Mars Prime

by William C. Dietz

  A chill ran down Corvan's spine. What if it was? What if Deimos was a spaceship of some sort? That would mean aliens, a technological treasure trove, and the biggest story ever broken! But where were the little green men if any? Dead, he guessed—a long time ago, judging by the look of things.

  Something touched his arm and he almost jumped out of his skin.

  "Whoa, big fella. It is I, your loyal companion."

  Corvan laughed but it sounded forced. "Glad to hear it. Is this strange or what?"

  "It is definitely strange," Redfern said solemnly. "Any signs of Dr B?"

  Corvan felt suddenly guilty. He'd been so preoccupied with his surroundings that Dr. B had slipped his mind. He looked around. The floor was covered with bits and pieces of dried-out whatever it was. And there, off to the left, scuff marks were visible where someone had walked through the stuff. Dr. B!

  Corvan pointed to the trail. "Look!"

  "Yeah," Redfern agreed. "Let's see where it goes."

  Corvan led the way. The scuff marks wandered back and forth a bit but generally headed up-slope toward a circular passageway. The reop saw that while Dr. McKeen might have been able to duck-walk through the hole, he'd be forced to crawl.

  So, based on the design of the ship's lock, and that of the upcoming passageway, it seemed safe to conclude that the original owners had been shaped like large worms. The thought caused him to look over his shoulder. He saw Redfern but no worms. Good.

  Corvan stopped at the passageway and got down on hands and knees. He felt his tank module scrape the top of the tunnel as he moved forward. It was dark inside. The light projected from his helmet wandered back and forth over smooth walls. The reop saw an opening up ahead. Strands of the dried-out seaweed-like material hung down to obscure the room beyond. It brushed over the top of his helmet and back along the sides of his suit. He sensed rather than saw some sort of antechamber and knew that the real room lay beyond that.

  Good though the E-suit was, it was bulky and difficult to handle from a kneeling position. The reporter reached out, found something to hang onto, and pulled himself forward. Whatever it was came loose, fell towards him, and hit his chest.

  Corvan saw a visor, and beyond that, a screaming face. It followed him down. The thing's eyes bulged, its lips were pulled back to expose bone white teeth, and its mouth gaped horribly open.

  Corvan wanted to scream but couldn't find enough air. He was working on it when Redfern appeared over the thing's right shoulder, grabbed the E-suit under the armpits, and pulled. The face disappeared. Corvan rolled over and fought his way to his feet.

  Redfern was matter-of-fact as he propped the suit up against the wall and read a name off its chest.

  "Well, look what we have here. George Imbulu. One of the two people that disappeared while working outside of Mars Prime. Poor bastard."

  "Make that both of the people," Corvan added grimly. "Here's number two."

  The other suit, a woman's this time, had been off to the right. Light from Corvan's head lamp had been reflected off the high gloss artwork on her chest plate and caught his eye.

  A quick examination revealed that her face bore an expression similar to Imbulu's. It wasn't pretty.

  "How the hell did they get here?" Redfern asked wonderingly. "And what happened to them?"

  "Beats the heck out of me," Corvan replied. "But judging from their expressions it wasn't much fun."

  "Look!"

  Redfern had aimed his light back into the darkness. Corvan did likewise and saw a pile of junk. There were chunks of loose rock, pieces of pipe, lengths of metal framing, and wait a minute, something the size and shape of an oversized garbage can. Twisted things stuck out from the object's side, things that looked like solar arrays. Solar arrays similar to those found on satellites. And not just any satellite, but the missing satellite, unless Corvan missed his guess.

  Someone, or something, was stealing things and stashing them away in this underground hoard.

  A light appeared out of the darkness. Corvan felt his heart stop then resume beating as a small robot rolled out to greet them. Its voice crackled over the reop's helmet speakers.

  "Hello. I am Weld Inspector 47. Due to a processor problem, or other malfunction, I am lost. Please direct me to a Class IV maintenance facility, or call one and have me picked up."

  Redfern laughed. "No can do, little buddy. Not right now anyway. Put yourself on standby and we'll deal with you later."

  The robot's light snapped out as the machine followed Redfern's orders.

  Corvan shook his head in wonderment. "This gets more bizarre every moment."

  "That's for sure," Redfern agreed cheerfully. "Come on. Let's see what else this place has in store."

  The security officer led the way and Corvan followed. There was no way to tell what Dr. B had thought of the room, or its contents, but her scuff marks led down a slight incline and through another small opening. There were lots of marks now, as if the scientist had come and gone numerous times, dragging things behind her.

  Redfern got down on his stomach and crawled. Corvan did likewise. Darkness turned to light as Redfern emerged from the other side and moved out of the way. Seconds later the security officer said "holy cow," in such awed tones that the reop expected to meet one, and static flooded his helmet. Something, a rather powerful electronic something, was very close by.

  Corvan pushed his way out of the tunnel, scrambled to his feet, and found Redfern staring upward. It was easy to see why.

  The entire ceiling, and the upper portions of the walls as well, were covered with an ever-shifting mosaic of video images. And like a mosaic, the pictures came in a variety of shapes and sizes, all of which were slightly out of focus as though intended for non-human eyes.

  Which Corvan reflected, they undoubtedly were.

  He saw some other things as well, including four kidney-shaped constructs that hung from the ceiling and some strange harness-like arrangements. There was plenty of the streamer stuff too.

  "Look!"

  The urgency in Redfern's voice, plus his rigidly pointing arm, caused Corvan to look at a large triangular picture. What he saw amazed and astounded him. It was a full color shot of the Mars Prime mess hall! The room was packed with people, many of whom looked familiar, and they were listening to some sort of speaker. What the—?

  But there was no time to consider the picture further because a weak, and almost inaudible, croak managed to make itself heard through the static that rumbled in their ears.

  "Hey! Over here! Behind you!"

  Both men turned simultaneously and searched for a body to go with the voice. Redfern was the first to see her. He pointed.

  "Look! Over there!"

  Corvan saw what looked like a pile of scrap metal, and beyond that, a headless E-suit. And that was all he saw for a moment, until he thought to activate the eye cam and zoom in. The geologist sat to the right of her space suit, with her helmet on and one leg propped up on a pile of the dried vegetable matter. Dr B was alive!

  It was a race to see who could get there first. Redfern won. He helped the scientist remove her helmet.

  "Dr. McKeen I presume?"

  "One and the same," the geologist croaked.

  "Hey, Doc, what happened to your leg?"

  The geologist peered into Corvan's visor. "Corvan? Is that you? Open your visor for God's sake. You're wasting suit oxygen. And give me a drink. My suit ran dry about twenty-four hours ago."

  The reop opened his visor, pulled two feet of drinking tube out of its storage module, and handed the free end to McKeen. She grabbed it and sucked greedily. Thirty or forty seconds passed before she relinquished the tube and wiped her mouth with the back of one hand.

  "Damn. I never would've thought that recycled piss could taste so good."

  Corvan chuckled. "You haven't changed a bit."

  The scientist grinned. "And neither have you. There isn't another sonovabitch on the planet dumb enough, and stubborn enough, to come f
ind me."

  Corvan nodded toward Redfern. "He did."

  "And I'm much obliged," McKeen said soberly, "but whose idea was it?"

  Corvan grinned. "Mine."

  The geologist nodded. "I rest my case. Don't tell me—let me guess. The first search party came, took a look around my camp, and split."

  "That's about the size of it," Redfern agreed ruefully.

  "Well, you're here, and that's the main thing," McKeen said, "and a good thing, too. We've got trouble."

  "No kidding," Corvan responded. "You saw the bodies? And the other stuff?"

  "Damned right I did," the geologist answered. "That's how I broke my leg. See those kidney-shaped constructs that hang from the ceiling?"

  Corvan glanced upward. "Yeah, they're kind of hard to miss."

  "Right. Well, each one of them is a control panel, and the third one over governs the transporter system. I can't prove it, but I think the system was dormant for hundreds, maybe even thousands of years, until something triggered it. One of our radio signals, some radiation, who the hell knows. Then, obeying God knows what instructions left eons ago, it starts to pluck samples off the surface of Mars. Some of them human. I'm not sure what killed them—the trip itself, or pure undiluted terror."

  The geologist gestured towards her surroundings. "I think Deimos is a survey ship, kind of like Darwin's Beagle, only bigger.

  "Anyway, I hauled some of the junk out here, jury-rigged a scaffold, and climbed up there. My plan was to find the equivalent of an ignition switch and turn the damned thing off. It took awhile to figure out the controls, but I had a pretty good handle on it when the scaffold collapsed and I fell. I came close to getting off scot free, but a piece of pipe rode me down, and I broke my leg. And that cramped my style, to say the least."

  "You must be hungry," Corvan said sympathetically.

  "A little," the geologist agreed, "but I’ve been eating these. They fill you up and give you one helluva high at the same time."

  So saying the scientist reached into a pocket of the suit seated next to her and withdrew something small and round. She held it up to the light.

  Corvan recognized it right away. A berry! Just like the ones that Sharma handed out! His mind raced. All sorts of things fell into place.

  "Tell me something Dr. B . . . have you seen any evidence of another ship?"

  "Besides Phobos?"

  Corvan felt his eyes bulge. "Phobos? Phobos is a ship?"

  The scientist shrugged and rubbed her injured leg. "Who knows? Some lucky dog will get to check it out. But if my guess is right, Phobos is hollow and packed with scientific samples."

  Her entire face lit up. "Imagine! Samples taken from the other worlds in our solar system, or who knows? From the other side of galaxy!"

  Redfern frowned. "So Phobos is a trailer?"

  "Not a bad analogy," the scientist said thoughtfully. "Assuming I'm right, that is. One thing's for sure, though. The mystery of how Mars acquired two moons is solved. They were parked rather than captured by a long-vanished atmosphere."

  "That's interesting, Doc, real interesting," Corvan said impatiently, "but not what I had in mind. I meant down on the surface. Are there any signs that a shuttle or similar ship landed on Mars itself?"

  "I haven't seen anything to support such a hypothesis," McKeen replied, "but I haven't seen anything that would rule it out either."

  She frowned. "Wait a minute ... up there ... towards the right. The rectangular shot. It changes frequently but covers the same locations over and over again. One of the shots looks the same way this room does. I had assumed that it was some other part of Deimos or Phobos, but it could be a video of a third ship."

  "It must be," Corvan said firmly. "And I'll bet you dollars to doughnuts that a guy named Barbu Sharma found it. Not only that, but some berries just like yours, which he used to start his own religion."

  "And speak of the devil," Redfern said, "look up there!"

  Corvan looked, and sure enough, there was Sharma in living color. A little out of focus, but still Sharma. It was the same shot he'd noticed before, the one of the mess hall and the throng of people.

  Sharma stood on a table top and wore the same anatomically correct E-suit that the reop had seen before. He raised his arms over his head, looked out over the assembled multitude, and mouthed words they couldn't hear.

  There were others present as well, lined up to Sharma's left and right, shoulders slumped, and wrists bound with tape. Corvan saw Peko-Evans, Fornos, Jopp, and a woman with black hair, who unlike the others, looked anything but cowed. Her head was held high, her eyes sparkled with anger, and her body was poised for action. Kim!

  The picture was worth a thousand words. Sharma had taken control of Mars Prime ... and his wife, too.

  Redfern growled and got to his feet. He'd seen the video and come to the same conclusions.

  Corvan gestured toward the ceiling. "The transporter . . . how does it work? Can we control it?''

  "I think so," McKeen said cautiously. "Assuming we can reach the control panels. Each picture represents a place where the transporter can reach. The only problem is that while it can reach through the dome and into the mess hall, it can't pull things back out. I think that it was capable of doing so in the past and keeps on trying."

  "Which accounts for the fact that the junk, plus both of the people, were snatched from outside of Mars Prime," Redfern said thoughtfully.

  "Wait a minute," Corvan put in. "You said that while the transporter can reach into Mars Prime it can't pull objects out. At least not anymore. But it can move things around inside the dome, right?"

  The scientist rubbed her leg. "I guess so . . . but I don't see . . ."

  Redfern brought his fist down onto the palm of his hand. "I get it! The Ochoa and Wu murders! The transporter system accidentally beat them to death while trying to pull them out through the ceiling!"

  "Exactly," Corvan said grimly, "and it deactivated some robots, too."

  The reop looked up toward the ceiling. "Wait right there, Sharma baby—have we got a surprise for you!"

  Chapter Twenty

  Sharma had talked so long that Kim wondered if he'd ever finish. The man liked the sound of his own voice, that was for sure. Still, judging from the flowery rhetoric, it sounded as though he had begun to wrap things up. Kim shifted her weight from foot to foot and did her best to restore some circulation to her tightly bound wrists.

  "And so,” Sharma concluded, "it is with a tremendous sense of humility that I accept the mantle of leadership so unexpectedly thrust my way—"

  And it was at that exact moment that the miracle took place. Suddenly, and without any warning whatsoever, Sharma was lifted up into the air.

  A collective gasp went up from the crowd. There were cries of, "It's a miracle!" and "Praise the great Membu!"

  But instead of the beatific expression that many expected to see, Sharma's face went slack with shock and his eyes started to bulge. They watched in shock as their religious leader hung in midair, kicked his legs, and windmilled his arms.

  "What's happening? Put me down! Someone help me!"

  But before anyone could react, the invisible force that held Sharma aloft did its best to pull him up through the ceiling. His head made a horrible thumping sound each time that it hit. Three such blows were sufficient to render him unconscious.

  Then, as if bored with its new-found toy, the force released him. Sharma's body drifted downward, hit the salad bar, and cartwheeled away. A medic chased it down, found that it had gone into cardio-pulmonary arrest, and started CPR.

  A long silence descended over the hall.

  Kim looked around, saw the shocked expressions, and held out her wrists to a man with a likeness of Mickey Mouse painted on his chest.

  "Cut me loose. I have work to do."

  So the man did, and others did likewise, until all of the prisoners had been freed.

  That was when Peko-Evans climbed up on a table, ordered everyone to sur
render their weapons, and suggested a return to work. Much to her surprise most of them did as they were told.

  There would be an investigation, followed by consequences for those who had taken part in the fighting, but that could wait. The dome's security cams had captured who did what to whom, and all of them could be rounded up with very little difficulty. No, the most important thing to do right now was to disperse the crow and let emotions cool.

  Peko-Evans climbed down from the table. Kim passed nearby. The administrator touched her arm. The editor stopped.

  "Yes?"

  Peko-Evans gestured towards Sharma. The CPR had been successful. Medics were loading him on an auto stretcher. "What happened? Do you know?"

  Kim looked at Sharma and shook her head. "Nope, but this should make one helluva news story."

  The bed was surprisingly comfortable, in spite of the fact that it was a makeshift affair, put together in the back of a crawler. It was cold, even with the heaters on, so Kim snuggled deeper under the covers. She ran a hand over her husband's stomach.

  "We could get dressed. It would be warmer that way."

  "But not as much fun," Corvan answered lazily. "Besides, Scheeler said we could have the crawler until morning."

  Kim nodded. Someone had killed the woman with the mace a fraction of a second after her weapon made contact with Scheeler's helmet.

  So, while three of the metal rods had punched their way through the helmet's outer surface, they remained in place, plugging the holes they had made.

  That, plus the semi-liquid sealer sandwiched into the helmet's construction, had saved Scheeler's life. She was up and around now, as was Sharma, though under widely differing circumstances. The security chief was back at work and the religious leader was awaiting trial for armed insurrection and murder.

  The crawler, and the opportunity to get away from Mars Prime, was the security officer's way of saying thank you for the help that both the Corvans had given her.

  Corvan gloried in the feel of his wife's smooth flesh, the warmth of the blankets, and his exotic surroundings.