Aurora

by David A. Hardy

  Everyone agreed with this, though Orlov seemed highly skeptical of the earthlights hypothesis. However, he couldn’t suggest any better idea, and they certainly needed to find out as much as possible.

  That afternoon they set out again, armed with new apparatus, some of it jury-rigged by Verdet and Beaumont with Aurora’s help. For a while it had looked as though she would have to remain at the Igloo, but Minako took pity on her and swapped duties. So she was with the four men as they approached the famous spot.

  As before, nothing happened as they approached. The sky above the canyon glowed a dusky crimson, which rapidly became purple, then almost black, with a scattering of bright stars, while the ragged strip of light on the uppermost parts of the wall shrank to a broken line and vanished. For a while they explored various small tributaries using their halogen lamps; then Orlov gave them the order to return.

  Suddenly there was confusion. Orlov stumbled over a boulder in the darkness. As his huge bulk crashed down, the ground beneath him gave way and he disappeared into a crevasse barely wide enough to take his body. They all heard his cry of pain. Then he lay still.

  At almost the same moment a glow appeared almost directly above him. This time it was not a solid-looking ball but indistinct—an amorphous mass inside which seemed to be a swirling motion.

  Lundquist took charge. “Claude, help me pull him out. Carefully now! You two”—to Beaumont and Aurora—“there’s nothing you can do for him at the moment, so carry on with your experiments. Vitali wouldn’t want you to waste time!”

  Aurora whispered, “Well I’m glad it wasn’t me again...,” but no one seemed to hear her. For one thing there was a rushing noise, like the wind through trees, in their headphones.

  The light was solidifying now, its pinkish glow taking on a roughly spherical shape. Then it elongated, as before, and seemed about to split. But instead it hung like a vertical dumb-bell, its outline pulsating. A windblown eddy of fines wriggled its way, snakelike, along the floor. The light moved in the opposite direction.

  With a shock, Aurora realized that it was taking on a human shape. Wasn’t that an arm, beckoning? “Look! It’s a figure!” she cried aloud.

  There was a moment’s silence. Then Beaumont said doubtfully: “Well, yes, I suppose it does look a bit like one. But don’t get carried away!”

  Verdet and Lundquist had laid Orlov on the low sand-hill. He moaned loudly enough to be heard above the roaring noise which rose and fell in their helmets. Lundquist waved Verdet away as he examined his patient—as well as he could, with both of them encased in suits. His first priority was obviously to ensure that Orlov’s suit had not been punctured in the fall—the big Russian had fitted into the crevasse like a cork into a bottle. But the suit was intact.

  Verdet had heard Aurora’s comment and Beaumont’s response. “Sorry, Anne, I have to agree with Bryan. It is a curious shape, but a figure—?”

  Aurora was certain that for a few moments she had seen a gowned figure, its hidden feet not quite touching the ground, gesturing her to approach. But she was wise enough to keep her silence; she didn’t want her crew-mates to start questioning her sanity.

  “Come on over here!” called Lundquist. “I need your help now. Can you leave your instruments recording? I should have thought to bring a stretcher, but I didn’t. Damn. If we all place a hand under him, though, he won’t be difficult to carry in this gravity. I’ve splinted his left leg as best I can, but the main thing is to keep him as level as possible.”

  As they retreated, looking back over their shoulders, the light resumed its spherical shape, rose, dimmed and flickered out.

  * * * *

  Orlov lay on his cot, his face white. His leg was broken, but would heal in time. Far more significant was that he had no feeling in either leg. It seemed that the lower part of his spinal column had been damaged, and he could not walk. This was not just a personal disaster for him but a major crisis for the expedition as a whole. The rest carried on with their duties; it was all they could do.

  There was desultory talk, in private, that it would be interesting to see if the strange “Martian force” that had healed Anne’s arm would work for him too, but as the days passed and they were due finally to return to Camp One, there was no sign of improvement.

  Aurora visited Orlov alone one evening while the rest were in the Refectory debating the light. He appeared to be asleep, long black lashes lying on his rather swarthy cheek. For a moment she saw superimposed on his face her brother’s. They were as dissimilar as one could imagine, except that both had dark hair. Steve’s face had been long, ascetic, bespectacled. Orlov had regained some of his color, and had not lost his appetite, so his face was still round, yet with high cheekbones, and bushy eyebrows and a full beard.

  She suddenly remembered once more the story of how Steve had been paralyzed as a small boy until being cured when that strange “German” had touched him. Suppose—? Like many people, Aurora had during her long life had little contact with serious illness or injury other than her own. As an adult she had never witnessed a serious automobile accident or a plane wreck; had never even visited a hospital.

  Tentatively, she reached out her right hand, and ran it over her crewmate’s legs and round to his pelvis—he was lying half-turned on his side—and then on into the small of his back. Was it imagination, or did she seem to feel a heat that was more intense than his body temperature?

  “Why, Anne, I didn’t know you cared! And we all thought you and Bryan were an item!” His eyes opened, and a smile played briefly over his lips. Then he frowned. “But, if I may ask, what are you doing, exactly?”

  Her hand jerked away as though scalded. So they do know about Bryan and me!

  “I—I’m sorry. I thought—maybe—I could help. Stupid of me, but....”

  A sharp voice came from behind her. “Help? How, Anne?” It was Lundquist. “I just came to check on my patient, but I must say that I—” He stopped.

  “Do that again!” he ordered.

  Aurora was confused, not knowing whether the order was addressed to her or not.

  “Vitali! Your right foot! Wriggle your toes again!”

  Orlov did as he was told, incredulously, then rotated his whole foot. He swung himself off his bed and placed the foot on the ground. The other stuck out in front, being encased in a light but rigid plastic cast.

  “Help me up,” he said, his voice tight. They took hold of his arms and got him to his feet, while Lundquist reached for Orlov’s aluminum crutch and held it out to him. The Russian knocked it aside and took an awkward, stiff step forward. Then another. Lundquist and Aurora walked alongside him; then she loosened her grip. Orlov almost fell, then lurched forward, right into the Refectory a few paces away.

  He grinned at the open-eyed, open-mouthed faces that were turned towards him. “Good evening, my friends! Yes, you see before you a miracle! It appears that Dr. Pryor can heal not only herself but others.”

  “Oh, now, look!” protested Aurora. “We don’t know it was anything I did. I mean, it’s just as likely you were going to get better by now anyway. Isn’t it?”

  Orlov’s face was serious now. “I felt it,” he said quietly. “I wasn’t asleep, you know. When your hand passed over me, I could feel a—a sort of tingling warmth in my bones. And then it was like an electrical iron!”

  He reached down and unsnapped the cast from his left leg. Flexing the limb, he said: “Hmmm. It doesn’t feel quite right yet, but—” He walked in a circle around the tiny room, limping only slightly.

  Lundquist spoke wearily. “Before you start doing the cancan, Vitali, sit down, will you? I want to examine that leg.”

  Aurora was trying to avoid Beaumont’s eyes, but could feel them upon her.

  “I think you ought to tell them, Anne,” he said softly.

  She looked around at their puzzled, expectant faces, and sighed. “Damn! Oh, all right. I suppose there’s no point in postponing the inevitable.”

  And on
ce more she poured out the whole story, or as much of it as she thought they needed to know.

  When she had finished, there was a stunned silence. Then Claude Verdet exploded: “This is a total fairy tale. I don’t believe a word of it! Is it supposed to be some sort of joke?”

  “Any of you can check Anne’s records. I did.” said Beaumont. “They go back as far as 2000, which is what you’d expect by looking at her. But the ones for more than a few years ago—well, they’re plausible, all right, but anyone with even a remotely suspicious mind can tell there’s something wrong with them. And then there are a lot of correlations with an Alison Petrie who seemed just to sort of...fade out around the time that Anne Pryor started becoming prominent. You can trace the whole ‘ancestry’ back if you know what you’re doing. Anyway, Claude, you’ve seen with your own eyes how her arm regenerated—and now there’s Vitali. You can’t argue with facts! Can you offer a better explanation? Anne’s something special.”

  “But if all this is true it means that you’re a phony, Anne! Your degrees—your doctorate—you haven’t earned any of them....”

  This was Minako, almost glowering. Aurora had noticed a slight, veiled hostility from the meteorologist before, but had put it down to the fact that, as the only other woman on the expedition, she might resent Aurora’s blonde good looks; Minako herself was short and thickset, with a rather coarse complexion, and looked a full decade older. Perhaps, though, her jealousy was not personal but professional?

  “Oh, don’t worry, I’m fully qualified,” said Aurora airily. “I claim nothing that I haven’t worked hard for and earned. The only things that are phony about me are the dates on my forged documents and computer records. Haven’t I proved I can do my job as well as any of you?”

  There were nods, and nobody else seemed prepared to argue.

  It was already well into the early hours of the morning, and everyone now appeared inclined to go to their beds and think over this strange development in private. Before they parted, though, Orlov said: “I think we should keep this among ourselves—at least until we’ve discussed it again. We don’t want Mission Control to think we’ve all gone off our—what is it you say, Bryan? Oh, yes—off our trolleys! Nyet?”

  Nobody disagreed.

  ARTIFACT

  It was 07:30 Mars time; the fact that the Martian day was so similar in length to Earth’s—Mars rotates in twenty-four hours and thirty-seven minutes—made life easy from the point of view of sleep periods and the like. The crew were packing the rovers for their return to Base the following day. Already the Blimp had been deflated, despite complaints from Aurora that she had never been allowed to fly it—Orlov had half-promised her she could do so back at Base Camp. For the moment, at least, the rest of the party seemed to have accepted her extraordinary story; there was little they could have done otherwise.

  “Only one more night here,” said Beaumont. “It feels like going home from a holiday. Er, Vitali?”

  Orlov looked up from strapping together some tripods. “I’ve a feeling you’re going to ask of me a favor.”

  As he often did when broaching “fringe” subjects, Beaumont looked at the floor as if embarrassed. “It’s just that there’s something I’ve been wanting to try, and this is my last chance,” he said.

  “Go on. I’m listening.”

  Beaumont hesitated, then said: “Dowsing.” He hurried on, as if expecting to be laughed at. The other crew-members, who could overhear the conversation clearly on their phones, stopped what they were doing and gazed at him with a variety of expressions. “I’ve tried it back home, and it does work. Nobody seems to know quite how, and sometimes it doesn’t—especially when you try to subject it to scientific conditions—but trying it here couldn’t do any harm, now could it?” He was almost pleading. “I mean, if there’s something in that canyon, some...focus, I might be able to find it.”

  Orlov shook his head, and for a moment Beaumont thought he was refusing. But he saw the resigned amusement on the man’s face.

  “Yes, all right,” said the Russian. “Anything for a quiet life. But do you have the equipment for this?”

  “All I need are two lengths of metal wire or rod. One to one-point-five mil in diameter and, oh, thirty centimeters long.”

  Finding such items proved more difficult than Beaumont had expected, but finally he was allowed to cannibalize a spare telescopic aerial. All watched with interest as he cut two pieces to the same length and bent them, less than halfway along, to a right angle.

  “I’ve never tried this with gloves on,” he said as he walked across the nearby ground in a straight line, elbows bent, holding the rods like some old-time cowboy with a pair of six-guns.

  “Are you expecting to find water down there?” asked Minako skeptically.

  “Oh, no, of course not—not here! But that’s the interesting thing about dowsing. It’s not just about water. You can find whatever you want—or try to. You just, well, sort of ask questions. But I’ll have to go to the canyon to do it, because that’s the point of interest. What I’m hoping is that I’ll find some evidence that our seismometers were perhaps not sensitive enough to register—of underground stresses, or electrical currents. Something like that.

  “It’s a strange thing, you know, that stone circles and other megalithic sites often seem to be a focus not just for earthlight phenomena but for the energies that dowsers detect. I’ve felt it myself at the Rollright Stones.”

  Seeing the skepticism on their faces, he turned away sulkily.

  “Well, I have. You’ll see.”

  Claude Verdet muttered: “Are you sure you’re not a doctor of parapsychology?”

  If Beaumont heard the remark, he ignored it.

  * * * *

  Later in the day—there was no need to wait for darkness, Beaumont pointed out—he, Aurora and Orlov walked once again along the canyon. This time the sunlight shone down brightly, bouncing off the sepia and ochre rock faces. When they reached the spot, Beaumont marked out a rough grid by dragging his foot in the sand, and began to walk in straight lines holding his two bent rods quite loosely in his hands, the longer arms parallel and pointing straight ahead. He had stripped the ink containers out of two ballpoint pens to use as plastic handles into which the rods fitted, free to rotate.

  For the first three traverses, nothing happened. Then, as he walked close to the spot where Orlov had fallen, the horizontal rods moved smoothly inwards until they crossed.

  “Ahhh,” he breathed.

  “Is that the equivalent of a hazel twig pointing downward?” asked Aurora.

  “That’s right. Will you put a marker here, please?”

  She obediently placed a green golf ball on the spot, and he continued walking.

  There was no further sign of activity; the rods continued to point straight ahead.

  After three more traverses Beaumont stopped. “Right. Let’s see what we’ve got here.”

  From a pocket in his suit he produced a crystal pendant which Aurora could remember seeing around his neck. Walking back to the marker, he held the pendant like a pendulum in one hand over the spot. It began to oscillate.

  “Is it water?” he murmured, apparently to himself.

  The pendulum continued to swing.

  “Metal?”

  The pendulum began to rotate clockwise. Inside his helmet, Beaumont nodded,

  “Now, how deep is it? Is it more than ten meters down?”

  No response.

  “More than five meters? More than two meters? More than one meter?”

  He looked surprised.

  “If this thing’s telling me the truth, whatever it’s found is only a few tens of centimeters at most below the surface. In which case....”

  He began to dig in the soft fines. Soon he had excavated a sizeable hole, and his arm could hardly reach the bottom. Orlov and Aurora stood at the edge, looking down.

  “Damn. Ah!” His gloved hand rubbed the sand off something solid. At first it seemed to be a
smooth boulder, but as he wiped the fines off it became obvious that it was metallic. It looked shiny, new.

  “Help me scrape the regolith from around this, will you, guys?”

  The other two knelt around the hole and scooped out sand and dust. Slowly, a spherical object was revealed.

  “I don’t believe I’m seeing this!” said Orlov. “Hang on a moment! I must take some pics before we go any further.”

  Aurora thought of asking Beaumont if he’d buried the object there himself, but bit back the joke.

  Orlov said: “Wait here. I’m going to call the others.”

  He scrambled up a scree slope which he hoped might be high enough that his radio signal wouldn’t be blocked by the solid rock walls all around. Seen by the two below, his suited figure sparkled in the sunlight as he climbed higher and finally stopped, one arm hooked around a rocky crag.

  Although conversation was faint and scratchy, he succeeded in making contact.

  “They’re on their way,” he told Beaumont and Aurora as he clambered back down.

  Soon afterwards the others arrived. Verdet used his video camera to record the moment when the object was lifted clear of the hole. It stood a little over a meter high and consisted of two joined spheres, one about seventy centimeters in diameter and the other not much more than half that, and partly embedded inside the larger one. Both were of a shiny but greyish metal and almost featureless. The smaller sphere had a black band running round it and a small circle, full of dust, inscribed in its top. From the bottom of the larger sphere, and apparently molded seamlessly into it, extended three elegant, narrow fins or legs, presumably to serve as a stand.

  Suddenly the little party became aware of a familiar rushing sound, as of a distant waterfall, in their helmets. Looking up, they saw that, even though it was full daylight, the lightform was faintly visible against the shadowed wall of the canyon; it was transparent enough that they could see the rocks through it, and gave the impression that it was fizzing. Aurora was reminded of a firework set off in daytime.