Aurora was silent for a long minute. “You must realize that whatever you’re suggesting could be disproved in a moment,” she said. “For instance, it just happened that my records were destroyed in a fire in 1999. But—if you can wait until tonight, I just might have something else to say....” Then, as she saw his face light up: “I only said might. Tonight?”
“OK. It’s a date.
“Dream on, boy!”
* * * *
But that night there was more excitement. Minako had taken out the Blimp during the afternoon. She had less flying experience than the others, and had intended to make only a short trip to accustom herself to the controls. But, as everyone else had found, the experience of seeing the network of canyons unfolding beneath her had been so fascinating that she’d not wanted to come down. There was no particular reason for Orlov to insist she did, so, as long as she kept in radio contact, he let her carry on.
However, as the shrunken Sun was almost touching the horizon he was about to radio her to tell her to get back within the next few minutes when her voice, unusually high and excited, came over the speaker.
“I saw a light down below! I went quite low over the spot where we found Dr. Pryor—it’s quite wide there—and was about to switch on my lights—for a second I thought I had—when I saw this ball of light moving about right below me, down in the dark canyon. I went even lower, and it sort of skipped out of the way and disappeared. But—I think I got a shot of it before it did!”
While they were eating their evening meal, Claude Verdet brought up the digital image he had made on the computer screen. It was not very impressive, but it showed an overhead view of the aptly named labyrinth of intersecting canyons. The desert was redly sunlit, with boulders casting long shadows, but the gorge was in darkness.
Except in one place, where a spherical light-source cast enough illumination to make the walls visible. Had the watchers not known that none of them had been down there it could have been an astronaut aiming a lamp upward. Indeed, one could almost imagine a pale figure behind the light.
“You know what they’re going to think, back on Earth, don’t you?” said Beaumont, examining the screen closely. “‘It’s a fake’—that’s what they’ll say. They’ll say we’ve done it to keep interest alive in the Mars project and ensure funding for the next phase.”
“We’ll all swear an affidavit if it comes to that,” protested Aurora. “Surely they’d have to believe us then?”
“With any luck, maybe we’ll get better evidence, anyway,” said Orlov soothingly. “But it means we’re going to have to set up a night-watch—with instruments, at least.” Apart from the airglow experiment, they’d been switching off pretty well all the instrumentation at night up to now.
Minako added, casually: “If you send them my pulse and blood pressure graph for the moment when I saw that light, they’ll know it was something unusual!” For Minako, it was almost a joke.
It was time for Orlov to make his daily transmission to Earth, and he left, taking Verdet’s video card with him. The rest of the evening was spent in heated argument, theories about the light or lights being put forward by one and torn apart, or occasionally supported, by the rest. Although Aurora several times felt Beaumont’s eyes on her, there was no opportunity for them to have a personal conversation. She found she felt quite disappointed about that.
After an hour or so, Orlov returned. “The folks back at Mission Control seem quite interested in the lights,” he informed them with conscious understatement, “though not exactly over the Moon.” This was greeted with hoots of derision, as were all such corny remarks. “Anyway, tomorrow we’re to set up a video camera on the surface, rigged in such a way that it can cover the valley floor with a wide-angle lens. I think I can arrange a mechanism that will alert us if it picks up anything brighter than someone lighting a cigarette.”
“Somehow I don’t think you’re taking this seriously!” commented Aurora.
“What’s a cigarette?” asked Verdet gloomily. He had been a heavy smoker back on Earth. There had been a strict no-smoking policy since they’d left. Smoking would have been impossible outside anyway, in the thin, oxygen-poor Martian atmosphere, and anywhere else there was too much oxygen in their canned air for a naked flame not to be dangerous. Even without these considerations, it’d have been highly anti-social to fill their communal living and working spaces with cigarette smoke.
After a moment Verdet joined in with the laughter of the others.
* * * *
The next night they at first clustered around the viewscreen to watch the image from the video camera. But, even though its sensors could be adjusted to show wavelengths from infrared to ultraviolet, nothing out of the ordinary appeared. Eventually they lost interest, and left it up to the alarm system to tell them if there was anything worth watching.
Beaumont caught Aurora’s arm as she was about leave for her tiny cubicle. “Yesterday you said you might have something to tell me,” he reminded her, his voice hoarse.
She stood for a while, her eyes on his face, then led him to her cubicle. “I like you, Bryan,” she said once they’d got there, “though I don’t much like the way you’ve been digging into my past life. I suppose you’ve discovered that I’m British too? Scottish, actually.”
“Well, actually, no—though I did have a strong suspicion, from your accent.” He emphasized the “actually” with an upper-crust accent. “So where were you around 1972? I could go on digging, you know. Even your initials are the same—A.P.—though in your recording days you were known as just ‘Aurora’. Of course, only a rock-music freak like me would see any connection—I guess you just got unlucky....”
Aurora hesitated, playing with a lock of blonde hair. Then a mixture of expressions crossed her face: stubbornness, quickly replaced by resignation, submission; relief?
“I was in London. I’d been dossing around, getting into drugs, all sorts of shit like that. Then I met this guy who was in a group—yes that’s right, the Gas Giants—found I could play, and the rest is herstory!”
“Hers...? Oh, yeah, I get it. But how old were you?”
“As a matter of fact, I was thirty-two—but I looked about sixteen or seventeen, as you know. I’ve always looked younger than my age.”
“Well, sure, but that means you’d have to be....” He did a quick calculation. “Seventy-eight? Jeez! This is crazy! I mean, I sort of knew it—well, I thought it—but...it’s got to be impossible!”
“So’s growing a new arm. Do you think I don’t find it all impossible, too?”
“You mean even you don’t know why? You’re sure you’re not the result of some secret Nazi genetic experiment, or something?”
Aurora smiled faintly. “Not that I know of. I age slowly, I heal quickly, I don’t get ill or catch diseases, and, as we’ve now discovered, I seem to be able to regenerate new limbs. My theory is that I’m some sort of genetic mutation. In which case there must be others like me, somewhere.”
Bryan sagged back in his plastic chair, gazing at her as she sat cross-legged on her cot. “I can’t take it in,” he said weakly. “Tell me some more about yourself. Will you, please?”
She plunged right in and told him her life story. The whole saga tumbled out. Her childhood, the rock scene, her late education and jobs. He let her go on until he knew just about everything there was to know about her. When she had finished it was after two in the morning, and they were both whispering, as everyone else was asleep. Snores in different pitches came from the direction of Orlov’s and Verdet’s cubicles.
“Incredible!” Bryan breathed at last.
Aurora grinned at him. Bryan’s cheeks were flushed, and he was running his fingers rapidly through his hair. She realized once again how fond of him she’d grown over the previous months. Now, after the last few hours, they were closer than they’d ever been before.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have made you tell me. But....”
Aurora leaned forwar
d and gave him a sisterly kiss. “It’s all right. To be honest, it’s a relief to tell somebody at last. D’you know how long I’ve been keeping this to myself?” The atmosphere between them was charged now. Bryan kissed her back. Then they kissed again, and it lasted longer than either of them had expected.
When at last they broke apart he looked embarrassed. “Tell you the truth, I’ve always fancied the pants off that girl on the record sleeve.” He stood up. “I’d better go....”
“Yes, I think perhaps you had,” she said, smiling at his departing back.
* * * *
She awoke, somehow surprised and even disappointed to find herself alone, inside her sleeping bag. Had last night been a dream? No—it all came back to her. It was such a relief finally to have confided in someone. But her relationship with Bryan Beaumont could never be the same again....
She relaxed languidly for a while, then got up and took what passed for a shower—a sponge-down in a liter of water from a metered instant heater. Oh, for a real, tingling needle-shower, she thought. She supposed she should be grateful that it was her turn, since even this facility was rationed to one shower per three days per person. Long ago there had been much more water on the surface of Mars. Someday, when humankind decided it was time, there would again be more. For now, it was locked up underground.
It seemed almost strange that work at the camp continued as normal. Life took on a new dimension for Aurora. She rarely had an opportunity to be alone with Beaumont, and when they did go into a huddle in the Refectory she felt that everyone’s eyes were on them, and that there must be gossip.
The days passed, until their researches around Noctis Labyrinthus were almost completed and only a little aerial mapping remained. In two days they should return to Base Camp.
And all this time the light in the canyon had not reappeared.
DISCOVERY
Next day Aurora went to Vitali and announced: “I want to go down the canyon again, to where you found me.” Seeing that he was about to interrupt, she continued quickly, “Look, that light was real, and we can’t just leave here until we’ve found out some more about it. I know it may sound crazy, but I have a feeling that it might be triggered when someone passes close by. That’s why the video camera up at the rim has never seen anything. Well...look, I know it’s a long shot, but this whole thing is pretty weird, isn’t it? It’s got to be worth a try?”
Orlov grinned, his teeth white in his black beard, and held his palms towards her in surrender. “What took you so long? OK, OK! I was going to suggest that we took another look at that spot, anyway, since that’s where Minako saw the light too. But no solo trips this time, right? A party of us will go see.”
Aurora smiled. “Thanks!”
That night, an hour before sunset, four figures descended into the gloom of the canyon and set out at a brisk pace along its floor. They slowed as they reached the wider area, with its hummock of sand, in which Aurora had been found. No light appeared.
“Let’s go on a bit,” she suggested. “I found a cave with icicles in it down here. As you know, that particular cave collapsed on me, ahem, but there might be others there. I didn’t have much of a chance to look.”
They traversed the floor, passing over bedrock, then sand, then more rock. No further caves were found.
Finally, Orlov said, “We’d better get back.”
As they neared a corner where the gorge turned in a forty-five-degree bend, Claude Verdet, who was leading, stopped and pointed. His voice came softly in their helmets. “Look. See—ahead there?”
The jutting rock was limned by a soft glow.
They moved towards it, treading softly as though their footsteps might scare something away. The glow brightened, silhouetting the features of the cliff.
They rounded the corner.
And there hovered the ball of light, just as Aurora had described it. It was about two meters from the ground, but as they advanced it rose to twice that height and bounced softly up and down.
Belatedly they remembered their cameras and other equipment, and began making recordings and taking measurements. The sphere sank slowly lower and, as they stood still, approached them.
“It’s like an animal, wanting to come close, but wary,” Minako whispered.
Bryan’s going to be so sick he missed this, thought Aurora. But he and Lundquist had had to stay behind, Beaumont to send their daily message to Earth, the doctor to make his medical report.
The sphere elongated slightly, its interior sparkling. Its color pulsated, first a reddish tinge predominating, then blue. Suddenly it became pear-shaped and split into two, like a dividing amoeba; then the two halves merged again into one. The ball faded to a dull red, rose higher—and winked out.
There was a collective sigh.
Verdet was the first to speak. “Fantastique!” he breathed.
“Beautiful!” agreed Orlov, while Minako merely nodded, unable to speak.
Aurora, too, said nothing. She felt only a great sadness that the light had gone.
Orlov spoke, more briskly. “Come on, let’s get back. I’m going to send this stuff to Mission Control tonight, and ask them to agree to a longer stay at this camp.”
Mission Control agreed.
* * * *
Now that the evidence was incontrovertible, the news of the lights broke on Earth. The newspapers, the newscasts and the internet were filled with excitement. Hard copies of some of them were printed out in the Igloo and passed around to much merriment and some annoyance.
LIFE FOUND ON MARS?
MARTIAN UFO DISCOVERED
GREAT BALLS OF FIRE!
ASTRONAUTS HAVE SPOTS BEFORE THE EYES!
Not surprisingly, theories were hatched in abundance. After a while most of the crew ignored the popular press, which seemed to be fixated on alien life forms, tiny spacecraft and Martian ghosts, and concentrated on the reports of scientists who, like themselves, were studying all the data: the wavelengths of emitted light, spectroanalysis, electrical potentials, radioactivity, and anything else they could discover. Beaumont did still browse through the mass media, partly for amusement but also just in case anyone did come up with an interesting idea, he said. Most of the others (including Aurora, privately) thought he protested a little too much.
However, among the expedition members it was Beaumont who came up with the best hypothesis, backed up quite quickly by scientists on Earth.
When he first advanced it he appeared almost sheepish. “As I think most of you know,” he said, “I’ve taken a sort of interest in UFO phenomena for some time. Not that I believe in little green men or anything like that, of course!” he added hastily. “But you must admit there are some interesting cases, and they need explaining. Well, the best explanation I’ve found is earthlights.
“It has been known for, oh, thirty or forty years that lights and glows in the sky have been associated with various areas around the world. In England, for example, there’s Glastonbury Tor, Silbury Hill and the whole Warminster region. In Utah there’s the Uintah Basin—the locals call them spooklights there. And so on. In some cases, records go back hundreds of years concerning balls of light—some say “like a rising Harvest Moon”, that sort of thing—which bob around certain hills or mountains. Sometimes they’re round, sometimes cigar- or rocket-shaped; which is why lots of people thought—still think—they’re spacecraft. Going further back, they were called Will ’o the Wisp, or thought to be ghosts, spirit lights, or whatever.
“But genuine researchers suggested they might be due to ball lightning, or some sort of plasma effect—or to “earthquake lights”, associated with tectonic activity. That doesn’t mean there had to be an earthquake in the area; quite the opposite, in fact, because a quake releases energy quickly. It seems the lights and glows can be caused by low-magnitude seismic activity—any kind of gradual release of pressure that has been building up in underground rocks, modifying local electrical conditions.”
“That’s right eno
ugh,” confirmed Aurora, interrupting his long, eager sermon.
“It could be a piezoelectric effect—you know, when you put pressure on some types of crystal, electrical charges are formed on their surfaces. You could easily get 10,000 or even 100,000 volts per square meter in rocks below ground. It might be due to friction, or to the fracture of rocks. But there’s research going on all the time, and whole new areas of geophysics are appearing.” He looked embarrassed. “Well, you all know that, don’t you! But whether it’s friction, heat or pressure—there’s an effect called rock-crush, too—I’m sure you see the point. If it can happen on Earth, why not on Mars? After all, we had evidence of seismic activity when Anne found that steam-vent at Arsia.”
Claude Verdet spoke up. “I’ve come across some of this research, too. But I understood that it’s more likely to be an atmospheric effect. Isn’t it true that, when some fracture lights were spectroanalyzed, they found no trace of elements from the rocks, only from the air?”
“Apparently,” replied Bryan. “They tried experiments in the laboratory in various gases and in a vacuum. The spectra showed distinct lines from the gases. But there’s no reason why the Martian atmosphere shouldn’t produce the same sort of effects as Earth’s, is there?”
“None that I can see right now—except that it’s so thin,” said Verdet with a frown. “But we obviously need to set up some new experiments, don’t we?”
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