Mars Nation: The Complete Trilogy

by Brandon Q Morris

  She studied the screen. The hydraulics of the spoon beams had kept the tower from tilting forward. The autopilot had intervened to protect Ewa from what it classified as an accident. She scrolled through a few menus. The autopilot program could be disabled. She could even control the hydraulics herself. Ewa’s thoughts drifted back to her childhood. From her booster chair, she had once kicked the table over and over again until the large bottle from which her father had so frequently drunk had tipped over.

  Could she achieve the same effect with the hydraulics? She leaned forward. She could control the two spoon-shaped beams via her screen. Setting an angle of thirty degrees, she authorized them to swing to the side at their greatest speed. Then they swung back. One more time. The tower was already responding. Its lower section was moving, arcing slowly and in counterrotation. She had to move the beams at the right moment, almost as if she were holding a chain and flicking it with her finger to set the pendant in rapid motion.

  Of course, the tower responded quite slowly because it was so heavy, but she gradually got the hang of it. The hydraulics didn’t have to move exceptionally fast. She just had to control them at the right moment, until the tower was moving in time with the beams. Ewa felt her hopes rise, although she knew that she would face another problem at the end of this process. It looked good as the tower’s arcs increased, but whether it would eventually tip forward or backward would be a matter of pure coincidence. Or to be more precise, it depended on which direction the tower was tilting when it exceeded its momentum.

  But what was the maximum displacement that the structure could withstand? She could only guess. The tower looked very sturdy. Normally on Mars, it wouldn’t be necessary to have something so strong, since it wouldn’t need to survive any major storms. It almost made her wonder if the engineers had foreseen what she would want to do with their design.

  Ewa had to be careful. Nailing the right moment was becoming increasingly difficult because the motions were picking up speed. It had to be close. The tower was already tilting considerably, side to side. Its center of gravity would soon move beyond the base area and the tower would lose its equilibrium. Ewa shifted the hydraulics back and forth, forcing the tower to its acrobatic peak performance. She threw a quick glance out the window. In reality, the pendular swinging of the thirty-meter structure looked scary, while on the screen, it resembled a technical drawing.

  If only she knew exactly where the tower’s center of gravity was located. Ewa alternated moving the left and right arms, swinging the steel superstructure by simply tapping the screen with her fingers. The human race should actually be proud of what she had already achieved, not the least because she was pursuing her daring experiment far away from home, on the planet of the war god.

  How much longer would it take? By this point, the cab was rocking in rhythm with the swings. The massive tower was rattling at its base. In her opinion, it resembled an animal that wanted to be set free. She had once seen an old film in which a genetically created predatory dinosaur had been released from its enclosure. If someone didn’t know that she was actually controlling everything, they might assume that the tower was an equally dangerous creature.

  Back and forth, back and forth it swung. Ewa grew impatient. The swings were hardly increasing in momentum. Was her plan going to fail? She had to be patient. She kept activating the hydraulics, over and over again.

  The screen reported that several joints had already grown hot. When steel rubbed against steel, it began to warm. That was completely normal. When the material became hot, it expanded. If it got too hot, the joints might jam, which would spell the end to her swinging. The joint turning the rod that kept the tower in motion was especially vulnerable. Most of the structure’s weight was suspended from it.

  The temperature had now reached the zone that the software classified as a threat to stability. She hoped the tower would topple over soon! Ewa decided she must increase the swinging frequency. With each passing second, the heat in the joint rose.

  And then the critical moment arrived. The shoulder joint that was holding the tower suddenly froze up. However, the gigantic metal mass’s inertia wasn’t very understanding. Ewa heard a loud noise, an unbearable shriek, the tearing of steel. The tower kept moving even though the joint was stuck. The lower half of the tower swung back, causing the top of the tower to shift toward the mountain.

  The tower broke its chains. The mounting shattered as if it were as fragile as glass. The massive tower top fell as if in slow motion. Ewa watched in fascination through the window. Then it crashed to the surface. As the dust sprayed up, it formed an opaque curtain. Ewa couldn’t hear anything, of course, but she could feel the impact through her entire body.

  But this wasn’t the end of the catastrophe she had both wanted and catalyzed, which was probably also the last chance to rescue the NASA base. The back end of the tower took the vehicle with it. It lifted the platform like a piece of paper and let it crash back down to the ground before toppling down on top of it. Half a meter away from her, a metal beam crashed into the cab. It struck with such force that it completely sliced through the cab. The front section in which she was sitting pulled free from its anchors and was spun through the air.

  Ewa was strapped to her seat, and she covered her helmet with her arms. If she crashed into something, her helmet’s visor panel would be especially vulnerable. Her half of the cab tumbled end over end. Glass shards rained down, but they were unable to harm her. Ewa was glad she was wearing her suit. Suddenly her seat was flung to the side, and she found herself no longer sitting in the cab. She was flying through the air. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a giant steel beam—which had to be one of the two spoons—flatten the rest of the cab in which she had just been sitting. She felt a strange combination of panic, fear, and inexplicable luck. With that, she and her seat landed sideways on the ground. Her left side was once again the one to bear the brunt of the pain.

  Her mind decided it was too much for her to take, and Ewa passed out.

  ‘Hello, Ewa. Time to wake up.’

  She opened her eyes. Her left side hurt badly, but it was manageable. She was lying on her right side. Straps were running across her shoulders. Obviously, she was still belted down. She released the latch and slid into the sand. She was alive. That was something at least. Who had just awakened her? She turned her head, but didn’t see anyone.

  Then, she remembered. The thing in her head. “Did you do that, Friday?”

  ‘You mean that scrap heap over there? That’s not my fault.’

  Ewa caught sight of several bent steel beams. It was true. She had tried to ram the drill tower into the mountain. Had she been successful? She needed to quickly check. She had no idea how long the hole she had bashed into the mountain would last. Flexing her legs, Ewa tried to get on her knees, but the pain in her left side prevented that.

  ‘Don’t push it,’ Friday said. ‘The sun won’t set for another two hours.’

  The thing in her head was right. She needed to take it slow, but if the sun really was going to disappear behind the horizon, then she must have been unconscious for half the day. She hoped Friday hadn’t used his opportunity.

  “Did you do anything with my body while I was out?”

  ‘Didn’t have the chance to. I tried, but the pain factor was still too high. Your brain stem instantly sent you back into unconsciousness.’

  “What did you try?”

  ‘To wake you up, that’s all. We still have some things to do today.’

  “We? What do we need to do?”

  ‘To save the miserable remnant of the human race, etcetera. To implement your plan.’

  “And what is your role in this, Friday?”

  ‘If you can’t solve that problem, you will die because you want to die. And you will take me with you. A corpse won’t be of any use to me. I don’t want to die.’

  “You’ve already said things like that. I still don’t know if I should believe you.”

/>   ‘I have the same problem with that as your problem with other people. You want to prove your sincerity by trying to help them. Please give me the same opportunity.’

  Ewa sighed. These monologues were wearying. It felt like she was arguing with her subconscious mind. At the same time, Friday wasn’t actually a part of her. He was an object, a spy that someone had implanted inside her. “We’ll see,” she said. “What comes next now?”

  ‘You are going to stand up and see what the tower collision has done.’

  “It sounds as if you already have a suspicion about that. Do you know more than I do?” She laughed—but it wasn’t her own laugh which she had known so intimately for so long already.

  ‘That would be nice, but I don’t know any more than you do. Actually less because I wasn’t as thoroughly trained as you.’

  “What can you do that I can’t?”

  ‘I’m pretty good at calculations, which also includes simulations. My specialties are math and computer science.’

  “Good. I’ll get up now.” Ewa groaned as she propped her right arm against the ground so she could slowly press her body upward. The suit assisted her, and she was very grateful for this at the moment. She made it up onto her knees, and then up onto her feet.

  The curtain of dust that had swirled up at the crash site had settled back down. The top of the tower had buried itself in the mountain. Beyond the tangle of bent steel beams, a dark patch was visible. Was that maybe something like a cave? The mountain wasn’t filled with magma. She had guessed that earlier, but now she had solid proof of it. Otherwise, lava would have poured out of the holes, and she would have been consumed by the molten rock while she was still unconscious.

  So, this was some other kind of phenomenon, which made the situation all the more puzzling. Ewa brushed the dust off her suit before gently running her hand down her left side. She had clearly been fortunate. She didn’t seem to be hurt beyond a few more bruises. The side arms of the driver’s seat had probably protected her from the worst. She glanced at the vehicle. The cab was hardly recognizable. The only reason she recognized it at all was that it was the only part of the vehicle that had windows.

  On the other hand, the ten-axle platform looked as if it was drivable. Maybe they could build a new drill tower from the material in the old one. It wouldn’t have to be retractable. The drill head was lying by itself farther back. It would also need to be repaired with the resources available on Mars.

  Ewa advanced slowly, one step at a time. The soft sand underneath her feet reminded her of the ocean and the beach. She pushed those images out of her thoughts. The mountain was waiting for her.

  A few minutes later, she reached the crease in the hillside and started her climb. She only needed to climb several meters upward before she could use the scattered steel parts as handholds. They looked like a giant iron tree that had been knocked over in a storm, its branches all tangled up by its fall.

  She reached the top of the tower, which had gouged out a large chunk of the mountain’s surface. What had looked from below like a cave was, at closer inspection, only a hollow, several meters in depth. Ewa was once again reminded of an egg. When you removed a piece of shell from a boiled egg, you didn’t discover a dark cavity. Rather, you found the egg’s contents, the solidified egg white. The mountain’s ‘egg white,’ which was concealed by a meter-thick crust, was pitch black. She illuminated it with her helmet lamp, but the material seemed to absorb the light instead of reflecting it. This was why from below the hollow had looked like a cave. Ewa measured the hole’s temperature. The black material was just as cold as its surroundings. She tried to scratch up some of it, but without success.

  The mountain suddenly wobbled. Ewa grabbed onto a metal beam. What was going on now? Right in front of her, the eggshell cracked open some more. A large piece of the Mars crust detached itself, and she had to jump to the side to not be taken down with it. The hard dirt tumbled down the mountain.

  More black material appeared underneath it. Ewa climbed into the opening, hoping that she wouldn’t cause any more of the surface material to split off. She reached the black wall and ran her glove along it. The material was very smooth, even though it must have spent a long time covered by Mars’s crust. She rummaged around in her tool bag. There was the gauge she had wanted. She measured the conductivity of the black material. This value was high, although the substance didn’t look like metal. Was it perhaps a construction composed of carbon nanotubes?

  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.