by Ben Bova
“A meteor?” she asked, feeling the uneasy stir of an old memory, a childhood fear, within her.
“Meteoroid,” Dex corrected, leaning over Jamie’s shoulder to push his face into the picture.
“Maybe more than one,” Jamie said. “The disaster that wiped out the dinosaurs on Earth might’ve been more than one meteor strike.”
Vijay felt the old, old fear clutching at her.
“It must have been a swarm of them,” Dex said, his voice strangely flat, drained of emotion. “Big suckers, too.”
“On Earth three-quarters of every living species was wiped out, land, sea and air,” Jamie said.
“And here on Mars,” Dex went on, “nothing survived except the lichen and the bacteria underground.”
“Shiva,” Vijay whispered.
“What?”
“Shiva, the destroyer,” she said, remembering the tales of the ancient gods that her mother had told her.
Jamie’s brow furrowed slightly. “Is that—”
“Shiva is a god,” Vijay explained. “His dance is the rhythm of the universe. He destroys worlds.”
Dex pushed into the picture again. “Shiva is a bunch of big rocks, then.”
“His avatar,” said Vijay. “His presence among us.”
Jamie saw it with his inner Navaho’s eyes: The Martians working under a hot sun, their crops waving in the breeze, their villages dotting the fertile land. And then death comes roaring out of the sky. The explosions as the meteoroids impact. The ground quakes. Mushroom clouds billow into the blue sky. The Martians flee to their temples, begging their gods to end this rain of devastation.
The terrible bombardment from the sky goes on and on, without end, without mercy. The planet’s air is blown away almost completely, until a mere wisp remains. The seas freeze. The Martians die, every one of them, their crops, their herds, their very memory erased from the planet’s surface. Except for a rare temple here and there, in a protected spot, where the last dying members of the race desperately scratch the final chapter of their story into the stones.
Dust covers the frozen seas. Nothing alive remains except the hardy lichen and the bacteria that dwell deep underground. Death reigns over all of Mars.
With a shudder, Jamie forced his attention back to the present, to this moment. He could see on the little laptop screen that Vijay looked somber, almost frightened. Maybe we should all be scared, he thought. Another rock could wipe us out, too.
You don’t know that for certain, the rational side of his mind warned him. The data could be off by millions of years. The dating could be just a coincidence. But he could not believe in such a coincidence.
“So that’s what happened to the Martians,” Vijay said, her voice hardly above a whisper. “Shiva destroyed them. Without mercy. Without warning. They were swept away as if they never existed at all.”
Nodding, Jamie said, “But they left this temple. Maybe there are other—”
The yellow priority message icon began blinking on his computer screen.
“Hold on,” Jamie said, splitting the screen to see who was calling so urgently.
Dezhurova’s dour face appeared. She was obviously in the rover’s cockpit, and obviously unhappy.
“Stacy, what’s the matter?” Jamie asked.
“I am stopped about fifty kilometers from you,” the cosmonaut said.
“Stopped?”
“Wheel malfunction. Must be dust in the bearings. It is overheating badly. If I try to proceed it will probably burn out completely.”
“I’ll tell the dome,” Jamie said. “I’m already talking with Vijay.”
“Good. Tell Rodriguez to come in the number two rover with a replacement wheel bearing.”
Jamie glanced at the digital clock blinking in the screen’s lower right-hand corner. “You’ll be stuck there overnight.”
“Not problem.”
“If we kept a rover here,” Dex pointed out, “we could go out and get you before sunset.”
“Perhaps,” the cosmonaut agreed glumly.
“That might be something to think about,” said Jamie. “We have the extra rover …”
“Tell Rodriguez to come in the old rover,” Dex said, “and then leave it here with us.”
“Perhaps a good plan,” Dezhurova said slowly. “I will discuss it with Tom.”
Close to midnight, as Jamie lay in his bunk, the yellow message light on his laptop began blinking again.
“Now what?” he muttered. It was late, he was tired, emotionally weary from the realization of what had wiped out the Martians. He had spent several hours looking over the archeologists’ reports on the age of the building. Then DiNardo had called in, a long, rambling monologue that boiled down to the Jesuit geologist’s doubts about associating the demise of the Martians with the extinction of the dinosaurs.
“The error bars on the archeologists’ dating for the Martian structure encompass several million years,” DiNardo said, his voice almost trembling with emotion. “It is fantastic to believe that the same event that caused the extinctions at the end of the Cretaceous on Earth also caused the extinction of the Martians.”
He’s frightened, Jamie saw as he studied DiNardo’s swarthy, stubble-jawed face. For some reason this idea scares him.
“Father DiNardo,” Jamie replied after watching the geologist’s message twice, ”I have to admit that the data on the age of the building here are pretty shaky. But even if the K/T extinctions on Earth and the end of the Martians happened a few million years apart, they still might have been the result of a single cause. A swarm of big meteoroids could have swung through the inner solar system and collided with the planets over a span of millions of years. We should be looking for evidence of a bombardment around that era on the Moon, don’t you think?”
He sent his message to DiNardo, then saw more than a dozen members of the archeologists’ committee wanted to talk with him. And the ICU board wanted to discuss the replenishment mission that was going to be launched. And Tarawa was scheduling a media conference for tomorrow.
Jamie had been glad when he attended to the last of his waiting messages and could finally crawl into bed and try to sleep. Then the message light started blinking again.
Who could be calling at this hour? Tarawa wouldn’t unless there was some sort of emergency. Nobody at the dome, they’re all asleep by now.
Stacy? He sat up on the bunk. Is Stacy having trouble out in the rover?
Jamie reached out and tapped the keyboard. Mitsuo Fuchida’s face showed on the screen.
“What’s wrong, Mitsuo?” Jamie asked.
The biologist was obviously in his quarters in the L/AV, only a few feet from Jamie’s cubicle. Yet he chose to call rather than come over in person. The lighting was dim, but Jamie could see that Fuchida appeared troubled, worried.
“I am convinced we have a saboteur among us,” Fuchida said, almost in a whisper.
“What?”
“I have been reviewing the evidence associated with several so-called accidents,” Fuchida said, “and I believe they were deliberately caused.”
Jamie swung his legs off the bunk and hunched closer to the laptop screen. Great, he thought. Mitsuo’s playing Sherlock Holmes.
“What accidents?” he asked wearily.
“The puncturing of the garden dome during the dust storm, for one.”
“That was sabotage?”
“Those punctures were made from the inside, not by the storm.”
“We’ve been through all that …”
“And Tomas’ injury? Do you believe that the tray of molten glass just happened to give way while he was standing beside it?”
Jamie drew a deep breath. ”Why are you telling me this? And why in the middle of the night?”
“Because you are the only one I trust,” Fuchida answered urgently. “The saboteur might be any of the others!”
“Why would anybody want to sabotage our equipment? Or hurt one of us?”
“I do
n’t know. Maybe he’s insane.”
There is that, Jamie admitted to himself. According to Vijay we’re all a little nuts.
Fuchida added, “And now this bearing malfunction in Stacy’s rover. Those bearings are sealed against dust penetration!”
Shaking his head, more in weariness than annoyance, Jamie said, “Okay, Mitsuo, tell you what. You and Wiley check out that faulty bearing when you go back to the dome. If you find any tampering with it, then tell Stacy about it. She’s the mission director now, not me.”
“But she might be the saboteur!”
“Stacy? That’s …” Jamie was about to say crazy, then realized that it would fit right in with Fuchida’s theory.
“She was on comm duty in the dome the night of the storm, while all the rest of us were sleeping. Remember?” the biologist insisted. “She helped to build the kiln for the glass bricks. She is alone in the rover and it breaks down.”
“You think she did it so she could spend the night alone out there?”
Jamie asked.
“If she is insane her motives would not be rational,” Fuchida replied.
Despite himself, Jamie sighed. “Well, when you and Wiley inspect the bearing—”
“How do we know that Wiley isn’t the saboteur?”
How do we know you’re not off your tracks? Jamie wondered silently.
“It could be any one of them,” Fuchida added.
“All right, Mitsuo, all right. Check out the faulty bearing by yourself, then. If you find any evidence of tampering, tell me about it. Okay?”
Fuchida bobbed his head eagerly. “Hair’
Jamie cut the connection and crawled back into his bunk. Just what I need. Either we have a crazy saboteur among us or Mitsuo’s going paranoid. Great.
Jamie did not get much sleep that night.
THE TORRENT OF DEATH
THE COLLOQUIUM HAD BEEN HASTILY THROWN TOGETHER, BUT ALMOST every member of the Institute for Advanced Study’s faculty crowded into the auditorium to listen to Li Chengdu.
He felt unworthy of this honor, unprepared for this responsibility, as he slowly climbed the three steps and crossed to the podium standing in the middle of the bare stage. All the buzzing conversations stopped. The auditorium fell absolutely silent as this tall scarecrow of a Chinese sage reached the podium.
Remarkable, thought Li. Nearly two hundred of the most argumentative men and women on Earth, and they all expect me to enlighten them.
For several hushed moments he merely stood there, nearly six and a half feet of lanky scientist, and stared out at the audience. Physicists, mathematicians, historians, biologists, even the economists were well represented. No outsiders, though. No news reporters or photographers.
Good, thought Li.
He began: “As you know, Mars was once inhabited by intelligent species. They were apparently driven to extinction at approximately the same geological time that represents the boundary between Cretaceous period ami Tertiury era on Earth, which has been called the Time of Great Dying.
“Three-quarters of all life-forms on land and sea were extinguished on Earth. On Mars, every species above the complexity of lichen was destroyed.
“It would appear, then, that a torrent of death swept through the inner solar system some sixty-five million years ago …”
Beverly Urey was only a distant cousin to the Nobel laureate chemist, but she was an astronomer at the Keck telescopes in Hawaii and the news media reporters tracked her down in the vast moonscape of Mauna Kea’s ancient caldera.
“We have a report from Princeton that said a torrent of death hit Earth and Mars sixty-five million years ago!” one of the reporters shouted at her.
“Well, yes,” she replied, somewhat dazed by their numbers and aggressiveness, “I suppose you might say that.”
TORRENT OF DEATH SWEPT EARTH AND MARS
Hilo: ”A ‘torrent of death’ swept both Earth and Mars sixty-five million years ago, according to a leading astronomer.
Dr. Beverly Urey, of the Keck Telescope Facility on Hawaii, told reporters that the same swarm of meteors that wiped out the dinosaurs on Earth also killed the intelligent race that lived on Mars. According to Dr. Urey …
“But they’re not dead,” said Hodell Richards, with a thin smile.
The host of the network TV show, a genial intelligent man with a secret passion for astronomy, smiled back skeptically. “The Martians aren’t extinct?”
“Not at all.” Richards had changed in the seven weeks since the first discovery of the Martian building. His lean, ascetic face had filled out somewhat. His hair was shorter, more in style with the current fashion. He had shaved off his mustache.
“But our scientists on Mars—”
Richards cut the host short. “Do you really think they’re telling us the whole story?” he asked archly.
“They’re not?”
“Of course not! They couldn’t. The government won’t let them.”
“But the Mars expedition isn’t being run by the government.”
Ignoring the inconvenient fact, Richards looked straight into the camera. “As I’ve been saying all along, the Martians have established a secret base for themselves here on Earth, in Tibet. We’ve got to find it!”
Arching a brow, the host said, “You think, then, that the Martians pose a threat to us?”
“They’re here to conquer us through genetic engineering. They want to plant their seed in Earth women and create a new race of Martians here on Earth and take over our planet.”
The host kept his quizzical smile in place, but inwardly he was thinking, The things I do just to keep the ratings up.
Pete Connors sat at his desk in Tarawa, surrounded by phone screens that connected him with the Baikonur launch center in Kazakhstan, the office of the chairman of the International Consortium of Universities in New York, the International Space Station in orbit around the Earth, and the office of the woman who headed the expedition’s logistics department, thirty meters down the hall from him.
Each of the faces on the screens looked harried, frustrated, almost angry. Each of them was talking—almost hollering—at the same time.
“All right,” Connors said firmly, “let’s cut the crap.”
They all fell silent.
“We’ve got to set the replenishment mission launch back from our current date, that’s clear. All agreed?”
Glumly, one by one, they agreed.
“Okay, it’s no gut-buster. Nobody’s head is gonna get chopped off and the people on Mars won’t be endangered by the delay. Is that clear?”
Nods and mumbles.
“I know you’ve all been getting a lot of pressure from the media. Just ignore it.”
”And just how in hell do we do that?” asked the launch director at Baikonur, a grim-faced Russian.
“Buck any and all media questions to me,” Connors said. “I’ll handle the news jocks.”
“Really?” asked the woman in New York.
With a sweetly reasonable smile, Connors replied, “Yep. I’m setting up a major media conference right here on this balmy tropical isle. Get those suckers out here and off your backs so you can do your work and we can entertain ‘em with swaying palm trees and a tour of the mission control facilities.”
“I get it,” said the engineer in the space station. “It’s the slow season for tourists down there.”
Connors smiled toothily. “You got it.”
Once she got rid of the reporters, Beverly Urey returned to her work. Hypothesis: A giant swarm of meteoroids swept through the inner solar system roughly sixty-five million years ago.
Evidence: Mega-extinctions on both Earth and Mars caused by the impacts of the meteoroids.
Question 1: Impact craters have been found on Earth and associated with the K/T extinctions. Can we find similar craters on Mars and get accurate dates for them?
Question 2: The Moon would have been hit, too. Can we locate craters of that age on the Moon? And what about
the other planets?
Question 3: Can we find the meteoroid swarm?
She sighed as she pondered that last question. Sixty-five million years ago. Whatever’s left of the swarm is much too far away for our telescopes to detect.
Then she sat up, eyes suddenly wide with fear. Unless their orbit is bringing them back toward us!
Fr. DiNardo knelt in the small confessional. Usually its dark, cramped confines brought him some measure of comfort, like a return to the womb.
But not today.
His confessor, on the other side of the screen, sat down heavily, making the wooden bench creak. DiNardo smelled the priest’s aftershave lotion; it overpowered the distant scent of incense from the altar.
“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned,” DiNardo began his confession.
The priest said nothing, waiting.
DiNardo swallowed hard, tasted bile. He took a breath, then whispered urgently, “I have sinned against the first commandment.”
“The first commandment?”
“I fear that I am losing my faith,” DiNardo answered, miserable.
“I don’t understand,” said the confessor.
“It’s the Martians.”
“The Martians are causing you to lose your faith?” the priest whispered, clearly puzzled, alarmed.
“Yes.”
“How can this be?”
DiNardo hesitated. Then he explained, ”How can a just and merciful God create a race of intelligent creatures and then kill them all?”
“How do you know—”
“They were intelligent!” DiNardo hissed. “They constructed buildings. They invented writing. I cannot believe that they did not have souls.”
“Yes, perhaps they did.”
“Then how could God have destroyed His own handiwork?”
“We cannot fathom the workings of divine purpose,” the confessor said.
“It isn’t right,” DiNardo whispered harshly. “To kill them all … all of them …”
The confessor was silent for several moments. Then he whispered, “Judgment Day has already come on Mars.”