Girl on Mars

by Jack McDonald Burnett

  She fell, dragging the drone down with her. When she hit the ground, she skidded and fell backwards onto her rear end. She sprung up. She could feel the drone whirring in her hands, trying to break free. She swung the drone up and over her head, then down with tremendous force. It crumpled in wreckage on the ground.

  “Daniels!” Izzy called over the radio. “We bought you another few minutes. Hurry up!”

  Daniels was more than a few minutes, but was eventually done. He emerged and snapped the circuit board into place. He blew some Martian dust out of the portal’s innards and sealed it as best he could.

  He hesitated, looking at Izzy, but then toggled the switch that was supposed to turn it on. The portal hummed to life. Conn and Izzy both shouted their approval.

  “The only issue now is we need line-of-sight with the portal on Phobos,” Daniels said.

  “How long?”

  “Twelve minutes and change,” came Ginny’s voice.

  Conn scowled, but it could have been worse. Phobos completed an orbit of the planet about every seven and a half hours, which seemed like more than eight at any point on Mars because of the planet’s simultaneous rotation in the same direction. But Phobos rotated, too. It meant the portals were usable for twenty-five minutes and then out of sight for twenty-five minutes, a cycle which repeated four times; then the portal would be unavailable for more than four hours as Phobos dipped to the horizon and then escaped to the other side of the planet. They were coming up on one of the twenty-five minute windows.

  Conn noticed lights bobbing from the direction of the Martian settlement. She didn’t doubt they were going to get bigger. “They’ll be here in under ten,” she said.

  “Can you stall them for a few minutes?” Ginny said.

  “We’ll have to,” Conn said.

  The astronauts waited in tense silence. The lights grew, as did the Martian shadows. The setting sun cast the redness of the landscape a dull gray.

  Before long the Sidereals were upon them, six of them. They formed a line as though blocking the astronauts’ way back toward the settlement. Conn wondered what any of them could do next—the language barrier. Conn had experienced both Pelorians and Aphelials “speaking” directly into her mind, and she didn’t put it past the Sidereals to know the same trick. But what would they say? Everybody just had to be unsure of themselves for a few minutes, and not do anything. . . .

  “You have met the presiding officer. He is of one faction,” one of the Sidereals said into her mind, in Basalese. “We represent another.” Conn translated for Izzy. “We believe if you stay, we can give you an advantage.” Conn translated this to make it worth your while.

  She considered how best to reply. The Sidereal would be able to “hear” her as well, if it worked the same way it did with other races. While she considered, Daniels said, “you destroy. Gate. Uh, door.” Daniels knew only rudimentary Basalese. The basics were “uploaded” into his and Conn’s brains on the moon, when they had made first contact with the Pelorians. Later, a Pelorian military officer, fed up with talking like a toddler, had given Conn the full language to speak and understand.

  “We need to go home, before the portal is destroyed,” Conn said. “Without it, we would be stranded.”

  “We can guard your portal,” the Sidereal said. “No one will destroy it as long as we’re guarding it.”

  “You understand why we’re skeptical,” Conn said. “We have to decide whether to trust you. Right away. Because otherwise we might not get home. It is difficult to trust you so soon. I mean no disrespect.”

  “You are leaving without the fourth one of you?”

  Conn reddened. They could only afford to leave when the portal became active because armed Marines—maybe a lot of them—would be coming through in the opposite direction to guard it. The astronauts could regroup at the Dyna-Tech space station and then come back for Ryan. “We’ll come back for him,” she said vaguely. “We had to complete the portal and use it before it was destroyed.” She began to creep backwards toward the portal.

  “I could take you to him right now. And guard the portal for you. It requires you to trust me, but if you do, you won’t regret it.”

  “Guys,” Ginny’s voice crackled. “You should be lined up and good to go.”

  Conn motioned for Daniels and Izzy to follow her lead, as she backed toward the threshold of the portal. “We want to trust you. We want to understand you. We came here to explore. But right now, we have to go.” She backed the rest of the way past the threshold of the portal. She readied herself for an instantaneous transition to the almost-no gravity of Phobos.

  It didn’t happen.

  Daniels and Izzy passed through the portal, too and didn’t go anywhere. “It’s not working,” Conn told Ginny. She worried. Would they be able to fix it? Would they have the time?

  “Come with us,” the Sidereal leader said. One of his fellow Sidereals was poking at the wreckage of one of the drones with his foot. “Come join your fourth. We’ll talk, then we’ll see about getting you home.”

  “The Marines are trying to get to you,” Ginny said. “But they’re stuck on Phobos.”

  “You guard the portal,” Conn told the leader. “Daniels and Izzy here will stand guard too. I'll go with you.” Daniels turned and gave her a look she ignored.

  The Sidereal leader appraised Daniels and Izzy. “You have weapons?”

  “No,” Conn said. “We’re unarmed.”

  “Then how did you—” he gestured at the drone wreckage.

  “Strength and speed,” Conn said.

  “Your bare hands?”

  Conn said, “Yes. And rocks.” She strode to the Sidereal line, and squirmed her way past two humanoids. “Shall we go?”

  TWENTY-TWO

  Reunion

  July 6, 2039

  On her shuffle back to the settlement, Conn pressed the four Sidereals who hadn’t stayed behind for information. What was this advantage they were offering? What was the deal with the two factions? Why was theirs less concerned about the existence of the portal? Was she going to be in big trouble for destroying those drones? But the Sidereals wouldn’t engage her, other than the apparent leader, whose name Conn decided was Jeffrey. He only wanted to talk about Conn’s physical prowess.

  “Are you unusually strong and fast on Earth?” he wanted to know. Conn said she wasn’t. She was in good shape, but not remarkably powerful. “So your friends are as strong as you are here on Mars. What makes you their leader?”

  “Me? I’m not—that is, officially, they’re a totally separate expedition.”

  “So back there, when you told your friends to guard the portal while you came with us, that was just—you taking control?”

  “It makes sense. I speak Basalese the best. It’s their portal, not mine. And Ryan, the man you’re taking me to—you’re taking me to him, right?—Ryan is under my command. Technically.”

  “How did you destroy the drone without a weapon? Describe what happened.” And on in that vein. Conn did come to glean that the drones had been dispatched by the presiding officer and his faction, the one that was Jeffrey’s group’s rival. The one they had already met.

  They descended into the airlock. After a time they exited and were back in the network of tunnels and alcoves that was the Sidereal settlement.

  “Our forebears came here to hide,” Jeffrey said, finally opening up. “And there is a segment of our population that would stay hidden. They believe in isolation and a strong defense. At the moment, they control our government.

  “We would trade and engage with you humans on Earth, and eventually with other civilizations. We have little influence, but are committed to our cause.”

  “Came here to hide from whom?” Conn asked.

  Jeffrey looked sour, but it may have been Conn’s imagination. “The people whose language we are speaking,” he said. “The fact that you know it says you have met them already.” Conn said she had.

  “That’s troubling,”
he said. “So these Pelorians, as you call them, they are here? In this neighborhood, I mean?”

  “On the far side of our moon, yes,” Conn said.

  Jeffrey made a face that might have been a wince. “Well, it was only a matter of time. I hope for your sake you have not formed too close a partnership with these Pelorians. It never turns out well for civilizations that do business with the Pelorians.”

  “My nation has been at war with them since they arrived,” Conn said. “I used to think that was foolish.” She wasn’t sure what she thought about that anymore.

  “They are not ones to make their own war. They allow others to fight by proxy. Still, they must be a formidable opponent, given your limitations.”

  “What limitations?”

  “Conn, you are just now landing people on this planet. You can’t be very far along, technologically. Besides, if you were any further along, the Aphelials would come after you.”

  They’ve already found us, Conn thought but did not say. Her stomach sank. Unless these Sidereals were as untrustworthy as the Pelorians, this was confirmation from another source that, yes, there was a super-race of aliens that meant Earth harm. A source that wasn’t just a superior-feeling Aphelial criminal in a spacecraft’s brig.

  “Are there any good aliens?” Conn asked. “Let me guess. You?”

  “If attacked, we may be the most dangerous aliens of all,” Jeffrey said. “Leave us alone, though—or engage us in mutually beneficial trade—and we’re the best neighbors you could ever want.”

  “Why the most dangerous?”

  But there was no more time for question-and-answer. Jeffrey led Conn into a deep hollow with partitions and doors, and three desks and chairs, one against each of three walls. It looked like an office suite, carved into a cave. Sitting at one of the desks was Ryan. He brightened when Conn entered. She tamped down a strange urge to go hug him.

  “You OK?” she asked him instead. He grinned and nodded.

  “We took Ryan away from you, and we apologize,” Jeffrey said. “He was interested in establishing trade with us. We naturally found the idea enticing.”

  Ryan had never betrayed an interest in establishing trade with anybody. Conn gave him a quizzical look. He reddened.

  “What’s going on?” she asked. She would have accepted an answer from anyone, but she spoke the question in English, so she waited for Ryan to reply.

  “Marcus knew,” Ryan finally said. “He knew about the Sidereals. He wanted me to open a dialogue with them.”

  “In what language?” she asked.

  “Basalese,” Ryan said in Basalese. Conn’s jaw dropped.

  “There’s four people in the world who know Basalese!” she said.

  “At least six,” Ryan said. “Marcus and me.”

  “I wish I hadn’t been knocked out at the time. How did you communicate this desire to trade? Just shout I want to trade in Basalese and hope somebody understood you?”

  His brow furrowed. “They found me,” he said.

  Conn turned to Jeffrey. He shrugged. “So: what is the deal?”

  “No deal as such, not now,” Jeffrey said, seating himself. “While we don’t as yet have the power to trade community resources with Ryan’s father, we are excited about his terms. And an offer like his could be just the thing that sways public opinion in our favor, and leads to the reins of power.”

  “What’s his offer?”

  “Nitrogen,” Jeffrey said, almost reverently. “The most plentiful gas in Earth’s atmosphere, which we can use for power. Marcus Stoll will supply us with enough nitrogen to power this colony permanently.”

  “Or as long as he needs what you have. Which is?”

  Jeffrey smiled. “Dirt,” he said. “Specifically, perchlorates from our soil. ClO4, which occurs naturally in quantity in only a few places on Earth. But which can be used as a powerful rocket fuel. So you see—” here, Conn could have sworn he winked at Ryan “—we each give away our least precious resource, and what we receive in exchange is a boon. The best example of a win-win trade I can think of.”

  # # #

  The astronauts shuffled across the Martian surface on the way back to the portal, which Conn hoped Daniels and Izzy had been able to fix. She was still aggravated with Ryan and walked ahead of him, which gave Jeffrey an opening to talk to her.

  “I keep harping on your physical prowess,” Jeffrey said. “And I suppose I could be bothering any of your companions instead, and you probably wish I would. But Conn—” he paused, and Conn looked at him “—I would like to make it worth your while to stay here. For a while.”

  “Stay on Mars,” Conn said, in a tone of voice she hoped accurately conveyed what she thought of the idea.

  It didn’t. “Stay on Mars! Yes! You’ll have lavish quarters, as quarters go, here. Three hot meals a day, the best we have to offer. Now, you can get those anywhere, but Conn: you’ll have an opportunity to interact with a species that I cannot guarantee will be interacting much with others down the line. Think what you could learn!” Conn shuffled faster, and Jeffrey came around her other side as he tried to keep up. “And look: you could help open this potentially lucrative trade market for your people.”

  “How?”

  Jeffrey sputtered. “Just by being you! Showing everybody what human beings are all about. Getting them used to them.”

  “You want me as a decoration.”

  “That’s—that’s not all,” Jeffrey said. “I won’t downplay it: we have room—almost a need—for some . . . muscle. If we’re going to take charge of this colony, we may have to . . . defend ourselves.”

  “Defend?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Just defend? Not maybe take the offensive here and there?”

  “There are a number of ways you could be instrumental in establishing a productive human-Sidereal relationship.”

  “I’m flattered,” Conn said, and she was. And it was a terrific opportunity to learn about the Sidereals, and commerce was always important—nations on Earth tended not to go to war with their trading partners. “But right now my responsibility is to get six astronauts home. I can’t take a detour on the way to doing that. You understand?”

  Jeffrey nodded grimly. “I do. Just—just keep it in mind. If we get your portal working, the offer will be open next time you visit as well.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  Problem Solving

  July 6 - 16, 2039

  “You got us into this mess, by showing up with no fuel for a return trip,” Daniels shouted. Conn looked down and tapped her foot, as she often did when she was impatient. When they had dated, the tic had driven Daniels to distraction. “If you hadn’t been so selfish and single-minded about getting here first, the four of us could go up in your lander. We could all go home.”

  “We’ll all get home,” Conn insisted. But she wasn’t as sure as she sounded, and she wasn’t relishing the prospect of an extended stay in the caves of the Sidereals.

  “Can we, I don’t know, siphon some of their gas?” Ryan suggested.

  “We don’t have an ascent engine,” Conn reminded him.

  “Then salvage the ascent engine from the Dyna-Tech lander and use it to launch ours into orbit.”

  “You think I didn’t think of that?” Daniels said. “It’s a non-starter. It won’t work.”

  “You’re veteran astronauts. Aren’t you supposed to be problem-solvers?” Ryan said. “Apollo 13?”

  “The point is you deliberately made this a one-way trip. Well, here’s the risk you took—the portal doesn’t work. Only now we’re stuck with you.”

  “Dude,” Ryan said, “you crashed. Not us.”

  “You’ll keep trying, of course,” Conn said. “To fix the portal.”

  “We’ll keep trying,” Izzy said, waving Daniels off. He stalked away from the group and the inert portal. “We’re also going to confirm that the lander is totaled. If not, there might be something we can do about that, maybe with help from our new f
riends.”

  Jeffrey, who wouldn’t have understood a word of what they had all just been saying, seemed to get the gist. “You are all welcome to our hospitality for as long as necessary,” he said, directly into the astronauts’ heads, in Basalese. Conn translated for Izzy. “If I recall correctly, you told me our presiding officer even said so. Your lives are not in danger.”

  “Thank him,” Izzy said. “But for real, this sucks.”

  “Ginny,” Conn called on her radio. “Anything from NASA or Dyna-Tech?”

  “Just now, Conn,” Ginny said. “They can get an uncrewed vehicle here with all the parts we’d need for a portal, figuring we need some other supplies, too, in about five months.”

  “From today, or from launch?”

  Ginny was silent for a beat. “They didn’t say. I’ll get clarification.”

  “I’m sure they meant from launch,” Conn said to Ryan and Izzy. The Dyna-Tech spacecraft and Ginny were using the same frequency, knowing they would have to work together. “So: a good seven months from now.” To Ginny, she said, “What about using the Phobos portal to get stuff here quicker?”

  “They mentioned that,” Ginny said. “They could get all the parts to Phobos, but not a vehicle to take them to the surface. But they’re looking at the possibility of converting this thing.” When it was time to go home, Ginny would land the Adventure roughly on tiny Phobos and use the portal there to get back to the space station. The Adventure couldn’t land on Mars, there were no parachutes or true descent engines to slow it down as it fell and the atmosphere would burn it up. But the frame and other large parts might be salvaged to build a lander. “Dyna-Tech isn’t saying no, but they’re not gung-ho either.” Conn wouldn’t have said no, when she was in charge at Dyna-Tech. But it was a different company now.

  They would try to make Izzy and Daniels’ lander spaceworthy, and back home, NASA and Dyna-Tech would work on getting parts for the portal to them. In the meantime, they were stuck on Mars.