Moving Mars (33 page)

Snug as bunnies in a pot, I said, teeth clenched.

Im sorry I got you into this, Casseia

I couldnt clamp my hand over his mouth, but I made the gesture against his helmet anyway. Shh, I said. Tell me a story.

Ilya excelled at making up fairy tales on the spur of the moment. Now? he asked.

Please.

Long ago, he began, voice husky, and long after now, two rabbits dug a hole in the farmers garden and ate through all of his water lines

I closed my eyes, listening.

Our helmets pressed against the rocks and each other. Before Ilya had finished the story, I laid my hand against the bottom of the ditch, palm flat to pick up vibrations. The line of dust and compressed atmosphere to the west stretched inky-black and very close. It began to obscure the horizon. Only seconds now

All around, through the rocks, we heard a low grumbling, then a distinct, rhythmic pounding. There it is, I said. Plains buffalo. We had all seen Terrie Westerns.

Ilya placed his hand over mine. Freight trains, he said. Hundreds of them.

I began to shiver. Have you been through one of these? I asked.

When I was a kid, he said. In a station.

Anybody hurt?

He shook his head. Small one. Only a quarter of a bar. Made a lot of noise when it went over.

What does it sound like when it goes over?

He was about to tell me when I heard for myself. The sound started out ghostlythe sibilant patient whine of a strong Martian wind, audible through our helmets even in the trench, backed by the staccato of pebbles and dust striking against the foils and tarps. The blackness seemed to leap over the land.

I felt pressure in my ears, thin fingers pushing into my head. I opened my eyes to slitsmy eyelids had pressed themselves tight shut instinctivelyto see Ilya. He lay on his back, shoulder wedged against the side of the trench, staring up, eyes searching.

This is going to be a bad one, he said. Ill finish the story later, okay?

Okay. But dont forget. I shut my eyes again.

For a moment, the surge sounded like huge drums. A thin shriek descended into a monstrous, horrifying bellow. I thought of a ravening god marching over the land, Mars itself, god of war, furious and implacable, searching for things that might be frightened, things that might die.

The pressure suit loosened around me, then clung tight to my skin. A sharp pain in my ears made me screw up my face and groan. The torch fell between us. Ilya grabbed it again, shined it on his face, shook his head, face slick with tears, and held me tightly. I could feel his heart through the suits.

The vibration of the trench walls stopped. We lay for a moment, waiting for it to begin again. I started to get up, pushing against the tarp, frantic to see daylightbut Ilya grabbed my shoulder and pressed me down. I could not hear very well. The torch illuminated his face; he was trying to mouth words to me. Somehow I understood through my fearrocks and dust would be falling outside. We might be killed by rocks falling from thousands of meters in the wake of the surge, striking at eighty or ninety meters per second. I pressed myself against him, mind racing, grimacing at the pain.

Time passed very slowly. My fear turned to numbness, and the numbness faded into relief. We were not going to die. The worst of the surge had passed over and we were still in the trenchbut a new fear hit me, and I had to fight myself to keep from clawing out of Ilyas embrace. We could be buried under a fresh dunetons of dust and sand, dozens of meters high. We would never dig out. Our oxygen would be depleted and we would suffocate, this trench would become just what it seemed, a grave I began to squirm, breath harsh and short, and Ilya struggled to keep his arms around me. Let me go! I shouted.

Suddenly, I flinched and stopped thrashing. A light had hit me in the face, not our torch. The labs arbeiters were ripping away the foils and tarps, searching for us.

The chief arbeiter appeared on the edge of our trench. A jointed arm had been wrenched loose and the machine was covered with dents and red smearsrock impacts. It had weathered the storm outside, tending the edges of the foil until the last moment. It must have been blown around like a small can.

Ilya pulled me up out of the ditch in deathly silence. The mobile lab was still intact above us; we might be able to get to a station on our own.

We brushed each other down, more for the reassurance of physical contact than any other reason. I felt light-headed, giddy with still being alive. We walked beneath the main foil and tarps, inspecting the lab, then emerged to stand in the open.

The foil on the specimen shed had failed. It was nowhere to be seen.

The sky from horizon to horizon glowered charcoal-gray, almost black. Dust fell in thick snaking curtains, great sheets unrolling, drifting, hiding. We gathered the arbeiters beneath the lab and climbed the steps into the airlock, quickly sucking the gray dust from our suits, then stripped.

Ilya insisted I lie on the narrow fold-down cot. He lay on his cot across from me, then got up and pushed in close beside me. We shivered like frightened children.

We slept for an hour. When we awoke, I felt ecstatic as if from drinking far too much high-powered tea. Everything seemed sharply defined and highly colored. Even the dust in the lab interior smelled sweet and essential. The pain in my ears had subsided to a dull throb. I could still hear, but just barely.

Ilya showed me the labs weather record. The surge had topped at two bars.

Thats impossible, I said.

He shook his head and smiled, tapping his own ears with a finger. Then he wrote on his slate, Compressible fluidsa lot to learn. He added with a rueful grimace, Some honeymoon. I love you!

With little ceremony, and not much in the way of clothing left to remove, we celebrated still being alive.

We checked in with the satcoms to tell everybody we had survived and could take care of ourselves. Resources were strained from Arcadia to Mariner Valleythe surge had sheared into three parts crossing the Tharsis volcanoes, and twenty-three stations had been hit by the three-headed monster. There were casualtiesseven dead, hundreds injured. Even UMS had suffered damage.

Ilya and I inspected the lab from outside, elevating the tires again and cutting the tie-downs. The foils and tarps had protected it against most of the boulders flung by the surge. Minor damage could be fixed by patches.

We decided to collect what specimens we could from the sheds remains and drive the lab back to Olympus Station. Replacing our suit tanks and purifiers, we walked west from the lab several dozen meters.

Ilya was somber. My tinnitus had passed but hearing was still difficulthis voice in my com was a barely understandable buzz. Looks as if weve lost the cyst, he said. The shed itself was nowhere to be foundit might have blown clear to Tharsis by now. But it would undoubtedly have spilled its heavy contents.

I looked up through the thinning curtains of dust. The sky peeking through the gray seemed greenish. I had never seen that color before. I pointed it out to Ilya. He frowned, looked back at the lab, then set his jaw and said we should keep searching.

The air temperature hovered just above zero. It should have been thirty or forty below at this latitude, at this time of the year.

My ecstasy was fading rapidly. Please, I muttered. Enough. Im not an adventurous woman.

What? Ilya asked.

Its hot out here and I dont know what that means.

Neither do I, Ilya said. But I dont think its dangerous. There havent been any more warnings.

Maybe something local is brewing, I said. Everyone knows weird weather lives in the sulci.

He vaulted across a wind-exposed boulder and picked up a pale brown cylindrical rock. One of our core specimens. Maybe the shed dumped its load here.

I think we should go back.

Ilya stood and frowned deeply, caught between wanting to please me and a powerful need to find something, anything, of the broken cyst and the other specimens. Suddenly, I regretted being such a coward. But lets look a little longer.

Just a few more minutes, he agreed. I followed him to the edge of a canyon. A hundred meters below, fine dust drifted like a river through the canyon bottom. Gray dust mixed with, swirls of ochre and red, immiscible fluids, Jovian; I had never seen anything like it. Ilya kneeled and I squatted beside him.

If they fell down there he said, and shook his head. Our suits were covered with clinging gray dust; the suck and destat in the lab might not be able to remove enough to keep it from getting into the recycling systems, into our skin. I imagined smear rashes itching all night long.

Something fogged the outside of my face-plate. I reached up to wipe it. A muddy streak formed under my touch. I swore and removed a static rag from my waist pack. The rag did not work. I could hardly see.

The dust is wet, I said.

Cant be. Theres not enough pressure, Ilya said. He looked at my suit and streaked the muck on my arm with one finger, then examined the finger. Youre right. Youre wet. Am I?

His face plate had fogged as well. I touched his helmet. Yeah, I said.

Jesus. Just a few more minutes, he pleaded. Over the canyon, afternoon sun broke through clouds of dust. Green-tinted rays swept across the rugged furrows of the sulci, casting the landscape in a ghoulish light interrupted by deep shadows.

We backed away from the rubble at the edge of the canyon. Ilya kicked wind-exposed rocks aside and slogged through drifts of familiar red smear and the superfine gray dust. There was no sizzle anywhere. It had been mixed with unradiated clays and flopsand. Years might pass before ultraviolet could convert the surface to crackly sizzle again.

The surge must have uncovered an ice aquifer nearby. Pebble saltation blasted it, Ilya said. This gray stuff must be ice dust, and down here, its just warm enough to melt

He stopped and gave out a groan. Up there, he said, pointing to the top of a low ridge. A jagged lump of rock about a meter wide presented a flash of crystal in the broken rays of afternoon sun. We climbed.

I looked back over my shoulder at the lab, half a kilometer away. My back muscles tensed with a red rabbits instinct to run and hide. The surge was gone, but wet dust was completely outside my experience. We might sink into a depression and drown. I had no idea how our filters and seals would function in water.

Ilya reached the top of the ridge first. He knelt before the exposed lump of rock. Is it the cyst? I asked.

He did not answer. I stood behind him and peered at the shiny exposed face. It was indeed part of a cystvery likely the cyst that had tumbled from the shed. It lay half-buried in a hole filled with gray dust. The intricate patterns of quartz and embedded zinc clays seemed less distinct, blurred; I thought it might be the weird light. But where the fragment of cyst met the pool of dust, a thick gelatinous layer spilled and churned.

Whats that? I asked.

Something in suspension, Ilya suggested. He reached out to touch the gelatinous material. It clung to his glove.

Snail spit, I said.

Genuine grade-A slime, Ilya agreed, lifting his glove.

Why doesnt it dry out? I asked.

He looked at me, forehead pale, cheeks flushed, eyes wide. I could hear his rapid breathing over the com. Theres water all around. The gray dust is ice and clays, and the clays are keeping the ice from sublimating. But the temperature is high enough that the ice melts, and the cyst can get at the moisture. Its the right mix. It has what it wants.

The slime grew thicker as we watched. Within, white streaks formed little lacework doilies.

How much do you think this masses? he asked, measuring the fragment with his arms.

Maybe a quarter ton, I said.

We couldnt carry it far. The lab might roll close enough, we could get the strongest arbeiter up here

I removed my slate and set it for visual record.

Good thinking, Ilya said. He put a sample of the slime into a vial, capturing parts of the lacework as well.

Do you think its I began to ask.

Dont even say it, he warned. Whatever it is, its a tricking wonder. He sounded like a little boy with a new toy.

I looked up at the curtains of gray, the sun dazzling through the clouds. This was as close as Mars could get to rain.

Its just a fragment, Ilya said, trying to rock the piece of cyst in its cradle of pebbles and dust. What can a fragment make? The whole ecos?

He passed me the vial. As he took more samples, I stared at the lacework within the captured fluid. It measured no more than two centimeters across, as fine as gossamer. I had no idea what it wasa bit of cellular skeleton, a template for cytoplasm, a seed, an egg, a tiny little baby.

Perhaps a Martian.

Within two days of returning to Olympus Station, we were famous. Journals on LitVid and ex nets across the Triple lauded us for making an epochal discoverythe first viable, non-Terrestrial life discovered in our Solar System. That we had made the discovery on our honeymoon only threw petrol on the celebrity fires.

The discovery was more than a little embarrassing to the Martian science community. Ilya was a fossil hunter and areologist, a digger, hardly trained in biochemistry at all; there was considerable resentment, even skepticism, at first that we should have been in the right place, at the right time, to witness a cyst bloom

We spent much of the next two weeks accepting or dodging interviews. Messages flooded in: offers of vast fortunes for a whole cyst (Ilya did not personally own any of the cysts he had foundthey belonged to Erzul, of course); requests for information from schoolchildren; offers to turn our story into LitVids and sims.

No one in the general public seemed to care that the plasm from the cyst died before we got it back to Olympus. The Martian degenerated in a few hours to simple proteins and monosaccharides, remarkable enough coming from clay and quartz and mineralrrich water, but hardly the stuff of romance.

We had demonstrated two things, however. The cysts might still be viable, and the genetic information for a Martian ecos was contained in the mineral formations within the cyst, locked in the minute intricacies of clay and quartz. There had probably never been extra organs to help ecos reproduction.