Martian Rainbow

by Robert L. Forward

  "They had started east around the base of the main glaciers, but hadn't gone far when our attack landers roared overhead. They turned back, caught our guys unaware, and began to raise hell."

  "Don't remind me," Alexander snarled, crumpling up the paper and tossing it to the deck. Jerry wheezed as he leaned over to pick up the piece of fax-erase paper. He smoothed it out on his ample thigh so the fax machine could erase, iron, and ready the paper for use again.

  "What did they want Tanya for?"

  "Beats me. According to the records, she's an expert on volcanoes, but there are no volcanoes at the poles. But she is also a backup medical doctor, one of the two at the main base that day. Having both a Ph.D. and an M.D. is probably why the KGB let her go to Mars, even though they didn't trust her."

  "Well, both Tanya and Viktor are back on Mars. But I've got someone here on the Yorktown who can clear up the mystery for me." Alexander's fingers flew over the icons on his screen. "Bring me Ivan Petrovich from the prison section!" he said to the face that appeared on the screen.

  "That brings me to the other reason that I showed up in hardcopy," Jerry Meyer said, handing over another sheet of fax-erase paper. "Here are a couple pictures of your Ivan Petrovich—taking his time in the toilet!"

  "What is he doing standing on the seat?"

  "Getting access to the conduits in the ceiling. It turns out the main comm links from the bridge to the central computer are routed through that region. We noticed some funny things happening to the computer system, failed password attempts, loused-up files, stuff like that. We set up imps at all the known terminals and the input ports to the computer, and found that one line was inputting requests that were never sent by its transmitting terminal. That line passes right over the toilets in the prison section. It didn't take us long to locate the position of the tap, and security installed some hidden cameras. They were triggered just an hour ago, and I brought you the pictures as soon as security could get them enlarged. He still doesn't know we caught him in the act."

  "Spying!" Alexander's face broadened into an almost evil grin, the steel-gray eyes slitting up as the crow's-feet appeared. "What did he use to get past the computer's defenses?"

  "I'm afraid there aren 't many defenses built into the Yorktown computer," Jerry said with a shrug. "The Yorktown is what we would call a 'secure facility'. It was built to hold loyal fighting troops, not strangers or prisoners. The fiber-optic cables have armor to protect them from enemy attack, but none of the normal security precautions to protect them from enemy spying. The I/O software is also fairly lenient, since it is only designed to keep underlings from reading the mail of their superiors. Otherwise it assumes everyone talking to it is on our side.

  "As for what he used," Jerry continued, "according to the security people, it is a normal-looking video reader with expanded I/O capability and a hidden compartment containing a device for tapping into fiber optic lines. Also, according to them, he must be high up in the Dirty Tricks Department of the KGB as well as the Communist party to be allowed to have one of those."

  "A KGB spy!" Alexander said with pleasure. He dismissed Jerry with a wave of the hand and started touching the icons on the control screen in front of him. The deck vibrated slightly as Jerry went down the steps, followed by two pneumatic-sounding whooshes as he passed through the door.

  "YOU HAVE heard what these two gentlemen have reported to me," Alexander said to the prisoner standing on the other side of the table. On the table were pictures of Ivan standing on the toilet and the video book with the fiber optic tap pulled out of its secret compartment.

  "The Signals Officer has reported clandestine attempts to obtain information from the classified weapons operations files of the Yorktown battle computer. Those clandestine attempts were traced to a certain compartment in the prisoner section of the ship. The photograph shows you in that compartment operating a video book in an unorthodox fashion.

  "The security officer has testified that the video book in the picture is the one on the table that was found in a search of your room. The security officer has also testified that the video book is capable of tapping into a fiber optic line and attempting clandestine contact with a computer. Thus, you had put yourself into a position and made yourself capable of clandestinely gathering information that would be of assistance to the enemy.

  "The security officer has additionally testified that the video book also contains a provision for using the video laser to produce a burst code message on a tightly focused laser beam. The laser beam can be sent out any Earth-facing porthole to the well-known 'photon bucket' telescope the enemy has established on the back side of the Moon. Thus, you had made yourself capable of transmitting that clandestinely gathered information to the enemy."

  Alexander paused, and his crow's-feet crinkled slightly as if he was enjoying himself. "In view of the sworn testimony and the physical evidence, I pronounce you guilty of spying and sentence you to the fate of a spy in wartime—death!"

  Ivan stiffened a little at the verdict, then relaxed and smiled. "Surely you are joking with your little mock trial. You are merely a general and have no authority to judge me. We are not at war. The hostilities on Mars ended many weeks ago."

  Alexander's face turned serious, and he leaned forward to stare directly at Ivan's eyes. "The battle for Mars was but a skirmish in the long war of the free world against the atheistic forces of communism," Alexander said. "The U.S. and the New Soviets still have armed troops facing each other all along the Baltic front. Technically our nations are still at war and technically, as commander-in-chief of this theater of operations, I can try, convict, and execute you ... and I did ... and I will!"

  He got up and laughed. "Of course, it won't be possible to hang you in one-tenth gee. But given unusual circumstances, one must make do with what one has."

  Ivan stood impassively, his hands handcuffed behind his back, while two large troopers, feet firmly implanted in footholds on the deck, held him by the elbows.

  "Guards! Take him to personnel lock 180. I'll be right behind you." The guards unplanted their feet, lifted Ivan in the one-tenth gravity like he were a doll, and carried him out the door, with Alexander following.

  They came to the lock. "Put him in," Alexander said.

  "Sir?" one of the troopers said.

  "That is a direct order."

  "Never mind," Ivan said, stepping into the lock. Alexander walked over to the door and stuck his face close to Ivan's.

  "I don't like you, Mr. Petrovich," Alexander said slowly, his face mean, and his eyes nearly hidden in his space-wrinkled face. "You killed my men and doubled my butcher bill. I told you before, I don't get mad at people, Mr. Petrovich, I get rid of them." He reached back and started to close the door to the inner lock, then paused.

  "I might consider letting you appeal your sentence back on Earth if you tell me a story," Alexander said.

  "A story?" Ivan asked, puzzled.

  "Yes. What were you, Viktor Braginsky, and Tanya doing at the North Pole?"

  Aha! Ivan said to himself. All this trial nonsense was to make me talk. Well, I won't—and Tanya doesn't know why we went there. Once I get back, I'll have to make sure Viktor never talks. He raised his eyes in simulated bewilderment.

  "The North Pole?" Ivan repeated to gain time. "I was just on one of my usual inspection trips."

  "I know better!" Alexander yelled. "The commissar of Mars has better things to do with his time than take long trips out onto the glaciers of the North Pole when winter is barely over."

  "Why don't you look in the computer files, like you did the last time?" Ivan chided. "Your 'owlies', as you call them, have told you everything else, surely they could do this little thing for you."

  Alexander closed and bolted the airlock door. He went to the controls and activated the intercom. "One last chance. What was important at the North Pole and where is it?"

  "There was nothing and it is nowhere," came the echoing reply from inside the lock.


  Alexander turned a control and the outer door started to open. The air pressure in the lock started to drop. For a fraction of a second there was a flicker of concern in Ivan's eyes, then he laughed and spoke over the hiss of escaping air.

  "Go ahead, lower the pressure. Threaten me all you want until I pass out from lack of air. But you'll learn nothing from me. I'm a Neocommunist. I'm brave. Not like you cowardly Americans who go into battle hiding in tin cans and with many pretty doctors and nurses just the throw of a stone away."

  Alexander turned the control more. "What is it and where!"

  Ivan was in pain from the growing bubbles of gas in his bowels and obviously having trouble breathing. His eyes were rapidly blinking slits to protect them against the near vacuum. The pain in his gut made him want to strike back. He leaned close to the window, motioning Alexander toward him. As Alexander drew near, he spat at him, the spittle freezing as it bubbled down the window.

  "You asked for it, you neocommie bastard!" Alexander yelled, suddenly losing his temper. "Nobody spits at me!" He slammed his palm onto a red button and blew the outer lock.

  There was a loud bang and a wide-eyed Ivan Petrovich went tumbling off into space.

  CHAPTER 6

  Oven Olympus

  THE SUN was rising in the east as Joseph Stanislavsky nudged the large crawler forward through the narrow confines of the north-side vehicular airlock of Olympia.

  "You have fifty centimeters this side," Tanya said, looking out the copilot window at the tip of the springed "feelers" that marked the outer edges of the huge hollow spring-wire wheels that the crawler used for traction. Joseph pushed forward evenly on the two forward motor controls and increased the speed of the crawler as it came out into the pink morning sunlight. Mount Olympus loomed off to the left. Its nearby steep rampart cliffs reached high above them, nearly blocking their view of the top of the gigantic volcano.

  "It's been a long time since I've been outside," Gus said, his voice echoing from the observation dome in the top of the middle section of the three-segment crawler. "I hadn't realized the base had this much equipment."

  "Every spare moment we have, we go out and salvage what we can find from what the troops left lying around," Mike McGuire said from the engineering console in the middle segment. "Never can tell when it might be useful ... Say! Joe! I forget. What does 'phi oh tee' mean on a circuit breaker?"

  "Photon, Mr. Mike," Joseph called back from the pilot's seat. "That is protector switch for photoflash circuits of panoramic camera."

  The six huge wheels of the crawler slowed slightly as they came to the end of the graded roadbed that led away from the base and continued north across the rusty-colored rolling ground.

  "We have less than one hundred kilometers of travel," Joseph said as he swayed back and forth from the motion of the articulated crawler over the rough terrain. "But this route is not served by autobahn, so it will take some hours."

  Gus looked back along the way they had come. The base, which had loomed so large in his life on Mars up until now, was rapidly shrinking into the distance. He nodded to Ozaki Akutagawa, who was looking out a similar dome above the living quarters in the back segment, then turned toward the front to watch the sparse scenery of Mars flowing toward him as the crawler made its way toward the southeast lift station at the base of the Mount Olympus ramparts. He could see the curly mass of Chris Stoker's sandy hair matted up against the top of the dome in the front segment. He, too, was obviously enjoying the view.

  "Hold up!" Mike said suddenly, looking at the indicators on the engineering panel. "The left rear wheel motor is heating up."

  "I, too, now see the problem," Joseph said, looking at a corner of his pilot's console. "The wheel must have picked up another optical fiber from the American missiles."

  "I'll go out and clear the tangle," Mike said, getting up. "We made the mess, we should clean it up."

  "Watch yourself," Gus warned. "Those fibers are nearly unbreakable."

  "Not if you know the technique," Mike said as he put on his helmet.

  Soon they were on their way again.

  "Wow!" was all Gus had to say as he stepped out of the crawler at the foot of the rampart cliff and looked upward. Chris had loped off a distance away from the rest of the party in the upwind direction to run a sample of air through his atmospheric analyzer.

  "Yeah, wow!" Mike said quietly. The cliffs looked as if they were about to fall on him.

  "It is indeed impressive," Ozaki agreed, shading his eyes with his glove. He turned to Joseph. "How many meters, please?"

  "It is little over five kilometers, three English miles," Joseph said. "But there are higher ramparts on north side." He, too, shaded his eyes with a glove and pointed with the other one.

  "The Sun angle is now high, so is hard to see, but careful looking will observe distinctive layering of ash and lava flows. Howsoever, the lava layers are too thick for the viscosity I calculate from samples I obtain."

  "You've been up that cliff to get samples?" Mike said.

  "Many times, Mr. Mike," Joseph replied. "But is easy when you rappel down from the top."

  He turned to look at Ozaki and Gus, and continued. "In my professional opinion, this is an example—an extreme example—of a table mountain, such as is found in Iceland. This volcano grew up out of a large ice field. The hot lava and ashes melted a hole out to this point, then got too cold."

  "Five-kilometer sheets of ice!" Tanya injected. "Ridiculous! You should stop pushing your crazy theories on these polite foreigners, Joseph. Are you asking us to believe that Mars was once covered by many kilometers of ice? If so, where is it all?"

  "I do not say all Mars covered with ice," Joseph replied angrily. "Just northern hemisphere. Both Olympus Mons and Tharsis Ridge volcanoes grew through the ice. As to where ice went, what didn't evaporate into space is trapped under dirt at poles, I bet."

  "Anybody with any sense knows that ramparts are caused by gravity thrust and hydraulic-aided shear wasting," Tanya replied. "The growing volcano puts great weight on the surface—after all, it is twenty-seven kilometers high and six hundred kilometers in diameter. The surface around the periphery fractures and thrusts up under the pressure. Trapped underground water heated by the volcano aids in creating fractures." She tossed her head and continued. "I, at least, have some evidence to back my theory."

  "You and your pissoir waterfall," Joseph said, angrily turning away. "Come Mr. Mike," he said to the engineer. "Let me show you how to drive this monster back to base."

  "You found a waterfall?" Chris asked in surprise.

  "Yes!" Tanya said. "A very pretty one, maybe tallest in the whole solar system. I noticed a clue on the survey photo and found it for certain during our first expedition around the base of the mountain, so they named it Pavlova Falls. Because the most famous Pavlova was a dancer, the name makes a joke in English. Anyway, I will show it to you when we get to the north side. But first we must go up and over."

  She led the way to the southeast lift station at the base of the cliff. It was a simple motor-driven pulley system with two cables that went up into the air at a sharp angle and disappeared in the distance. Gus pulled down his visor and, by zooming the magnification of his helmeyes, he could follow the dual cable up until he could see a similar pulley system in a metal frame some five kilometers up at the top of the cliff.

  "The size of those cables isn't very comforting, even if there are two of them," he observed.

  "Come now, Gus," Tanya said in a chiding tone, putting a gloved hand on his arm. "These are made of the latest in polymer tether materials. Each one has been tested at one million Newtons—they can lift one hundred metric tons in Earth gravity. Surely two of them can lift you in Martian gravity. Besides, I go up first." She reached for a harness hanging from a carrier frame attached firmly to the two cables.

  "I'll go first," Gus suggested, starting to take the harness from her. She snatched it away, and standing on tiptoe, used her height advantage
to look sternly down at him while holding the harness in back of her.

  "Do you know what the landing site looks like?" Tanya asked. "Do you know how to stop the cable at the right time?"

  "No, but—" Gus protested.

  "I do," Tanya said, coming down off her toes and closing out any further discussion by patting him dismissively on the chest. "So I go first, then help you to a safe landing." She turned her back to him and got into the harness. By the time she was ready, Joseph Stanislavsky and Mike McGuire had returned. Between them they carried a heavy bag of supplies and oxygen bottles.

  "What is the channel of the motor, Joseph?" she asked. He looked down at an instruction card in Cyrillic next to the control panel on the southeast lift station.

  "Channel ninety-six," he said. "Three ones for checkout, three twos to start motor ..."

  "Three threes to stop, and single twos and threes to speed up and down," Tanya continued. She paused for a second, as if listening to something. "Motor says it is okay and the battery has lots of power. I'll go now." She tongued the number two button three times and the electric motor hummed to life.

  Following the slowly moving carrier frame overhead, Tanya ran up a slight slope and then flew up into the air toward the distant point on the cliff top above. Gus watched her go, then switched to his helmeyes as the speed of the motor increased and the tiny figure became even tinier. She was obviously enjoying the ride, swinging her legs back and forth to make herself move in large, birdlike swoops as she rapidly rose up along the kilometers of cliffs. The silence was eerie as the five men waited, looking always upward.

  AFTER about twenty minutes, Gus noticed something coming toward them down the cable. It was another carrier frame with harnesses hanging below it. The motor changed speed a number of times, slowing each time, then came to a complete halt. The incoming carrier frame had just passed the drive wheel.

  "Everything's okay," Tanya's voice said overthe radio. "Hut's holding pressure and has plenty of reserves of water, air, and batteries. You can come up."