MARS UNDERGROUND

by William K. Hartmann

  He felt like he wasn't getting enough oxygen.

  As they unsuited just inside the airlock, Carter was hit by the aroma of the air, so different from the dusty, antiseptic, synthesized air in the shuttle. Some chemical presence—wet paint?

  Okay, he said to himself. Pull yourself together. This is it.

  He sniffed the air conspicuously. "My diagnosis is that you need to check your air filtration," he said. Lighten the tension.

  "We're behind on changing the carbon filters," Lena said defensively. "Carbon shipment was delayed."

  She was taking him seriously, for chrissakes. "Delayed? Just call me. Hell, we'll just scrape a new batch off Phobos..." Keep joking with them. You've got them off guard.

  "Well, actually, the last shipment was bumped for some other stuff. Lab stuff we needed. Urgent priority. But we'll take care of it."

  Philippe faked a sneeze, but no one noticed his joke.

  "Well, you didn't come all this way to talk about air filters."

  "Actually, we did, in a sense. The problem we have, it's a question of clearing the air...."

  Lena gestured. "Come up to the conference room."

  It turned out to be a utilitarian conference room on the second floor, next to Lena's office. The whole place was utilitarian. Boxes piled in hallways. Scientists never had enough room for their stuff. They passed through her office on the way. It wasn't the only access to the conference room, but Carter had the impression she wanted to show it off. It was cramped, smaller than his own. A spectacular Navajo rug covered most of the floor. Must have cost a bundle to ship that here, Carter thought.

  She caught him looking at it. She laughed freely. "My one extravagance. Spent a summer at the USGS in Flagstaff just after your market crash. The ruble exchange rate was fantastic. I could have bought one twice as big. Used up a third of my weight allowance to bring it here. But then, I didn't have much else to bring in those days. I was starting over. Navajo rugs are about the same mass as husbands, but harder to throw away."

  They were sizing each other up, Carter thought. A lot of fencing.

  Several boxes of microdisks marked DATA and another marked ACCOUNTING sat on a wall shelf. The boxes looked dusty. The screen of Lena's terminal was glowing, but blank. The disk lying beside it was labeled ORGANIC ANALYSIS. Carter noticed Annie looking at it. She looked up. Their eyes met, firing question marks at each other.

  In the conference room, Annie felt uncomfortable. The room was cramped. There was a Velasquez window on the wall opposite her, behind Elena—a narrow but spectacular vertical slit that rose from the floor and curved partway across the arch of the ceiling. They took seats around a scratched plastic table. Annie kept finding herself staring out the window, wishing she had surveyed the outside landscape before taking a seat. Looking outside from a warm room was different from being outside, vulnerable in your suit. She needed to get down every impression about this place. Lena, across from her, blocked the view of the surface. But she could see the pale sky, a veil of pink fog, somber but beautiful.

  Elena forced a smile at Carter. "So?"

  Under the pretext of fishing out a notepad and pen, Annie switched on the high-gain recorder she had clipped to the inner edge of her bag. She sat very still. There was something unseen passing through the room, like radiation of some undiscovered wavelength.

  Carter looked tense. She knew that look so well now. His muscular body looked poised to spring from the chair. He was trying not to think about her. He hadn't looked at her since their eyes met a moment before, in Elena's office. Organic analysis.

  "What did you say you do here, Sturgis?" Carter asked.

  "Communications. It's Doug. Doug Sturgis." Sturgis was an interesting-looking sort. He had a rectangular face, strong but bland, and very short hair, hardly more than stubble. He wore pants with bright blue suspenders over his white shirt, a mode that had been popular in the twenties. On one finger was a heavy ring, probably from some university. He had tiny, bright eyes. His bland face and a peculiar indoor quality of his skin made it hard to guess his age; perhaps it was thirty-five. Maybe forty. He looked as if he was made of vinyl. "By the way, speaking of communications, you'll have to turn that off, Ms. Pohaku. That recorder you hid away."

  Annie flushed and reached into her bag. Damn. She knew he had not seen her. He had sensors in here that could detect her equipment. This was going to be trickier than she had thought. "Sorry," she said. "Force of habit."

  "And I'd prefer no one take any notes," Sturgis added, with an over-innocent smile. "For the moment, at least."

  Who was this guy? Annie watched everything. She felt detached. Now she had to become a giant recorder herself.

  Carter turned to Elena. "We have a sensitive problem here," he said. "Maybe we should discuss this with you privately."

  Elena looked as tense as Carter. "It's okay." She gestured around the table. "Everybody here's involved. Administratively."

  "Same among us," Carter said. "My friend Philippe's been helping me get material for my report..."

  "Good chance to see Mars," Philippe chimed in.

  "...and you know Annie here has been helping us, trying to cover the story at the same time. Win-win and all that."

  "Not much to report so far," Annie contributed.

  As if to be helpful, Sturgis got up and returned a moment later with glasses of water for everybody. "We don't have a lot of luxuries to offer down here," he said apologetically.

  Carter continued. "You understand, I'm under orders from the Council. I'm coming to a dead end, almost, trying to understand what happened to Stafford. Actually, it's not a dead end, but an unexpected end. We're hoping you can help us."

  "Of course. If we can," Elena said, smiling.

  If only I could describe that smile in words, Annie thought.

  "The trail led us here. We think there may be some clues here, might shed light on what happened."

  "Clues?" Lena said.

  "Let me list some of my findings; see if you don't agree. For instance, we all remember Stafford's dune buggy out in the desert." He looked intensely at Sturgis. Annie observed that Sturgis was glaring back. A nice male turf battle. "Don't know if you heard about it, Doug, but Stafford had piled up a rock wall blocking the view of his buggy, as well as putting a cover over the thing. To my eye, he had planned to leave the buggy there, and he deliberately concealed it. That's fact number one."

  "Hardly a fact," Braddock broke in. "An interpretation maybe. But even when we were standing there looking at it, there wasn't any proof of what Stafford intended. If he had already encountered strong winds, he would have tried to shield it when he went out on foot. That might explain why he drove into that cinder cone, too."

  "Okay, let's call it an item. We have a chain of items here. The second item is that on the night after Stafford arrived at the crater somebody landed a hopper just outside the crater wall and then took off."

  They were all silent. Lena fingered her glass of water and glanced at Sturgis, whose face was growing darker.

  "Now that sounds like an interpretation if there ever was one." Brad-dock again. "You want to talk about how you drew that conclusion?"

  "Sure. Orbital imagery."

  "What kind of orbital imagery?"

  "For the moment, let's just leave it that I've been looking through the data banks with special techniques."

  "You don't have an image of a hopper sitting there."

  "I don't think there's anything in my mandate from the Council that says I have to tell you what kind of image I have." Carter was smiling and cool; Annie had to hand it to him. "Look, Lena, this is a delicate situation. I don't..."

  "Hell, Lena." Braddock looked as foul-humored as Sturgis. "He comes in here talking about hoppers and he's got no data to back him up ... I've got other things to do than..."

  "Calm down. Let's hear him out."

  "But you've got no hard proof?" Sturgis asked. "Hard-copy images to lay in front of us?"

  C
arter shrugged noncommittally.

  Philippe butted in. "Carter's analysis of the images led you to the buggy of Stafford. That was hard evidence."

  Sturgis glared.

  "And then there's item three," Carter continued. "Where's the only base on Mars that can reach Stafford's site with an unaccounted-for hopper?" He paused. They looked at each other. "Right. We're sitting in it."

  "How do you know it was a hopper?" Braddock said. "If you've just got orbital imagery, how do you know it wasn't a cargo shuttle? If a shuttle was really out there, it could have come all the way from Mars City."

  "Unlike the records up here, the records at Mars City are quite precise when it comes to shuttles. I've checked them. No large vehicles flew out in the time frame we're talking about." Carter sat for a moment with no expression. "Look, do you agree that if a vehicle landed out there near Stafford's buggy, and if it was a hopper or a bigger ship, we could go out there and distinguish which was which from the blast marks and the imprints?"

  "You're saying you've got evidence that a hopper landed somewhere near that crater we visited?" Braddock paused. "I mean apart from where my crew landed?"

  "Let's just say I can prove there was another landing."

  She had to admire Carter's handling of it. He had Braddock just where he wanted him. Braddock couldn't really deny it without revealing that he recognized the one way the original landing marks could have been destroyed—by having his own ship land on top of them.

  "Sounds kind of vague."

  "Let me put it to you straight: Somebody flew a hopper out of this station and picked him up. I've chosen to come to you direct and get your help. Now we can resolve this together. Did somebody fly out of here without you knowing? Is that possible? Can we check the records? Can I interview your pilots? I want to find out what's going on. I'm sure you do, too. I know I'm taking up your time, but let's work together on this. What do you say?"

  Elena stood up and gazed out the window with her back to them.

  "Oh, my God, it's snowing."

  They jumped up from the table and crowded around the window, pressing against each other like kids.

  "It's never happened this early since we've been here," Elena continued. "And usually it only happens closer to the pole."

  Outside, Annie could see myriads of tiny crystals wafting out of the sky. Suddenly, out of view, the sun must have come out from behind the fog. The crystals were transformed into a million sparkles, a parade of shiny confetti.

  Carter moved to the window, followed by Philippe. Only one at a time could stand close to the heavy glass for a good look.

  As they took turns, Annie joined them. The dry, crystalline snow lay on the soil in windblown swirls, making a magical landscape of vanilla ice cream and orange sherbet. Opponents, suddenly united by magic. She made a mental note.

  Braddock and Sturgis went back to their seats, as if the snow were beneath their dignity. Finally, the group at the window turned back toward the table, self-consciously.

  "I think we can work together," Elena said, finally. She had remained standing.

  "So what can you tell us?"

  "Look," she said, "you've brought us some disturbing news. Give me the rest of the day to make some inquiries while you see the station and settle into your rooms. Okay? We'll meet again in the morning. First thing."

  "You know how important this is, don't you, Lena? You understand the gravity of the situation. Maybe we're past the stage where Stafford's life hangs in the balance, but we don't know that. And I need to wrap up my report. I want it to show your complete cooperation, of course."

  "Don't worry. It's just that, well, I don't know how to react to your accu ... your assertions. I can't really give you any answers now. I mean, I don't know what else to say. I can respond better when I get some more information." Seeing the look of anger settling on Carter's face, she added, "We'll get you some answers."

  "Give us the run of the station, to do some interviews."

  "We'll be happy to give you a tour. As soon as you settle in. You can ask questions as you go. Meanwhile, let me start right now to do my own digging. As director, I'd like to ask some questions around here myself. We can agree on that plan, can't we?" They were fencing again, Annie noted to herself.

  "What about the run of the station?"

  "Look, you're really putting me on the spot. Nobody has ever just arrived and been given the run of the station. There's a lot of sensitive equipment here. Everybody goes through a training period. You've got to grant me the courtesy of following our normal procedures." Touché.

  Carter shrugged. "I might be able to get authority from the Council to do what I want. But for the time being, we're your guests. So we don't have much choice, do we?"

  "No. You don't," said Sturgis quietly. He was smiling at them with his bland face. The smile looked out of place.

  24

  MARCH 3, CONCLUSION

  The meeting was breaking up. Carter seethed quietly as the snow continued to fall outside. Another delay. Finally, Lena ushered them from the conference room, through her office and down hallways past labs and storerooms with windows of various sizes. The windows offered glimpses of the polar world outside. The ground had turned entirely crystalline, a sparkling creamy white. The snow was not thick and lush, as during a winter storm on Earth. It did not drape the landscape with a fresh blanket. Rather, it was dry and spartan, the sort of snow that might blow through an open door into a deserted ballroom after a revolution, blending with crystal chandeliers and glinting silver candelabras. The snow frosted the rocks and sand drifts, and seemed to condense on the surfaces of the chartreuse tractors, camouflaging them into the grainy pale landscape. The sky was still white with fog, and the horizon vanished into the mist.

  First, Lena showed them the cramped, colorless cafeteria, but it was still an hour before noon. "Come back up here for lunch," Lena told them. Then they headed toward their rooms. Carter was amazed when Lena asked, "You have a contract number we can charge the rooms to?"

  It wasn't an unreasonable question, just out of place, like asking about casket expenses during a funeral. He swallowed his impatience and explained to her that the Council had set up a specific account for the investigation.

  Down two flights of stairs they were given three tiny rooms in a row: Carter, Philippe, Annie. The rooms were hardly more than cubicles. Small table, mirror, closet, bed. Bare metal and Martian ceramics. Showers and toilets were at the end of the hall.

  Lena left them. "I've got to talk about all this with my people." Carter stood at his door and watched her disappear down the hall. Cold. Professional. Not a private word to him.

  After she disappeared up the steps at the end of the hall, Philippe and Annie popped out of their doors.

  "What do you think?"

  "She's stalling."

  "Stonewalling. Who the hell is Sturgis?"

  "Let's meet in half an hour for lunch. Talk about it."

  The privacy of the room seemed to give Carter his first chance to think. No ideas came.

  He tried to reach Lena by 'corder, but her machine said she was out. No return message arrived. When they started up the stairs to the cafeteria, a young man materialized to lead them. With a smile, he introduced himself as a research assistant.

  "What sort of research you do?" Annie asked him.

  "Sedimentology. Working on the ages of the sediments. The whole cap is layered, you know."

  When they arrived at the cafeteria, the man left them.

  "Obvious sheepdog," Annie said.

  There was no sign of Elena, Braddock, or Sturgis.

  "I tried to go out and look around after we went in our rooms," Philippe said. "But you can't leave the hall without picking up an escort. 'A guide,' he called himself. He said we should not go anywhere; he would take us around after lunch."

  They dawdled over hearty soup, served by a cheerful cook.

  "You know what impresses me ... a lot of construction equipment outs
ide the windows," Philippe said.

  "Exactly what research are they supposed to be doing here?" Annie asked. "Run that by me again."

  Carter explained. "The basic idea is that the geology and environment at the pole is very different from most of the planet. In the polar ice cap, you have this huge concentration of frozen water and in wintertime frozen CO2. Under the seasonal cap, you also have layers and layers of stratified sediments, brought in by summer dust storms, deposited between the layers of frost. In fact, the winter snowflakes condense on the dust particles lofted into the atmosphere by the summer storms, so the dust particles get carried to the ground at the poles and packed into the sediment layers. They're really thick. The strata show ancient climate cycles, like tree rings. Periods of lighter or heavier depositions. People used to think the old sediment layers would be the best place to look for traces of ancient life. They were thinking about the water on the edge of the polar cap; some of it melts in the spring. Of course, they never found much, except for Stafford's layer of enhanced organics and microbes. But that was the original motivation for the Polar Research Station."

  "So that's why she might have been doing organic analysis on samples? That disk, in her office...?"

  "I was surprised by that, too. I didn't think they were doing much of that anymore. But they still do a lot of excavating, to reconstruct the ancient climate cycles. That's why all the construction equipment. One of the headaches of my life, all the stuff they want shipped down to the pole."

  The afternoon was taken up with a meaningless tour of the base, with an anonymous underling telling them pointless facts about the history and function of different labs. Lena was nowhere in sight. It was as if everything was on hold. At dinner they were given their own table; they could only agree that there was not much they could do.

  When they got back to their rooms, Philippe put on a broad American accent to imitate the guide. " 'Chem lab's down that way, but I'm not authorized in there so I can't show it to you.' " He grimaced in disgust. "Right."