by Anthology
“And did you find out?”
Mac wondered why he remained so wary of her. The answer was probably simple. The strongest man, usually able to keep control of his emotions and stay cool, would find it hard to resist that beauty.
“Sure I did.” She straightened her back. She moved toward him, half-smiling, looking up from under heavy lids, her voice husky. “But I couldn’t trust him to pay.”
Stone caught himself laughing. “I last saw you twenty years ago, stealing water from the tanks.”
She grinned. He remembered that grin from when he had chased her through the bazaars of the Low-Canal and she had mocked him for his clumsiness. She boasted then that she had true Martian blood from a time when the great Broreern triremes had dominated the green seas swelling under a golden sun in the autumn of the planet’s long history. Stone could easily believe her. Cynics said Yily’s mother was a Terran whore and her father a Martian prison guard. But, with that glorious light brown skin, her beautifully muscled, boyish frame, that curly hair, her long legs, those firm, small breasts, her sardonic golden eyes, no one who saw her ever believed she was anything but a Mars woman reincarnated.
There were very few career possibilities on Mars for a girl of Yily’s background and looks. She had chosen the least likely: first as Tex Merrihew’s sidekick, learning the bounty hunter’s trade, then as a fixer on her own account. Mac wondered if Yily Chen had other reasons for helping him. She was known to be clever and devious. Was her word as good as they said? “So what are you proposing, Yily?”
“A partnership, maybe.”
“I didn’t know you liked me that much.”
“I don’t like Delph at all. I don’t like what he’s done to Mars or what he will do if he gets what he wants. What does he want, Mac?”
“He believes I have a bunch of indigo flame sapphires.”
“A bunch?”
“A bunch.”
She was silent. He could almost hear her thinking.
“What was that about a bomb?” she said.
He saw no reason not to. So he told her all he knew.
When he had finished she said, “Then, I guess I’d better help you.”
He asked why.
She grinned. “Because I’m a Martian, too.” She bent and picked up her heavy pack. “And I’m not tone-deaf.”
5
Whistling “Dixie”
They came to the falls, increasingly communicating through their filtered helmet radios. The sound was deafening. An eerie pink light glared up from the chasm’s depths.
“Some say that’s Mars’s core down there.” She didn’t elaborate.
“Have you been here before?”
“Once. Guy jumped bail on Terra. Thought he had immunity here. He did, but they framed him anyway because the judge in Ram owed the judge in Old London a favor. So I was in for double reward. A share of the bail money if I brought him in alive. Well, it turned out he had friends here. Archaeologists. Academics. They crack easily. They told me how they’d found evidence for what they called the lost canal. You know the story?”
He nodded. “Guy’s out in the desert. He beds down for the night. Wakes up suddenly. He hears water. He listens more carefully. Running water. It’s the ghost canal. A kind of mirage, leading travelers astray so they die of thirst convinced there’s water all around them.”
“They told him about a cave system. Legends said it was a way into another world. Some argued it came out on Terra, in Arizona somewhere. Some thought ancient Mars. Others linked it to the discoveries of the so-called hidden universe obscured from our astronomers by drifting clouds of cosmic fog.” She shrugged. “You don’t have to break many fingers before they put two and two together. I found the cave, found this place, found him, hauled him up, took him in, and took the money.”
“Why didn’t I ever hear of that entrance?”
“Because I destroyed it. Didn’t want those archaeologists to be embarrassed again. My guy had two reasons not to talk. He might escape and hide out down here. And he knew what I’d do to him if news of the falls ever reached the surface. They sent him to Ceres. You don’t live long there. As far as I know, he died with the secret.”
The falls mesmerized them. They both found themselves walking too close to the edge, drawn by the vast, rearing walls of water spraying blue and gold, emerald and ruby, in that strange light. Old light, thought Mac without knowing why. Light that appeared to be pressed down by the cavern’s impenetrable blackness. Mac saw all kinds of shapes in there. Faces from his past. People he had hated. Nobody he had loved. Men with weapons. Women wanting his money or contempt or both. Cruelty ran through interplanetary society like a fuel. Not his drug of choice. Peace. Why was he thinking like this as the pink flume blew into a million shapes and offered to hold him like a baby, safely, safely . . . ?
“Stone!”
Her strong hand grabbed his arm and yanked him back from the edge. “Damn! I thought you could look after yourself.” Her anger was like a slap across his face. He swore. Those eyes, those glaring eyes! What had they held in that moment when she raged at him?
He shook his head. “Don’t worry. I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”
She was frowning now, peering through her distance glasses out across the raging falls and pointing. “What’s that?”
A flash of electric lime green. An obviously unnatural color. Nothing like anything surrounding it. He switched over to the helmet’s optics and brought it in sharply as instruments reported distance and size. She adjusted her own glasses to check it out.
About 1.5 meters square, the star bomb lay balanced between a rough circle of rocks. Almost peacefully, white water whirled around it. Contrary currents held it in suspension. Any one of the currents could alter course slightly and take the bomb over the brink, from where it would never be recovered. And would ultimately detonate, splitting the planet apart.
The falls bellowed, echoing through the vast cavern whose roof lay beyond sight in the glittering darkness. According to the helmet, its walls held deposits of gold, silver, diamonds, and many other metals now very rare on Terra. Stone could imagine what would become of the place once the likes of Delph found out about it. He scanned the falls as far as he could see, pointing out a possible pathway through to it, where a great slab of black granite formed a canopy on which tons of water fell by the second. The rocks beneath the canopy were given a little potential protection, at least for part of the way. Some of the rocks disappeared behind another great massing of fallen debris. They formed a blind spot. Neither Stone nor Chen could see what danger might be waiting for anyone who tried to cross beyond that point. There didn’t seem to be a better route anywhere else.
“We’d best rope up.” She lowered her heavy pack to the walkway. “We can’t work on that thing out there. We’re going to have to fetch it.”
“I could try firing a grapnel from my Banning.” He showed her the tonkinite hook on his belt. “It’s attached to fifty meters of spiderwire. But even if it was a good idea, there’s no way we could do it from here. We need to be sure we have the bomb securely held. We can’t make mistakes. We need to switch over to gravity equalizers. They should hold off the worst of the force from the water. Does your suit have equalizers? Doesn’t matter. We’ll use mine. Both of us will probably have to go out there for at least as far as that route takes us.”
They had little left to discuss. First, they tested the GE potential. This took the power of anything threatening them and, using the threat’s own energy, converted it into a force field theoretically capable of equalizing any outside pressure. The idea behind the technology was brilliant, but there had been more than one infamous GE accident. You didn’t get any second chances. They contacted Miguel Krane. He assured Stone that the helmet had been tested for all environments, particularly for the power of the falls. He was surprised to learn that Yily Chen was involved, but he saw no problem in both of them using the suit. “One or a dozen, it can theoretically
protect against a considerably stronger power. Of course, we haven’t allowed for human error. Just remember, it only takes one break in the circuitry and you’ll both be swept over those falls in a blink.” He suggested that they have her suit run on low power as a backup. “You’ll have to decide between you if that would work.” Krane sounded a little uncertain.
Soon they were ready. They roped up, using Mac’s spiderwire. It was unwise to rely on their helmets’ intercom. They would rely as much as they could on visual signals. Even with everything turned to minimum input they could still hear the heavy beating of the water against the rocks, the yelping gush of the canal as it spilled over into that bottomless gorge. Together, they inched out over the slippery causeway, hands, feet, elbows, and knees on full suction, allowing them to gain traction with every limb. The vast weight of water, even though not the full mass, smashed against their force converter, allowing them to move forward. They were tiny specks caught above those gigantic liquid walls. Able to see less than a meter ahead, they clung together, taking careful steps, often crawling on hands and knees, blinded by the screaming spray surrounding them. More than once, Stone lost his balance. She remained sure-footed and caught his cord before he followed his momentum down into the hungry core of the planet. He calculated that she’d saved his life at least seven times in as many minutes.
Above them, the wild spray boomed and shrieked. Their heads rang under the hammerblows of the surging current. Once, she was almost swept over the rim. He held on with hands and feet as he extended the field, hauling her back, kicking an impossible surge of power out of his equipment and falling backward as something caught his shoulder. Recovering, he saw that debris was also being carried down the falls, effectively doubling their danger. They watched for larger objects as much as possible, another eye on their chronometers, which were telling them roughly how much time still remained before the bomb was due to blow. Forty minutes. They reached a place where the water was suddenly quiet and even the sound seemed muted. For a moment or two they rested, gratefully recovering their strength in calm water forming little pools beneath the huge canopy of granite. They made up some of their lost time.
Once or twice, Stone looked back toward the bank, now invisible to him. Was all their effort worthless? Wouldn’t it be better to accept the impossibility of their mission? He began to think Krane was mad. If there was a threat, then inevitably they would die. Death was the future of all people, all planets, all universes. Their struggle was symbolic of the futility of living creatures who fought against their own inevitable extinction. What were a few more years of existence compared to the longevity of a cosmos? In those terms, the whole history of their species lasted for less than a fraction of a second. And then, sheltering beside him under the protection of the energy equalizer, she looked up for a second, and, obscurely, he understood that the effort always would be worth it. Always had been worth it.
They emerged eventually from the overhang. They saw the gaudy lime-green box glittering on the far side of a rocky cleft. Stone could see no obvious way down to it. For a moment, it seemed that they had come this far only to fail. Then Yily nodded and signaled that if he held on to the spidercord, she might be able to swing down and snag the box. But it would mean switching over to her own untested equalizers. Whether her suit had enough capacity was uncertain. She shrugged and began tying herself on.
The falls coughed and grumbled, always treacherous.
Stone grew concerned that there wouldn’t be enough spiderwire. He had trouble gauging the distance properly. He braced himself. He would have to switch off as soon as he could after she switched on, conserving power and maintaining stability for split seconds. He raised his hand and gave the signal. They knew a sickening few moments while the switch took place, then she was dropping out of sight before coming back into view, a far smaller figure than he had expected.
The blue and red of her suit was just visible, flashing on and off as she fell through a sickening weight of water. Her relative gravity, thanks to the converter, gave her extra resistance, and she stretched out her arms and clasped the n-bomb to her, swinging free over the rosy abyss. She cried out her triumph in a wild yell, her body curving back into the trajectory. He thumped the control and brought her up to where he perched, hanging on with everything but his nails and teeth. He was laughing like a fool as she swung to stand beside him, counting out with elated blows on his arm the measure to activate his helmet’s converter so both were again protected. He could feel her elation as he hugged her tight.
They had the star bomb!
Now, somehow, they had to follow the steps back to the sheltering rock. Inch by inch, they crossed the exposed falls, feet feeling for holds as the minutes slipped by, and they dared not waste a moment trying to see how much time they had before the bomb did what it had been designed to do. The climb back to the walkway seemed to take longer than the whole rest of the mission. Increasingly, the strain on the equalizer became greater. Little bubbles of energy flinched and disappeared into the wavering field.
Stone was almost convinced that they had run out of time and strength. He gasped his surprise when, suddenly, his boots stood on the smooth granite and the bomb was on the ground before them. Manhandling it to the relative quiet of the stone arches, they were at last able to turn off the equalizers. The suit crackled and zipped, revealing flaws that moments later would have meant sudden death.
Stone triumphantly announced their success to Krane over the radio. The Earthman seemed less than overjoyed.
“You have twenty-seven minutes left,” he said. “Do you think you can do it, Stone?”
Yily grinned and began to whistle.
“What’s that?” Krane asked.
“It’s not doing anything,” she said. “ ‘Yankee Doodle,’ right?”
But, even when the tune had been relayed back to them by Krane, only four of the eleven locks protecting the n-bomb snapped open. They needed seven in sequence. “The Yellow Rose of Texas” snapped open two more. “Moonlight on the Wabash” made two snap back. She tried different keys and speeds, new sequences. Two more. One more. But after that it was no good. She was embarrassed. “My grandma came to Mars in the Revival Follies. We used to sing them all before the dope took her.”
“This is getting dangerous,” Krane told them. “Something has jammed. Stop!” Oblivious of his growing concern, they kept trying and kept failing as the minutes and the seconds died. “You’ve got to stop!” Krane told them. “Unless every lock is undone in order, the bomb can’t be neutralized. It took us years to work out those codes. We encrypted everything in easily remembered traditional tunes. We—we haven’t time to work out the codes again! If anything, we’ve complicated the situation. We have eight minutes left.”
Mac hovered over the bomb, trying different force-tools on the remaining locks. “This is hopeless. We could explode the thing at any moment.” He watched the most recently tried force-tool fade from his glove.
“I guess neither of us is musical enough. Time for plan B.” She reached with both hands into her pack and pulled out a large square metal container. Quickly, she dragged off the box’s covering, revealing a compacted canister covered with government warnings, which, as she stroked it with her gloved fingers, began to expand, flopping and twitching like a living thing until it lay in her lap like a long khaki-colored barracuda. “I’d better set this now.”
Stone recognized the unactivated B-9 wombot. He guessed her plan, but he said, “What are you going to do with that?” It was his idea too.
But she wouldn’t stop. “I’m a lot lighter than you. Give me your big scarf,” she said. “Hurry! And some of those tools might prove useful here. I’ll tell you what to do. We need that spiderwire. Can you disconnect it from your suit?”
“I can try.”
So he dragged out his long white scarf. She began to wind the thing around her waist. No clocks or numbers on the bomb told them how much time they had left. They had only their own
chronometers. “Seven minutes.”
He was still planning to do the thing himself. “Now,” he said, “get those magnets situated. The scarf will be useful. It won’t bear any serious strain, but it’ll keep the bomb in position while we spiderwire it to the wombot. Leave those ends free. Screw drill might help.”
The thing grew firm in her hands as she helped give the cables a few more turns. “OK,” he said. “More magnetic clamps. As many as we have between us.” The bomb was settled on the ground, the wombot beside it. At his count, they seized the bomb, rolled it, and bound it with the wire while they fixed the eight magnetic manacles she normally used for heavy-gravity truants. They held the wombot squarely on the bomb. Six minutes. He took a deep breath.
Then, while he was still thinking about it, she had straddled the whole contraption, binding herself to it with the scarf and the remaining spiderwire, leaving her limbs free. There wasn’t time to argue. Stone grew more and more unhappy. He realized that he couldn’t take over. Too late to start arguing.
Soon she had the whole contraption firmly beneath her, the wombot now fighting like a fish to be free. He gripped it as hard as he could with his numbed hands. Then she began powering up her suit.
He couldn’t find any more words. He felt sick. He had an unusual set to his jaw as he watched her first switch her own equalizer to run, then eased the bomb but not the wombot outside her suit’s circle of power. She tapped in codes on her arm. Wouldn’t she need a helmet? There was a faint flash and she winced. Not a suicide mission! Don’t say it was that! The sound of the falls still drowned any noise they made without using the radio. The powerful bionic drone jumped in her hands and lifted over Stone’s head with Yily still clinging to it. It bucked and pirouetted and bucked again. He yelled for her to let go, that he would catch her.
“I have to test it first,” she said. “There isn’t much time.”