MARS UNDERGROUND

by William K. Hartmann

He called up a contrast stretch and the screen obediently created a revised version of the picture that broke up into a garish chartreuse-and-brown pattern that appeared to be random noise. And yet... Southwest of the crater, a few hundred meters out on the plain, was a patch of light. Was it more noise? No. It persisted even when he changed the temperature limits and reduced the stretch coefficient. It stood out from the noise. There had been warmth there on the forty-fourth that was not there on the thirty-ninth.

  What the hell did that mean?

  A warm patch that had not been there a few days earlier. He expanded the scale. The picture broke up into a grid of pixels. The warm spot had structure. The central pixel was the brightest pixel in the frame. It was surrounded by a target ring of slightly less bright pixels, and an outer ring of still fainter ones that nearly blended with the background. The whole thing was perhaps thirty meters across, relatively circular. A round spot warmest at the center; at night. There was nothing else like it in the frame.

  Fumbling with the disks, trying to beat the library's closing hour, he went back to the high-resolution visual at visible wavelengths. Here, the dark rocks and light dunes appeared in their ordinary sunlit colors. The region of the warm spot was unusually smooth, free of rocks, but there was nothing extraordinary in the picture—possibly a darker smudge in the questionable spot in the views made after Feb 43, but nothing to fecundate a theory.

  Carter sat, staring at the picture and at the cluttered desk.

  "I'm sorry, it's closing time." It was the librarian, standing in the cubicle entrance behind him. "Have you found what you're looking for?"

  "I don't know. Maybe I'm on the track of something."

  "Good." A professional smile. She left.

  Carter regretted the awkwardness with her the day before, when he had checked in. He could have liked her, he thought. Librarian on Phobos. Interesting lady. Lots to talk about. Reluctantly he began clearing up the disks.

  The subconscious mental cauldron was simmering. Bits of ideas bubbled to the surface where the inner eye of his semiconsciousness could catch fleeting glimpses of them. Suddenly the pieces bubbling up at random meshed into a pattern. His mind clicked.

  The librarian was back. "There's somebody to see you," she said, coolly. Annie Pohaku was standing behind her with an unprofessional smile.

  19

  PHOBOS

  FEBRUARY 55-56

  Carter's first reaction to Annie was mixed, though he quickly discovered that pleasure outweighed distress. Pleasure from her smile, the sheen of her black hair that made his own dark hair seem somehow dull by comparison. Her movements as she leaned against the cubicle door ... Her carriage seemed to go beyond any self-consciousness to some sort of universal awareness. The distress—oh, yes it was there—was an odd feeling that his moment of discovery was being interrupted. By what?

  A small part of his brain said: If only she had come an hour later, when I'd had a chance to digest things. Am I supposed to work this out in her presence? And then is her role co-discoverer, reporter, or what?

  It was as if her presence might revoke his discovery.

  "I heard you were here." She smiled. "I decided to come up on the next shuttle. I hope it's okay. Have you found anything?"

  "Yeah. Something. Thermal images late on February 44. I could show you."

  "I'm sorry," the MRL librarian broke in testily. She was still standing behind Annie. "The library is closing. You'll have to wait till tomorrow." The librarian was even cooler than before.

  They decided to walk the promenade. The full circle was almost four kilometers. Carter and Annie, a spin around the neighborhood on Friday night. So, he had reached the stage where he liked their names together in the same sentence; it was worse than he thought.

  The promenade at Phobos University was billed as the greatest walk in the solar system. All the brochures about Phobos used the cliché. It wasn't entirely local boosterism.

  The design of the city went back to sketches by crazy visionaries, Nordung and Von Braun, and to the reality they never lived to see: space cities orbiting Earth. The living space inside the wheel was divided into four decks. If the wheel were compared to a bicycle tire, the floor of the lowest deck would be the inside of the tread. The promenade deck was the inside rim of the tire, where the spokes attached. Like spokes, cables and four large tunnels ran from this roof surface to the central axle of the wheel. The axle was a massive tower erected vertically on the north pole of Phobos. The city was a giant wheel, pinned through its heart to Phobos.

  The roof, the spoke-supporting rim of the tire, was constructed not of the pale aluminum of the rest of the station, but rather of laminated glass panels fused at the lunar glassworks. What a fleet these panels had made, shipped from Tycho via solar sail, glittering through space all the way to Mars. Now they arched overhead, linked into a spectacular space-window roof over the promenade deck. Triply laminated, they were as resistant to meteorite impact as the rest of the station skin. They offered a topsy-turvy view of the Martian system.

  Carter and Annie stood, looking out at the scene, intermittently bathed in a palpable russet glow. Arching directly overhead was the rest of Phobos University—the other side of the great, wide wheel. Carter enjoyed thinking about the fact that they were turning; but as they looked up, it seemed that they themselves were standing still, while the universe turned lazily around them: the Ptolemy effect.

  Carter and Annie started walking in silence. They had shared only strained pleasantries since leaving MRL.

  Above them, through the glass, the far side of the wheel filled part of the view. To the right of it loomed the dark mass of Phobos, standing on its side. Like a wall, the horizon of Phobos rose toward the zenith beyond the glass, parallel to the far side of the wheel and to the edge of the window. Soft-shouldered craters pocked its sooty surface. It rolled away from them like an Ohio hillside. As the station turned, the panorama swung by a little at a time, but faster than the change of scene in the rotating restaurants of L.A. New land slid above the window and climbed vertically into their glassy sky. Always the slow turning of the station brought some changing vista into view. Now came vast Mars, rising and passing overhead, harboring some quiet secret. In the opposite direction, brought around into their view by the wheel's rotation, was the sun. It hung over a shadow-filled crater, swinging now to shine like a searchlight into their eyes. The kaleidoscopic effect filled their senses with constantly changing impressions.

  Carter and Annie continued in silence. Sharing the view was enough for them, a form of communication in itself.

  Shadows changed around them as the sun swung through the 90-second mini-day of Phobos University. Every minute and a half the Phobos panorama repeated on the right, carrying the sun overhead in the narrow gap between the Phobos horizon and the far side of the wheel. Then the sun would set and Mars would loom up, casting its ruddy glow, as if a fire were crackling outside. Below Mars, ordinary life. Trees in planters, couples strolling, shops and booths along the side.

  "Behold," Carter said, sweeping his arm around. "Humanity breaking free of gravity."

  Annie walked in silence, glancing in the windows of the little shops along the arcade. It didn't look like humanity breaking free. It looked like a flying mall.

  "You act like you're waiting for something," Carter said.

  "As you like."

  "Well? What might you be waiting for?"

  "I'd like to hear about what you found."

  The very idea of journalism touched off something in him. He stopped and faced her. "Annie, dammit, I've got a problem here."

  "?" A gesture. She waited quietly.

  Music drifted from a shop, something angular, with a compelling, unsyncopated rhythm, played on soft instruments. A guitar and tubular bells? The rhythms of bells and Mars-glow propelled him forward. Her patient smile filled the universe.

  "I've found something... I think. Something in the image archives. I'm excited about it. I'd like to ta
lk about it with someone. Well, I'd like to talk about it with you. I haven't worked it all out yet. But..."

  "But?"

  "I want to talk to you, but I'm not sure I want to talk to a reporter...."

  "To me, as a friend?"

  "Yeah. How do I do that?"

  "You say it's off the record."

  "And you go out and write: 'Highly placed sources close to the investigation say...' " He paused, trying to find the words he wanted, when he wasn't even sure what he wanted to say. "Look, maybe I'm wrong about this. But you see my problem."

  "?" That gesture of hers again. "Tell Mother your problem."

  "It doesn't look right, for one thing, having my own private reporter in my pocket."

  "Am I in your pocket?"

  "It looks like I'm playing for publicity. I don't want to get ahead that way, and I don't want people to think I get ahead that way. Media success ... it's just a flash in the pan.... Does any of this make sense to you?"

  "Yeah ... you're hardly dragging me along, you know. Look, I'll buy my own dinner if you like." She had laughter in her eyes, as if she enjoyed watching him squirm.

  "Come on, I'm being serious. Besides, you know I'm attracted to you. I mean, who wouldn't be? But it makes it all the more difficult. I mean..."

  "Thank you." She made a little curtsy, enjoying his suffering more than ever.

  He plunged on. "So what I really should say is, it's not for publication at all. If we talk, you've got to sit on it till I'm ready." He felt as if he were asking for all of her.

  "Look, you're making too big a deal out of it. The story's over for the networks, until Stafford is found ... one way or the other. It's old news. I'm the only journalist on it right now, and that's just by luck, 'cause I happened to be here to do 'What's Happening on Mars.' Everybody else, they think Stafford's dead. Meanwhile, I watch you work; I think something interesting is going on here. But I'm cool. I'm sure as hell not breaking any of my own rules if I sit on this awhile and watch it unfold."

  "If you sit on it."

  "I've only filed four stories. I'm done for a while. Now, I'm following the reporter's golden rule: 'The more you file, the more you earn; but the more you file the less you learn.' George Fenton."

  "Who's George Fenton?"

  "Journalist, of course. A hero of mine. Forty, fifty years ago. Pacific rim. Did this book, All the Wrong Places. By chance, he kept turning up in places where big stories were breaking. Maybe that's what's happening to me right now." She stepped under a tree and touched its branch, caressing the leaves. "Of course, you can kick me out of here if you want. Then you won't have to talk to me. Course, I'll trail you, dog you around, watch your travel schedule, and generally make a pest of myself." She was eyeing him carefully.

  "Look," she continued, "there's no ulterior motive. It happens that both our job descriptions are to find out and report what happened. We just report in different places. Can't you see that? Why do you have to make it so damn hard? We're both on the same side, Carter."

  "It all sounds kind of naive."

  "Naiveté is for back on Earth. As you and Philippe are fond of saying, this is a new world. I'm ready to invent new rules."

  "And they are?"

  She sighed. "Suppose I find myself actually one of the participants in an unfolding story, and write about that as honestly as I can. What's wrong with that?" She sighed again, a deep sigh, as if linked to her first sigh to form a pair of parentheses. "Besides, I said I'd like to talk to you as a friend."

  "No, you didn't, actually."

  "Well, I would. Okay, I'll sit on it until you've written your report, or you give me a go-ahead. One or the other. You satisfied now?"

  "Where does that leave us...?"

  "You talk. I listen. I comment. I help. We're friends. We try to find out the truth.... Besides, I thought you bought into all this already when you invited me along with the search party."

  "You invited yourself. I just agreed."

  She ignored his barb. "I kind of like this idea of being involved," she added. "I don't like just regurgitating events, like a tape recorder. Especially what passes for news among the nets. 'Wars and carnage, craft and madness, lust and spite.' Life isn't just a tabloid. We can make people aware that this is an incredible age of discovery...."

  Carter had stopped listening. He had frozen at the echo of Philippe's phrase from Tennyson. Recycled conversations; the evidence of intimacy ... He could see them together, Philippe reciting his favorite poems to her...

  She saw it at once in his face. He could tell. Even in his distress he was amazed at her perception in picking up some silent language he had scarcely known existed. They both fell quiet. He wanted to accuse her of something. What? Spending time with Philippe without him being there? He felt caught up in childish jealousies.

  "Anyway..." she said finally. "You know, I'm in a dilemma about you." She smiled.

  "It's a good sign when the woman you're with feels she has a dilemma." He didn't know what he was saying. The anger was beginning to subside as fast as it appeared. "You want to tell me about this dilemma?"

  "Mmmmm. Maybe later."

  They walked on. Carter stuck his hands in his pockets. Mars turned overhead two, three, four times.

  "Listen," she said. "Maybe we could go back to talking about Stafford."

  Mars went around again and set beyond the branches of a bushy olive tree. Carter drew a deep breath. "I'll tell you two observations I made, and then I'll spin a theory around them. Okay?"

  She nodded.

  "First observation, you already know. If Stafford drove past that Mars-2 site, he could have reached the crater—where we found his buggy—by February 43.

  "Second observation. Sometime between February 39 and 44 an odd spot appeared southwest of that crater. A spot that was warmer than normal on the evening of February 44. I found it on the thermal images."

  "And this spot: it's not warm, every night?"

  "Not on the thirty-ninth."

  "And after? Has it stayed warm?"

  "I only looked at images up to the forty-fourth. I don't know if they have anything since then. Got kicked out of MRL too soon."

  "But you can go back."

  "Yeah. I need to check for more images after the forty-fourth."

  "And your theory? You said you'd tell me a theory to explain it."

  "Okay. Here's what happened on February 43."

  "The grand reconstruction."

  "The grand reconstruction. Mind you, it's part speculation." Carter walked with his head down. He had to look at the floor to keep concentrating. "Stafford learns about the Mars-2 lander somehow—where it might be located. He doesn't tell anybody because, well, just because he's Stafford. He'd rather go check it out himself in his own lone-coyote way than blab about it. So he makes what looks like one of his usual solo trips and gets out there on the forty-third. We know it was the forty-third from the disk he left. Also, that date checks with a normal rate of dune buggy travel out there.

  "Now, this is where the theory gets interesting. Mars-2, believe it or not, was only the first of two goals for Stafford. He had some other goal. I don't know what it was. Whatever it was, he never did plan to go back to Hellas Base. He had a plan to go on west from the Mars-2 site. He had some other target in mind, and whatever it was, he wanted to keep it secret. So he tried to make it as hard as possible to track him. That's why he drove a lot of loops around Mars-2, tried to hide his tracks on rocky ground, and built the wall and put the tarp around the buggy when he finally parked it."

  Annie was listening intently, as if hearing something beyond his words.

  "It's the second goal we have to figure out. We don't know if the two goals of the trip came together by accident, or if the Mars-2 trip was just an excuse for some other secret he had in mind all the time. Whatever the second goal was, it involved getting to that little cone. I think he really hoped his tracks would be so shallow they'd get wiped out by the wind before anybody could f
ollow him. I don't think he expected anybody to find the Mars-2 site for years, let alone follow him to the cinder cone. Maybe loners don't realize how much other people care. Maybe he really expected to be given up for lost. Conventional wisdom is that you can't see tracks from orbit."

  "But Stafford put that idea into your head about Lowell's canals, that you could see fine lines.... He expected you to find them."

  "Maybe he mentioned that to me just in case something happened someday, not with any focused idea in mind. I had to do a helluva lot of processing to pick anything up. Anyway, it doesn't make sense that he would hide his tracks and hint at how to find them."

  "So when he got to the cone...?"

  "He hoped that if people did track him there, they'd theorize that he left the buggy on foot and got disabled by some freak accident out in the middle of nowhere. At each step he did what he could to hide what was going on."

  "Carter, I know you don't like to think about this, but maybe ... suicide? Could he have had some medical condition? Just wanted to be out there, somewhere?"

  "He's not the type," Carter said brusquely. "Besides, he wouldn't take out a buggy. I... I did think about that."

  They walked on in silence.

  "Maybe he did get lost, for all we know," Annie said.

  "For all we knew until this afternoon."

  "When..."

  "When I found the hot spot on those flats southwest of the cone."

  "Which tells you...?"

  "That—this is the really speculative part—that somebody landed a hopper out there and picked him up."

  Annie fell silent.

  Carter continued. "Stafford was out there; he could check out a potential landing site and give coordinates. And Stafford was there first. He had time to check a landing site. The area southwest of the crater is smooth anyway. He probably picked it out from orbital photos before he even got there. All he had to do was check it out, find the best area. Let his rescue party know."

  Annie was listening intently.

  "So the hopper heated the soil and you picked up the hot spot on the thermal image?"