Analog SFF, November 2009

by Dell Magazine Authors

  I froze, staring. I began to tremble. I wanted to flee, but fear paralyzed me. The paper came down. A bland, small man looked at me with bloodshot eyes. He had short brown hair and a thick neck. I smelled it then: his familiar cologne.

  We stared. Finally, he said softly, “I'll be watching you."

  I opened my mouth but nothing came out. I wanted to say, “You're going to be disappointed.” I meant to go back home to New York, start school again, finish my studies in math. Nothing there worth watching.

  I moved toward him, half a step. It took me a long moment to find my voice. But finally I said, “I forgive you.” My words were barely audible. My hands shook. I said it again, louder. “I forgive you."

  "I don't need—"

  I cut him off. “Maybe you're just a bad man. But maybe instead you thought something had to be done to help the world. Something that might not work, something that might be bad, something that might even make things worse—that would, in the near term, surely make things much worse. But you couldn't think of anything else to do, and you hoped it might, just might, force an answer.” I nodded. “I understand that. I understand desperation. I understand the terrible things we sometimes do on the thin hope of a calculated risk."

  I moved on before he could respond, pushed through the heavy doors, and walked out into the blinding sunlight of a new and uncertain day.

  Copyright © 2009 Craig DeLancey

  (EDITOR'S NOTE: Marrion's kids appeared earlier in “Amor Vincit Omnia [April 2008].)

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Short Story: FOREIGN EXCHANGE by Jerry Oltion

  * * * *

  Illustration by John Allemand

  * * * *

  Plan ahead can only take you so far....

  * * * *

  The return vehicle touched down in a swirl of red dust. The engine continued to burn until the sensors in all three footpads reported contact, then it throttled down and let the entire weight of the craft settle onto the Martian surface.

  A few minutes later the protective shroud split open from nose to waist, four solar panels tilted out like flower petals, and a pump began pulling air through a chemical fractionating unit. Inside, catalysts stripped the oxygen from atmospheric CO2, and further pumps liquefied it and stored it in fuel tanks alongside the already-filled liquid hydrogen tanks. It was a long, slow process, restricted by the low wattage available in Martian sunlight, but it was steady. Molecule by molecule the tanks would fill, and by the time the manned landing party arrived they would have a fully fueled return vehicle waiting for them.

  Mission controllers on Earth directed the nose camera to swivel around for a full panorama, mapping the rocky floodplain at the mouth of the Valles Marineris so the astronauts could study their base camp site before they arrived. There were no facilities for soil samples or life-detection tests; that would be the explorers’ job.

  Off in the distance—a distance everyone hoped was far enough to keep the astronauts’ ride home safe from danger—they could see the fresh scar of the recent outflow event that had made them choose this landing site. Water had flowed out of the canyon wall and carved a gully just last year. “Follow the water” had been the dictum of Martian exploration since the 1990s, and this was about as close as you could get to a sure thing.

  The return vehicle kept making fuel. NASA, perpetually strapped for money and downlink time, switched off the camera and reduced the polling interval of the vehicle's status to once every two weeks. They left it alone to do its job while the second spacecraft was assembled and tested in Earth orbit, and after six months, when the return vehicle reported that its tanks were full, humanity's first manned expedition to Mars set out on its historic journey.

  There were only two astronauts. The ship couldn't carry enough supplies for more. Some people doubted that even two people could survive the trip, but Melissa Nelson and Will Randall were willing to risk it. They had faith in the engineering and faith in themselves and faith in each other. There were hundreds of unknown factors that could complicate the mission, but facing the unknown was what exploration was all about.

  The trouble with the unknown is that you can plan ahead all you want, but you can't plan for everything. Melissa and Will were only halfway to Mars when the return vehicle launched itself from the surface and headed for Earth.

  They cursed like sailors from a previous century when they heard the news, even though they were on an open mic. This was their ride home that had apparently, through some software glitch or stray command signal, grown impatient and come back too soon. They couldn't just turn around in space and come home themselves, either; they were committed to going all the way to Mars. They could use its gravity to swing around toward Earth again, like Apollo 13 had done around the Moon when its oxygen tanks had blown; but if they landed, they couldn't come back.

  Heads rolled throughout NASA. A Senate investigating committee convened to assign blame to anyone the new administrator had missed. Every company who provided so much as a bolt for the return vehicle was investigated, fined, and just for good measure, audited.

  The astronauts flew onward. The lander flew the other way. Minimum-fuel transfer orbits aren't straight lines; the two spacecraft were millions of miles apart at their closest approach, and moving at thousands of miles per hour relative to one another.

  The news reports went on to other topics. It would be months before the astronauts returned, and nobody but the scientists were interested in the malfunctioning lander. They ran it through its paces all the same, guiding it home and separating the crew capsule for a splashdown in the Pacific. Might as well test as many of its functions as possible.

  So they were unprepared for the sight that greeted them when they hauled the capsule on board the pickup ship and popped open the hatch. They hadn't taken any decontamination precautions; after all, the outside of the lander had been burned clean by reentry, and the inside had never been opened to Martian air. There wasn't anybody official on hand to give a speech or any of that. Just a dozen curious sailors and a computer tech named Carl Chapman, who carried a notebook computer and a patch cord that he intended to hook into the onboard control system and find out just what had happened.

  But someone in a spacesuit blocked his way.

  "What the hell?” asked Carl.

  If the Martian said anything, its voice was muffled by its spacesuit helmet.

  The smell that came out of the capsule nearly knocked Carl over. He backed up a couple of steps, sneezed, and looked over his shoulder at the sailors who stood in a ragged semicircle around the hatch. “Get the captain up here,” he said, and one of the sailors broke away and ran across the deck toward the bridge.

  The Martian put one foot out onto the deck. Its other two feet stayed just inside the airlock. All three hands held onto the frame. Its face wasn't clearly visible through the red-tinted bubble helmet, but Carl could see a wide mouth with lots of pointed teeth set below two bulging eyes.

  "Uh ... welcome to Earth,” he said belatedly.

  The Martian stared at him with its improbably large eyes.

  "Something tells me you don't speak English."

  The creature's spacesuit looked like it had seen a lot of action. It was patched in half a dozen places, a couple of them with silver duct tape that had no doubt come from the lander's tool locker. Carl couldn't imagine anyone trusting his life to such a patchwork job.

  He looked around again for support, but the sailors were just as bewildered as he was. He turned back to the Martian. “What were you thinking?” he asked. But that was obvious when he thought about it. An empty spaceship lands, refuels itself, and just sits there waiting for someone to fly it home; it probably looked like an invitation. The Martian apparently had his own pressure suit—probably because he lived underground in a sealed environment and needed it when he went out onto the surface. So he had evidently grown curious enough to climb inside, close the hatch, and push the “go” button, trusting whoever had sent
it to take care of him in transit.

  "Oh man,” said Carl. “You're in deep trouble."

  The Martian grinned toothily.

  Fortunately the captain showed up just then, and he was a little more used to making snap decisions than Carl was. “Hello, welcome to Earth, and get back in the capsule,” he said. “We don't have any idea what kind of microorganisms you might be carrying."

  The Martian showed no sign of comprehension, but when the captain ordered the sailors to rush toward it, the creature ducked back inside and slammed the hatch.

  "Get a cable around that to hold it shut,” the captain ordered. “And prepare a storeroom for emergency biohazard containment."

  While sailors hurried off to take care of it, the captain looked over at Carl and said, “Well, I guess we found out why it launched early."

  * * * *

  On the ship to Mars, nearing the point where they either had to start decelerating to go into orbit or commit to a slingshot return to Earth, Melissa and Will were arguing about what to do. “Look,” she said for maybe the third time, “The Martians obviously have enough intelligence to recognize a spaceship when they see one. They've got to have some kind of civilization. I say we land and see what's down there. We can get them to help us refuel our ship for the trip home."

  "And what if they've got the intelligence of chimpanzees?” asked Will. “What if they're as intelligent as us—and a hundred years behind us technologically? I mean, if they've got a civilization capable of producing liquid oxygen, why haven't we heard of them before this?"

  "Maybe they live underground,” said Melissa. “Maybe they don't use radio."

  "And don't build roads and don't till fields and don't herd animals and don't—"

  "I get the picture."

  Will shook his head. “If you did you wouldn't want to risk going down there and depending on their abilities to get us home."

  "Look,” said Melissa. “We're risking our lives already on this mission, but now we know without a doubt that there are Martians down there. Isn't that worth a little more risk to be the first people to talk to them?"

  "A computer tech named Carl Chapman was the first person to talk to one. By now a couple dozen others probably have. More likely we'd be the first people to be stuffed and mounted in a Martian museum."

  She snorted in disgust at his paranoia. “We have no indication that they're hostile."

  "They don't have to be hostile. They can stuff us after we die of starvation."

  "Where's your sense of adventure?” she asked. “We're explorers! We should be jumping at the chance to meet the Martians."

  "I'd love to meet Martians,” Will said. “I just want to make sure I survive the experience."

  "Mission Control says the one who took our return ship rebuilt the air recycler to provide its own atmosphere instead of ours. That argues for a pretty good understanding of technology. Anybody who can do that can make liquid oxygen."

  Will scowled. “I don't know. That's a pretty slim piece of evidence to stake your life on."

  "What do you want to go down in history as?” Melissa asked him. “The first guy to land on Mars and meet the Martians, or the guy who gave it a miss and went back home because it was too dangerous?"

  "I don't know,” he said again, and Melissa suppressed a smile. She'd spent enough time with him to know what he really meant when he said that. To him, “I don't know” meant “Convince me."

  "The Martian had freeze-dried ration packets,” she reminded him. “He had his own pressure suit. They've got technology."

  "Hmmm,” he said. This time Melissa did smile.

  * * * *

  Tnaxis knew he was in trouble the moment he saw the quarters they had prepared for him. He hadn't been thrilled with being cooped up in a tiny space capsule during the long trip between planets, but he had at least hoped for a friendly welcome when he reached his destination. It was probably unfair to judge these two-legged creatures by his own standards, yet a windowless room furnished with only a cot and a bucket hardly seemed generous treatment.

  And the air was actually worse than on board the spacecraft. They had apparently taken their cue from the modifications he had made to its recycling equipment, not knowing that he'd never succeeded in getting the mix right. Oxygen was like breathing acid vapor, so he was glad they realized he didn't need that, but they apparently thought he needed carbon dioxide. He didn't, and the stuff smelled awful. How could he tell them that all he really needed was methane?

  He had nearly run out of food, too. He'd brought enough for months, assuming that he might have to spend quite a bit of time on the blue-and-white planet before they sent him home, but their spaceship was slower than he had guessed and he had been forced to eat nearly all his rations on the way here. The two-legs had let him bring the last of it with him into his cell, but unless there was something he could eat on this heavy, smelly, unfriendly mistake of a planet, he would starve before he could get home.

  He cursed the rotten luck that had led him to crash-land on the red planet in the first place. He'd been about to land next to the fresh outflow gully at the mouth of Fnash's Gash, the enormous canyon that crossed nearly a third of the planet, and everything had been going wonderfully until the last few seconds, when one of the ship's footpads had struck a rock and the whole vehicle had tipped sideways. The crash hadn't breached the hull, but there was no way he could set the ship upright again and fix the damage. He had sent an amplified telepathic burst message for help, but his receiver had been damaged in the crash, so he couldn't tell if anyone had heard him. Nor did he know if they could send a rescue vehicle for him before his supplies ran out. He'd thought he was dead until he'd discovered the mysterious spaceship out in the ancient flood plain. There was nobody in it and no tracks around it, yet it was fully fueled and ready to launch. It didn't look like anything his people would build, but he hadn't had much choice. He'd transferred the last of his supplies into it and pushed what he hoped was the launch button, and now here he was.

  Yet from the looks of it, this whole thing had been a colossal misunderstanding. The two-legs hadn't expected him. He wondered what they had expected, sending an empty spaceship to a dead world to wait so enticingly for passengers. He would probably never know. They apparently communicated through mouth noise, and their language sounded like a frooxie with a bad case of the jibs. He would run out of food long before he learned it.

  The one who had met him on deck now stood outside his new quarters, peering in through the tiny square window in the door.

  "I want to go home,” Tnaxis said to him, thinking clearly and pointing the multifingered tips of all three tentacles upward. He had taken off his spacesuit, glad at least that he could scratch his back again.

  The alien made a coughing sound and pointed at his head. Apparently two-legs called their heads “Carls.” Tnaxis pointed at his own head and repeated the same noise as best he could. The language lesson had begun.

  * * * *

  Mission Control was not happy with Will and Melissa's decision. “It's too risky,” they argued. “There'll be other flights."

  "But not for us,” Melissa replied. There were dozens of other astronauts waiting for a flight, and she and Will had already received enough radiation en route to Mars to disqualify them for anything beyond low Earth orbit ever again.

  Fortunately there was a twelve-minute lightspeed lag in communications, so Mission Control couldn't harangue them during the crucial orbital insertion burn, nor could they try to remotely control the spacecraft. All they could do was watch angrily while their crew put their ship into orbit and took the lander down to the surface.

  That, at least, went according to the original mission plan. They set the lander down within a hundred yards of the spot where the return vehicle had come down, figuring that was the one place on the planet that had proven beyond a doubt to be inhabited. Their engine kicked up a lot of dust, announcing their presence to anyone who might be watching.
<
br />   "Okay,” Will said. “Now we wait for rescue. You'd better be right about this."

  Melissa laughed.

  "What?"

  "You realize those are humanity's first words spoken from the surface of another planet?"

  He blushed. “Oh crap, they are, aren't they?"

  She laughed again. “At least you didn't say anything pretentious."

  * * * *

  Larry, the linguist who took over the attempt to communicate with the Martian, had finally gotten it to understand that “Carl” was a name, not a generic word for “head.” The Martian was apparently named Tnaxis, though that might have meant, “Oh, forget it,” instead. It was hard to tell. They weren't making much progress communicating through the tiny window in the door.

  Just when Larry thought they were getting somewhere, Tnaxis would ask for something beyond his comprehension. As near as Larry could tell, it wanted something that would either make its head explode or squirt its brains out its ear. Larry was sure he was missing some key concept, but whatever it was, the Martian was certainly emphatic about it. They had analyzed some of its food and had found that dry cat food was remarkably close to the stuff it had brought with it, but it wanted something else now and Larry just couldn't guess what that was.

  They would puzzle it out eventually, he was sure of it. Now that they knew they could keep the Martian alive, there was time to learn each other's language. If they could just figure out a few more common terms, things would no doubt pick up from there. And Will and Melissa would undoubtedly be learning things from this creature's people on Mars. Between them, they would eventually develop real communication.

  Tnaxis was making that expanding head gesture again, holding its multifingered fists clenched near its head, then flinging them open over and over again. “Static electricity?” Larry guessed. “Bad hair day?"

  * * * *

  Tnaxis could hardly believe it. These Larrys, as he had learned to call them, were telepathically deaf. He could shout at the top of his brain and this one right in front of him couldn't tell. And when he closed his ear and listened, he heard not even a whisper of activity on the entire planet. The creatures here obviously had no idea that the ability even existed, and without an amplifier there would be no way to contact his own people. Mission Control probably thought he was still in Fnash's Gash, and would send the rescue ship to the wrong planet, if they sent one at all.