Boundary

by Eric Flint

  Madeline almost did cross her fingers, even though she was generally even more sarcastic about superstition than Helen was. But there really wasn't any reason to do so, that she could see, even if she were so inclined. Since their desperate juggling of rockets and fuel back at Pirate, they hadn't encountered any significant problems. The accurate intelligence from both ground and orbital sensors allowed Bruce to follow a carefully plotted course with minimal major obstacles. All he had to do was make sure he didn't run them into a gully or a too-big rock, and he was more than good enough to manage that even on the slightly hairier parts of the trip so far.

  She decided a celebration was in order. "Then I say if we do make it all intact, we open one of Joe's special dinners and throw ourselves a party. It's been one hell of a trip, and we're going to be living pretty frugally for the next few months."

  "I'm up for that," Joe agreed cheerfully. He took advantage of the thaw to snaggle Madeline's hand back.

  His concussion had apparently had no lasting effects, fortunately. He no longer suffered from excessive sleepiness or dizziness, and the leg was already showing some signs of healing. Dr. Wu was a bit concerned about how strong the bone would wind up being, since it would be healing in one-third gravity throughout. But, obviously, there wasn't anything that could be done about that. At least Joe would be contributing to science in the process, being the first human bone injury healing in low gravity conditions.

  "I think that's got a unanimous 'yes' vote coming, Madeline," A.J. said. "Especially from those of us who're going to be working lots of overtime."

  "Then put it on your social calendars. First official rest day on Mars."

  "I hope I can find a date."

  "Oy, don't taunt those of us who know we won't get one," grumbled Bruce.

  "Don't complain; you're a flyboy. Your problem's trying to get away from them."

  "Right. Tell that to Tammy, would you? Make sure you do so from a distance. She throws a mean skillet."

  A couple of hours later, darkness forced Bruce to stop for the night, still not far from the kilometers-high wall of the Valles Marineris. "Time for a bit of dinner, and then the last run tomorrow."

  Joe distributed their strictly limited rations—enough to live on, not enough to get full on—and they ate. Madeline was deliberately slow in her eating. She wanted to give her body the maximum chance to realize that, yes, it really was getting fed, even if it wasn't getting as much as she'd like.

  Joe had finished already and was looking out the south-facing port. Suddenly, he stiffened. "Hey, Bruce, kill the lights."

  "Why? What's up, mate?"

  "Just do it."

  A chill ran down Madeline's spine. What did he see? There couldn't be anything out there that cared about lights.

  Could there?

  Reflexively, the hand she still had free went to where, in times past, she'd have kept a gun.

  If she had one now, which she didn't—and a fat lot of good it would do even if she did. Was she going to shoot through the port, with nothing out there but very, very thin air, almost all of it carbon dioxide?

  The lights went out and they were plunged into pitch blackness, only a faint glow to the west marking where the sun had gone down.

  "What is it, Joe? What'd you see?" A. J. demanded. The tone of his voice showed that he, too, found the situation unsettling. "There's nothing out there!"

  "Not quite. Take a look."

  As her eyes adapted to the darkness, Madeline suddenly realized that it was not totally dark through the port. A phantom glow shimmered in the distance; then, seemed to move toward them.

  "Holy . . ." she breathed, and heard some of the others mutter something similar.

  "What the hell is it?" asked Helen tensely.

  But Joe's answer seemed simply fascinated. "Look carefully."

  Now Madeline could see several glows, like immensely tall distant columns, flickering faintly with a violet radiance.

  Violet . . .?

  "It's like the dust devil. But what's moving at this time of night?"

  There was a sound of a hand smacking a forehead. "Dust falls! Of course! Dammit, Joe, don't scare us like that!"

  Now that A.J. had named it, Madeline could see that the motion wasn't really toward them. That had just been an optical illusion, partly brought on by nervousness. Instead, it was a downward flow; a gentle and impossibly slow water-falling motion.

  "A.J., if you let your imagination run away with you, I can't help it. There's nothing alive on Mars. Well, maybe some bacteria somewhere, but that's it. The dust falls through the air and picks up charge just like we did, and discharges it during the fall. No ghosts involved, just physics."

  Joe's voice suddenly dropped an octave. "Although . . . There is the legend of Old Bemmie, who wanders these canyons in search of his missing tentacles . . ."

  Children. That's what they are, overgrown children. Why am I falling in love with him? Why is Helen in love with that other juvenile delinquent?

  Finding no logical answer, she sighed and continued staring out at the ethereal glow in the distance.

  "Not ghosts," she said. "Fairies."

  "That's a good name," A.J. said, seriously. "The Faerie Falls of Mars."

  "Logged," Bruce said a moment later. "First tourist attraction to take anyone to see, I'd say. A beauty, that is."

  They watched for a while in silence, as Mars put on a show for its first visitors in sixty-five million years.

  Chapter 46

  They arrived in the vicinity of Target 37 right around the time Bruce predicted, but the next several days had to be devoted to unloading the rover and setting up a base camp before they could even think about searching for the alien ruins. The most pressing business was to bury the extra fuel tank they'd brought from Pirate in order to provide the container with insulation and keep leakage down. They'd probably lose some of the fuel to outgassing, no matter what they did, but this way the loss would be minimal.

  Once the fuel was hooked up to Thoat's generators, they were assured of months of refrigeration and compression. Hopefully, they'd be rescued before they had to return to Pirate for more fuel.

  Even more hopefully, the extra fuel they'd brought from Pirate would never be needed at all, much less a return trip to the lander. It would simply remain there as an emergency backup. As soon as the fuel tank was buried, they started setting up the most critical pieces of equipment they'd been carrying in the rover—the reactors initially developed by Ares Project which would use Martian raw materials to manufacture the water and oxygen they'd need, along with providing them with a self-sustaining fuel supply in the form of methane.

  The reactors they'd brought with them, of course, were considerably more sophisticated—not to mention expensive—than the "Ruth, Ferris, Porky, and Ethyl" prototypes originally built by Project Ares. After NASA had more or less absorbed Ares into the drive to reach Mars as soon as possible, the powers that be at NASA had wisely decided to simply adopt Ares' designs rather than start from scratch. But, with the money NASA had available to throw at the problem, by the time Nike left orbit the reactors it carried on board were at least three generations more advanced than the originals.

  Within two days, the reactors were up and running with no hitches—and all six of the humans on Mars heaved a collective sigh of relief. So, just as heartfelt, did the crew of the Nike. Whatever happened now, so long as Nike could figure out a way to provide them with food, the people stranded on Mars could survive indefinitely.

  The next task was to set up the "bubbles." Those were the aerogel-insulated hemispherical tents that would provide them with far more living space than they'd had aboard the rover. They'd continue using Thoat's kitchen and sanitary facilities, of course, since the bubbles had no cooking provisions at all and "toilets" that were essentially just very high-tech chamber pots. But they'd have far more room and, even more importantly, personal privacy.

  Finally, they removed the rest of the equipment an
d supplies and stored them in the bubbles. Only then, after working like beavers for five days after arrival, did they enjoy the little party they'd promised themselves.

  By that time, Nike was relaying down what seemed to be a veritable avalanche of congratulatory messages from Earth. Most of them were not even from people and organizations directly connected to the space program.

  After reading one message, sent by the faculty and student body of a university in a Chinese city that Helen had never even heard of, it dawned on her that they were famous. And not "famous" as in "tabloid meat."

  Famous.

  When she said as much to Ken Hathaway, in one of their conversations, the brigadier general just laughed.

  "Are you kidding? Helen, I don't think you have any idea. The crash-landing of John Carter and your subsequent trek to safety at Target 37 has been the lead story in every media outlet on the planet since it happened. NASA tells me they think more people in the U.S. are watching the news about it every night than watched the Super Bowl."

  "You're kidding." She stared at the screen, an empty feeling starting to come to her stomach.

  Famous . . . Really famous . . .

  "Nope, not kidding in the least. We're only sending down a smidgeon of the messages that are pouring in."

  God help me. The tabloids were bad enough.

  She had a sudden nightmare image of herself trying to conduct a dig somewhere in Montana—with a crowd of spectators surrounding the site.

  "I'm a paleontologist," she half-wailed. "How will I be able to keep doing my work?"

  "Um. Well, as to that . . . I can tell you, for sure, that at least you won't have to worry about collecting a salary any more. I haven't sent them down, since it seems pointless at the moment. But I can tell you that what looks to be every major garment manufacturer in the world is engaged in a bidding war to get you to be their spokesman. Last I saw, the top offer was fifteen million dollars."

  He paused, momentarily. "Well, 'spokeswoman,' I guess I should say. Emphasis definitely on the gender. Seeing as how the main interest seems to be—"

  "Nooo—"

  She did wail, that time—and felt her stomach fly south for the winter.

  "Yup. Their new projected lines of swimwear."

  "I'm almost forty-three years old, for God's sake!"

  "Yup," Ken's cheery voice continued, relentlessly. "I guess that explains why—near as I can tell—every cosmetics company in the world launched their equivalent of World War Three too. Women entering into middle age are apparently the biggest clientele for cosmetics, at least measured in terms of the money they spend—and you just became the poster girl for all half a billion of them. Last I heard, the cosmetic companies' bids were up to—hold on, I'll check with Jackie—"

  He was back in seconds. "Eighteen and a half million, she says. She asks me to pass on that she recommends the offer that wants to market the stuff under the title 'Helen of Mars.' I do agree with her that they came up with the niftiest slogan: the face that launched the greatest ship of all."

  "I'll kill her," Helen snarled. "And you're next!"

  "Under the circumstances, that's a pretty idle threat," Ken pointed out, as cheerily as ever. "Jackie also wants to know what you'd like for your birthday coming up. She warns you she can't afford anything fancy, even if you are on the verge of becoming richer than Croesus."

  "I want a cave in a desert somewhere!" Helen half-shouted. "Where I might get my privacy back!"

  Ken laughed again. "Why bother? Just stay on Mars."

  Helen's eyed widened.

  And widened. Her stomach paused in its headlong flight.

  She looked at A.J. He was sitting nearby in the rover, obviously doing his level best to keep from laughing himself.

  His level best wasn't nearly good enough, so far as she was concerned. "One chuckle out of you," she hissed, "and you can look forward to a completely celibate stay on Mars."

  That sobered him up, some. The threat wasn't idle, either. Not since they'd set up the bubbles and had some personal space again.

  "Wouldn't think of it," he managed to get out.

  "Good." After a moment, though, her glare started fading. "What do you think, A.J. Is it possible?"

  He shrugged. "Maybe. It's certainly feasible, from a technical standpoint. The real question—what else is new?—will be the funding. At a guess, I'd say that depends mostly on what we find—or don't find—at Target 37. If there's a real dig to be done there . . . You know what I mean. A major one."

  "A real dig," she mused. "A major dig. Major digs take years . . ."

  Somewhere far to the south, Helen's stomach wheeled around and start flapping back.

  Since A.J. managed to keep from chuckling—barely—Helen didn't carry out her threat that night. Rather the opposite, in fact.

  "I love you," she murmured, contently exhausted and lying sprawled across him. "Would you stay here with me?"

  "Don't ask silly questions. I came here looking for one dream, and found two. Of course I will."

  She could feel a suspicious rumble, with her palm spread across his bare chest. "What's so funny?"

  He was practically choking, now.

  "What's so funny?"

  "Well, I just got to thinking about funding. And it occurred to me—"

  "You even finish that sentence, mister—!"

  "Let's see what we can find," Helen said. "And stop whining, Joe. Paleontologists always start work at the crack of dawn, you know that. It's not my fault—"

  She broke off abruptly, realizing she might be treading onto delicate ground.

  Joe wouldn't be coming with them, naturally, with his leg broken. He and Bruce and Rich would stay behind in the camp and finish setting it up, while the other three started scouting for Target 37.

  Helen had decided to leave Bruce and Rich behind also, because neither of them had any skills that would be of particular use in this initial scouting expedition. A.J. was coming along for his sensor expertise, which would almost certainly be needed to find ruins that were sixty-five-million years old. Helen, of course, was the only one except Joe with real experience at this work. Finally, she'd chosen Madeline because three would be safer, and Helen had a great deal of confidence in the security official's general competence.

  So there was really no reason for Joe to be up this early. Helen assumed that Madeline had woken him up when she arose. Which wouldn't have been hard to do, since she'd been sleeping with him.

  Madeline Fathom had apparently decided that their safe arrival here was an omen, or a signal—or whatever it was that mattered to her Inner Self, which Helen still found somewhat mysterious. As soon as they'd started erecting the bubbles, she'd quietly and matter-of-factly explained that she and Joe would share one, so they only needed to put up four instead of five for living quarters.

  The look on Joe's face when she'd made that announcement had been . . . priceless. It was blindingly obvious that it had come as a surprise to him, too.

  The look on his face this morning, on the other hand, was that subtle, hard-to-define-but-unmistakable expression that characterized civilized men trying to suppress their cruder impulses. A combination of smugness and exultation kept under tight restraint, so that the barbarian within didn't start leaping about the landscape and shouting "Boy, did I score last night!"

  But he also looked inexpressibly happy, so Helen forgave him his male sins. When all was said and done, she approved of Joe Buckley. Very highly.