The John Varley Reader

by John Varley

  Crawford waited until she had run through a long list of reasons why they were doomed. Most of them made a great deal of sense. When she was through, he spoke softly.

  “Lucy, listen to yourself.”

  “I’m just—”

  “You’re arguing on the side of death. Do you want to die? Are you so determined that you won’t listen to someone who says you can live?”

  She was quiet for a long time, then shuffled her feet awkwardly. She glanced at him, then at Song and Ralston. They were waiting, and she had to blush and smile slowly at them.

  “You’re right. What do we do first?”

  “Just what we were doing. Taking stock of our situation. We need to make a list of what’s available to us. We’ll write it down on paper, but I can give you a general rundown.” He counted off the points on his fingers.

  “One, we have food for twenty people for three months. That comes to about a year for the five of us. With rationing, maybe a year and a half. That’s assuming all the supply capsules reach us all right. In addition, the Edgar is going to clean the pantry to the bone, give us everything they can possibly spare, and send it to us in three spare capsules. That might come to two years, or even three.

  “Two, we have enough water to last us forever if the recyclers keep going. That’ll be a problem, because our reactor will run out of power in two years. We’ll need another power source, and maybe another water source.

  “The oxygen problem is about the same. Two years at the outside. We’ll have to find a way to conserve it a lot more than we’re doing. Offhand, I don’t know how. Song, do you have any ideas?”

  She looked thoughtful, which produced two vertical punctuation marks between her slanted eyes.

  “Possibly a culture of plants from the Edgar. If we could rig some way to grow plants in Martian sunlight and not have them killed by the ultraviolet . . .”

  McKillian looked horrified, as any good ecologist would.

  “What about contamination?” she asked. “What do you think that sterilization was for before we landed? Do you want to louse up the entire ecological balance of Mars? No one would ever be sure if samples in the future were real Martian plants or mutated Earth stock.”

  “What ecological balance?” Song shot back. “You know as well as I do that this trip has been nearly a zero. A few anaerobic bacteria, a patch of lichen, both barely distinguishable from Earth forms—”

  “That’s just what I mean. You import Earth forms now, and we’ll never tell the difference.”

  “But it could be done, right? With the proper shielding so the plants won’t be wiped out before they ever sprout, we could have a hydroponics plant functioning—”

  “Oh, yes, it could be done. I can see three or four dodges right now. But you’re not addressing the main question, which is—”

  “Hold it,” Crawford said. “I just wanted to know if you had any ideas.” He was secretly pleased at the argument; it got them both thinking along the right lines, moved them from the deadly apathy they must guard against.

  “I think this discussion has served its purpose, which was to convince everyone here that survival is possible.” He glanced uneasily at Lang, still nodding, her eyes glassy as she saw her teammates die before her eyes.

  “I just want to point out that instead of an expedition, we are now a colony. Not in the usual sense of planning to stay here forever, but all our planning will have to be geared to that fiction. What we’re faced with is not a simple matter of stretching supplies until rescue comes. Stopgap measures are not likely to do us much good. The answers that will save us are the long-term ones, the sort of answers a colony would be looking for. About two years from now we’re going to have to be in a position to survive with some sort of life-style that could support us forever. We’ll have to fit into this environment where we can and adapt it to us where we can’t. For that, we’re better off than most of the colonists of the past, at least for the short term. We have a large supply of everything a colony needs: food, water, tools, raw materials, energy, brains, and women. Without these things, no colony has much of a chance. All we lack is a regular resupply from the home country, but a really good group of colonists can get along without that. What do you say? Are you all with me?”

  Something had caused Mary Lang’s eyes to look up. It was a reflex by now, a survival reflex conditioned by a lifetime of fighting her way to the top. It took root in her again and pulled her erect on the bed, then to her feet. She fought off the effects of the drug and stood there, eyes bleary but aware.

  “What makes you think that women are a natural resource, Crawford?” she said, slowly and deliberately.

  “Why, what I meant was that without the morale uplift provided by members of the opposite sex, a colony will lack the push needed to make it.”

  “That’s what you meant, all right. And you meant women, available to the real colonists as a reason to live. I’ve heard it before. That’s male-oriented way to look at it, Crawford.” She was regaining her stature as they watched, seeming to grow until she dominated the group with the intangible power that marks a leader. She took a deep breath and came fully awake for the first time that day.

  “We’ll stop that sort of thinking right now. I’m the mission commander. I appreciate your taking over while I was . . . how did you say it? Indisposed. But you should pay more attention to the social aspects of our situation. If anyone is a commodity here, it’s you and Ralston, by virtue of your scarcity. There will be some thorny questions to resolve there, but for the meantime we will function as a unit, under my command. We’ll do all we can to minimize social competition among the women for the men. That’s the way it must be. Clear?”

  She was answered by nods of the head. She did not acknowledge it but plowed right on.

  “I wondered from the start why you were along, Crawford.” She was pacing slowly back and forth in the crowded space. The others got out of her way almost without thinking, except for Ralston, who still huddled under his blanket. “A historian? Sure, it’s a fine idea, but pretty impractical. I have to admit that I’ve been thinking of you as a luxury, and about as useful as the nipples on a man’s chest. But I was wrong. All the NASA people were wrong. The Astronaut Corps fought like crazy to keep you off this trip. Time enough for that on later flights. We were blinded by our loyalty to the test-pilot philosophy of space flight. We wanted as few scientists as possible and as many astronauts as we could manage. We don’t like to think of ourselves as ferry-boat pilots. I think we demonstrated during Apollo that we could handle science jobs as well as anyone. We saw you as a kind of insult, a slap in the face by the scientists in Houston to show us how low our stock had fallen.”

  “If I might be able to—”

  “Shut up. But we were wrong. I read in your resume that you were quite a student of survival. What’s your honest assessment of our chances?”

  Crawford shrugged, uneasy at the question. He didn’t know if it was the right time to even speculate that they might fail.

  “Tell me the truth.”

  “Pretty slim. Mostly the air problem. The people I’ve read about never sank so low that they had to worry about where their next breath was coming from.”

  “Have you ever heard of Apollo Thirteen?”

  He smiled at her. “Special circumstances. Short-term problems.”

  “You’re right, of course. And in the only two other real space emergencies since that time, all hands were lost.” She turned and scowled at each of them in turn.

  “But we’re not going to lose.” She dared any of them to disagree, and no one was about to. She relaxed and resumed her stroll around the room. She turned to Crawford again.

  “I can see I’ll be drawing on your knowledge a lot in the years to come. What do you see as the next order of business?”

  Crawford relaxed. The awful burden of responsibility, which he had never wanted, was gone. He was content to follow her lead.

  “To tell you the truth,
I was wondering what to say next. We have to make a thorough inventory. I guess we should start on that.”

  “That’s fine, but there is an even more important order of business. We have to go out to the dome and find out what the hell caused the blowout. The damn thing should not have blown; it’s the first of its type to do so. And from the bottom. But it did blow, and we should know why, or we’re ignoring a fact about Mars that might still kill us. Let’s do that first. Ralston, can you walk?”

  When he nodded, she sealed her helmet and started into the lock. She turned and looked speculatively at Crawford.

  “I swear, man, if you had touched me with a cattle prod you couldn’t have got a bigger rise out of me than you did with what you said a few minutes ago. Do I dare ask?”

  Crawford was not about to answer. He said, with a perfectly straight face, “Me? Maybe you should just assume I’m a chauvinist.”

  “We’ll see, won’t we?”

  “What is that stuff?”

  Song Sue Lee was on her knees, examining one of the hundreds of short, stiff spikes extruding from the ground. She tried to scratch her head but was frustrated by her helmet.

  “It looks like plastic. But I have a strong feeling it’s the higher life form Lucy and I were looking for yesterday.”

  “And you’re telling me those little spikes are what poked holes in the dome bottom? I’m not buying that.”

  Song straightened up, moving stiffly. They had all worked hard to empty out the collapsed dome and peel back the whole, bulky mess to reveal the ground it had covered. She was tired and stepped out of character for a moment to snap at Mary Lang.

  “I didn’t tell you that. We pulled the dome back and found spikes. It was your inference that they poked holes in the bottom.”

  “I’m sorry,” Lang said, quietly. “Go on with what you were saying.”

  “Well,” Song admitted, “it wasn’t a bad inference, at that. But the holes I saw were not punched through. They were eaten away.” She waited for Lang to protest that the dome bottom was about as chemically inert as any plastic yet devised. But Lang had learned her lesson. And she had a talent for facing facts.

  “So. We have a thing here that eats plastic. And seems to be made of plastic, into the bargain. Any ideas why it picked this particular spot to grow, and no other?”

  “I have an idea on that,” McKillian said. “I’ve had it in mind to do some studies around the dome to see if the altered moisture content we’ve been creating here had any effect on the spores in the soil. See, we’ve been here nine days, spouting out water vapor, carbon dioxide, and quite a bit of oxygen. Not much, but maybe more than it seems, considering the low concentrations that are naturally available. We’ve altered the biome. Does anyone know where the exhaust air from the dome was expelled?”

  Lang raised her eyebrows. “Yes, it was under the dome. The air we exhausted was warm, you see, and it was thought it could be put to use one last time before we let it go, to warm the floor of the dome and decrease heat loss.”

  “And the water vapor collected on the underside of the dome when it hit the cold air. Right. Do you get the picture?”

  “I think so,” Lang said. “It was so little water, though. You know we didn’t want to waste it; we condensed it out until the air we exhausted was dry as a bone.”

  “For Earth, maybe. Here it was a torrential rainfall. It reached seeds or spores in the ground and triggered them to start growing. We’re going to have to watch it when we use anything containing plastic. What does that include?”

  Lang groaned. “All the air lock seals, for one thing.” There were grimaces from all of them at the thought of that. “For another, a good part of our suits. Song, watch it, don’t step on that thing. We don’t know how powerful it is or if it’ll eat the plastic in your boots, but we’d better play it safe. How about it, Ralston? Think you can find out how bad it is?”

  “You mean identify the solvent these things use? Probably, if we can get some sort of work space and I can get to my equipment.”

  “Mary,” McKillian said, “it occurs to me that I’d better start looking for airborne spores. If there are some, it could mean that the air lock on the Podkayne is vulnerable. Even thirty meters off the ground.”

  “Right. Get on that. Since we’re sleeping in it until we can find out what we can do on the ground, we’d best be sure it’s safe. Meantime, we’ll all sleep in our suits.” There were helpless groans at this, but no protests. McKillian and Ralston headed for the pile of salvaged equipment, hoping to rescue enough to get started on their analyses. Song knelt again and started digging around one of the ten-centimeter spikes.

  Crawford followed Lang back toward the Podkayne.

  “Mary, I wanted . . . Is it all right if I call you Mary?”

  “I guess so. I don’t think ‘Commander Lang’ would wear well over five years. But you’d better still think commander.”

  He considered it. “All right, Commander Mary.” She punched him playfully. She had barely known him before the disaster. He had been a name on a roster, and a sore spot in the estimation of the Astronaut Corps. But she had borne him no personal malice, and now found herself beginning to like him.

  “What’s on your mind?”

  “Ah, several things. But maybe it isn’t my place to bring them up now. First, I want to say that if you’re . . . ah, concerned, or doubtful of my support or loyalty because I took over command for a while . . . earlier today, well . . .”

  “Well?”

  “I just wanted to tell you that I have no ambitions in that direction,” he finished lamely.

  She patted him on the back. “Sure, I know. You forget, I read your dossier. It mentioned several interesting episodes that I’d like you to tell me about someday, from your ‘soldier-of-fortune’ days—”

  “Hell, those were grossly overblown. I just happened to get into some scrapes and managed to get out of them.”

  “Still, it got you picked for this mission out of hundreds of applicants. The thinking was that you’d be a wild card, a man of action with proven survivability. Maybe it worked out. But the other thing I remember on your card was that you’re not a leader, that you’re a loner who’ll cooperate with a group and be no discipline problem, but you work better alone. Want to strike out on your own?”

  He smiled at her. “No, thanks. But what you said is right. I have no hankering to take charge of anything. But I do have some knowledge that might prove useful.”

  “And we’ll use it. You just speak up. I’ll be listening.” She started to say something, then thought of something else. “Say, what are your ideas on a woman bossing this project? I’ve had to fight that all the way from my Air Force days. So if you have any objections you might as well tell me up front.”

  He was genuinely surprised. “You didn’t take that crack seriously, did you? I might as well admit it. It was intentional, like that cattle prod you mentioned. You looked like you needed a kick in the ass.”

  “And thank you. But you didn’t answer my question.”

  “Those who lead, lead,” he said, simply. “I’ll follow you as long as you keep leading.”

  “As long as it’s in the direction you want?” She laughed, and poked him in the ribs. “I see you as my grand vizier, the man who holds the arcane knowledge and advises the regent. I think I’ll have to watch out for you. I know a little history myself.”

  Crawford couldn’t tell how serious she was. He shrugged it off.

  “What I really wanted to talk to you about is this: you said you couldn’t fly this ship. But you were not yourself, you were depressed and feeling hopeless. Does that still stand?”

  “It stands. Come on up and I’ll show you why.”

  In the pilot’s cabin, Crawford was ready to believe her. Like all flying machines since the days of the wind sock and open cockpit, this one was a mad confusion of dials, switches, and lights, designed to awe anyone who knew nothing about it. He sat in the copilot’s chair a
nd listened to her.

  “We had a backup pilot, of course. You may be surprised to learn that it wasn’t me. It was Dorothy Cantrell, and she’s dead. Now I know what everything does on this board, and I can cope with most of it easily. What I don’t know, I could learn. Some of the systems are computer-driven; give it the right program and it’ll fly itself, in space.” She looked longingly at the controls, and Crawford realized that, like Weinstein, she didn’t relish giving up the fun of flying to boss a gang of explorers. She was a former test pilot, and above all things she loved flying. She patted an array of hand controls on her right side. There were more like them on the left.

  “This is what would kill us, Crawford. What’s your first name? Matt. Matt, this baby is a flyer for the first forty thousand meters. It doesn’t have the juice to orbit on the jets alone. The wings are folded up now. You probably didn’t see them on the way in, but you saw the models. They’re very light, supercritical, and designed for this atmosphere. Lou said it was like flying a bathtub, but it flew. And it’s a skill, almost an art. Lou practiced for three years on the best simulators we could build and still had to rely on things you can’t learn in a simulator. And he barely got us down in one piece. We didn’t noise it around, but it was a damn close thing. Lou was young; so was Cantrell. They were both fresh from flying. They flew every day, they had the feel for it. They were tops.” She slumped back into her chair. “I haven’t flown anything but trainers for eight years.”

  Crawford didn’t know if he should let it drop.

  “But you were one of the best. Everyone knows that. You still don’t think you could do it?”

  She threw up her hands. “How can I make you understand? This is nothing like anything I’ve ever flown. You might as well . . .” She groped for a comparison, trying to coax it out with gestures in the air. “Listen. Does the fact that someone can fly a biplane, maybe even be the best goddam biplane pilot that ever was, does that mean they’re qualified to fly a helicopter?”