I set down just beyond the lip of one of the largest craters, the one which houses the ancient flatlander base. From above the base looked like a huge transparent raincoat discarded on the cracked bottom.
It’s a weird place. But I’ll have to go out sometime; how else can I use the base lifesystem?
My Uncle Bat used to tell me stupidity carries the death penalty.
I’ll go outside tomorrow.
April 21, 2112
My clock says it’s morning. The Sun’s around on the other side of the planet, leaving the sky no longer bloody. It looks almost like space if you remember to look away from gravity, though the stars are dim, as if seen through fogged plastic. A big star has come over the horizon, brightening and dimming like a spinning rock. Must be Phobos, since it came from the sunset region.
I’m going out.
LATER:
A sort of concave glass shell surrounds the ship where the fusion flame splashed down. The ship’s lifesystem, the half that shows above the dust, rests in the center like a frog on a lilypad in Confinement Asteroid. The splashdown shell is all a spiderweb of cracks, but it’s firm enough to walk on.
Not so the dust.
The dust is like thick oil. The moment I stepped onto it I started to sink. I had to swim to where the crater rim slopes out like the shore of an island. It was hard work. Fortunately the splashdown shell reaches to the crater rock at one point, so I won’t have to do that again.
It’s queer, this dust. I doubt you could find its like anywhere in the system. It’s meteor debris, condensed from vaporized rock. On Earth dust this fine would be washed down to the sea by rain and turned to sedimentary rock, natural cement. On the moon there would be vacuum cementing, the bugaboo of the Belt’s microminiaturization industries. But here, there’s just enough “air” to be absorbed by the dust surface…to prevent vacuum cementing…and not nearly enough to stop a meteorite. Result: it won’t cement, nohow. So it behaves like viscous fluid. Probably the only rigid surfaces are the meteor craters and mountain ranges.
Going up the crater lip was rough. It’s all cracked, tilted blocks of volcanic glass. The edges are almost sharp. This crater must be geologically recent. At the bottom, half-submerged in a shallow lake of dust, is bubbletown. I can walk okay in this gravity; it’s something less than my ship’s gee max. But I almost broke my ankles a couple of times getting down over those tilted, slippery, dust-covered blocks. As a whole the crater is a smashed ashtray pieced loosely together like an impromptu jigsaw puzzle.
The bubble covers the base like a deflated tent, with the airmaking machinery just outside. The airmaker is in a great cube of black metal, blackened by seventy years of Martian atmosphere. It’s huge. It must have been a bitch to lift. How they moved that mass from Earth to Mars with only chemical and ion rockets, I’ll never know. Also why? What was on Mars that they wanted?
If ever there was a useless world, this is it. It’s not close to Earth, like the moon. The gravity’s inconveniently high. There are no natural resources. Lose your suit pressure and it’d be a race against time, whether you died of blowout or of red fuming nitrogen dioxide eating your lungs.
The wells?
Somewhere on Mars there are wells. The first expedition found one in the 1990s. A mummified something was nearby. It exploded when it touched water, so nobody ever knew more about it, including just how old it was.
Did they expect to find live Martians? If so, so what?
Outside the bubble are two two-seater Marsbuggies. They have an enormous wheelbase and wide, broad wheels, probably wide enough to keep the buggy above the dust while it’s moving. You’d have to be careful where you stopped. I won’t be using them anyway.
The airmaker will work, I think, if I can connect it to the ship’s power system. Its batteries are drained, and its fusion plant must be mainly lead by now. Thousands of tons of breathing-air are all about me, tied up in nitrogen dioxide, NO2. The airmaker will release oxygen and nitrogen, and will also pick up what little water vapor there is. I’ll pull hydrogen out of the water for fuel. But can I get the power? There may be cables in the base.
It’s for sure I can’t call for help. My antennas burned off coming down.
I looked through the bubble and saw a body, male, a few feet away. He’d died of blowout. Odds are I’ll find a rip in the bubble when I get around to looking.
Wonder what happened here?
April 22, 2112
I went to sleep at first sunlight. Mars’s rotation is just a fraction longer than a ship’s day, which is convenient. I can work when the stars show and the dust doesn’t, and that’ll keep me sane. But I’ve had breakfast and done clean-ship chores, and still it’ll be two hours before sundown. Am I a coward? I can’t go out there in the light.
Near the sun the sky is like fresh blood, tinged by nitrogen dioxide. On the other side it’s almost black. Not a sign of a star. The desert is flat, broken only by craters and by a regular pattern of crescent dunes so shallow that they can be seen only near the horizon. Something like a straight lunar mountain range angles away into the desert; but it’s terribly eroded, like something that died a long time ago. Could it be the tilted lip of an ancient asteroid crater? The Gods must have hated Mars, to put it right in the middle of the Belt. This shattered, pulverized land is like a symbol of age and corruption. Erosion seems to live only at the bottom of holes.
LATER:
Almost dawn. I can see red washing out the stars.
After sundown I entered the base through the airlock, which still stands. Ten bodies are sprawled in what must have been the village square. Another was halfway into a suit in the administration building, and the twelfth was a few feet from the bubble wall, where I saw him yesterday. A dozen bodies, and they all died of blowout: explosive decompression if you want to be technical.
The circular area under the bubble is only half full of buildings. The rest is a carefully fused sand floor. Other buildings lie in stacks of walls, ceilings, floors, ready to be put up. I suppose the base personnel expected others from Earth.
One of the buildings held electrical wiring. I’ve hooked a cable to the airmaker battery, and was able to adapt the other end to the contact on my fusion plant. There’s a lot of sparking, but the airmaker works. I’m letting it fill the stack of empty O-tanks I found against a pile of walls. The nitrogen dioxide is draining into the bubble.
I know now what happened to the flatlander base.
Bubbletown died by murder. No question of it. When nitrogen dioxide started pouring into the bubble I saw dust blowing out from the edge of town. There was a rip. It was sharp-edged, as if cut by a knife. I can mend it if I can find a bubble repair kit. There must be one somewhere.
Meanwhile I’m getting oxygen and water. The oxygen tanks I can empty into the lifesystem as they fill. The ship takes it back out of the air and stores it. If I can find a way to get the water here I can just pour it into the john. Can I carry it here in the O-tanks?
April 23, 2112
Dawn.
The administration building is also a tape library. They kept a record of the base doings, very complete and so far very boring. It reads like ship’s log sounds, but more gossipy and more detailed. Later I’ll read it all the way through.
I found some bubble plastic and contact cement and used them to patch the rip. The bubble still wouldn’t inflate. So I went out and found two more rips just like the first. I patched them and looked for more. Found three. When I got them fixed it was nearly sunup.
The O-tanks hold water, but I have to heat them to boil the water to get it out. That’s hard work. Question: is it easier to do that or to repair the dome and do my electrolysis inside? How many rips are there?
I’ve found six. So how many killers were there? No more than three. I’ve accounted for twelve inside, and according to the log there were fifteen in the second expedition.
No sign of the goldskins. If they’d guessed I was here they’d have come by now. Wi
th several months’ worth of air in my lifesystem, I’ll be home free once I get out of this hole.
April 24, 2112
Two more rips in the bubble, a total of eight. They’re about twenty feet apart, evenly spaced around the transparent plastic fabric. It looks like at least one man ran around the dome slashing at the fabric until it wasn’t taut enough to cut. I mended the rips. When I left the bubble it was swelling with air.
I’m halfway through the town log, and nobody’s seen a Martian yet. I was right, that’s what they came for. Thus far they’ve found three more wells. Like the first, these are made of cut diamond building blocks, fairly large, very well worn, probably tens or hundreds of thousands of years old. Two of the four have dirty nitrogen dioxide at the bottoms. The others are dry. Each of the four has a “dedication block” covered with queer, partially eroded writing. From a partial analysis of the script, it seems that the wells were actually crematoriums: a deceased Martian would explode when he touched water in the nitrogen dioxide at the bottom. It figures. Martians wouldn’t have fire.
I still wonder why they came, the men of the base. What could Martians do for them? If they wanted someone to talk to, someone not human, there were dolphins and killer whales right in their own oceans. The trouble they took! And the risks! Just to get from one hole to another!
April 24, 2112
Strange. For the first time since the landing, I did not return to the ship when the sky turned light. When I did start back the sun was up. It showed as I went over the rim. I stood there between a pair of sharp obsidian teeth, staring down at my ship.
It looked like the entrance to Confinement Asteroid.
Confinement is where they take women when they get pregnant: a bubble of rock ten miles long and five miles across, spinning on its axis to produce one gee of outward pull. The children have to stay there for the first year, and the law says they have to spend a month out of each year there until they’re fifteen. I’ve a wife named Letty waiting there now, waiting for the year to pass so she can leave with our daughter Janice. Most miners, they pay the fatherhood fee in one lump sum if they’ve got the money; it’s about sixty thousand commercials, so some have to pay in installments, and sometimes it’s the woman who pays; but when they pay they forget about it and leave the women to raise the kids. But I’ve been thinking about Letty. And Janice. The monopoles in my hold would buy gifts for Letty, and raise Janice with enough left over so she could do some traveling, and still I’d have enough commercials left for more children. I’d have them with Letty, if she’d agree. I think she would.
How’d I get onto that? As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted, my ship looks like the entrance to Confinement—or to Farmer’s Asteroid, or any underground city. With the fuel tanks gone there’s nothing left but the drive and the lifesystem and a small magnetically insulated cargo hold. Only the top half of the lifesystem shows above the sea of dust, a blunt steel bubble with a thick door, not streamlined like a ship of Earth. The heavy drive tube hangs from the bottom, far beneath the dust. I wonder how deep the dust is.
The splashdown shell will leave a rim of congealed glass around my lifesystem. I wonder if it’ll affect my takeoff?
Anyway, I’m losing my fear of daylight.
Yesterday I thought the bubble was inflating. It wasn’t. More rips were hidden under the pool of dust, and when the pressure built up the dust blew away and down went the bubble. I repaired four rips today before sunlight caught me.
One man couldn’t have made all those slashes.
That fabric’s tough. Would a knife go through it? Or would you need something else, like an electric carving knife or a laser?
April 25, 2112
I spent most of today reading the bubbletown log.
There was a murder. Tensions among fifteen men with no women around can grow pretty fierce. One day a man named Carter killed a man named Harness, then ran for his life in one of the Marsbuggies, chased by the victim’s brother. Neither came back alive. They must have run out of air.
Three dead out of fifteen leaves twelve.
Since I counted twelve bodies, who’s left to slash the dome?
Martians?
In the entire log I find no mention of a Martian being seen. Bubbletown never ran across any Martian artifact, except the wells. If there are Martians, where are they? Where are their cities? Mars was subjected to all kinds of orbital reconnaissance in the early days. Even a city as small as bubbletown would have been seen.
Maybe there are no cities. But where do the diamond blocks come from? Diamonds as big as the well material don’t form naturally. It takes a respectable technology to make them that big. Which implies cities—I think.
That mummy. Could it have been hundreds of thousands of years old? A man couldn’t last that long on Mars, because the water in his body would react with the nitrogen dioxide around him. On the Moon, he could last millions of years. The mummified Martian’s body chemistry was and is a complete mystery, barring the napalm-like explosion when water touched it. Perhaps it was that durable, and perhaps one of the pair who left to die returned to cut the dome instead, and perhaps I’m seeing goblins. This is the place for it. If I ever get out of here, you try and catch me near another hole.
April 26, 2112
The sun shows clear and bright above a sharp-edged horizon. I stand at the port looking out. Nothing seems strange anymore. I’ve lived here all my life. The gravity is settling in my bones; I no longer stumble as I go over the crater lip.
The oxygen in my tanks will take me anywhere. Give me hydrogen and you’ll find me on Luna, selling my monopoles without benefit of a middleman. But it comes slowly. I can get hydrogen only by carrying water here in the base O-tanks and then electrolyzing it into the fuel-cooling tank, where it liquefies.
The desert is empty except for a strange rosy cloud that covers one arm of horizon. Dust? Probably. I heard the wind singing faintly through my helmet as I returned to the ship. Naturally the sound can’t get through the hull.
The desert is empty.
I can’t repair the bubble. Today I found four more rips before giving up. They must circle the bubble all the way round. One man couldn’t have done it. Two men couldn’t.
It looks like Martians. But where are they?
They could walk on the sand, if their feet were flat and broad and webbed…and there’d be no footprints. The dust hides everything. If there were cities here the dust must have covered them ages ago. The mummy wouldn’t have shown webbing; it would have been worn away.
Now it’s starlessly black outside. The thin wind must have little trouble lifting the dust. I doubt it will bury me. Anyway the ship would rise to the surface.
Gotta sleep.
April 27, 2112
It’s oh-four-hundred by the clock, and I haven’t slept at all. The sun is directly overhead, blinding bright in a clear red sky. No more dust storm.
The Martians exist. I’m sure of it. Nobody else was left to murder the base.
But why don’t they show themselves?
I’m going to the base, and I’m taking the log with me.
I’m in the village square. Oddly enough, it was easier making the trip in sunlight. You can see what you’re stepping on, even in shadow, because the sky diffuses the light a little, like indirect lighting in a dome city.
The crater lip looks down on me from all sides, splintered shards of volcanic glass. It’s a wonder I haven’t cut my suit open yet, making that trip twice a day.
Why did I come here? I don’t know. My eyes feel rusty, and there’s too much light. Mummies surround me, with faces twisted by anguish and despair, and with fluids dried on their mouths. Blowout is an ugly death. Ten mummies here, and one by the edge of town, and one in the admin building.
I can see all of the crater lip from here. The buildings are low bungalows, and the square is big. True, the deflated bubble distorts things a little, but not much.
So. The Martians came over the
lip in a yelling swarm or a silent one, brandishing sharp things. Nobody would have heard them if they yelled.
But ten men were in a position to see them.
Eleven men. There’s a guy at the edge…no, they might have come from the other direction. But still, ten men. And they just waited here? I don’t believe it.
The twelfth man. He’s half into a suit. What did he see that they didn’t?
I’m going to go look at him.
By God, I was right. He’s got two fingers on a zipper, and he’s pulling down. He’s not half into a suit, he’s half out of it!
No more goblins.
But who cut the dome?
The hell with it. I’m sleepy.
April 28, 2112
A day and a half of log to catch up on.
My cooling tank is full, or nearly. I’m ready to try the might of the goldskins again. There’s air enough to let me take my time, and less chance of a radar spotting me if I move slowly. Goodbye, Mars, lovely paradise for the manic-depressive.
That’s not funny. Consider the men in the base.
Item: it took a lot of knives to make those slits.
Item: everyone was inside.
Item: no Martians. They would have been seen.
Therefore the slits were made from inside. If someone was running around making holes in the bubble, why didn’t someone stop him?
It looks like mass suicide. Facts are facts. They must have spread evenly out around the dome, slashed, and then walked to the town square against a driving wind of breathing-air roaring out behind them. Why? Ask ’em. The two who aren’t in the square may have been dissenters; if so, it didn’t help them.
Being stuck at the bottom of a hole is not good for a man. Look at the insanity records on Earth.
I am now going back to a minute-to-minute log.
1120
Ready to prime drive. The dust won’t hurt the fusion tube, nothing could do that, but backblast might damage the rest of the ship. Have to risk it.