MARS UNDERGROUND

by William K. Hartmann

  They lay together, sometimes resting, sometimes with his finger stirring, sliding to her breasts. They lay and listened to Ravel's Le Tombeau de Couperin—the Peruvian recording by Emilio Sanchez, which she had put on the music button she had brought with her. It went on for a long time, like rain pattering into a lake. After it was over, they still lay, resting, for a time more.

  Annie lay looking at Philippe. He looked sad. "What's the matter?" she asked him.

  "Nothing."

  "Memories?" A look like that always meant memories.

  "The music reminded me of something."

  "Someone?"

  "Are you my friend?"

  "Always."

  He kissed her nipple tenderly now, and then lay his head sadly on the pillow. She turned and studied him closely for a moment. Yes, his face was sad.

  He looked back at her.

  She prompted. "There was this woman...."

  "Yes. Of course. There was this woman. She was like the ocean."

  "You're being Philippe again," she teased him. "Grandiose." Suddenly she felt his longing and was touched. "You're serious? This is the secret of Philippe? This is why Philippe pretends he can't be touched?" She kissed his lips softly. "Your devil-may-care facade is calculatedly charming, of course, but you're a terrible actor."

  "And you are always radiating ... something. You are like a stream in the mountains, full of energy and laughter, even when you are quiet." She liked that. "I could live with you, easily." She thought he was being presumptuous, but it was nice to hear. "But this other woman ... I never knew how deep the currents went. ... Many women are just out there collecting experiences, you know? Perhaps even you. Which is wonderful, of course." He kissed her and touched her again, a kiss and touch that made her breath begin to come hard. But he was still floating in his own world, she realized, and they lay quiet for another minute.... She waited for the rest of his story.

  "She was, I think, discovering herself, not collecting experiences. When I made love to her, I was making love to an entire being, a psyche, not just a body. There was no end to her.... After she left, I came all the way to Mars and now I know I can't run away from what she planted in me. I won't be the same, and it frightens me, sometimes...."

  "What was her name?" As soon as she asked it, Annie knew it was a silly question, not addressing the reality of his feelings, and his face was like a readout, which displayed the thought: Why do women always want to know the other woman's name...?

  "It doesn't matter," he said after a pause, after his face changed.

  "But you were hurt? I'm sorry..." She was stroking his hair now, looking at its richness, its slight curl, the brush strokes of gray that she had not noticed before.

  "Not hurt so much as changed. It was aborted, the relationship."

  "So now you have this playboy facade—that nothing can hurt you?"

  He said nothing.

  "I've never even told Carter," he said sadly. He said it like a request. "Some things, you can discuss only with a woman.... Is it like that for you, with men?"

  "Sometimes." She didn't want to go into it. Not her own life. Not her own problem. Not Tomas and her hungers...

  "I go on with my work," he said, accepting her silence. "Sometimes it is as if a sea breeze comes in off her ocean, which is beyond the hills. I can't see the ocean, but I can feel that it is there." He still lay with his head against one breast, running his fingers over the other and down her side. His fingers moved like absentminded wanderers.

  "Is it hard for you?" she asked.

  "Hard to talk about. Not because of pain, anymore, but because I don't know what I want to say."

  "Will you tell me more about it? Sometime?"

  "Only if you'll tell me about the life of the sex-starved journalist."

  She wanted to know his secret. What was below Philippe's carefree surface? But they had begun to lose mind contact. He began to get restless. She could be only his friend, again.

  They lay quietly, touching each other softly. She rubbed his back.

  Philippe rolled over, listlessly.

  "Had enough? It's 'thank you, ma'am' time, now?" She teased with a gentle smile.

  He turned to her again, raising himself to study her bare shoulders, his fingers coming alive again and now tracing her cheeks, her nose, her lips. "There is never 'enough.' " He brushed her hair gently with a forefinger, and then propped himself up on one arm. "Ahem. I will tell you my theory. Sex is like sledding. You have this wonderful ride down the hill. Then you spend a lot of energy getting everything organized back up on the top of the hill, so you can do it again."

  "The sledding theory of life," she said. She felt a mixture of warmth, intensity, and teasing, stirring together inside her.

  "The sledding theory of sex. I think art is like that, and science, for all these researchers that I see in these labs. You must go out there all by yourself, and slog up that hill with your sled, slipping and sliding every step of the way, for days, weeks, months. All for those few climactic days when you have a sense of completion or wholeness. You sit, you enjoy the doneness of it. It even feels like sex, sometimes, painting. Then you get restless and start over."

  "Are work and play all mixed up for you? You give that impression, you know. I think you try to give that impression."

  He shrugged. "It is a good thing, if work and play are mixed up."

  "You're being Philippe again."

  "Of course." He sat up on the edge of the bed, dressing.

  He left her.

  She lay still for a long time. Another one had entered her and entered her life. She had never determined for herself whether these two were synonymous, and if so, whether it was a good thing. It had all been so easy. The music, the same music she had not played for a long time, was full of new chords.

  13

  FEBRUARY 48-49

  Late Friday afternoon in Hellas Base. Carter Jahns had returned to his war room in the old Cartographic Lab, discouraged and lonely. So, Stafford was gone. Annie was probably off with Philippe somewhere.

  Life would have to go on. He'd have to think about the future. All that crap.

  The screens in the lab flickered with a blue, melancholy glow. Tiny lights glinted at him: red, yellow, and green eyes of the machines, watching him, waiting to see what he would do next. He felt like the fluid in his cells was jelling, pulling him down.

  Braddock called from his office. "I guess it's over. His air couldn't have lasted this long."

  Carter said nothing.

  "I'm sorry. I know he was your friend."

  "Yeah."

  "You gonna file your report or what?"

  "I'm supposed to figure out what happened. That's what we still don't know. I'm looking at the photos. Looking for trail segments."

  "Find anything yet?"

  "No. I'm searching in different directions from the Mars-2 site. Stafford had to leave there in some direction. But I haven't found anything... yet."

  "I think we're going to have to call off further searching, you know. In a place like this, there's a limit to the resources we can devote, I mean, after the air runs out."

  "You've got a missing vehicle out there."

  "Yeah, but we don't know where to look for it and we don't know that it's in working order. It probably isn't. Otherwise Alwyn would have called in. I don't want to risk other personnel looking for a broken down..."

  "I need to know what happened to Stafford."

  There was a pause at the other end. "Well, fine. Let me know if you find anything. We'll take it from there." Braddock clicked off.

  Fine? Fine? What kind of reaction was that?

  He was feeling more than lonely. He was feeling frustrated and angry.

  How could he write a report on someone who just vanished without a trace? Something else had to happen; some new development. Trouble was, it looked as if the new development would have to come from him.

  He had been waiting for inspiration. Often, in the past, h
is ideas just seemed to pop up from someplace else, like telephone calls. This time, the muse seemed to be avoiding him. If she did call, it would probably be collect. He had a premonition that some kind of bill was going to come due when this was all over.

  He still had an ace up his sleeve. The image he had requested of the Mars-2 site was on its way downlink. A message from Phobos had said there was a processing problem, but finally the image arrived. Why, he thought, did everything have to be delayed during the week when time was most critical?

  Then he had to remind himself: Time was no longer a factor.

  As he worked, he seemed to sense Stafford's shade hovering over him. Smiling. "Get that picture," it whispered. "Don't give up. Keep looking..." It was creepy.

  The new hi-res image showed the confused tracks of Braddock's teams' vehicles at the Mars-2 site. Multi-wavelength. Thermal infrared. Clover-leaf patterns of trails looped out into the desert and returned; probably Braddock's people looking for clues.

  Finally, he made a spiral search pattern with the new thermal data folded in. And at last he saw them: broken traces of a soil disturbance— tracks—leading to the west. He felt excitement rising, but felt his own anger at the same time. Too late, too late, too late.

  The trail was not continuous. He could not even pick it up within the first few kilometers near the Mars-2 site. Maybe there was rocky ground, with no dust to show the tracks. Here and there, farther west, he could just see a trace.... The trail seemed to zigzag one way and then another. Detours around obstacles?

  Hours later he had traced the trail to a point beyond which he could find nothing. He was not sure he could find any unusual end point; the last segment faded out of resolution just as the other segments had. There was nothing unusual in the area: an eroded flow, a well-formed but nondescript cinder cone, some poorly developed dunes. But projecting the trail farther west, search as he might, he could find no further segments.

  He grabbed the phone and told Braddock he was tracing Stafford's trail west.

  "I've got to get out there. We can reach the Mars-2 site in hoppers and take buses west from there. You've got to back me on this. I'll go to the Council it you don't."

  "Okay." Braddock sounded defeated. "One thing, though. I want to go out there with you. I'll arrange it. Two buses. And listen: You better not be wasting my time."

  It was late. Carter hadn't even eaten. He had tried to find traces of the trail extending beyond the last region. Nothing. They would have to go that far and then see what they could find. He felt tired, excited, alone.

  He was pondering this when suddenly he knew he was no longer alone. He turned. It was Elena Trevina, standing just inside the door watching him. He still found her disturbing. It wasn't sexual; he was sure he couldn't feel anything sexual now. But there was something ... She wore her auburn hair very short. It illuminated a face that had grown not simply older, but more interesting, in the mysterious manner that most American women, in their eternally frustrated quest for youth, had not mastered. She was, perhaps, in her early forties, maybe a decade older than Carter. She created the impression that these years had let her in on some secret knowledge that Carter had yet to discover. The secret gave her an air of authority, yet there was also a perfume of empathy.

  "It's been a bad day," she said. "They told me you were here." She didn't say who "they" might be. "Still working, I see. I guess now it's too late...." She radiated an air of we-have-to-move-on.

  "Ummm."

  "Well?"

  "Well what?"

  "How are you? What have you been doing?"

  "I've been here most of the day."

  "With what result?"

  "I've been thinking..." Carter paused.

  "That's a result?"

  Carter shrugged.

  "Maybe we won't find out what happened to Stafford right away," she pressed. "Maybe it will be fifty years from now, when his ... his body turns up?" She stepped into the room. "I think you have to face that. Accidents can happen to anybody."

  "He knew the country. He told me once that any other direction from here just took you out into the basin—just a big bowl of dust. But Hellespontus, up on the rim, he said it was full of ghosts. That's actually what he called them. Ghosts. Now that we've found this Mars-2 thing, I know what he meant. Talking to him was like talking to a Zen master. He'd say something crazy. A year later, you'd realize it made perfect sense. Anyway, he liked the country up there. My job is to find out what happened, and I haven't...."

  "He checks out a buggy. He gets into an accident. End of story. What more can you do? Do you want to expose others to danger, to go after him now? I knew him, too, you know. If he died with his boots on, he'd rather be left out there...."

  "He knew dust devils. Chased them. So I don't understand ... I can't see him getting into danger. Anyway, I don't know what happened. I don't plan to speculate."

  "Our ace reporter doesn't seem to think you're so uncertain about what happened."

  "What?"

  "Look at this." Lena went over to the big screen console, put Carter's picture on hold, and punched voice control. "Call... up ... Newsnet. Find ... the ... story ... about... Stafford," she said very slowly and distinctly. The screen flickered and displayed a page of print.

  HELLESPONTUS CASUALTY THE WORK OF DUST DEVILS? the headline said. Lena was pointing to the byline. "Filed by Ann Pohaku." It was Annie's story with a new headline and a bulletin added at the end.

  Update. Feb. 48; 3 P.M. Hellas Base time. According to records of the supplies checked out by Dr. Stafford, the staff here estimate that his air would have run out by midday today. Stafford was born in 1968 and was a pioneer of Mars. No sign has been found of his vehicle, but new high-res satellite photos have been ordered. Officials believe he has died as a result of an accident, possibly involving dust devils known to have been active in the area. Stafford was famous for his research on ancient Martian microbes and his unsuccessful search for evidence of more evolved ancient life forms. As reported previously, Stafford's last triumph, and perhaps his most dramatic, was his discovery of the Mars-2 probe, the first human artifact to reach the red planet.

  The article went on. Carter feigned coolness. Lamely he said, "She's got it pretty much right, hasn't she?"

  "New satellite photos? Where did she get all this? From you?"

  "No. Well, I mean, not directly. She's been helping out." Carter glanced at the headline again. "What's the problem? Or is there a problem?"

  "She's the press, Carter. The press doesn't just 'help out.' She's a reporter, for God's sake."

  "Well, jeez, Lena. Why are you so paranoid? She reported the story, yes, that's her job. But this is Mars. It's an emergency. There's a man missing and we don't know what happened. When we came down here, we expected we could use more people in the search. She's available to get involved—that's her job, too, in a sense. Besides, I couldn't stop her from coming. And it hadn't occurred to me to stand in the way," he lied. "And the discovery of Mars-2," he tried to change the subject. "That thing really is historic ... that was a great story for her. I wish they had left it in place. I mean, it's a sacred spot."

  Lena wore an exasperated-by-naiveté expression. "They didn't know. They were just a construction crew from the reactor, not historians."

  Carter studied the screen.

  ...investigators close to the scene think Stafford may have encountered a giant dust devil that could have damaged his vehicle. Recent photos have shown dust devil activity in the area ... search continuing...

  "That's another thing I can't figure," Carter said. "As far as we know, no one's ever been tipped over by a dust devil, or sandblasted, or whatever the hell's supposed to have happened."

  "What was supposed to have happened?"

  "You heard Braddock as well as I did. I don't know if he's right."

  "And your theory?"

  Carter remained silent. He had tried to avoid having a theory. If you stood around and tried to explain what happen
ed, it meant you're no longer actively involved in finding out.

  Carter studied her. She was smiling at him expectantly. A curious smile. A Cheshire cat smile. Carter took a deep breath as if to say something, but ended in a sigh. It felt like he was expelling something evil that had been building up inside. It felt strange to begin to talk about an explanation.

  "Well?" Lena repeated. She was trying to help him get it out. He had wanted to try to work all this out with Annie, but with Annie he never felt free to talk. No telling what would end up in print. Maybe he could work through it with Lena.

  Out loud, his thoughts sounded like bullshit.... "Suppose Stafford is excited after finding Mars-2. He forgets to be careful. He gets in a dust storm and maybe can't see and drives off the edge of a ravine. Or something. Wind speeds and particle velocities are higher in a dust devil core than in your run-of-the-mill dust storm, right?"

  "Oh, yeah." She smiled. "You got that right."

  "Do you think a dust devil could pit the windshield of a buggy so he couldn't see?"

  "Ummm. Maybe, yeah ... I don't know if anybody really knows."

  "Anything like that I come up with, I can't figure out why he didn't just radio back that he was in trouble. Unless it was a sudden accident." Carter sighed again.

  "Maybe it did something to the antenna, too. Something he couldn't fix. Then there's always the dust sinks."

  "Dust sinks."

  "Drivers occasionally run into mushy spots. Vehicles sink in. Nobody knows how they form. Nobody's ever hit one big enough to sink a whole vehicle, but there's a sort of mythical belief that it's bound to happen. People have this idea of whole buggies just sinking out of sight and never being found. I think that's one reason Braddock doesn't want to spend more time looking for the vehicle."