Aurora

by David A. Hardy

  “I’m afraid we’re going to have to leave most of our rock samples here,” said Orlov.

  This decision would affect Minako, Beaumont and Verdet as well as Aurora. “I’m sorry,” he added apologetically, “but we’ve got to save weight wherever we can. We’re taking the two bodies, of course. Fortunately, we were very economical on fuel when we landed—otherwise we wouldn’t have enough to spare for this little jaunt.”

  He went into the Lowell with Beaumont to program their sub-orbital flight.

  Lundquist came to check up on Aurora, who was dozing. “I’m a bit worried that you might not be able to take the strain of the launch,” he said.

  “Oh come on, Doc—I’ll be fine. I’m just not used to all that physical work, that’s all. I’m tired, for chrissake! But just give me another night’s sleep.... Anyway, it’ll hardly be a high-gee launch, will it?”

  “True. OK, we’ll see how you feel tomorrow. It’s an early start, by the way, so you’d better get back to bed right away.”

  * * * *

  At 07:00 next morning Aurora got up and folded her cot and duvet. She still felt weak and rather queasy, but, since she didn’t want to be responsible for any delays in their plans, told Robert that she felt better. He seemed fairly satisfied with the readings on his diagnostic instruments.

  The team took a last look around the interior of the Hut as they suited up. Orlov made a final check of the automatic instruments which would be left working, relaying their information to the Orbiter via the smaller satellites.

  After ushering the others out he followed them, then closed the outer airlock.

  * * * *

  The campsite was a wave-patterned beach of bright and dark in the early-morning light. The longest shadow was cast by the big, vaguely conical Lander, which crouched on its legs like some monstrous spider crab. Much smaller shadows, like parasites, crawled up its side and were swallowed by its open, red-glowing maw. Below, as always, Earth-people had left litter and pollution to mark their passing.

  The ladder withdrew. The hatch swung closed. A wisp of pale vapor appeared near the base of the Lowell and became an expanding smoke-ring. Had anyone been standing on the sand to observe, they might have heard a thin roaring sound as, briefly, reddish flame flickered around the venturi. Only robot cameras watched, impassively, dutifully converting their electronic images into digital information to be reconverted and watched many minutes later by the waiting millions on Earth.

  Dust and sand erupted from beneath the Lander. The legs flexed. The gap between them and their shadow widened. Within that gap the landscape wavered and distorted through a bluish haze, like a mirage.

  For a long moment the spaceship hovered, balancing on a column of pale violet, diamond shockwaves, as though deciding whether to sink back down to the sand. Then, with startling rapidity, it shot upwards and arced across the bright orange sky, became a white star, and was lost to sight.

  * * * *

  To Aurora, it seemed that no time passed before the view through the porthole of Arsia Mons was replaced by the much smaller cone of Uranius Tholus, with the larger Ceraunius Tholus directly to its south. The two volcanoes, she knew, lay to either side of the latitude line of twenty-five degrees north.

  The motors whined, and the Lowell was dropping towards the plain. To their left appeared scores of long fractures running roughly north–south—tectonic patterns belonging to the crater of Alba Patera, already out of sight below their horizon to the northwest. The shadow-filled cracks, growing in detail as they drifted below, had an almost hypnotic effect, one replacing another but each successively growing larger, larger....

  “Three hundred meters. Looks rough down there. Taking manual control.” Orlov’s face was strained as he tersely exchanged parameters with Beaumont. Beaumont had asked if he could make this landing himself, but Orlov had overruled him on the basis of his own greater experience. Aurora thought Beaumont had seemed relieved: they couldn’t afford to take chances at this stage of the game.

  Below, overlapping folds of lava were a highly uneven and not very promising landing field. Scattered boulders, some the size of a small house, were going to make the task even more difficult.

  “Fifty meters. Impact crater down there. Right. Three forward. Twenty meters—damn! Right. Right! Ten meters.”

  “No, No—UP! There’s a boulder right under our legs!”

  “OK, OK. No! It has to be here or we’re into reserves. Picking up dust. Five. Four—contact light—”

  There was a grinding crunch and the craft tilted alarmingly. Then came a deafening screeching sound inside the cabin as they skidded horizontally in the moment that the landing pads touched the surface.

  But only for that moment.

  Then there was silence.

  “Engines off.”

  “We’re down!”

  The silence actually wasn’t a silence, Aurora discovered as her ears recuperated, but consisted of the dying whine of turbines, the ticking of cooling metal and many other sounds. The tilt of the cabin floor told her the steepness of the angle they had landed at. She hoped it would permit them to take off again safely. But Orlov, his face beaded with sweat, was grinning around at them through his beard.

  “Congrats, Boss!” said Beaumont, pumping the Russian’s arm. “For a minute back there you had me worried!”

  “Niet. Piece of cake!” claimed Orlov.

  Around them a miniature dust storm swirled. By the time it had almost cleared, the hatch was open and they began to emerge.

  * * * *

  Feeling partly disgusted, partly relieved, Aurora found herself confined to her reclining couch in the Lander while the others unloaded stores and began to set up the Igloo on its new site. All she could do was watch them on the small monitor screen, and listen to them chat as they worked.

  She still felt physically weak, but she was mentally active.

  At least she could rotate the view from two cameras to cover 360 degrees. At first, she looked at the scene scientifically. Both craters were partially submerged under younger lavas, so, like rocky icebergs submerged in an ocean of solidified magma, much of them lay beneath the apparent surface.

  Then she began to feel excited. The scene seemed...familiar—and not just from having seen the alien film, she was sure. She began to long to set her feet on the ground outside; already she seemed to feel the ancient planet calling to her.

  If Earth was held in the protective hands of a caring goddess called Gaia, as some believed, who guided the destiny of Mars? In the minds of humanity, Mars had for centuries been associated with warfare and destruction. Even its tiny satellites were named Fear and Panic. But Aurora felt that men (yes, men—never women!) had for too long imposed their own subconscious fears and bellicose nature on this little world, just because of its supposed resemblance to the colors of blood and fire. No: she imagined an ancient, benign god, waiting patiently and trustingly to welcome life—even in the form of humanity—whenever at last it came. Or had it already come and gone? If so, gone where? Perhaps they were about to find out.

  She hoped that humankind would not abuse the trust of the Martian god—that this time life would be welcome to stay as long as it wished.

  But then again, she thought tiredly, perhaps she was just feverish.

  She slept.

  * * * *

  When she awoke, the lower slopes of Uranius were almost lost in purple-grey shadow, but its peak glowed a deceptively warm rose color. Lundquist stood over her.

  “If you feel up to it, you can move into the Igloo now,” he said. “No problem if you’d rather not—you can stay here if you’d prefer.”

  “I’ll move. I think I’m feeling a bit better. I’d feel better still with some company.”

  With his assistance she descended the ladder to the ground and picked her way over pillowy but crusty pahoehoe-type lava, reminding her again of Kilauea in Hawaii. The rocks sparkled in the light from the helmet lamps as though wet. Although huge, Ur
anius was tiny compared with Olympus Mons—a more manageable size for the human eye to encompass in its field of view. Only the tip of its peak, as the Sun set, still glowed a rusty magenta. The yellow lamp over the Hut’s airlock entrance welcomed them in.

  Inside, the team was preparing once more to watch the alien “movie”—such an inadequate description, thought Aurora. It was a holistic experience. Earth had sent enhancements and enlargements of certain sections, comments and suggestions, principally so that the team could explore and excavate various areas. Rather grudgingly, the experts on Earth had even suggested that Beaumont might care to dowse over various carefully marked spots.

  He couldn’t hide his delight. “At long last the scientific establishment has been forced to accept publicly that the human mind does possess powers that can’t be duplicated by technology!” he pontificated gleefully.

  Whether the public was aware of his claim or not, it had been enraptured by the pictures of the ship’s launch from Arsia Base, as it was now known. During the initial landing only an expanding view of craters, rocks, and sand had been visible. Earth’s populace now waited with barely controlled anticipation for the discoveries they confidently expected to be forthcoming.

  The big viewscreen came to life with the initial view of the double city. There was no mistaking the similarity with the landscape outside, but Aurora felt a sense of disappointment. This image was flat and colorless compared with the totally lifelike and all-encompassing reality of the version they had watched in the alien craft’s cabin. She tried to concentrate on what her friends were saying.

  “...and we’re looking due south here,” said Verdet. “See? There’s Tharsis Tholus, and over to the right is Ascraeus Mons. But they’re both blue and misty-looking in the picture, which is why we didn’t recognize them before. And the impact craters of Uranius Patera and Fesenkov are almost hidden by vegetation. You can only see them when you know they’re there.”

  “There’s water in Fesenkov crater,” pointed out Beaumont.

  “Yes. It looks like a big lake.”

  Aurora found herself dozing again. She tried to pay attention to the discussion. Had someone just asked her a question? She didn’t seem to have the energy to keep herself awake.

  * * * *

  Robert bent over the recumbent form of Aurora, looking grim. Her eyes, once such a wonderful violet color, were bloodshot from burst capillaries. Her golden hair had faded and become ragged, now looking more like straw. Her skin, always pale, had taken on a grey sheen, and had even begun to flake. The rest of the crew, standing in a silent group, looked over at them. Lundquist shook his head.

  “I can do nothing for her,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  A NEW LIFE

  Once again, Aurora woke in her cot. She got up, feeling nauseous, and walked unsteadily to the bathroom. Only just in time. She vomited into the toilet bowl.

  When she came out she saw Lundquist standing there with his eyes on her. “I want to give you a proper check-up.” His voice was somber.

  “But I feel fine now. Really I do!” she said brightly.

  “You’ve just thrown up, haven’t you?”

  “Damn these thin walls. Is there no privacy! Yes, I did. But I feel better for it.”

  “Come on, lie down. This won’t take long.”

  But the examination was thorough, including a blood count, body scan, and other tests. Throughout it, Aurora was watching his expression. It remained concerned, but after a while it became puzzled as well.

  “I’ll need a urine sample,” he finally said.

  “But....”

  “I think I already know the result, though.”

  “It—it’s the radiation, isn’t it?”

  “Radiation? Oh, no. That’s a separate issue. You’re pregnant,” he said matter-of-factly.

  Aurora gulped. Had he handed her a sentence of death from leukemia, she would have been much less shocked, in the circumstances.

  “You—you what?”

  “You heard me quite well the first time. You did say you’d had your Pregnil shots before you left, didn’t you?”

  “Yes. I did. I was due for a booster quite soon, though. I told you. But—how am I doing apart from that?”

  “Oh, you’re absolutely fine. Your blood-cell count is quite normal now, though it was down a couple of days ago. The problem seems to be that your body’s self-protection system, however it works, seems to have objected to the intrusion of the birth-control hormone, too, and countered it. You’ve never been pregnant before?”

  “No, of course not. I—never intended to be, ever.”

  To Aurora’s surprise, he began to laugh.

  “What the...?” she began.

  “Even if you weren’t on Mars, and hadn’t performed all those miracles already, you would make the news now,” he said. “Eighty-eight-year-old woman to have baby! Can you imagine the field day they’d have?”

  “Eighty-nine by the time I have it,” said Aurora.

  He sobered quickly. “You can’t have it, of course.”

  “Oh yes, I can. And I’m going to.”

  “Now come on, Aurora. You must see that there’s no way I could permit that.”

  “‘Permit’? What are you going to do? Perform an abortion against my will?”

  “Let’s stop this, shall we? I don’t want to fight with you. But you must see how impossible it would be. We’ll talk about it again later, when you’ve had time to see reason.”

  “We can talk all you like. But I’m not going to change my mind. I may be a crazy old woman, but my first baby will have been conceived on Mars.”

  “Hmm. We’ll see about that. Meanwhile, I suggest that we keep this between the two of us—right?”

  “Sure.”

  The concertinaed curtain which served as a door to the comm desk parted, and Vitali Orlov strode in. “Sorry, but you said it yourself—the walls in this place are thin. And you were raising your voices rather. I couldn’t help overhearing.”

  His gaze as he looked directly at Aurora was grim. “The doctor is right. Of course you can’t remain pregnant. It must be your hormones talking!”

  “I don’t see why it’s such a problem,” she hissed. “We’re on Mars for another six weeks, right? Then there’s a journey home of three months or so. So there’ll be at least another three months after that before the baby is born. On Earth.”

  Lundquist snorted. “It’s easy to see you’ve had no experience of babies. They don’t keep to that sort of exact schedule, you know! Suppose it arrived early? How would you cope then? Would you be willing to trust it to the rigors of an Earth-landing?”

  “Don’t be so melodramatic, Bob! You know as well as I do that there’s nothing particularly hazardous about transferring from the ship to a shuttle and landing on Earth. If anything went really wrong, whether the child was inside or outside my body would be the last of the worries.”

  Orlov said dryly: “There is the small matter of a spacesuit. We don’t happen to have any in stock in junior sizes....”

  “Now you’re just making up objections. The combined science of Earth’s nations isn’t capable of solving a little problem like that?” She smiled. “Come to think of it, I’ve already solved it. If it did become necessary—and I really don’t think it will; I have pretty good control over my body, as you’ve seen—we could use the baby’s capsule from the alien ship. It’s custom-made!”

  “You’ve thought of everything, haven’t you?” said Orlov sourly. She knew him well enough the twinkle in his eye. With his strong religious convictions he had probably been unhappy about the notion of her having an abortion, even while his intellect ruled that such a measure was necessary.

  “Maybe. But in any case, I think the father should have some say in this, don’t you? I’d like to talk to him tonight. Alone.”

  “OK. ’Til tonight then, Mum’s the word!” said Robert.

  * * * *

  Bryan’s face went through a whole gamut of e
xpressions and emotions. Finally he exploded.

  “You’ve already told Bob and Vitali about this, and now you’ve finally decided to tell me!” he said fiercely. Didn’t you think I had the right to know about this first? I mean, I assume I am the father....”

  For a moment it looked as though Aurora was going to fight, but then her face softened. “Don’t be silly, Bryan—of course you are! Look, I didn’t plan for this, and in theory it couldn’t have happened; but it has. Something to do with my—oh, I don’t know, biochemistry or physiology or something.

  “Bob had to know, because he’s the doctor, And Vitali is our leader. You do understand, don’t you?” Her face was almost pleading.

  Bryan’s puckered with thought as he realized the implications and complications of this new situation. “But anyway, you couldn’t—I mean, we couldn’t risk it,” he said. “After all, we can always try again when we get back to Earth. Couldn’t we?” he added hopefully, watching her face.

  “I’ve already been through all the arguments with Bob and Vitali,” she said determinedly. “You won’t talk me out of it.”

  She explained about the time factor, and about the capsule.

  “Our baby will have been conceived on Mars,” she said again. “I never had any intention of having children, but this one I am going to have. And that’s final.”

  And so, it seemed, it was. Verdet seemed pleased, and Minako did not seem to care one way or another. Was the woman jealous? wondered Aurora. They then had to go through the whole routine with Mission Control, who were appalled by the idea. But there was not really much the people back on Earth could do at that distance except make noises.

  Mission Control did insist, however, that this time the public not be told. Beaumont, red to the tips of his ears, agreed that he would not be an informant this time.

  * * * *

  The Sun was still behind the bulk of Uranius when they set out in the rovers next morning. The volcano’s long shadow stretched across the plain, a luminous blue-grey, but to north and south the lava fields glowed a warm orange. Also to the south, the striated slopes of Ceraunius reared above the horizon, the mountain’s peak blazing in the early sunlight.