The Season of Passage

by Unknown

  'Explain,' Bill said.

  'The planet's river beds were carved by water,' Jim said. 'Mars may be a volcanic planet, but no lava, no matter how

  thin and runny, could have cut the ravines we have here. Of course, that's not news. Since the Vikings everybody's figured that Mars possessed surface water at one time. When that time was has always been the question. After studying these rocks and this soil, I feel the effects of erosion on Mars have been severely underestimated. The air here is thin, but we've already recorded winds as high as fifty miles an hour, far higher than we anticipated, and plenty high enough to make dust airborne. Do you all see my point? The ravines I studied today are relatively sharp edged. They couldn't have been subject to erosion for too long. That means the water that dug the ravines must have been here as recently as a couple of million years ago. I'd say there was still water here when the human race was getting started.'

  'You're saying there were canals here, then?' Lauren asked, poking fun at him.

  Jim smiled. 'If you want to call them that.'

  Lauren reminded herself why water could not exist in the liquid phase on Mars. In the thin atmosphere, it would immediately vaporize or freeze. It snowed on Mars, but it never rained.

  'But Jim,' Lauren said, 'that means the atmosphere was at least ten times thicker then. What could have blown it away?'

  Jim pulled the two halves of another Oreo apart and began to lick the icing. 'I wonder,' he said.

  'What if Mars came into conjunction with the Sun?' Bill said. 'When the axis of the planet was tilted at such an angle that both poles were facing the sun at a relatively similar angle. In such a case, the layer of frozen carbon dioxide that covers the ice water at the poles could evaporate. That would cause the atmosphere to undergo a considerable rise in density. Is that not possible, Professor?'

  Jim nodded. 'Possible. However, I've always favored intense volcanic activity filling the atmosphere with dust and causing the greenhouse effect, and in turn raising the temperature. No conjunction to the sun would melt the ice water at the poles. Only the carbon dioxide would melt.'

  'But those are theories on how the atmosphere could become dense,' Lauren said. 'How did Mars lose its air in the first place?'

  Jim shrugged. 'Some cosmic catastrophe perhaps.'

  [Message from Houston.]

  'What classification?' Bill asked.

  [Class F, Bill.]

  That meant it was from a friend or relative. Lauren hoped it was Jennifer, and that she had finally joined Terry in Houston. Lauren worried about her, even though she was sure Daniel's family were fine people. Lauren worried about cosmic catastrophes.

  'Who is it?' Lauren asked.

  [Kathy Johnson, Lauren.]

  Gary howled. 'My woman.'

  'Use my screen,' Jim said. He erased the photo of his Martian rock. 'I'm through for the night.'

  'Great,' Gary said, getting up quickly. 'On screen six Friend.'

  [Yes, Gary.]

  Kathy came on the screen, cute as ever, and started talking to a stoned, smiling Gary. Lauren continued her search out the porthole for Phobos, and pretended not to listen. Suddenly Gary howled again, this time in irritation.

  'Damnit,' Gary said, his face crumpling. 'It's Lorraine.' He slapped his knee. 'She had me fooled for a minute. She was talking like Kathy. But listen to her now!'

  'It was very hairy,' Lorraine was saying. 'I didn't know what to do. I've never seen a loaded cannon with

  ammunition like that. He tried to pin me, and I tried to squirm away. But Gary, I'm sorry, I guess I just didn't try hard enough. He had me greased. Somehow he slipped inside. Do you forgive me?'

  Lauren would have thought no one could laugh harder than she was laughing if Jessica hadn't been in the same room with her. The two of them doubled up and fell off their respective couches. Jim's cheeks looked as if they were ready to burst; he was trying to restrain himself. Bill was another matter. In a ridiculously even tone, he said, 'If you don't want to listen to the young lady, Major, have Friend break the connection.'

  'Turn that bitch off, Friend!' Gary shouted.

  [Which bitch is that, Gary?]

  Gary pointed at Lorraine. 'Her!'

  [You mean the young lady on screen six, Gary?]

  'Yes!'

  [I apologize for the delay, Gary. I did not know the young lady was a female animal or a vicious or immoral woman, and could thus be classified as a bitch.]

  The screen went blank. But they weren't through yet.

  'The rest of you shut up!' Gary yelled, turning red.

  'Oh, my!' Lauren gasped from her place on the floor, clutching her sides.' "He had me greased"!'

  ' "I'd never seen a cannon loaded with ammunition like that"!' Jessica cried, choking on her laughter. 'Oh, Gary! You sure know how to pick them!'

  Gary appealed to Jim. 'Would you tell these tramps that this is no laughing matter?'

  Jim started to speak. But then he slapped his leg and burst into giggles. Lauren threw a cushion and hit Gary in the head. Even Bill began to chuckle. Finally, in the end, Gary began to laugh with them.

  T could have sworn it was Kathy at first,' Gary said, when

  they began to sober up. 'Hey, Friend. Put the bitch back on. But leave the audio off. I can look at her and pretend she's Kathy.'

  [Yes, Gary. The bitch on screen six.]

  'No, look at this,' Lauren exclaimed, jumping back to the porthole. A dull elongated light outside the portal had caught her eye. It was rising too fast to be a star, and it was too big. The group gathered at her back and stared out into the night, where the temperature would have killed them in a minute without protection. Phobos inched steadily into the sky, and it seemed to Lauren a good omen that the moon appeared just at the end of their laughter.

  Yet the night deepened, a night as long as Earth's, but darker and more silent. More empty.

  Lauren awoke from a troubled sleep to find her arms moving in the air above her head. She'd been having a nightmare, and had been trying to push something away. Quickly she brought her arms back to her sides and glanced to the other bed where Jessica lay snoring peacefully. Try as she might, Lauren could not remember any other details from her nightmare, except that something heaving and repulsive had been trying to climb on top of her, and that it had been smothering her.

  Lauren sat up and swallowed, wondering at the foul taste in her mouth. It was as if she had eaten spoiled meat for dinner. She considered going down to the basement for a glass of water. She felt dry.

  Instead, she got up and crossed to the porthole. The alien darkness drew her, although she couldn't see a thing. She looked for a few seconds and then climbed back into bed. A few minutes later, though, she was at the porthole again, watching and waiting. Still, there was nothing there. She leaned her nose against the glass. The chill of the contact

  made her whole body shiver. She felt suddenly alone, terribly alone.

  'Jenny,' she whispered. 'Jenny.'

  In time Lauren returned to her bed and fell asleep.

  The footprints that had crossed in front of the Rover were gone. But the Rover's high-gain antenna had been snapped off its extension arm. It hung like a broken arm as they drove up to the probe in their jeep.

  Lauren fingered the trigger on her laser rifle. Two miles in the distance she could see the Hawk, sleek and sharp in the afternoon sun. Bill and Jim climbed out of the jeep and stood nearby. Lauren had a headache. She'd slept very badly.

  'Where do you think they went?' she asked.

  Jim walked over in front of the Rover and knelt where the footprints had been photographed years before. 'I think a Martian brushed them away,' he said.

  'Seriously,' Lauren said.

  'The wind. I told you it's been much stronger than we anticipated.'

  'You think it's the wind that made the prints, don't you?' Lauren climbed down from the jeep, still holding the laser.

  Jim smiled. 'Remember, I'm the one who saw canals.'

 
'What are your plans, Professor?' Bill asked.

  Jim kicked the sand at his feet. It was primarily composed of hydrate ferric oxide. Indeed, the planet's once respectable water and oxygen supply - if they listened to Jim - was not chemically bound in the soil.

  'I would like to brush away the dust in the area where the footprints were photographed,' Jim said. 'If there are holes where the prints used to be, then we can be fairly certain they were created by the wind.'

  'Do you wish to start on that today?' Bill asked.

  'It could take me more than a day. But, yes, we may as well get going on it.'

  'What equipment will you need?' Bill asked.

  'The same equipment I was using to dig yesterday. It's back at the Hawk.'

  'I was thinking that you should install the seismometer first,' Bill said.

  'Fine,' Jim said. 'This can wait. We should stick to our program. But while we are here, I want the Rover photographed from every direction at a distance of fifty feet. I also want to examine the Rover itself.'

  'Very well, Professor,' Bill said, removing a camera from the front seat of the jeep. 'I'll take the pictures.' He walked off.

  'Come, Lauren,' Jim said. 'Let's inspect this 'nineties masterpiece.'

  The Rover had been driving straight for a low hill when it stopped. Its oversized wheels appeared unharmed, and the ground immediately in front of it was as close to uncluttered as Mars got. Its cameras were filthy with dust. Still, it was the snapped antenna that held their attention.

  'Well, did a monster do this or not?' Lauren asked.

  Jim tugged unsuccessfully on the snapped arm, trying to break it free. 'I don't know,' he said.

  'What about the wind?'

  'It should be too thin to snap metal like this,' Jim said.

  Lauren shifted the laser rifle's strap on her shoulder. She noticed they were in the patch of Bill's picture-taking. 'Let's move to the side,' she said, gesturing. 'I always feel self-conscious in front of a camera.'

  'Why do you say that?' Jim asked, his voice oddly alert.

  'We're in the way. You said you wanted the Rover photographed from every angle.'

  'No, Lauren. Why did you say you felt self-conscious in

  front of a camera? I've seen you on TV. You could be an actress.'

  The question caught her off guard. She had been looking back over her shoulder. She had done the same often during the entire drive to the Rover. It was fine to keep an eye out, but she realized she was being paranoid. Yet she felt suddenly defensive about her actions.

  'It's natural to feel you're being watched when you're in front of a camera,' she said.

  'Watched? Do you feel like you're being watched?'

  'I didn't say that,' Lauren said.

  'Did you have a good night's sleep?'

  'No. Why do you ask? Did you?'

  T slept horribly,' Jim said.

  Lauren shook her head. 'I can't place you, Jim. You weren't excited about the footprints. You don't think a monster snapped the antenna. Yet you're worried about being watched. Or you're worried that I feel like I'm being watched. Now tell me, yes or no, do you think this planet's dead?'

  Jim grabbed a handful of dust that had settled atop the Rover's temperature sensor and squeezed it in his gloved hand. 'Yes. I've never been in a place that felt so dead. We'll continue our exploration and our experiments, but there's no life here.'

  'Then what are you getting at?'

  Jim tossed the dust in the air. Rather than falling straight down, it trailed slightly to the west. 'I'm anxious to visit the spot where the Russians landed. We might find some answers there. But you see this dust? It's scattering. The wind is coming up. We should be careful about the wind.' He pulled once more on the broken antenna arm, and it dropped to the ground. 'Even a dead planet could kill us.'

  Later, they drove back to the Hawk in silence.

  That night, Lauren helped Jessica with experiments on the soil. They were performing three types. The first was designed to test for both plant and animal life. It relied on the fact that if you gave an animal or plant something to eat, it sooner or later gave off gas. Here they were talking about microscopic plants and animals hidden in the dirt. They fed the dirt a special broth, and were at first excited when it gave off substantial amounts of carbon dioxide. Unfortunately the amount quickly diminished, and then disappeared altogether, which shouldn't have happened if there was life in the soil; it should have been busy reproducing.

  The second experiment also gave confusing results. It was designed specifically to test for plant life. On Earth, all plants took in sunlight and carbon dioxide. Would the soil sample absorb carbon dioxide when exposed to it? The answer was yes, and for a while they were excited again. But then soil continued to absorb carbon dioxide even when it had been baked to such a high temperature that all plant life should have been destroyed.

  Their third experiment was the simplest, of all, and gave them perhaps the most information. They baked lumps of Martian soil and analyzed what gases were given off. All organic material gave off an aroma when it was heated. Yet the Martian soil didn't smell at all. It was dead. It was beginning to look more and more as though Jim was right, as were most scientists on Earth who had never seen the Rover's pictures.

  It made sense to Lauren. Mars had no ozone layer to protect it from the sun's ultraviolet. Consequently, the soil should be sterile. However, Jessica seemed uncertain that ultraviolet bombardment alone could account for the experimental results. Jessica said there were still plenty of

  signs that there had been life on Mars long ago. There just weren't any bodies left behind.

  Lauren removed her hands from the gloves attached to the inside of the Hawk's incubator and washed up while Jessica entered the bathroom to take a shower. Lauren was on the verge of leaving the basement when she became aware of the dust blasting the Hawk's hull. It sounded eerie in a world where nothing was supposed to have changed much in a million years.

  It sounds like an invisible monster.

  Lauren climbed the ladder out of the basement.

  Gary was alone in the living area, sprawled on the couch with a book in his hands, the science fiction classic Dune.

  'What happened to Bradbury's Martian Chronicles?' she asked.

  'I put it away,' Gary said.

  'Why?'

  'At the beginning of the book they talk about the first few expeditions to Mars. It was depressing me.'

  'Why? I mean, what happened to them?'

  'In which expedition?' Gary asked.

  'Oh. The first one?'

  Gary rested Dune on his chest and looked at her with tired eyes. She couldn't remember him having smiled all day. 'A Martian murdered them when they landed,' he said.

  'I see.' It was only a story. 'How about the second expedition?'

  'The same. But first the humans were mistaken by a Martian for insane Martians. Eventually they were all killed, though.'

  'What about the third expedition?'

  Gary reached for his book and continued reading. 'You don't want to hear about it.

  'Was it bad?' Lauren asked.

  'Yes.'

  'Like the first two?'

  'Worse.'

  'I never knew it was a gloomy book,' Lauren said.

  'Dune's not much better. They have sandstorms in Dune. Storms like we're having now.'

  Lauren wanted to change the subject. 'Where's Jim? Has he gone to bed?'

  Gary nodded. 'He told me he was exhausted.'

  Lauren made a mental note to examine him in the morning. 'Keep an eye on him, Gary. Make sure he doesn't overwork himself. Everything we do revolves around him.'

  'Sure.'

  Lauren yawned. 'I'm tired myself. I think I'll hit the sack. Is Bill talking to Houston?'

  'Yeah,' Gary mumbled, preoccupied. The United States had spent billions for them to come to this forsaken place, and he spent his time reading fiction.

  'I kind of wanted to talk to Jim before I went to bed,'
she said, mostly to herself. 'Gary? Did he say what the wind was up to before he lay down?'

  'Seventy-nine miles an hour.'

  'Is that dangerous?'

  'If it gets any higher, yes.'

  'What would we do then?'

  'Leave,' Gary said.

  The word had a nice ring to it. 'I have to admit I kind of miss old Earth already.'

  Gary turned a page in his book. 'If we leave here, we just go to where the Russians landed. We just go there.'

  'Oh. Yeah. I hadn't forgotten.'

  Strong hands gripped her neck, choking off her air. She

  needed to scream but she couldn't breathe. They were smothering her!

  'Don't touch me!' she finally managed to cry, bolting upright in bed. The relief was instantaneous. She had been asleep. Now she was awake. She was safe. Gary was sitting on her bed. Jim stood at his back.

  'What is it?' she asked, dazed.

  'I didn't mean to wake you so roughly,' Gary said.

  Lauren noticed it was still dark. They had not turned on the light. Jessica was no longer in her bed. 'Why are you two up?'

  'Listen,' Jim said.

  Lauren couldn't believe she hadn't noticed the sound at first. Whatever she had been dreaming about had muddled her whole brain. It sounded as if the Hawk was getting sandblasted in preparation for a new coat of paint.

  'How bad is it?' she asked.

  'The sand has stripped away our exterior paint,' Jim said. 'Our communications are filled with static. I can't even measure the speed of the wind. We have to get out of here.'

  'Can you do it, Gary?' she asked.

  Gary stood, and paced uneasily in the cramped quarters. 'Not if it gets any worse. I would prefer to wait until it dies down, but Bill is worried that dust may filter into our engines. I see his point. If that happens, we'll never get out of here.'

  'But can we blast off in this wind?' she asked. 'Won't we wobble?'

  'Wobble?' Gary said. 'We'll have our guts twisted inside out.' He stepped to the door. 'I've got to start my checks.' He left.

  Wearing only her underwear and her oversized Houston Oiler jersey, Lauren got up and followed Jim to the porthole. 'Where's Jessie?' she asked.