Pale Mars

by Garnett Elliott

  She started to slip her respirator back on. "What about your toast?" Nadezhda said.

  "Oh, that." Whitcombe hoisted her cup, then inverted it and let the wine sputter over the fire, libation-style. "Paul was a good man and a stolid searcher for truth, et cetera. Now let's go."

  She led them back out the tent, more animated than angry, to a corner of the chamber where a large tripod had been set up. Beneath it stretched a jagged hole in the floor. The opening looked like it could've been made by a jackhammer, or a small explosion. A rope ladder dangled from the tripod's apex down through the hole.

  "How're you for climbing?" she said. "You all look fit enough, I suppose."

  Gennady eyed the opening with a frown. "Where does it lead?"

  "Tunnels. The whole complex's honeycombed with them. Structures built atop older ones … we used radar to find this lot. Only half of it's been mapped out, but I doubt the rest could compare to what we've—I've—discovered."

  She grabbed the rungs and started down. Nadezhda tested her weight against the ropes before following. She heard Ramos's grunting above her, then Gennady's. The ladder descended some five meters to touch smooth basalt floor. Radium lamps had been strung here, too, along a trapezoidal corridor. Slab-like walls of polished black stone sloped towards the ceiling, reflecting the ghostly green light.

  "This way …" Whitcombe waved for them to follow. The lamps led in only one direction, making the decision academic. Their footfalls sent echoes bouncing through the darkness.

  "I thought you dragged me here to look for survivors," Ramos whispered to Nadezhda. "Not wander after some crazy woman half a mile underground. The wine was nice, and I appreciate the private tour, but I've got people back at the colony depending on me."

  "Aren't you the least bit curious to see her discovery?"

  "Not really. It's probably just a rock, or a pottery shard or something. Academics get excited over—"

  "There's quite a drop ahead," Whitcombe's voice warned. "Mind the steps, and stay as close to the walls as possible."

  Nadezhda stopped short. The "drop" was a square shaft intercepting the corridor, with stairs cut into the sides leading down. The trail of radium lamps descended at right angles, giving a sense of vertigo akin to staring at an Escher print.

  "It's not as deep as it looks," Whitcombe added, before mounting the steps. They'd been scaled for creatures with longer legs, but the lower gravity made descent less abrupt. Nadezhda quickly became accustomed to it. The farther down they went, the warmer the air grew. Nadezhda paused to remove her suit's gauntlet and touch the stone wall. Warm. Definite geothermal activity. The oxygen should be growing thicker, too, but she noticed Whitcombe kept her respirator on.

  Less than ten minutes later they'd reached the base of the shaft. A trapezoidal archway, made from the same black stone as the corridor above, led into a shallow chamber. Two enormous valves of oxidized iron formed a gate on the opposite side. The valves lay partially open, revealing a fissure of darkness just wide enough to slip through.

  Whitcombe rapped at the gate with her hand. "This is the most metal I've ever seen in a Martian ruin. When I found it, I knew there must be something important on the other side."

  "Dr. Azarova said something about an antechamber," Nadezhda said, unable to take her eyes from the crack. Anything, it seemed, might come crawling through the dark space.

  "This is it. We had to bring a winch down here to pull the gate open, though we burned out a motor doing it. There must be a counterweight mechanism, somewhere. But look at this …"

  She took a hand-lamp from her parka and played the light over an adjacent wall. A second mosaic loomed there, larger than the one she'd seen in the tomb chamber, though rendered in a cruder style. It depicted a humanoid monster, with multiple limbs and faces like some Hindu demon, rearing over a group of much smaller Martians. Taloned hands reached down to crush them, or stuff their bodies into one of its many mouths.

  "It's almost … juvenile," Nadezhda said.

  "You can tell this work is more recent," Whitcombe agreed, angling the light so it showed the edges of the mosaic. "Not part of the original structure. And hurried."

  "What does it mean?" Gennady said.

  "I think it means Armageddon, though that was the subject of some debate."

  "This isn't your 'great discovery,' is it?" Nadezhda said.

  "Of course not." The lamp snapped back to shine on the fissure. "Through there, if you've got the stomach for it. Though I'll warn you—it's not treacle and cake."

  Gennady swallowed. He looked for a moment like he might object, but Nadezhda glared at him. "You are a cosmonaut and an officer," she said in Russian. "I'll not remind you again."

  "Yes, kapitan."

  She switched on her suit's forearm lamp. "Do you want me to lead the way, doctor?"

  "This is my discovery, not yours. I won't have some Siberian hussy claiming it for the glory of the Communist Party." She took in a sharp breath to say more, then checked herself. Quick as the burst of anger had come, it faded. Without comment, she thrust the light in front of her and slipped through the gate.

  Nadezhda's bulky vacc suit made squeezing after her difficult. The gate's iron valves were thick. She had a moment of panic they'd start grinding shut with her in between, but it passed after she'd wriggled through. Behind her, Ramos cursed as his paunch caused similar hampering.

  She found herself in a vast, open space.

  Neither her lamp nor Whitcombe's could find walls or ceiling. What they did show was the shore of an immense black lake, with a surface so still it could've been polished obsidian. Nadezhda reasoned she would've smelled the water earlier, if not for her respirator. She could smell it now. Dank.

  A stone causeway, just wide enough for two to walk abreast, stretched out over the depths. She gave the water a cautious glance.

  "There are no tentacles waiting to pull you over the side," Whitcombe said, "I assure you. This is a cistern, not an aquarium."

  "I've never seen a lake on Mars before," Ramos said. "Hell, I haven't seen one this big in Texas."

  "An aquifer of this size would tend to disprove the theory about Martians running out of water. But it's only the first revelation …"

  Whitcombe started down the causeway. The enormity of the cavern, coupled with the water's surface should've made for great acoustics, but there was nothing to hear—just a faint, distant dripping, the shuffle of their footsteps, and the respirator's hum. Not unlike the silence of the void. Nadezhda thought she could make out something in the darkness ahead; a shadow, bulking large against a backdrop of shadows.

  The shape began to resolve. Whitcombe's lamp sent a pale finger of light over a gleaming, blood-red surface. Carnelian, it looked like. Tapering. Nadezhda's more powerful beam picked out the rest. A three-sided pyramid, curved near the top like a dorsal fin. At twenty meters' height its scale seemed modest compared to anything at Giza, though there were no marks to indicate where blocks had been fitted together. Midway up the side facing them a symbol had been etched: a circle, with the bottom third intersected by a straight line.

  Whitcombe's face lit. "Well?"

  "Impressive," Nadezhda said.

  "Is that all you can say?"

  "It would help, doctor, if I knew what I was looking at. Besides a monument of some sort. What does the circle mean?"

  Whitcombe licked her lips. "Ah, now there's the crux. It could mean 'renewal' or 'rejuvenation.' The circle represents the sun—you can see its relative scale, compared to the view from Earth—as it rises at dawn. Or, it could mean 'decay' or 'dying.' The sun is setting, not rising. Or it could stand for both; this is alien symbology, after all. Myself, I'm leaning towards—"

  Gagging sounds, behind them.

  Nadezhda swept her light around. Gennady had doubled over along the side of the causeway. Beads of sweat appeared on his forehead, and as Ramos reached down to try and steady him, he vomited a thin stream into the pristine waters.

 
; "Gennady," Nadezhda said, "what's wrong?"

  He wiped bile from his mouth. "C-can't you feel it?"

  "Feel what?"

  "That thing." He nodded towards the pyramid, then jerked his head away as if the acknowledgement had caused him pain. "It's covered in blood."

  "That's just the color of the stone."

  "I don't mean physically … ah, I can't explain it."

  Whitcombe was nodding. "Krause reacted the same way. Not surprising, really. I've always believed death and violence can leave behind a psychic residue."

  "What do you mean, 'death and violence'?" Nadezhda said.

  "All around the base of the pyramid. Take a look for yourself."

  The monument rested on a small island, a platform made from basalt pilings. Nadezhda directed her lamp over it. Heaps of some brownish-red material, glossy like dried snakeskin, lay everywhere. She walked over and pulled at one. It came up in a crackling sheet; a husk, with gangly limbs, a torso, and a folded-over Martian's face. Its rounded, toothless mouth drooped open as if in an expression of horror.

  She let the thing drop. It collapsed into a pile of flakes when it struck the stone.

  Husks. Castings. Just like …

  She swept the beam around her. Hundreds of dried heaps, each representing a Martian corpse.

  Maybe thousands.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The trip back up the shaft, with its steeply-scaled steps, took much longer than the descent. Gennady became violently sick and had to stop at several points. Whitcombe seemed spent after her excitement at the pyramid, and Nadezhda found herself feeling listless as well, exhausted beyond the events of an event-packed day. Only Ramos appeared to have energy left. The American whistled as he climbed, seemingly unaffected by what he'd seen, though Nadezhda noticed he'd been careful to stay on the causeway and not touch the husks. They reached the corridor with the rope ladder. The climb up that drained Nadezhda's reserves. She had to stop and catch her breath before helping Ramos guide Gennady inside the pressure tent.

  "Kapitan," her engineer said, slumping against a bedroll, "I don't think we should try to fly back in the Volga just yet."

  "Agreed. We need rest." Outside the tomb chamber, Martian night would be falling. As would the temperature. She didn't like the idea of bumping around in the cold, trying to find the ship's boat while more sippee beetles could be lurking.

  "Good to see you're human like the rest of us," Ramos said. He took off his hat and respirator. "You alright with that, ma'am? We'd like to impose on your hospitality a bit."

  Whitcombe didn't respond. She'd sat herself down by the fire, and was busy fumbling for another amphorae of wine. When her eyes did make contact, they were narrow and secretive.

  "In that case …" Nadezhda opened a plastic crate marked 'provisions.' Inside were stacks of freeze-dried potatoes, an old spacer standard. She pulled tabs on the foil pouches, allowing water to mix, and placed them around the fire to heat. Gennady didn't seem hungry, but Ramos was already licking his lips.

  "Those bodies looked like the ones we found in the air shaft," he said. "Well, except they were Martians and not people I knew."

  "That was my thought," Nadezhda agreed.

  "So, if I'm reading this right … whatever did all that, down there, might be loose in the domes now?"

  Nadezhda waited to see if Whitcombe would comment. The archeologist was too busy guzzling wine straight from the container. Crimson fluid splashed down either side of her mouth.

  "… and this thing," Ramos continued, "is supposed to have wiped out the Martian race?"

  "That's the implication."

  "Well, it doesn't square. For one thing, we know the Martians were at least as aggressive as we are. Hell, most of their artifacts are weapons. I can't picture them just rolling over and letting something pick them off."

  "No. I think they would've tried to fight, just like your fellow colonists."

  "For all the good it's done." He pulled a pouch away from the fire, checked the temperature, and put it back. "The past couple days I've been getting this feeling … when I was a kid, my dad would take me out deer hunting every season. We'd set up a salt-lick, find a good place to hide and wait, for hours on end. Sometimes for days. That's the feeling I've been having—except I'm the deer."

  "When the explosions started," Nadezhda said, "you lost communication, then means of escape. But not life-support systems. Whatever this thing is, it wanted you isolated."

  "A hunter, like I said." He shivered a little, despite the fire's warmth.

  Gennady made a snorting sound. Not from derision; he'd fallen fast asleep, curled in the fetal position on his bedroll. A glance showed Whitcombe was nodding out, too. She'd slumped against a crate with amphorae still in hand, her eyes glazing over.

  "I want to rest," Nadezhda said, "but we need to take watch. Can you go first?"

  "Of course." Ramos patted at the shard-thrower. "I'll just reload this baby and wake you in about four. How does that sound?"

  "Much appreciated."

  She helped herself to one of the pouches. Despite the situation, as soon as warm food touched her stomach she felt fatigue overwhelming her. She laid down on one of the vacant bedrolls and allowed her eyes to shut.

  * * *

  Ramos was shaking her, what seemed like seconds later. She'd been dreaming of endless basalt corridors … "It's Whitcombe," he said, breathless. "She's gone."

  She leapt to her feet. The amphorae lay on the floor where Whitcombe had slumped. Gennady was rising too, rubbing at his temples. He looked worse than when he lay down.

  "I must've dozed off," Ramos said. "That never happened to me before, in the Army—"

  "Forget it." Nadezhda threw on her respirator and bolted from the tent. Nothing outside, just the ravaged crawler and dead Martians in their sarcophagi.

  "You think she went back down, to the pyramid?" Gennady said.

  "I don't see her walking pole. She'd set it next to the tent flap."

  "Maybe she went outside …"

  Nadezhda had a sickening thought. She started running down the cave tunnel. Behind her, Ramos shouted to wait, but she only sprinted faster.

  Night, out in the basin. Biting cold. A wash of brilliant stars lit the trash-piles. Wind howled past the lip of stone overhead, but thankfully, didn't carry sand.

  Heating coils in her vacc suit were already humming to life as she mounted the ramp. Her exposed face stung. The chill worsened when she reached the top and the full brunt of the wind. She raced instinctively for the tree line, and the protection the foliage would offer. If sippee beetles were nocturnal, they might be having a feast in the next few moments. She found the clearing where Whitcombe had been treed, marked by scorch marks on the ground. Still no sign of the archeologist.

  Another clearing, then: the sleek metallic outline of the Volga, gleaming under starlight. Her heart kicked with relief. For a second she'd thought—

  Whitcombe came running at her from behind the boat's engines, pole held high, her long white hair trailing. She shrieked as she charged. A lunatic's war-cry. Nadezhda's muscles tensed, her body settling into a Sambo combat stance.

  Fireball.

  The blast from the white-hot explosion shoved her against a tree trunk. Consciousness flickered for a few seconds, but not before she glimpsed the Volga flipping some twenty meters into the air, her stern aflame. The wrenching crash when the boat struck ground again brought her back, though both her ears were ringing to near-deafness.

  A silhouette loomed over her. Whitcombe, blood streaming from a triangular chunk of shrapnel lodged in her neck. Smaller bits had punctured her forearm and lacerated her face, but madness must've also given her strength, because she looked as intent as before. Hands shaking, she raised the pole high. She'd been talking as she tottered close, but only when she came within half a meter could Nadezhda make out her words.

  "… for this, he'll spare me, just like he did before. I'll be the only one left. And you won't see
him coming. You won't know until—"

  A brilliant lance of crimson licked in from the side, struck her torso for half a second. But even a glancing hit from a Topchev was fatal. Whitcombe's chest swelled as the energy dumped into it converted tissue to steam; radiating heat cooked her brain, dropping her faster than if she'd been poleaxed. Her metal staff clattered to the ground.

  Gennady broke into the clearing, gun held high, his narrow face showing both concern and smugness. She checked her rage, momentarily: this was the second time he'd liquefied people for her benefit.

  "Kapitan," he said, "are you—"

  Rage won. She slapped him across the cheek, hard. "She was going to tell me, you idiot! She's the only person who knows."

  "Tell you what?"

  "The Last Martian, the vampire, the thing—whatever it is that's responsible for all this."

  He rubbed his face, then looked over to where the Volga lay, beached on her side like some marine animal. The nozzles of her rear engines had been peeled back, the cockpit shattered. Nadezhda's stomach felt slick as she surveyed the fuselage. If the reactor had been breached …

  "We need to get out of here," Gennady said, apparently having the same thought.

  "Back to the cave."

  Ramos came bounding up to the clearing, huffing beneath his respirator as they re-merged with the tree line. He took one look at the smoking hulk of the Volga and did an about-face.

  * * *

  "This changes things," Nadezhda said, wrapped in a blanket next to the fire pit. Gennady had found a first aid kit among the site's supplies, and finished applying a cold compress to the back of her head. Yegor wasn't there to make an official diagnosis, but they both suspected mild concussion. "No boat," Gennady agreed. "No communication with the Sokol."

  "Did you talk to Alyona at all when you were on the pad?"

  "Just once. I checked in."

  "She'll try to land when she doesn't hear from us … eventually. Finding Chrysetown without a radio beacon will be difficult."