“Where the fuck did that come from?” Ozzie spluttered. Admittedly he hadn’t checked around much since the flock left, but this should surely have been visible from a long way off. He hadn’t been dozing that much.
“We are going to crash,” Tochee said.
Ozzie’s e-butler computed their closing velocity at just less than one meter per second. Purple vector lines sliced across his virtual vision. No doubt about it, they were on an interception course. “Bump,” Ozzie corrected. “Not crash: bump. This is freefall, remember. And at this rate we’ve got another five hours to go. We’ll be quite safe.”
“They did it!” Orion exclaimed jubilantly. “The Silfen saw us, and steered us here. I knew they were our friends.”
Ozzie wanted to tell the boy how unlikely that was; but then the gas halo wasn’t exactly a natural artifact. “Could be. Okay, guys, let’s work out how we’re going to lasso ourselves onto the surface when we approach.”
Twenty minutes away from what they now called Island Two, a gentle wind was providing the Pathfinder a lazy, slightly erratic tumble, which made it difficult to know exactly which way up it would be when they finally hit. Bumped! Ozzie was planning on jettisoning the sail when they were keel-on and only a few minutes away from contact. That ought to slow their breeze-augmented rotation; although he wasn’t sure if the figure-skating principle might not apply here, and pulling the mass in toward the center would actually help increase the spin. In any case, they all thought it would be best if they jumped just before the raft reached the treetops.
Ten minutes, and Island Two was alarmingly large and very solid. The worst part was when their stately unstoppable gyration shifted his visual orientation so they seemed to be falling up toward it. At this distance it was no longer a particle. It was land.
Every loose item on board had been securely lashed to the deck. Ozzie was looking at the sail ropes, wondering which sequence to cut them in. The sail should flutter its way into the treetops. There were enough small branches and curving fern leafs protruding above the general canopy that he was confident they would be snagged safely as they made contact. Bouncing off would be the final insult.
With two minutes to go, Ozzie untied his safety rope. One thing he didn’t want to do was get tugged along by the mass of the raft if their impact made it spin. Island Two was now close enough to reveal a wealth of detail to the unaided eye. The actual ground itself was still obscured by the trees, but in among the brown and green canopy Ozzie could see strange spaghettilike hoops of purple tubing coiled in intricate knots. Several ocher columns jutted tens of meters up out of the foliage, like ancient giant trees that had died and petrified. They were tipped in bulbous bristles that looked uncomfortably sharp. He hoped that the Pathfinder didn’t come down directly on one of those; they’d be in danger of a lethal impalement.
“There is water down there,” Tochee said. Their friend was perched on the edge of the raft, ready to fling itself free.
“That’s a good omen,” Ozzie said. “We can fill all our containers. And you seriously need to start drinking.” The filter hadn’t been terribly successful in separating out Tochee’s fecal matter.
“This may not be a correct translation,” Tochee said. “I do not believe water like this is a good sign. What is making it do that?”
Ozzie looked from the big alien to the handheld array. “Water like what? What is it doing?”
“It is flowing along the ground as if this were a planet.”
“That can’t be…” Ozzie stared forward, his retinal inserts scanning the canopy and its meandering mists, searching for a gap. There was ground beneath the eerie twisted-spiral leaves. Loose loamy soil carpeted with dead leaves. What’s holding the leaves there? “Uh oh,” Ozzie grunted. He’d assumed only the big water islands used artificial gravity. “Dumbass!”
“What?” a panicked Orion asked.
The Pathfinder was starting to speed up.
“Brace yourself!” Ozzie shouted. He gripped Orion’s wrist. “Don’t jump.”
“But…”
The raft creaked ominously as weight reasserted itself against the decking. They were tilted slightly, sliding down (and it was definitely down now) toward Island Two’s rumpled treetops.
The Pathfinder was still accelerating when it thumped into the uppermost branches. All three travelers were thrown violently to one side. The jolt pushed Ozzie’s stomach somewhere down toward his feet, while his spine hit the decking painfully. The wood bent alarmingly beneath him. He immediately wanted to be sick. Loud crashing splintering sounds reverberated all around him. Leathery leaves slapped him hard across the cheek, their tiny spikes digging in through his stubble. The decking lurched around, tipping toward the vertical. Ozzie felt himself sliding over the simple planking as it bowed alarmingly. Somehow he’d turned upside down, so it was his head that was going to hit the ground first. The Pathfinder was bucking about as it continued to crash through the tree, snapping off branches as it went.
Tochee’s manipulator flesh curled around Ozzie’s ankle. He was tugged violently upward as the raft fell away from him. The universe spun nauseously, curving smears of jade and caramel and turquoise wrapping themselves across his vision. Then his descent came to an abrupt halt. The universe reversed direction, and the Pathfinder finished its undignified landing with a bone-busting crunch.
“Urrgh. Fuck.” Ozzie tried blinking to sort out the confused blur that was all his eyes registered. Hot pain stabbed into his right knee. His cheeks smarted and he could feel something wet soaking into his stubble. When he dabbed his hand on the area and brought it away he saw fingers glistening with blood.
He tilted his head and looked down—no, up—to the tentacle of flesh coiled around his ankles. Above that, Tochee was wedged into the V where a thick branch forked away from the trunk, its manipulator flesh extended as long as Ozzie had ever seen it. The big alien was very still, though he could see it sucking down a lot of air. Several large splinters were sticking into its multicolored hide, where gooey amber fluid was seeping out of the lacerations. When he let his head flop down again, he could see the ground at least another fifteen meters below. The Pathfinder lay underneath him, its decking fractured in several places, with all their belongings scattered around.
Retinal inserts showed him Tochee’s eye signaling rapidly. It was asking if he was okay. Ozzie managed a feeble smile and gave his big friend a thumbs-up. Tochee contracted his tentacle slightly, and began to sway him smoothly from side to side, building up a pendulum motion. The tree swung a little closer with each arc until Ozzie finally managed to grab hold just above a broad bough. His feet were freed, and he collapsed onto the bough. The first thing he realized was how hard the bark was, almost like rock. “Thanks, man, I owe you one there,” he wheezed, even though Tochee couldn’t hear. “Orion? Hey, kid, where are you?” He looked down at the broken raft again. “Orion?”
“Here.”
Ozzie looked back over his shoulder, then up. The boy was tangled in the upper branches of the nearest tree, a leafless ovoid lattice of slim brass-colored stems. He began to wriggle his way downward through the interior; as he did so the smaller stems bent elastically to accommodate him. “I jumped. Sorry,” Orion said. “I know you said not to. I was scared. But this tree is made out of rubber, or something.”
“Yeah, yeah, great,” Ozzie said. “Good for you.”
“It’s not big gravity here anyway,” the boy said enthusiastically. “Not like you get on a planet, or the water island.”
“Terrific.” Now he noticed, Ozzie didn’t feel very heavy. He eased off his stranglehold on the bough, and shifted around experimentally. Gravity was probably about a third Earth standard.
Tochee slid smoothly down the trunk, pausing briefly as it came level with Ozzie. “I am no longer falling.” Its eye patterns flared contentedly. “I enjoy this place.”
Ozzie gave his friend another weak thumbs-up, and started to work out how to shin down the trunk.<
br />
Orion and Tochee were waiting for him at the bottom. He stood cautiously, very glad he wasn’t in a full gravity field; his knee felt as though it were on fire.
“Hand me the first aid kit, will you,” he told the boy.
Orion bounced off over the rumpled land, searching through their scattered belongings. When he came back he had both the medical kit and the handheld array. Ozzie sank down, and touched a diagnostic probe to the inflamed skin above his knee. Blood was dripping from his chin, falling slothfully to stain his already filthy T-shirt. His e-butler told him that some of the OCtattoos on his cheek had been torn, and could now only operate at reduced capacity.
Tochee was resting on the ground opposite, using a tentacle to pull the big splinters from its hide. A shudder ran along its body as each one came out.
“What now?” Orion asked.
“Good question.”
***
“Think of this as my wedding present,” Nigel Sheldon said.
Wilson didn’t dignify that with an answer. He raised the transparent helmet up in front of his face. On the other side of it Anna was glaring at him in her special warning way.
“Thanks,” Wilson said gracelessly. “I appreciate it.”
“No problem.” Nigel seemed oblivious to any undercurrents. “I have to admit, this whole problem tweaked my curiosity, too.”
Wilson brought the helmet down over his head. The space suit collar sealed itself to the rim. His e-butler ran checks through the suit array, and gave him the all clear.
There were nine of them getting ready in the long, composite-walled prep room. Wilson appreciated that they had to take the navy forensic office team along, but he was starting to think that maybe he would have liked a few moments alone to begin with. It wasn’t going to happen; even with Nigel’s backing, this little jaunt was expensive.
Commander Hogan was heading the investigation team; his every response formal and respectful, he seemed almost awestruck by Nigel. Wilson knew he was Rafael’s man, the one who’d replaced Myo. Not that it made him a bad person, but Wilson felt more comfortable with his deputy, Lieutenant Tarlo, who was approaching the excursion with a schoolboyish enthusiasm, and wasn’t in the least intimidated by the company he was keeping. Ever since they’d arrived in the prep room, he and Nigel had been chatting about the surf to be found on various planets. Four navy technical officers were going as well, to inspect the systems they were visiting to see what the hell the Guardians were doing with them. They were all happy about the jaunt—a day away from the office and their usual routine, an interesting technical challenge, plus getting themselves known to the admiral and Nigel Sheldon—who wouldn’t be?
“We’re ready for you,” Daniel Alster said. If Nigel’s chief aide had any misgivings about his boss taking part, he was hiding them beautifully, Wilson thought.
Nine space-suited figures tramped down a long corridor toward the gateway chamber, their bootsteps echoing loudly off the old concrete walls. Wilson’s treacherous memories replayed the time when the Ulysses crew had walked across Cape Canaveral’s main runway from the bus to the air stairs of the waiting scramjet spaceplane, their short route lined ten deep by reporters and NASA ground staff, cheering and whooping as they embarked on the first stage of their flight to another world. Meanwhile, over in California, Ozzie and Nigel were chugging beer, chasing girls, smoking joints, and building the last few components of their machine…
The gateway used to be operated by CST’s exploratory division, back in the days when they were venturing out through phase one space. That period had ended over a century and a half ago when the exploratory division packed up and moved out to the Big15; they were now transient again, en route to phase three space, their progress stalled only by the Prime invasion. But this wormhole had remained active, tucked away in a section of LA Galactic where the general public never visited. It was used for many things: emergency backup for the big commercial gateways, supplying rapid response transit for the emergency services during civil disasters, carrying reserve power circuits to the moon in the event of any regular linkage shutdown. But mainly it provided interstellar transportation for governments that couldn’t afford, or weren’t liberal enough to sanction, life suspension sentences for criminals. Even on the old phase one developed, “progressive” worlds, some crimes were regarded as needing something more than suspension, and a large proportion of convicted criminals refused suspension anyway. With characteristic opportunism, CST filled the market for such a banishment.
There were several planets in phase one space that were on the borderline of H-congruous status; if they were opened for settlement they would be hard work to live on. As CST explored and opened up hundreds of other, easier worlds, they were rapidly sidelined and consigned to a detailed entry in astronomical records and company history. Hardrock would have been one of them, a world whose life-forms were still on the bottom of the evolutionary ladder, with no land animals and only primitive jellyfish in the sea. A perfect place for the scum of humanity to be dumped, where they were incapable of doing any harm to anybody except their own kind. So once a week, CST would open the wormhole to a new location on Hardrock, send through crates of farm equipment, seed, medical supplies, and food; then the convict batch would be marched over. After that, they were on their own.
The circular gateway chamber looked crude compared to its modern equivalents, its surfaces of raw concrete and metal more suited to handling cargo rather than people. But then Wilson suspected the people who passed through here were regarded as less than cargo anyway. A Class 5-BH transRover stood on the floor, a simple open jeep used for driving around on airless worlds, with big low-pressure wheels. Several equipment cases had been loaded on the rear rack. The gateway itself was a blank circle, three meters in diameter, projecting slightly from the concave wall. A force field shimmered over it, turning the air to a slightly grainy smoke layer.
Daniel Alster gave them a tight smile. “Good luck,” he said as he left.
Wilson looked up the wall opposite the gateway to the broad window fronting the operations center. A couple of technicians were lounging on the other side of it, regarding the travelers with a disinterested glance as they joked between themselves.
“Stand by,” the gateway controller told them. “We’re opening the wormhole now.”
A pale light began to shine through the force field. Wilson turned to face it, seeing faint shadows growing across the floor behind all of the team. The light was deepening, becoming amber, then heading down toward ginger. His heart began to pick up as the color flipped all sorts of switches in his brain. Why the hell am I putting myself through this? He hadn’t realized just how much Mars had been haunting him down the centuries.
The wormhole opened. After a break of over three centuries, Wilson was once again looking out across Arabia Terra.
“Clear to proceed,” the gateway controller said.
Wilson drew a breath, staring at the stone-littered landscape. Thin wisps of ginger dust were scurrying through the ultra-thin atmosphere.
“You want to go first?” Nigel asked.
How envious he’d been of Commander Dylan Lewis all those centuries ago, the first man to set foot on another planet. Except he wasn’t; Nigel had been there waiting. Some strange atmospheric phenomena carried Ozzie’s laugh down the ages to reverberate around the chamber. “Oh, man, don’t do that, you’re going to so piss them off.”
“Sure,” Wilson said briskly. He walked through the force field.
Martian soil under his feet. Pink-tinged atmosphere banding the horizon, fading to jet-black directly overhead. A million pockmarked, jagged rocks scattered about, with rusty dust in every crevice. He scanned around, placing himself against the geography and features he could never forget. Off to his left was the rim of giant Schiaparelli, which should mean…There, just off north. Two mounds of red soil smothering the lower third of the cargo landers. Their white titanium fuselages had been scoured by the storms of th
ree centuries, blasting away all markings and color. Now the exposed sections were tarnished curves of dark metal, the originally sharp edges of the parachute release mechanisms abraded down to warty clusters. Holes had opened up in several places, revealing the skeleton of internal struts caging black cavities.
So if the landers were there, then…He turned slowly to see the Eagle II. Sometime down the years the undercarriage had collapsed, lowering the spaceplane’s belly to the ground. The sands of Mars had claimed the craft, creating a smooth triangular dune of soil whose upper fingers of coppery grit gripped the top of the spaceplane’s fuselage. All that was left of the tailfin was a stumpy blade of bleached and brittle composite, half its original height.
“Damnit,” Wilson muttered. There was moisture in his eyes.
YOU OKAY? Anna sent in text.
SURE. JUST GIVE ME A MOMENT. He walked a little way across the icy landscape, allowing the others to come through the wormhole. Tarlo drove the transRover out, bouncing across the rough ground.
“Whoa, this low gravity really screws up maneuverability,” Tarlo exclaimed. “And these rocks don’t help. I’ve never seen so much rock lying around in one place. Was there some kind of massive meteor shower or something? How did you drive when you were here, sir?”
“We never did,” Wilson said. They’d brought three mobile laboratories with them, the best that twenty-first-century technology and money could build. They were still inside the cargo landers; his mind could see them like dead metal fetuses, every moving part cold-welded together, their bodywork flaking away in the terrible hostile atmosphere. “We just went straight home again.”
“You could have stayed and explored,” Nigel said. He didn’t sound very contrite.
“Yeah, we could have.” Wilson was trying to work out angles against the landscape and its poignant relics. He walked over toward the Eagle II. Its dimensions were scripted perfectly in his mind, allowing him to draw its shape through the raggedy mound of soil. The profile dynamic wings had been fully retracted for the landing, shrinking back down to a squat delta; there was the smooth curvature they followed to merge with the fuselage. Both narrow sections of the windshield were buried; he was glad of that, the equivalent of closing the lids on a dead man’s eyes. He didn’t want to see inside again.
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