by Allen Steele
‘Right…August.’ Again the slight, quickly-vanishing smile.
‘So we’re all friends here. ‘Bout time.’ Boggs looked as if he had eaten lemons for breakfast; Nash wondered how his hangover was treating him. ‘Okay, I didn’t expect you to know how to co-pilot the thing on your first go-round, so it’s all programmed auto on your side of the bench. Sit back and enjoy the ride…if we get out of here, that is.’
As he spoke, Boggs’ eyes were sweeping across the myriad digital and analog dials on his dashboard. He glanced at a board beneath his left elbow and swore under his breath. ‘Hey, Skip!’ he snapped into his headset mike. ‘Skip, you hear me?’ He paused, listening for a moment. ‘Listen, man, I got a red light telling me the rear maintenance hatch is still open…yeah, that one. You want to get somebody back there and close it or what?’
He cupped his hand over the mike and cast a sour glance at Nash. ‘Ground crew,’ he muttered. ‘They’re always leaving the blamed hatch open. I swear, if I didn’t have idiot-lights to tell me what’s going on…’ He stopped and listened again, looked down at the board to verify that the warning light had gone off, then unclasped the mike. ‘Okay, thanks. I owe you one.’
Boggs grasped the twin throttle bars next to his right thigh and pulled them down one-quarter. There was a slight vibration and a rising drone as the turboprops revved up. He glanced again at the center flatscreen, which showed an overhead computer simulation of the airship on the landing grid, then touched the lobe of his headset.
‘Akron to Arsia TRAFCO. We’re vectored for launch and ready for cast-off, you copy?’ He listened for a moment. ‘Thanks, Jeri. We’re on our way. I’ll bring home some M & Ms. Over.’
Through the wide wraparound window, Nash saw the forward mooring cable detach from the pad-wrench beneath the airship’s bow; it was quickly dragged across the hangar floor and pulled upward as it retracted into the bow spindle. There were similar lateral jerks as the port and starboard cables were released. Skinsuited ground crewmen were hastily backing out of the airship’s shadow; one of them bent, released his ankle bracelets, then straightened and did a forward somersault, alighting perfectly on his feet.
‘Showoff,’ Boggs grumbled. ‘Ted’s going to hurt himself doing that one of these days.’ He grasped the yoke firmly with his left fist and gradually pushed the throttles all the way down to the floor with his right hand. ‘Hang on, now. Here we go…’
As easily as if it were an elevator, the Akron ascended from its landing pad. Through the window, they could see the sloped walls of the crater falling around them. Up, up…
The rim of the crater approached, sunlight glinting off the edges of the retracted roof. Then, all at once, the massive airship cleared the hangar and rose into the pink Martian sky.
Wind immediately buffeted the airship. The blunt prow pitched sharply forward; for a second it seemed as if the Akron would plow into the ground. Through the gondola windows, Nash glimpsed skinsuited people below stopping, staring up at him. The large mound of the condo seemed dangerously close. ‘Oh shit shit shit shit…!’ Boggs hissed as he hauled back on the yoke.
The airship almost seemed to groan as he fought for control; its shadow raced across the red dirt. Nash clutched the armrests of his chair and gritted his teeth as the Akron made a shallow dive toward the ground. Perhaps the six million cubic feet of hydrogen in the gas cells couldn’t burn…but they could explode. He braced himself for the inevitable crash.
Boggs fought the yoke, snarling between his clenched teeth: ‘C’mon you fucker, climb climb climb…!’
Then—a precious foot at a time, then faster and faster—the bow tilted upward as the Akron muscled its way into stability. The creaking and shaking of the airframe lapsed; the throb of the engines became less urgent. ‘There we go, there we go…’ Boggs was whispering. ‘Good girl, easy does it, that’s my baby…’
The horizon appeared as Arsia Station fell away below them; clear of the treacherous ground winds, the giant airship gracefully ascended to cruising altitude. As Boggs turned the yoke to the right, they could see in the western distance the great cones of the Tharsis Montes volcano range: the vast looming mountain of Arsia Mons and, on the farthest horizon as a hazy yet insanely huge dome, the high caldera of Olympus Mons.
Then the airship was pointed to the north-east; the volcanoes drifted away to their left, and in the near distance, appeared the deep, meandering canyons of the Noctis Labyrinthis. From this height, the Labyrinth of Night looked like an endless maze across the face of the planet, its steep, windswept walls falling into the thin morning fog which still lay above the floor of the chasm. Below the fog, shadows veiled the furthermost depths of the great canyon. If the Akron had careened into that bottomless abyss…
Nash stared down at the canyon system until the Akron passed over it, then lay back in his seat and let out his breath. Behind him, he heard Miho Sasaki do the same thing. Beyond the Noctis Labyrinthis lay the equator and the vast central plains. Boggs pushed the throttle-bars forward to three-quarter power, keystroked the flight computer to autopilot, then pulled the headset off his head. He took a deep breath himself, then tipped back his cap. There was a fine film of sweat on his forehead.
Boggs lifted the cap off his head, swabbed at the sweat with its liner, then grinned at Nash with Tennessee-style humor.
‘Christ,’ he said. ‘Like having sex with a gorilla.’
Nash and Sasaki took turns in the airlock to peel out of their skinsuits and stow them away; once they were dressed in jumpsuits and sneakers, Boggs sent them into the cargo bay to inspect the payload. He was concerned that the cargo might have shifted during takeoff, thereby unbalancing the airship. ‘It’s the kind of thing you might not notice during flight,’ he said as he laid in their course on the navaids computer, ‘but it can be a pain in the ass during landing. If something’s moved around, just tuck it back in the right place and lash it down again.’
This was easier said than done. Several crates in the cargo bay had snapped their cords and toppled over; most were heavy enough to require handling by both of them. In addition, a large container of Russian food rations had broken open and spilled its contents across the deck. Miho righted the box and, on her hands and knees, began searching the hold for all the lost cans, wrappers and tubes while Nash tightened the cables holding the large piece of machinery which he had seen being loaded just before takeoff.
‘I had forgotten the pleasures of Russian cuisine,’ she commented as she pumped an armload of red-striped squeeze tubes into the container. ‘Sorrel soup…borscht…buckwheat kasha…liver with cream…’ She found a clear plastic-wrapped bundle of dry, tasteless-looking cubes. ‘And, of course, rye bread.’
‘Sounds terrific.’ Nash was probing the giant Kevlar-shrouded machine; it was still suspended from the overhead wrench-cables, so it had not fallen during the ascent. There seemed to be a claw-manipulator at its front end, but he couldn’t be sure. At the rear, though, was the unmistakable bulge of a methane fuel tank. ‘I hope there’s plenty of antacid tablets in the medical supplies.’
‘I’m serious,’ Sasaki insisted. ‘Russian food is badly underrated. Sort of an acquired taste, although this bread leaves much to be desired and I wish Glavkosmos would get away from putting the soup in tubes. They haven’t improved much over what they used to send up in the old days when…’
She looked up from her work and watched as he tried to pull aside a few inches of the shroud. ‘If you must know,’ she added coldly, ‘it’s a Jackalope manned reconnaissance vehicle, specially refitted for Mars work by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. Despite its size, it’s quite delicate, so I ask that you not paw at it like that.’
Nash dropped the shroud and stepped back. For all he knew, it could have been the prototype of a new Mazda solarcar, but he had to accept her explanation. ‘Excuse me. Maybe if you came straight out and told me some of these things…’
She glared at him. ‘And maybe if you acted a little less li
ke a spy and asked honest questions instead of snooping…’
‘Whoa.’ He turned around and held up his hands. ‘Back off, lady. I’m not the one who was eavesdropping last night.’
‘This is true.’ Sasaki stashed the bread-cubes into the crate, refastened the plastic cover, and heaved it onto the stack of containers. She dusted off her hands on the thighs of her jumpsuit and turned toward the hatch. ‘If you’ll excuse me, I’ll go prepare some coffee in the galley for Waylon.’
She started toward the closed hatch, but Nash reached out and grabbed her forearm. ‘Not so fast, Ms. Sasaki…’
‘Pardon me, Mr Nash.’ She wrested her arm out of his hand. ‘And that’s Dr. Sasaki, if you please…’
‘Sorry, I forgot, Dr. Sasaki…’ He forced himself to relax a little. ‘Look, I apologies, okay? But you said you’d come clean with me once we got off the ground, and it’s time we had that conversation you promised.’
She hesitated, still ready to leave the payload bay. ‘Of course,’ he continued, ‘we’ve got two days in front of us before we get to Cydonia, so we can discuss all this another time. Like at dinner tonight, with W. J.?’
The sweet-and-sour treatment worked. Miho turned back around, folding her arms across the front of her jumpsuit. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘It’s actually very simple. My government had heard many reports about the peculiar actions of your Commander L’Enfant…’
Nash shook his head. ‘Not my Commander L’Enfant, believe me. Let’s get that straight. He was sent to Mars by the Pentagon, and my company’s client doesn’t like it any more than Tokyo.’
Again, that on-and-off smile. Nash had already noticed that Miho Sasaki was a very pretty woman; he wondered how much more beautiful she would be if she didn’t keep such a tight grip on herself. ‘Pardon me. Their Commander L’Enfant. Besides the fact that Japan considers Shin-ichi Kawakami to be a national resource, there’s also the large stake which we have in discovering the last secrets of the aliens, in terms of capital investment as well as possible scientific payoffs. Considering L’Enfant’s past record, particularly in regard to the Takada Maru incident, we have much to be alarmed about.’
Yes, of course: the Takada Maru would have to enter into this. ‘Sounds very much like the motivations of my clients,’ he said carefully.
She shook her head. ‘No need to be circumspect, Mr Nash. I’m already quite aware that you’re a field operative for Security Associates and that Skycorp has retained your company’s services. We have our own resources.’
Nash felt his blood pressure beginning to rise. Twice now in this operation his cover had been blown: first by Leahy, who had blabbed the secret to Boggs…and now by Sasaki, who could not have known all this simply by eavesdropping from the condo balcony the night before.
Sasaki hadn’t told him everything yet, despite her promise, but he could guess that she had been enlisted by Uchu-Hiko. That or, perhaps as a better possibility, JETRO. The Japanese External Trade Organization was essentially a government-operated commercial spy agency; it had been engaged in espionage against private American companies for many years now, often recruiting previously unattached Japanese nationals for the dirty work abroad. Turnabout was fair play; the CIA had done the same with American corporate officials in Asia and the Middle East, as well as in the old Soviet bloc.
‘So your…’ Nash was careful with his words ‘…employers asked you to return to Cydonia Base and find out what L’Enfant is doing.’
Sasaki didn’t fall for the bait. ‘Yes. Very much the same as your own assignment. Of course, I’m only supposed to be escorting the MRV to Cydonia. After I’m through, I am to return to Arsia Station to take up my new position as senior astrophysicist.’ She shrugged a little. ‘My report may be redundant to your own, but at least we’ll be able to verify each other’s accounts.’
‘We might.’ Nash mulled it over for a moment as he leaned against a stack of crates. ‘But if your people knew about what my people were doing, why didn’t they simply get in touch with Skycorp? We seem to have the same goals, and it might have saved a long trip for one or the other of us.’
Her furtive smile reappeared again. ‘For a very good and simple reason, Mr Nash…’
He grinned back at her. ‘C’mon, Miho. Call me August.’
‘Certainly, August.’ Absolutely immune to his charm. Miho turned again to the hatch. ‘The reason why we didn’t contact you earlier is because we don’t trust you.’
As she undogged the hatch and pulled it open, the glanced over her shoulder at him. ‘Please, though, don’t hold it against my country. I don’t trust you either.’
Then she left the cargo bay, shutting the hatch behind her. Nash let out his breath as he watched her go.
For the life of him, he couldn’t tell whether or not she was joking.
12. The Takada Maru Incident
WITHIN AN HOUR of their departure from Arsia Station, the Akron entered the crater fields of the Lunae Planum. From the windows, they could see long, meandering channels leading south toward the Valles Marineris, carved by long-extinct rivers in the ancient eras when the Martian atmosphere had been more dense and the planet had free-flowing water. Boggs deliberately kept their airspeed below seventy knots to conserve fuel; when he wasn’t in the gondola with his hands on the yoke, he set the autopilot so that the altitude remained constant at one thousand feet, taking best advantage of the wind.
Sunset of the first day of the journey occurred while they were still over the Lunae Planum; all three of them gathered in the control cab to watch as the sun set in the western horizon off their port side. Boggs slipped an old bluegrass CD into his jury-rigged deck, and they listened in silence as Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs ushered out the end of the day on an alien world far from Nashville. Night on Mars was as dark and deep as the night in Antarctica: the pitch-black sky broken only by starlight, the distant ground a sullen, featureless mass without form or depth. Miho microwaved their tasteless meal in the galley, and after they ate—with little more than polite conversation between the three of them—she went to sleep in her curtained bunk while Boggs and Nash took four-hour shifts on watch in the flight deck.
Daybreak found them high above the south-west edge of the Chryse Planitia. The terrain had transformed itself overnight, abruptly changing from craters and dead river channels to a vast plain of drifting dunes and wind-scored boulders and rocks. Shortly before noon, Boggs summoned Nash to the flight deck and pointed out a metallic glint on the surface, glittering like a bit of silver in a dark red sandbox: the Viking 1 lander, periodically buried under the sand and uncovered again by recurrent dust storms since its touchdown in 1976. The old NASA probe gradually receded from view and then Boggs announced that they were now halfway to Cydonia Base.
An hour later, upon Boggs’ request, Nash donned a skinsuit, cycled through the main airlock, and climbed through the over- head hatch into the airship’s envelope for a midflight inspection. It was like entering a mammoth, girdered cavern; a narrow catwalk led through the skeleton’s polycarbon rings, taking him past the immense translucent bags of the hydrogen gas cells. Fiberoptic lights along the catwalk lent a dim glow to the airship’s vast interior.
This was a land of giants; everything here was on a larger-than-life scale, dwarfing him like a toy play-figure captured in an adult’s room. Nash had to hold tight to the handrails as he toured the vast core of the airship, feeling it sway back and forth with each breeze. He went all the way to the stern of the ship, found the aft maintenance hatch and reconfirmed that it was shut tight by the Arsia ground crew, then he began to make his way forward again, the bright circle of light from his helmet lamp dancing across the inner skin as he searched for pinhole leaks.
He located one in the mid-aft section, caused by a windborne bit of gravel, and scaled it with a foam dispenser which Boggs had given him. He then scaled a long ladder to an upper gangway near the top of the airship. No more holes here; but instead he found the crow’s-nest:
a tiny, seldom-used observation blister on the Akron’s upper fuselage.
Nash climbed up a short ladder into the tiny compartment and involuntarily sucked in his breath. It was as if he had been hiking a mountainside, surrounded by the forest, until he had passed the treeline and abruptly found himself at the summit. Through the Plexiglas dome, in front of and behind him, the hull of the Akron stretched out as a giant gridwork, rendered metallic-black by the solarvoltaic cells which covered the airship’s topmost outer skin. All around the ship, he could view the Martian desert, the scarlet barrens stretching out as far as the eye could see.
Directly in front of him, past the tapering prow, lay the great curve of the north-west horizon. Somewhere beyond that horizon, on the other side of this hellish and beautiful terrain, was Cydonia Base…
And L’Enfant.
He gazed into the north-west for a time, then climbed back out of the blister, secured the hatch, and began to make his way down to the cab.
Shortly after lunch, Boggs returned to his customary post in the flight deck; Nash was seated behind the little fold-down wardroom table, gazing out of a window at the dunefields, and Sasaki was disposing of the last of the paper trays when she spoke up.
‘Why did they send you after L’Enfant?’ she asked.
The question was almost innocuous, phrased as if she’d asked him whether he was married, or what was his favorite movie. It took Nash by surprise, though; Sasaki had said little to him since yesterday’s brief conversation in the cargo hold, and even less than that to Boggs. He looked at her where she was standing in the galley with her back turned toward him.
‘Pardon me?’ he asked.
She didn’t bother to repeat the question, nor did she turn to face him. ‘According to your dossier, you were aboard the USS Boston when L’Enfant was in command. Isn’t it reckless for your company to be sending an operative who might be recognized by his target?’
God, how much did this woman know about him? On the other hand, any good intelligence agency kept tabs on everyone else’s known agents; unwittingly, Sasaki had proven his hypothesis that she was working for JETRO. Nash rubbed a napkin across his mouth to disguise his grin.