. The large mound of the condo seemed dangerously close. ‘Oh shit shit shit
shit
…
!
’ Boggs hissed as he hauled back on the yoke.

The airship almost seemed to groan as he fought for control; its shadow raced across the red dirt. Nash clutched the armrests of his chair and gritted his teeth as the
Akron
made a shallow dive toward the ground. Perhaps the six million cubic feet of hydrogen in the gas cells couldn’t burn…but they
could
explode. He braced himself for the inevitable crash.

Boggs fought the yoke, snarling between his clenched teeth: ‘C’mon you fucker, climb climb
climb…!
’

Then—a precious foot at a time, then faster and faster—the bow tilted upward as the
Akron
muscled its way into stability. The creaking and shaking of the airframe lapsed; the throb of the engines became less urgent. ‘There we go, there we go…’ Boggs was whispering. ‘Good girl, easy does it, that’s my baby…’

The horizon appeared as Arsia Station fell away below them; clear of the treacherous ground winds, the giant airship gracefully ascended to cruising altitude. As Boggs turned the yoke to the right, they could see in the western distance the great cones of the Tharsis Montes volcano range: the vast looming mountain of Arsia Mons and, on the farthest horizon as a hazy yet insanely huge dome, the high caldera of Olympus Mons.

Then the airship was pointed to the north-east; the volcanoes drifted away to their left, and in the near distance, appeared the deep, meandering canyons of the Noctis Labyrinthis. From this height, the Labyrinth of Night looked like an endless maze across the face of the planet, its steep, windswept walls falling into the thin morning fog which still lay above the floor of the chasm. Below the fog, shadows veiled the furthermost depths of the great canyon. If the
Akron
had careened into that bottomless abyss…

Nash stared down at the canyon system until the
Akron
passed over it, then lay back in his seat and let out his breath. Behind him, he heard Miho Sasaki do the same thing. Beyond the Noctis Labyrinthis lay the equator and the vast central plains. Boggs pushed the throttle-bars forward to three-quarter power, keystroked the flight computer to autopilot, then pulled the headset off his head. He took a deep breath himself, then tipped back his cap. There was a fine film of sweat on his forehead.

Boggs lifted the cap off his head, swabbed at the sweat with its liner, then grinned at Nash with Tennessee-style humor.

‘Christ,’ he said. ‘Like having sex with a gorilla.’

Nash and Sasaki took turns in the airlock to peel out of their skinsuits and stow them away; once they were dressed in jumpsuits and sneakers, Boggs sent them into the cargo bay to inspect the payload. He was concerned that the cargo might have shifted during takeoff, thereby unbalancing the airship. ‘It’s the kind of thing you might not notice during flight,’ he said as he laid in their course on the navaids computer, ‘but it can be a pain in the ass during landing. If something’s moved around, just tuck it back in the right place and lash it down again.’

This was easier said than done. Several crates in the cargo bay had snapped their cords and toppled over; most were heavy enough to require handling by both of them. In addition, a large container of Russian food rations had broken open and spilled its contents across the deck. Miho righted the box and, on her hands and knees, began searching the hold for all the lost cans, wrappers and tubes while Nash tightened the cables holding the large piece of machinery which he had seen being loaded just before takeoff.

‘I had forgotten the pleasures of Russian cuisine,’ she commented as she pumped an armload of red-striped squeeze tubes into the container. ‘Sorrel soup…borscht…buckwheat kasha…liver with cream…’ She found a clear plastic-wrapped bundle of dry, tasteless-looking cubes. ‘And, of course, rye bread.’

‘Sounds terrific.’ Nash was probing the giant Kevlar-shrouded machine; it was still suspended from the overhead wrench-cables, so it had not fallen during the ascent. There seemed to be a claw-manipulator at its front end, but he couldn’t be sure. At the rear, though, was the unmistakable bulge of a methane fuel tank. ‘I hope there’s plenty of antacid tablets in the medical supplies.’

‘I’m serious,’ Sasaki insisted. ‘Russian food is badly underrated. Sort of an acquired taste, although this bread leaves much to be desired and I wish Glavkosmos would get away from putting the soup in tubes. They haven’t improved much over what they used to send up in the old days when…’

She looked up from her work and watched as he tried to pull aside a few inches of the shroud. ‘If you must know,’ she added coldly, ‘it’s a Jackalope manned reconnaissance vehicle, specially refitted for Mars work by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. Despite its size, it’s quite delicate, so I ask that you not paw at it like that.’

Nash dropped the shroud and stepped back. For all he knew, it could have been the prototype of a new Mazda solarcar, but he had to accept her explanation. ‘Excuse me. Maybe if you came straight out and told me some of these things…’

She glared at him. ‘And maybe if you acted a little less like a spy and asked honest questions instead of snooping…’

‘Whoa.’ He turned around and held up his hands. ‘Back off, lady. I’m not the one who was eavesdropping last night.’

‘This is true.’ Sasaki stashed the bread-cubes into the crate, refastened the plastic cover, and heaved it onto the stack of containers. She dusted off her hands on the thighs of her jumpsuit and turned toward the hatch. ‘If you’ll excuse me, I’ll go prepare some coffee in the galley for Waylon.’

She started toward the closed hatch, but Nash reached out and grabbed her forearm. ‘Not so fast, Ms. Sasaki…’

‘Pardon me, Mr Nash.’ She wrested her arm out of his hand. ‘And that’s
Dr.
Sasaki, if you please…’

‘Sorry, I forgot, Dr. Sasaki…’ He forced himself to relax a little. ‘Look, I apologies, okay? But you said you’d come clean with me once we got off the ground, and it’s time we had that conversation you promised.’

She hesitated, still ready to leave the payload bay. ‘Of course,’ he continued, ‘we’ve got two days in front of us before we get to Cydonia, so we can discuss all this another time. Like at dinner tonight, with W. J.?’

The sweet-and-sour treatment worked. Miho turned back around, folding her arms across the front of her jumpsuit. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘It’s actually very simple. My government had heard many reports about the peculiar actions of your Commander L’Enfant…’

Nash shook his head. ‘Not
my
Commander L’Enfant, believe me. Let’s get that straight. He was sent to Mars by the Pentagon, and my company’s client doesn’t like it any more than Tokyo.’

Again, that on-and-off smile. Nash had already noticed that Miho Sasaki was a very pretty woman; he wondered how much more beautiful she would be if she didn’t keep such a tight grip on herself. ‘Pardon me.
Their
Commander L’Enfant. Besides the fact that Japan considers Shin-ichi Kawakami to be a national resource, there’s also the large stake which we have in discovering the last secrets of the aliens, in terms of capital investment as well as possible scientific payoffs. Considering L’Enfant’s past record, particularly in regard to the
Takada Maru
incident, we have much to be alarmed about.’

Yes, of course: the
Takada Maru
would have to enter into this. ‘Sounds very much like the motivations of my clients,’ he said carefully.

She shook her head. ‘No need to be circumspect, Mr Nash. I’m already quite aware that you’re a field operative for Security Associates and that Skycorp has retained your company’s services. We have our own resources.’

Nash felt his blood pressure beginning to rise. Twice now in this operation his cover had been blown: first by Leahy, who had blabbed the secret to Boggs…and now by Sasaki, who could not have known all this simply by eavesdropping from the condo balcony the night before.

Sasaki hadn’t told him everything yet, despite her promise, but he could guess that she had been enlisted by Uchu-Hiko. That or, perhaps as a better possibility, JETRO. The Japanese External Trade Organization was essentially a government-operated commercial spy agency; it had been engaged in espionage against private American companies for many years now, often recruiting previously unattached Japanese nationals for the dirty work abroad. Turnabout was fair play; the CIA had done the same with American corporate officials in Asia and the Middle East, as well as in the old Soviet bloc.