Mars Nation 2

by Brandon Q Morris

  Construction. The word sent a shiver down her spine. This was getting stranger and stranger. But she had never heard of a single physical process that could produce a material like this. Didn’t you have to call it a construction? By implication, didn’t that mean that whatever was hidden inside the mountain wasn’t natural in origin? In front of her, about ten square meters of the object was visible. How large could it be? She could still remember clearly standing on top of the mountain yesterday. Since then, the mountain had grown to the dimensions of a small city. What if its belly wasn’t hollow, but was filled by this construction?

  She ran her hands along the surface. It might be an all-too-human thought, but shouldn’t there be an entrance somewhere? Whatever the object’s purpose was, it wouldn’t make any sense if it couldn’t interact with its surroundings. Thus, there had to be openings, hatches, doors... whatever. Who would build something that was completely isolated from the planet? Of course, it was possible that right here, within these ten square meters, there weren’t any openings. It would be an extremely unlikely coincidence that she would find something.

  Somehow, though, luck was on her side. It’s about time, she thought. In the otherwise homogeneous surface, she felt a groove under her glove. It was a thin groove, an upside-down U that was cut into the blackness. However, the groove remained invisible in the beam of the helmet lamp. That was how much the material absorbed the light.

  But it was there. Her sense of touch told her that. The shape reminded her of a portal. It was somewhat shorter than her height, but wide enough for her to fit through—if it was actually more than a simple groove. And yet there were no clues that this was indeed the case. Maybe it was just decoration. Its invisibility was one argument against this, but sight is only one of many senses.

  “Do you have any ideas, Friday?” That thing in her head might have a useful suggestion. Ewa’s ideas were slowly running out.

  ‘Want to try knocking?’

  Ewa rapped on the door, but nothing happened.

  ‘I wasn’t serious about that,’ Friday said.

  “I’m open to crazy ideas, as you can see.”

  A muffled blow shook the mountain. Dust and pebbles from the remaining crust layer over her head hailed down.

  ‘I’m afraid you won’t get any farther here,’ Friday said.

  Ewa felt a second bang. It felt as if the mountain was moving. “Yeah, it’s a dead end,” she replied. “We should get out of here before we get buried in Mars’s debris.”

  The danger was real. Several hundred meters of Mars’s dirt was located above her. It would come crashing down if the mountain’s insides continued to rumble. She had to get out of here.

  Ewa turned around and walked back to the slope. The visibility was bad. A curtain of dust hovered around the mountain once again. She climbed down carefully. Ewa wanted to avoid falling again, at all costs. She might not get off so lightly next time. She reached the sandy area at the foot of the mountain without any problems. Since her climb, a few large, hard boulders had scattered around the area. The mountain must have shaken them off, which meant this region wasn’t very safe. If something like that hit her... well, better not to think about that.

  Ewa took cover behind the drill vehicle. With its meter-high chassis, she hoped the ten-axle vehicle would protect her. She was reasonably safe behind it, but she couldn’t remain at this spot since it wouldn’t help her make progress. Ewa studied the mountain through her binoculars. Something was definitely happening, but what?

  “Hello, Ewa,” suddenly blared over her helmet radio.

  She looked over her shoulder, but nobody was near her. The helmet radio’s range was limited. “Who is this?” she asked.

  “Look up.”

  Ewa obeyed and caught sight of a drone. She waved, and the drone waggled its wings.

  “We’re a day and a half away, but we’re transmitting via the drone. This was the only way we could reach you. How’s it going?”

  “Good,” Ewa said, explaining what she had done so far. “I’m trying to figure out what is going on with the mountain. I got here just in time. I think something’s happening now.”

  “Is the mountain still growing?”

  “Not as much as earlier, but there are more and more tremors.”

  “We measured those, too. And what are your plans now, Ewa?”

  She raised her binoculars again and could hardly believe what she was seeing. The crease she had tried to enter earlier was now opening into a fissure. However, it didn’t seem to be heading downward, deeper into the ground, but horizontally straight into the mountain.

  “I’m going to check on what’s going on over there and will try to get into the mountain. Maybe I can find a way to somehow stop it from growing any bigger,” Ewa said.

  ‘That isn’t a good idea,’ Friday interrupted with her own voice. ‘Do you see the giant boulders that crashed down?’

  “Uh, you’re talking to yourself?” Mike asked.

  “I, um, yeah. Sometimes, when I’m alone,” she said. “I know it’s an odd habit.” She hoped Mike bought that excuse.

  “I get it,” he replied. “The drone is showing me some fairly dramatic footage from the foot of the mountain.”

  Mike had bought it. Good. They had more than enough problems right now.

  “Yes, and that’s why I have to go in there right now,” Ewa replied to both Mike and Friday.

  She started off running. In her suit, she felt almost like Wonder Woman, as if she could run faster than any chunk of rock could ever fall. As she sprinted, she saw that the crack was now a full meter deep. It seemed as if the entire mountain was about to lift off and hover in the air. Only, the regolith of the Mars surface didn’t show support for this idea, as it continued to shake off large pieces of rock. She chose an area where a large section of the mountain’s material had already crashed to the ground. The fissure seemed to run from this spot another ten or fifteen meters. Ewa had no time to look more closely, but she had the impression that light was evident towards the inner end of the opening. It was nearly impossible, but one more reason for her to continue with her plan. She would go inside the opening, even crawl through the crack if she had to, as far as she could go. Somewhere, there had to be entrances and exits.

  She jumped over two obstacles at full speed, reached the crack and quickly climbed inside. For the first two meters into it, she needed to crawl, but after that the height of the ceiling was high enough for her to walk, albeit with her head bowed. She moved as quickly as she could to get out of the section where the Mars surface was over her head because she still had the nagging feeling that it could come crashing down. Her impression of it being lighter farther inside proved to be correct. The material above her changed about thirty meters into the cavern; it was no longer the regolith from outside. Now she saw the smooth, black material that she had scrutinized earlier. The deeper she went, the more she felt an increasingly strong wind blowing against her. She saw that the dust it carried didn’t fall to the ground. Instead, it blew almost horizontally. There must be excessive pressure underneath the mountain. And the light was coming from down here, as she could now see very clearly. It was a warm, orangey light, and she followed it.

  Then she came to the threshold and instantly stopped. There was nowhere else to go. Now she knew what the mountain was hiding, although she couldn’t comprehend it. Ewa stood at the edge of a huge dome, like an edifice from some unknown religion. She glanced at her universal device. It indicated that the atmosphere here was about one-tenth of the Earth’s pressure. She ran a rapid analysis of her surroundings and found that the air was made up of carbon dioxide. Too bad, she thought. But at least it was warm, at a temperature of about ten degrees. This was probably due to the number of artificial suns that were hanging from the ceiling of the dome and the warm light they emitted.

  The dome itself was a free-standing structure—at least Ewa could see nothing that looked like it was bearing the weight of it—and wi
thin it was some sort of strange machinery. Thick pipes wound their way upwards, crossed and then separated again. At the point where they connected to the dome, Ewa noticed some three-dimensional shapes that reminded her of eggs. Steam radiated from their tops, and they were suspended from the dome in such a way that all of their symmetrical axes were aimed at the same point. After Ewa had moved to where that point was, she was startled. Every axis was aimed directly at her. Was she being watched? Is there something alive in this place? She was suddenly aware that she was very close to panic, and she purposely steadied her breathing. She needed to collect herself. Of course it was mere coincidence that all of the eggs were pointed in her direction, nothing more. To prove it, she walked along the dome’s circumference. Shit. The eggs shifted so each axis moved right along with her. Ewa imagined that instead of fountains of steam, laser beams might shoot out of the eggs. However, as she moved, nothing new happened and she regained her composure. It is probably just an optical illusion, she told herself.

  The eggs, however, were not the most impressive things in the structure. Several large objects that looked like wheels were suspended from the middle area of the hall’s ceiling. Ewa counted six of them, all arranged into a hexagon, with a seventh one hanging in the center. At first, she thought they were disc-shaped lights, since they gave off a white light, but then she realized that inside the discs something was spinning very quickly. She wondered then if they might be massive exhaust fans.

  What kind of a construction had she wandered into? It seemed impossible to find out what the function of this machinery was. Ewa felt like an ant that had just happened to walk under a car and look up into the engine compartment. She with her ant knowledge and her ant size would never be able to comprehend the principles of the electric motor. But if she could just follow what the thing under which she was standing was doing, she would be able to discern its general purpose—like the ant noting the forward motion of an automobile. And what if she could also seize the opportunity and climb up the wheels and engine compartment into the driver’s seat of the cockpit? She wouldn’t be able to find a steering wheel meant for a human to sit behind, but perhaps she could short-circuit the ignition and force the vehicle to come to a halt. This was her mission. It was the only way to take the mountain offline before it was able to run over her ant friends, as it seemed so close to doing. For the time being, Ewa suppressed the thought that the little ant might not survive the short-circuiting. It was more important to find a way into the cockpit. She would decide what to do after that.

  Ewa ran her hand once more over the black wall. The crack behind her seemed to have gotten smaller again, but the wind that blew toward her from the center was, in contrast, stronger. Ewa thought of a hovercraft. There was a time when this technology was employed on Earth for amphibious vehicles. Could this construction lift off the ground in the same manner with the help of its excessive pressure? This would also mean that it needed to have the ability to glide over the Mars surface. A wandering mountain! The idea alone was simply too phenomenal. One other question remained—no, two. Where was the mountain going, and who was controlling it?

  She would only find answers to her questions if she didn’t stand around here any longer. Ewa entered the hall and was reminded of her ant comparison. Maybe it was an advantage to be an ant. No one bothered with such small insects. The closer she came to the middle point of the dome, the stronger the wind blew. She would soon need to engage the motors on her suit to make headway against the airflow. After she had covered about one-third of the distance, she had to concede she wasn’t going to get anywhere. She measured the density of the atmosphere this time with her universal device and was surprised to see that it was half of that on Earth! The ant would not reach the middle point of the dome. She needed a better way. Ewa looked around. Some of the pipes ended just above the surface, and some were wide enough in circumference that a human could easily fit through them.

  The next closest pipe was only twenty meters from her, and she needed to watch that she didn’t get blown away by the wind. Again, Ewa lucked out as the pipe was not sealed at the lower end. It started about two meters above the ground and was pitch black inside when she tried to shine her helmet lamp in it. It was empty except for something that glinted in the light and could have been a strut—perhaps it was a ladder. If the pipe had a purpose, then it would also need to be maintained, which was why it was accessible. Ewa jumped up. Her suit’s muscles took her higher than she had anticipated, but she made it up and rolled onto her right side. The interior wall of the pipe wasn’t as smooth and slippery as she had thought. But she had also taken note of how precipitous an angle the pipe corkscrewed into the air. It made her all the more happy when she felt around and discovered that the protrusion was in fact a brace. Above it was another and a third—someone had built a sort of ladder against the inside wall of the pipe. The steps were about a half a meter apart, which led Ewa to suspect that the being for whom they were intended must have been much taller than a human. On the other hand, perhaps they were only meant to assist the forward momentum of maintenance robots.

  She lingered for a full three minutes before finally starting off. She enjoyed climbing a lot, as it reminded her of her childhood and was, in every way, an incredibly diverse sport. As a child, many of the playgrounds had slides that consisted of large plastic tubes through which you could slide down, but she had had much more fun climbing back up them. Her sister had always posted herself at the upper opening to make sure that no other child would come down the slide at her while she climbed up it. Her sister... Where would her sister be today, if she hadn’t died so young? Maybe she’d have also made the trip to Mars and prevented her from becoming her friends’ murderer.

  Ewa was making good progress. Now and then she tested the temperature and air pressure. It was becoming warmer, and the air density was increasing. Unfortunately, her secret hope of finding an oxygen atmosphere here didn’t materialize. Whoever had made this mountain was not dependent on oxygen. What could these pipes have possibly been used for? If they were used to transport something, it must have been from the top downward because at the bottom, that is, the exit, there was nothing except for a thin atmosphere made up of carbon dioxide. Perhaps it was something like a waste pipeline, similar to the exhaust pipe of a car, but the number of pipes seemed to her to be somewhat excessive for that. Whatever it was, she hoped that they wouldn’t be put to use until after she was out again.

  She climbed for a quarter of an hour. The passageway never changed at all, but she heard a muffled rumbling in the distance. It was similar to the sound her stomach made when she was hungry. She should be getting near the end by now. As if the construction could read her thoughts, the pipe ended after a right turn, and she found herself standing in front of a blower fan whose diameter matched that of the pipe. To her good fortune, the blades were not moving so that she was able to slip between them.

  She came to a small terrace on the other side, a kind of platform set inside a giant bowl-like structure. It was loud there, almost deafening. Ewa’s suit automatically lowered the sensitivity of its exterior microphone. The view was fantastic. Once again, she felt like an ant. This time she was standing at the edge of an enormous, bubbling, cook pot. The platform, which had no railing, measured about one meter wide with a drop-off of about fifteen meters.

  The bottom of the bowl was filled with various objects that looked like rocks to Ewa from her height. They were moving about like pieces of meat or vegetable chunks in a bubbling pot of soup. The heat rose up, but the cook had forgotten to add the liquid. Instead, glinting metal cutters with large teeth were stirring the pieces. Over and over again, she watched as a large rock got caught between them and was gouged by the teeth until it was finally ground into smaller pieces by their strength.

  Ewa was not afraid of heights, but what was happening down below caused her stomach to clench. There were other pipes that also ended at around the same height, at the top half of th
e pot, as the pipe she had just come out of. They presumably also led down to the same place she had started from. On two of them the fans were running, but she spotted another pipe that was noticeably narrower and not closed off by a ventilation grid. This was the only pipe she could continue through.

  At the base of each of the passageways, there was a small platform, as was the case in front of the one she had just chosen. They were all connected by a narrow, at most ten-centimeter wide girder attached to the wall of the pot. The designer probably added it merely for decoration, but Ewa would use it to reach her objective. She had no other option, after all.

  She briefly considered what would be the best strategy, but there was only one possibility, to advance sideways, step after step with her back against the wall until she reached where she wanted to go. Ewa calculated her chance of succeeding. She wore a European size 40 shoe, but the boots of the suit were, of course, a bit larger than normal shoes. This meant that she would have to balance herself on just her heels along the girder. And under no circumstances lean forward, no matter what was happening. Her center of gravity had to remain above her heels. Was there anything to hold on to? She ran her hand along the wall. It was smooth. How wonderful it would have been if she truly were an ant—or a lizard! She was sure that there were suction cups sitting in a box on the drilling vehicle. Could she somehow recreate their effects?

  Her odds didn’t look too rosy. Her talent at improvising wasn’t going to be of any use to her here. She just needed to stay steady, keep herself upright, not look down. Piece of cake.

  ‘Should I take over maybe?’ Friday asked through her mouth. ‘I am not as... emotional.’

  “No,” Ewa answered immediately. But then she thought about it. He would only be in control for a few minutes. She believed that Friday didn’t want to see her fall into the pot. He would get her safely to the other side. She just needed to let him take control.