Saxon grunted acknowledgment, then busied himself with the in-flight task he had assigned to all of the skimmer’s other occupants: scanning the landscape as they passed over it for any sign of Ishida or anything else unusual between Sabaea Base and Isidis Planitia.
The Martian landscape they passed over displayed variety. The base had been built on a high plain, selected because the thin winds scoured away as much dust and sand as they deposited. As they flew northeast, the shadow of the skimmer gradually pull ahead of them on the surface below, Saxon saw depressions which had been sculpted into gentle whirls of dust in manifold warm hues, pebble- and cobble-strewn steppes, and weathered crevasses dating from the last time that liquid water had molded the face of the planet hundreds of millions of years ago. All of it was lifeless; none of the lichens from the southern hemisphere extended this far north except as part of the experimental transplant patch at the base, and there was literally nothing native alive up this far except some scattered proto-microbes that an earlier exploration had described as “like viruses, but stupider.” It was an old world, an ancient world that wore its years brazenly, unmediated by dense atmosphere or oceans; but at the same time it seemed unfinished without the skin of life that the Earth bore rampantly all over, life which colonized and persevered and thrived even in extreme conditions. It was as if a careless and unknowable creator had lost interest in Mars and abandoned the project without finishing it, leaving it forever half-completed.
Until they had arrived—they and their ambitious terraforming plan. Saxon rarely looked beyond the engineering schedule he had been hired to administrate, seeing their mission as one of problem-solving and construction, of twisting solar energy and gravitation to consciously designed ends. But watching expanses of the planet’s skinless surface pass beneath him forced a perspective upon him that placed all their solar aggregators and paragravity emittors against a vast backdrop of time and space that disappeared beyond the horizon in all directions. They were a speck on a wide heedless canvas, just like the shadow of the skimmer beneath them, preceding them across the endless expanses of sand and rock that were themselves artifacts, each particle of them, artifacts of a planet that had not sought out human hands to remake it, and ahead of the shadow of the skimmer was an ancient pit in the sand, a huge orifice that sucked the shadow in and closed its lipless rim around it, chewing and devouring it—
Saxon jerked awake. There was no mouth-pit in front of them, only the shadow of the skimmer which skipped ahead like an energetic child ahead of its parent. The area they were entering was covered with irregular rocks large and small, and their shadows were growing and merging into a thatch of twilight that indicated to Saxon that the skimmer had entered the Isidis Planitia depression.
Rigby glanced at him, and he realized he was panting slightly, and his forehead was damp.
“You okay?” Rigby asked.
Saxon nodded. “How close?” he said. The back of his throat was bitter and metallic.
Rigby indicated out the transparent canopy with his chin. “Inside of ten minutes,” he said. The scope on the dash showed their progress as a green dotted line with a circle at the end, almost on top of a red square. Rigby had said earlier that they would have about two hours of daylight once they got there, but sunset would come on sooner as they descended into the basin of the crater, and the atmosphere was still too thin to let twilight linger.
“Let’s search from the air as much as we can,” Saxon said. “Get as close as you can to their touchdown site—” he tapped the scope “—and circle while we still have light.”
Saxon looked behind him to confirm that they had heard him. The three men nodded. From the way Mendez rubbed at his eyes with his thumb and first knuckle, Saxon could tell he’d napped as well.
“Everyone better dose up on some caffeine,” Saxon added. “We don’t stop until we find Ishida, and then it’s straight back to Base.”
***
The broken, rocky expanse that was Caldwell’s indicated landing site was almost at the bottom of the thousand-mile crater, an area broken up by mounds and hillocks where any detritus or wind-loosened stones from further up the slopes had rolled in the last few million years. The red square on the scope was only an approximation, so Rigby picked an arbitrary spot as the center of the spiral he then followed. Four pairs of eyes examined the ground for the next forty-five minutes until dusk robbed them of confidence. At Saxon’s instruction, Rigby returned to the center of his search spiral and brought the skimmer down into as stable a position as he could, though the whole craft canted to the right as he leveled off the paragravity and let it settle under its own weight.
Everyone strapped their masks to their faces, connected the hoses to their chest packs and smeared any exposed skin with medical gel; it stung Saxon’s face where his skin had been unprotected around his mask at sunup, and he realized that he had never even stopped to glance in a mirror to see how bad he looked. Once they were all in their masks, a slight whistle of vacuum preceded the unsealing of the canopy, and all five men clambered out and around to the unpressurized cargo area to strap on their loaded gearbelts. Already it was dim enough that flashlights were necessary to keep from turning ankles on the densely strewn stones.
“Let’s fan out from here,” Saxon said. “Sing out if you find signs of either Ishida or a cavern.”
Night had fallen precipitously, and now five flashlight beams jiggled as the men tried to tell what was shadow and what was solid in front of them. As the men radiated out and grew farther apart, Saxon felt the darkness here in this high-horizoned landscape draw in, the starry sky above separated distinctly from the unbroken blackness beneath. Only Deimos, the smaller of the two Martian moons, was visible in the sky, no brighter than a notably large star. Saxon knew it was only his imagination that seemed to infuse Deimos’s reflected light with a slight greenish tinge.
“Hey!” came Swann’s voice over the radio. “I think I found a cave.”
“Has anyone seen any sign of Ishida? Any clue?” Saxon asked. The men each sounded off in the negative.
“Swann,” Saxon continued, “aim your light straight up so we can find you.” He did so, and shortly the other four flashlights had converged on him.
The opening in the ground was on the lee of a small hump of soil; from any angle but straight in front of it, it just looked like yet another inky black shadow in a field of shadows. The opening was like a small crevasse, a crack in the dry surface. Saxon stuck his light inside the opening and shone it downward. The bottom dropped away at an angle. Scuffs covered the surface of the slope down, and Saxon could pick out the tread of standard-issue exploration boots.
He straightened. “Mendez and Chu,” he said, “get the saws and backpacks from the skimmer. Swann, set up the radio relay for when the satellite gets into range.” The men immediately returned to the skimmer, their lights bobbing over and around the lumpy blackness in front of them. Saxon knelt back at the cave entrance with Rigby, and they both examined it in their lights.
“Doesn’t look artificial,” said Rigby. “I mean, there are no signs of digging or drilling. Could just be a natural fissure.”
“Yeah. Could be,” said Saxon. He pulled his hood back, removed one earpiece, picked up a small stone from the ground, and dropped it down the passage. It clattered out of view.
“I guess that means there’s not a drop-off just out of sight,” said Saxon, standing and dusting his gloved hands. Swann came back with the radio relay, a cylindrical device about two feet tall, and set it on the ground on four telescoping legs. Once the radio satellite was in position between them and the base, the relay would boost the signals from their masks, even—Saxon hoped—if they were underground.
Mendez and Chu returned more slowly, carrying awkward loads of backpacks and two plasma saws. The backpacks held extra rations of food and water, polymer cable lines they could use for climbing lines, and extra flashlights. Chu also had a compact med kit, smaller than the one Kettr
ick had taken out to the crash site which was now in the back of the skimmer. If they found Ishida alive, with any luck they could get him to the surface using what Chu carried and stabilize him for transport at the skimmer.
With Swann holding a light for him, Mendez quickly looped his line around a craggy stone poking from the sand and tied a secure knot with hands that were confident even in gloves, then strung the line back and tossed the coil into the black hole where it unspooled as it fell out of flashlight range. Saxon motioned for Mendez to lead the way.
Mendez hesitated.
“Something wrong?” Saxon said.
After a moment’s hesitation, Mendez shook his head and stepped forward. “Sorry,” he said. “Just... steeling myself before we’re swallowed up.”
Saxon felt an electric tickle somewhere below his ribcage. The image from his dream in the skimmer came back to him with surprising intensity: a giant mouth-shaped hole in the Martian surface swallowing him eagerly as he fell into it without volition or hope of rescue. Why had Mendez used that exact phrase? Was it just something spelunkers said? Mendez had been the other one asleep in the skimmer beside Saxon. Had he—
Mendez descended into the hole, one hand on the line for stability and the other aiming his flashlight. Before his light had faded entirely down the hole, Swann followed him, then Chu. Rigby glanced back at Saxon, and Saxon thought he could see a question in the man’s posture. Then Rigby grasped the rope in one hand and slid his feet over the invisible demarcation between the plain around them and the mouth of the cave.
Saxon could see the reflections of their lights when he looked down the hole—none directly below him, but close enough that there must be some stable place to congregate not far out of sight. He wrapped the line around one gloved hand, took a last look out at the irregular horizon standing black against the star-specked sky, and slid himself down.
It was only about twenty feet to where the others waited on a flat stretch of stone, the roof arched not far over their heads. The far side of the small natural chamber was fissured with cracks and crevices, some large enough to conceivably be tunnels. Mendez was crouching in front of one, his light held at an oblique angle to highlight the dusty rock in front of the fissure.
“Looks like they came through here,” Mendez said.
“Hold on just a second,” Saxon said. “Swann, I want you to stay in contact with the relay. Let me know when the satellite comes in range, and tell me if we ever lose contact ourselves.” Swann nodded.
Saxon stepped forward to the fissure and shone his light. It was a vertical crack, with no level surface to place one’s feet, but wide enough that they could half-walk, half-climb through, even with their packs on. He leaned in, placed first one foot and then the other against the sloping walls, and led the way into the fissure.
After ten yards roughly downward, Saxon saw the fissure open out again into a dark space beyond that swallowed his flashlight beam. When he got to the open end of the fissure, he peered out and shone the light around.
The floor was smooth and level. The walls angled inward, but were also smooth and regular.
He stepped onto the floor and straightened his back. The ceiling was flat and featureless.
This was no cave. This was a room.
Swann gasped as he followed Saxon out of the fissure. “This is...” he trailed off, instinctively keeping his voice to a whisper.
Saxon laid his palm against the wall, feeling the machined texture through his glove. “Definitely artificial,” he said, “but not done with a plasma saw.” Behind him, Chu, Mendez and Rigby stepped from the fissure into the chamber. Their lights traced the square junctures between wall and floor, wall and wall, wall and ceiling. The room was five yards on a side, though the inward slope of the walls toward the ceiling three yards up made it feel tighter. A triangular passage opened on one side, the walls sloping in at the same angle to meet at a point at the top. Another passage led from the room in a direction roughly, but not exactly, opposite.
Rigby pulled a small cylindrical extra battery from his belt, set it on the floor, and nudged it one direction, then another. He rotated it ninety degrees and nudged it again, back and forth.
“Perfectly level, as far as I can tell,” he said.
“This is phenomenal,” said Mendez. “I owe Caldwell twenty clams now.”
“I think we all owe him a lot more,” Saxon said. “And Ishida, too. We still need to find him before we hand out medals.”
Mendez hunkered down in front of one of the two passageways. “Footsteps through here,” he said.
“How many?” Saxon asked.
Mendez shrugged. “It’s all scuffed—I can’t be sure. But there’s none at the other passage, so if Ishida’s still down here, he’s this way.”
The passage ahead went straight beyond the reach of their lights. From where they stood, they couldn’t see any more doorways or other features in the leaning walls before the turn.
Suddenly Swann clapped his hand to his ear. “The relay’s picking up the satellite,” he said. “Sounds like Kettrick’s got a repeater for you to call in.”
Saxon dialed through to the repeater and opened the channel so the men with him could listen in. Kettrick’s voice simply said, “Base to Saxon, please respond,” in a loop.
“Kay-Kay, this is Saxon.” It took a minute before Kettrick’s recorded voice was replaced by a pop of static, then a live transmission.
“Saxon. What’s your status there?”
“We’ve found... where Caldwell and Ishida went underground,” Saxon said, holding up a hand so the others would stay quiet. “What’s going on at your end?”
“I just thought you’d want to know,” Kettrick said. “I hooked Caldwell up to an EEG to see what was going on neurologically, and... Do you know anything about brainwaves?”
“Only that I have them,” Saxon said.
“Then I won’t bore you with details. But his are all screwed up. If I hadn’t checked the wires three times, I’d never believe that what I was seeing came from someone’s head. The delta waves aren’t even waves anymore, they’re—Well, I said I wouldn’t bore you. It’s just very strange, and very disturbing.”
“What could cause that?” Saxon asked. “Head trauma? Radiation? Toxins?”
“I’m not specifically a neuropathologist, you understand,” Kettrick said. “But as far as I know, and as far as my medical references here can tell me, the answers are no, no and no. Permission to transmit these readings to Earth and see if I can get help?”
Saxon hesitated. The last thing he wanted was terrestrial news media earning their salaries by trumpeting about one of the Mars personnel’s weird brainwaves.
“Hold off,” he said. “When we find Ishida, maybe you can learn more from him.”
“Okay.” Even through the radio, Kettrick’s reluctance was obvious. The transmission ended.
“Mendez, you’re the cave guy,” Saxon said. “You go first. Chu, you’re right after him—when we find Ishida, I don’t want anyone else in the way.”
Mendez said, “Okay, but we’re really not dealing with a cave anymore, you know.”
The passage went about twenty yards before intersecting with another passage at an odd angle. Mendez crouched to examine the dust.
“The tracks go that way,” he said, indicating to the left with his light. “I think.”
“You think?” asked Swann.
“There’s something else in the dust,” Mendez said. “Like brush marks, or... I don’t know. They go all the way up and back, over and under the footprints.”
“Could they have been dragging something?” Saxon asked.
“It doesn’t look like heavy drag marks,” Mendez answered. He stood up and leaned against the corner of the junction as he played his flashlight beam first one direction, then the other. Then he removed his hand from the corner and stared at it.
“What?” Saxon said.
Mendez played his beam across his gloved palm, and
Saxon could see the weak reflection of moisture there. “Water,” he said. “Just a bit.”
“Stands to reason,” said Rigby. “Even before we start moving the polar water, the melt has put a lot of vapor into the air—a lot by Martian standards, at any rate. And with Isidis being the lowest spot in the whole area, there’s bound to be some condensation.”
Mendez wiped his hand on his pants. “Just caught me off-guard, is all.”
“Scratch a mark on the corner there,” said Saxon. “If these passages are any indication, things aren’t going to be at right angles down here, and it’ll be easy to get lost.”
“I’ll get it,” said Chu. He pulled out a utility knife and scratched a shallow arrow back the way they had come at eye height on the stone wall.
“Mendez?” said Saxon. “Where from here?”
Mendez flashed his light to the left. “That way, I guess. We can always go back if—”
“Shh!” Rigby hissed. He pulled back the side of his hood and tugged his earpiece from his ear.
Saxon and the rest stood still, not moving. Saxon suddenly felt deafened by his earpieces; he could hear the muted breaths of the others through their mask pickups, but anything beyond that—anything in this unknown complex around them—was muffled and distanced. He felt abruptly vulnerable, as if something could creep up on them, soundless in the meager dust of millions and millions of years, until it was right next to them in the darkness and he would never know it until...
“Huh,” said Rigby. “Nothing.” He moved to put his earpiece back in, but Saxon laid a hand on his shoulder and pulled his own right earpiece out, leaving the left one in place.
“If Ishida’s conscious, he might make some noise to help us find him,” Saxon said. “And who knows how stable this place is? We might weaken some supports that haven’t borne any weight for millions of years. I’d like some warning. You and I, we’ll keep one ear open.”
Saxon led to the left and the rest followed. He felt claustrophobic at the top of the corridor, where the sloping sides came together in a peak that was just high enough for him to walk upright. He hadn’t thought about the possibility of structural weakness until he’d said it, but now he was very aware of the weight of Martian soil above their heads—only half a dozen yards at most, but enough to crush them to death quickly if this ancient masonry very reasonably decided to give way. He kept his hands off the walls and consciously tried not to hunch his shoulders.
Space Eldritch Page 11
