Nadia went over and sat down on a chair, feeling as drained as if she had had to make the speech herself. “She was great,” she said. “She remembered everything we told her. Now we just have to make it real.”
“Just saying it makes it real,” Art said. “Hell, everyone on both worlds saw that. Praxis will be on it already. And Switzerland will surely back us. No, we’ll make it work.”
Sax said, “Transitional Authority might not agree. Here’s a message in from Zeyk. Red commandos have come down from Syrtis. They’ve taken over the western end of the dike. They’re moving east along it. They’re not that far from the spaceport.”
“That’s just what we want to avoid!” Nadia cried. “What do they think they’re doing!”
Sax shrugged.
“Security isn’t going to like that at all,” Art said.
“We should talk to them directly,” Nadia said, thinking it over. “I used to talk to Hastings when he was Mission Control. I don’t remember much about him, but I don’t think he was any kind of screaming crazy person.”
“Couldn’t hurt to find out what he’s thinking,” Art said.
So she went to a quiet room, and got on a screen, and made a call to UNTA headquarters in Table Mountain, and identified herself. Though it was now about two in the morning, she got through to Hastings in about five minutes.
She recognized him immediately, though she would have said she had long since forgotten his face. A short thin-faced harried technocrat, with a bit of a temper. When he saw her on his screen he grimaced. “You people again. We sent the wrong hundred, I’ve always said that.”
“No doubt.”
Nadia studied his face, trying to imagine what kind of man could have headed Mission Control in one century and the Transitional Authority in the next. He had been irritated with them frequently when they were on the Ares, haranguing them for every little deviation from the regulations, and getting truly furious when they temporarily stopped sending back video, late in the trip. A rules and regs bureaucrat, the kind of man Arkady had despised. But a man you could reason with.
Or so it seemed to her at first. She argued with him for ten or fifteen minutes, telling him that the demonstration he had just witnessed outside in the park was part of what had happened everywhere on Mars—that the whole planet had turned against them—that they were free to go to the spaceport and leave.
“We’re not going to leave,” Hastings said.
His UNTA forces controlled the physical plant, he told her, and therefore the city was his. The Reds might take over the dike, but there was no chance they would broach it, because there were two hundred thousand people in the city, who were in effect hostages. Expert reinforcements were due to arrive with the next continuous shuttle, which was going to make its orbital insertion in the next twenty-four hours. So the speeches meant nothing. Posturing only.
He was calm as he told Nadia this—if he hadn’t been so disgusted, Nadia might even have called him complacent. It seemed more than likely that he had orders from home, telling him to sit tight in Burroughs and wait for the reinforcements. No doubt the UNTA division in Sheffield had been told the same. And with Burroughs and Sheffield still in their hands, and reinforcements due any minute, it was not surprising they thought they had the upper hand. One might even say they were justified. “When people come to their senses,” Hasting said to her sternly, “we’ll be in control here again. The only thing that really matters now is the Antarctic flood, anyway. It’s crucial to support the Earth in its time of need.”
Nadia gave up. Hasting? was clearly a stubborn man, and besides, he had a point. Several points. So she ended the conference as politely as she could, asking to get back to him later, in what she hoped was Art’s diplomatic style. Then she went back out to the others.
As the night went on, they continued to monitor reports coming in from Burroughs and elsewhere. Too much was happening to allow Nadia to feel comfortable going to bed, and apparently Sax and Steve and Marian and the other Bogdanovists in Du Martheray felt similarly. So they sat slumped in their chairs, sandy-eyed and aching as the hours passed and the images on the screen flickered. Clearly some of the Reds were detaching from the main resistance coalition, following some sort of agenda of their own, escalating their campaign of sabotage and direct assault all over the planet, taking small stations by force and then, as often as not, putting the occupants in cars, and blowing the stations up. Another “Red army” also successfully stormed the physical plant in Cairo, killing many of the security guards inside, and getting the rest to surrender.
This victory had encouraged them, but elsewhere the results were not so good; it appeared from some scattered survivors’ calls that a Red attack on the occupied physical plant in Lasswitz had destroyed it, and massively broached the tent, so that those who had not managed to get into secure buildings, or out into cars, had died. “What are they doing?” Nadia cried. But no one answered her. These groups were not returning her calls. And neither was Ann.
“I wish they would at least discuss their plans with the rest of us,” Nadia said fearfully. “We can’t let things spiral out of control, it’s too dangerous. . .”
Sax was pursing his lips, looking uneasy. They went to the commons to get some breakfast, and then some rest. Nadia had to force herself to eat. It was exactly a week since Sax’s first call, and she couldn’t recall anything she had eaten in that week. Indeed, on reflection she found she was ravenous. She began to shovel down scrambled eggs.
When they were almost done eating Sax leaned over and said, “You mentioned discussing plans.”
“What,” Nadia said, her fork stalled halfway to her face.
“Well, this incoming shuttle, with the security task force on board?”
“What about it?” After the flight over Kasei Vallis, she did not trust Sax to be rational; the fork in her hand began to tremble visibly.
He said, “Well, I have a plan. My group in Da Vinci thought of it, actually.”
Nadia tried to steady the fork. “Tell me.”
The rest of that day was a blur to Nadia, as she abandoned any attempt to rest, and tried to reach Red groups, and worked with Art drafting messages to Earth, and told Maya and Nirgal and the rest in Burroughs about Sax’s latest. It seemed that the pace of events, already accelerated, had caught gears with something spinning madly, and had now accelerated out of anyone’s control, leaving no time to eat or sleep or go to the bathroom. But all those things had to be done, and so she staggered down to the women’s room and took a long shower, then ate a spartan lunch of bread and cheese, and then stretched out on a couch and caught some sleep; but it was the kind of restless shallow sleep in which her mind continued to tick over, thinking fuzzy distorted thoughts about the events of the day, incorporating the voices there in the room with her. Nirgal and Jackie were not getting along; was this a problem for the rest of them?
Then she was up again, as exhausted as before. The people in the room were still talking about Jackie and Nirgal. Nadia went off to the bathroom, and then hunted for coffee.
Zeyk and Nazik and a large Arab contingent had arrived at Du Martheray while she was sleeping, and now Zeyk stuck his head into the kitchen: “Sax says the shuttle is about to arrive.”
Du Martheray was only six degrees north of the equator, and so they were well situated to see this particular aerobraking, which was going to happen just after sunset. The weather cooperated, and the sky was cloudless and very clear. The sun dropped, the eastern sky darkened, and the arch of colors above Syrtis to the west was a spectrum array, shading through yellow, orange, a narrow pale streak of green, teal blue, and indigo. Then the sun disappeared over the black hills, and the sky colors deepened and turned transparent, as if the dome of the sky had suddenly grown a hundred times larger.
And in the midst of this color, between the two evening stars, a third white star burst into being and shot up the sky, leaving a short straight contrail. This was the usual dramatic appeara
nce that aerobraking continuous shuttles made as they burned into the upper atmosphere, almost as visible by day as by night. It only took about a minute for them to cross the sky from one horizon to the other, slow brilliant shooting stars.
But this time, when it was still high in the west, it got fainter and fainter, until it was no more than a faint star. And was gone.
Du Martheray’s observation room was crowded, and many exclaimed at this unprecedented sight, even though they had been warned. When it was completely gone Zeyk asked Sax to explain it for those of them who had not heard the full story. The orbital insertion window for aerobraking shuttles was narrow, Sax told them, just as it had been for the Ares back in the beginning. There was very little room for error. So Sax’s technical group in Da Vinci Crater had equipped a rocket with a payload of metal bits—like a keg of scrap iron, he said—and they had shot it off a few hours before. The payload had exploded in the approaching shuttle’s MOI path just a few minutes before its arrival, casting the metal fragments in a band that was wide horizontally but narrow vertically. Orbital insertions were completely computer-controlled, of course, and so when the shuttle’s radar had identified the patch of debris, the AI navigating the shuttle had had very few options. Diving below the debris would have put the shuttle through thicker atmosphere, very likely burning it up; going through the debris would risk holing the heat shield, likewise burning it up. Shikata ga nai, then; given the risk levels programmed into it, the AI had had to abort the aerobraking run by flying above the debris, thus skipping back out of the atmosphere. Which meant the shuttle was still moving outward in the solar system at very near its top speed of 40,000 kilometers per hour.
“Do they have any way to slow down except aerobraking?” Zeyk asked Sax.
“Not really. That’s why they aerobrake.”
“So the shuttle is doomed?”
“Not necessarily. They can use another planet as a gravity handle to swing around, and come back here, or go back to Earth.”
“So they’re on their way to Jupiter?”
“Well, Jupiter is on the other side of the solar system right now.”
Zeyk was grinning. “They’re on their way to Saturn?”
“They may be able to pass very close to several asteroids sequentially,” Sax was saying, “and redirect their crash—their course.”
Zeyk laughed, and though Sax went on about course correction strategies, too many other people were talking for anyone to be able to hear him.
So they no longer had to worry about security reinforcements from Earth, at least not immediately. But Nadia thought that this fact might make the UNTA police in Burroughs feel trapped, and thus more dangerous to them. And at the same time, the Reds were continuing to move north of the city, which no doubt added to security’s trapped feeling. On the same night as the shuttle’s flyby, groups of Reds in armored cars completed their takeover of the dike. That meant they were fairly close to the Burroughs spaceport, which was located just ten kilometers northwest of the city.
Maya appeared on-screen, looking no different than she had before her great speech. “If the Reds take the spaceport,” she said to Nadia, “security will be trapped in Burroughs.”
“I know. That’s just what we don’t want. Especially now.”
“I know. Can’t you keep those people under control?”
“They’re not consulting me anymore.”
“I thought you were the great leader here.”
“I thought it was you,” Nadia snapped back.
Maya laughed, harsh and humorless.
Another report came in from Praxis, a package of Terran news programs that had been relayed off Vesta. Most of it was the latest information on the flood, and the disasters in Indonesia and in many other coastal areas, but there was some political news as well, including some instances of nationalization of metanat holdings by the militaries of some client countries in the Southern Club, which the Praxis analysts thought might indicate the beginnings of a revolt by governments against metanats. As for the mass demonstration in Burroughs, it had made the news in many countries, and was certainly a topic in government offices and boardrooms around the world. Switzerland had confirmed that it was establishing diplomatic relations with a Martian government “to be designated later,” as Art said with a grin. Praxis had done the same. The World Court had announced that it would consider the suit brought by the Dorsa Brevia Peaceful Neutral Coalition against UNTA—a suit dubbed “Mars vs. Terra” by the Terran media—as soon as possible. And the continuous shuttle had reported its missed insertion; apparently it planned to turn around in the asteroids. But Nadia found it extremely encouraging that none of these events were being treated as first-headline news on Earth, where the chaos caused by the flooding was still paramount in everyone’s attention. There were millions of refugees everywhere, and many of them in immediate need. . . .
But this was why they had launched the revolt when they had. On Mars, the independence movements had most of the cities under their control. Sheffield was still a metanational stronghold, but Peter Clayborne was up there, in command of all the insurgents on Pavonis, coordinating their activities in a way that they had not been able to match around Burroughs. Partly this was because many of the most radical elements of the resistance had avoided Tharsis, and partly because the situation in Sheffield was extremely difficult, with hule room for maneuvering. The insurgents now controlled Arsia and Ascraeus, and the little scientific station in Crater Zp on Olympus Mons; and they even had control of most of Sheffield town. But the elevator socket, and the whole quarter of the city surrounding it, were firmly in the hands of the security police, and they were heavily armed. So Peter had his hands full on Tharsis, and would not be able to help them around Burroughs. Nadia talked to him briefly, describing the situation in Burroughs and begging him to call Ann arid ask her to get the Reds to show some restraint. He promised to do what he could, but did not seem confident that he had his mother’s ear.
After that Nadia tried another call to Ann, but did not get through. Then she tried to reach Hastings, and he took her call, but it was not a productive exchange. Hastings was no longer anything like the complacent disgusted figure she had talked to the night before. “This occupation of the dike!” he exclaimed angrily. “What are they trying to prove? Do you think I believe that they’ll cut the dike when there’s two hundred thousand people in this city, most of them on your side? It’s absurd! But you listen to me, there are people in this organization who don’t like the danger it puts the population in! I tell you, I can’t be responsible for what happens if those people don’t get the hell off that dike—off Isidis Planitia entirely! You get them off there!”
And he cut the connection before Nadia could even reply, distracted by someone off-screen who had come in during the middle of his tirade. A frightened man, Nadia thought, feeling the iron walnut tugging inward again. A man who no longer felt in control of the situation. An accurate assessment, no doubt. But she had not liked that last look on his face. She even tried to call back, but no one in Table Mountain would answer anymore.
A couple of hours later Sax woke her up in her chair, and she found out what Hastings had been so worried about. “The UNTA unit that burned Sabishii went out in armored cars and tried to—to take the dike away from the Reds,” Sax told her, looking grave. “Apparently there’s been a fight over the section of the dike nearest the city. And we’ve just heard from some Red units up there that the dike has been broached.”
“What?”
“Blown up. They had drilled holes and set charges to use as a—as a threat. And in the fighting they ended up setting them off. That’s what they said.”
“Oh my God.” Her drowsiness was gone in a flash, blown away in her own internal explosion, a great blast of adrenaline racing all through her. “Have you got any confirmation?”
“We can see a dustcloud blocking the stars. A big one.”
“Oh my God.” She went to the nearest scr
een, her heart thudding in her chest. It was three A.M. “Is there a chance ice will choke the gap, and serve as a dam?”
Sax squinted. “I don’t think so. Depends on how big the gap is.”
“Can we set counterexplosions and close the gap?”
“I don’t think so. Look, here’s video sent from some Reds south of the break on the dike.” He pointed at a screen, which displayed an IR image with black to the left and blackish green to the right, and a forest-green spill across the middle. “That’s the blast zone there in the middle, warmer than the regolith. The explosion appears to have been set next to a pod of liquid water. Or else there was an explosion set to liquefy the ice behind the break. Anyway, that’s a lot of water coming through. And that will widen the break. No, we’ve got a problem.”
“Sax,” she exclaimed, and held on to his shoulder as she stared at the screen. “The people in Burroughs, what are they supposed to do? God damn it, what could Ann be thinking?”
“It might not have been Ann.”
“Ann or any of the Reds!”
“They were attacked. It could have been an accident. Or someone on the dike must have thought they were going to get forced away from the explosives. In which case it was a use-it-or-lose-it situation.” He shook his head. “Those are always bad.”
“Damn them.” Nadia shook her head hard, trying to clear it. “We have to do something!” She thought frantically. “Are the mesa tops high enough to stay above the flood?”
“For a while. But Burroughs is at about the lowest point in that little depression. That’s why it was sited there. Because the sides of the bowl gave it long horizons. No. The mesa tops will get covered too. I can’t be sure how long it will take, because I’m not sure of the flow rate. But let’s see, the volume to be filled is about. . .” He tapped away madly, but his eyes were blank, and suddenly Nadia saw that there was another part of his mind doing the calculation faster than the AI, a gestalt envisioning of the situation, staring at infinity, shaking his head back and forth like a blind man. “It could be pretty fast,” he whispered before he was done typing. “If the melt pod is big enough.”
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