Aurora

by David A. Hardy

  As their heads peered over the edge, they could see Beaumont as a tiny figure nearly a kilometer away.

  “He might have driven over to fetch us!” said Aurora crossly as they tramped towards him, their feet sinking a centimeter or two into the soft regolith, the duricrust crunching like dried mud.

  Beaumont was kneeling by something, looking at it intently, and making gentle scooping motions with his hands.

  When they reached him, they found that he had excavated quite a deep hole, itself inside a wide linear depression which stretched away from the canyon rather like a dried-out stream bed, though quite straight.

  “I think this was a small crevasse, originally, but it’s filled up with sand,” he said by way of greeting, not looking up. “I started by dowsing along it, just out of interest—I thought I might be able to detect how deep it went. About five meters, as a matter of fact. But two meters down....”

  He pointed to the bottom of the hole he had dug.

  A metallic-gloved hand protruded from the dust.

  For a moment Aurora felt as if her eyes were whirling in their sockets. Giddiness washed through her. It wasn’t possible! She re-focused. The glove was still there, and it looked so much as if it had come from one of their own spacesuits that for a moment she visualized a crazy scenario in which Verdet had murdered Minako and buried her...or vice versa.

  She shook her head to clear away the fantasy.

  Orlov took holos of the gloved hand from various angles and then they started to dig deeper.

  The rest of the arm appeared, then a helmet. It was a transparent bubble, though, like the canopy of the spacecraft, it was yellowed and slightly opaque.

  Soon they could see the top of a head. The brow was mottled ochre and brown, but the cranium was covered quite thickly by grey or white hair. They unearthed another arm, then the shoulders.

  “It reminds me of when I fell into that crevice down there,” said Orlov. “I wish we had Robert with us—not that I’d expect him to be able to do anything for this poor fellow, but....”

  More digging, and more of the torso came into view, then a leg, which seemed to be twisted at an awkward angle.

  “I just don’t believe this!” said Beaumont. “He’s got to be human! Surely?”

  There was no doubt that the figure was of human proportions, with head, jointed arms and legs—even five fingers. The head, when they were able to see the face through the yellowed plastic, was discolored and wrinkled, and reminded Aurora of a mummified ape she’d once seen in a museum. But then how would a human astronaut look after being buried on Mars for unknown centuries? Or was it less than a century? No one really seemed able to accept Verdet’s findings on that.

  The suit was made of a silvered material, very much like their own, and, far from being hardened and cracked, it seemed even more supple than theirs. It bore no insignia or other markings, although there was a small black box on the chest. The backpack was slim and curved, unlike their angular pliss equipment, but it was dented as if by some sort of blow.

  It took a lot more careful work before the figure was completely free and could be removed. They kept Lundquist informed on progress, and he in turn passed on the information to Earth, together with Orlov’s acid addendum that this was a piece of news that had been “officially” approved for general release.

  Lundquist was almost beside himself with impatience to examine the astronaut’s body, so they strapped it carefully to the carrier on the back of the rover (“But don’t bring it inside the cabin, in case of contamination—in either direction,” he had instructed them) and headed back to the Igloo.

  Soon they saw its white dome, half-shadowed, rising above the horizon like a third, but Moon-sized, Martian satellite.

  * * * *

  Inside the Igloo, Lundquist had rigged up an isolation chamber using transparent plastic sheeting and an electric fan to produce an invisible curtain of air. Any bacteria or other micro-organisms from the alien body would be filtered out and could later be examined with his tiny electron microscope. Inside, he wore an environment suit which would be decontaminated after use.

  The others stood around, like family visitors at a hospital, powerless to help but impatient to know the result of the operation. Through the tantalizing reflections on the gently undulating plastic they watched as the physician, after completing his examination of the exterior of the spacesuit, unclipped the black box on its front and laid it aside.

  Then he removed the helmet. They crowded closer for a better view.

  Two cloudy greyish eyes stared back from deep sockets. The face was wrinkled, the skin waxen and yellowish. A few flakes of dried flesh dropped away from it abruptly, making Aurora jump.

  Stupid! she said to herself.

  The spacesuit opened easily, with no obvious zip or Velcro fastening; it simply peeled apart. The figure had worn some sort of undersuit, but this seemed brittle and tore almost at a touch. Lundquist placed samples of the material into sealed containers.

  After what seemed an eternity, most of the body had been uncovered.

  “I don’t believe any of this!” said Lundquist into his helmet mike. “It just has to be some kind of hoax.” He peered out at Orlov. “Are you sure the Soviets didn’t send a man to Mars sometime in the Seventies, and keep quiet about the mission because it ended in disaster? Your people used to do that kind of thing, you know!”

  Before Orlov could reply, Lundquist continued: “Actually, I should have said ‘send a woman to Mars’. This cosmonaut, or whatever it is, is a human female, about thirty years old when she died, I’d say. Oh, there’s no doubt about it”—he spoke above the hubbub of conversation from outside his “tent”—“and don’t start talking about parallel evolution, please, Bryan! I’ll need to do a scan of the skull, but from what I’ve seen already I know that the pattern of the teeth is fully human. Look: on each side, two incisors, one canine, one, two premolars. OK, no wisdom teeth, but that’s not unusual. There’s no doubt she’s human. And look at the ribs.... There’s no chance that an alien species could develop in exactly this way. This lady was born on Earth.

  “Mind you, there are a few trivial differences, but even those could be confined to this individual. The toes—see?”

  He had pulled the spacesuit right off one leg. No one paid any attention to Aurora’s sudden hiss of indrawn breath.

  “They’re hardly there,” Lundquist continued. “Very short and stubby, and practically joined up into one. But I’ve seen similar variations before—in the children of radiation victims, for instance. There are a few other minor oddities, too, but nothing that suggests she’s not human.

  “Vitali, if you’re eager to make a report to Earth, you might like to take down a few notes—save me getting out of this suit? There are some more tests I want to make before I do that....”

  Orlov grabbed a notebook and pen and tried hard to keep up with the medic’s rapid-fire commentary.

  “I want to make sure the medical specialists at Mission Control know this report is absolutely official and authentic,” the burly Russian remarked to the rest during a rare pause. “Otherwise there’s no way they’re going to believe it. Let’s face it, they won’t anyway!”

  He carried on writing, moving his lips as he did so, echoing Lundquist’s words in an undertone. “Remarkably good condition...no bacterial decay in tissues...probably frozen very quickly...some breakdown of cells due to ice crystals...probably protected by the fact that it was buried...kept at fairly constant low temperature....”

  This went on for several more minutes until Orlov exclaimed, “Stop, stop! Surely that’s enough?”

  The normally quiet and reserved Lundquist seemed to realize for the first time how long he had been talking, and grinned. “Yes, of course. Sorry! Got carried away. Go ahead and transmit that.”

  Orlov did so, along with other details of the discovery. He played down the dowsing aspect, Aurora noticed. She glanced at Beaumont and saw that he’d noticed this
as well.

  They waited with some trepidation the forty minutes or so before they could expect a response from Earth, still on the far side of the Sun in its orbit, though now getting daily closer.

  When it arrived, the message from Earth was all that they had expected:

  ...please transmit video and visual scans at earliest opportunity. On no account allow contamination of or by crew. Ask Dr. Lundquist to make personal contact with us as soon as he is able—our Chief MO, Dr. Sodhi, wants to ask some questions.

  There was more of the same. Then came a message from Bill Emmart which they had not anticipated:

  ...story of Dr. Pryor’s healing of Commander Orlov, and of her apparent age—and other unusual attributes—has somehow leaked to the media. We are attempting to trace the source, but no luck so far. I’m afraid she’ll have to face a full inquiry on her return, though in view of her achievements on this mission it may not be too great a worry! However, the TV and media are having a field day, as you can imagine.

  I don’t know how this new discovery of yours will affect things, except perhaps to take the heat off Anne. At the moment, the rock-music world has gone mad, and the Gas Giants’ album is being re-released along with some video footage someone’s found. Anne’s—I mean Aurora’s—face is everywhere!

  There’s a movement to send invalids to Mars; they seem to think that Mars is some sort of Lourdes.... Meanwhile, you probably won’t be too surprised to learn that the second Mars mission is being brought forward, and enlarged, using a Venus swing-by to reach Mars more quickly. You’ll be gone before they arrive, of course; though there has been a proposal that a couple of your crew-members might be able to stay on the surface until the second expedition gets there. That would allow you to bring back the, er, body. But it’s only a suggestion so far.

  Mission Control, out.

  The team-members stared at each other.

  “Damnation!” said Aurora.

  Orlov looked furious.

  Lundquist, still inside his tent, seemed disgruntled—had they really believed his report?

  Beaumont, after a momentary look of panic, seemed almost gleeful. “Now the shit’s really hit the fan! Don’t you see? This is going to make all those hide-bound-fogey scientists, living in their ivory towers, open their minds at last! Every aspect of science is going to be affected!”

  “Have you quite finished trotting out the clichés?” enquired Orlov. “Because, if you have, we’ve still got work to do. For a start, would you like to report the latest developments to those two in the rover—and find out how they’re getting on? They should be halfway to Base by now.”

  Bryan switched wavelengths and made contact with the rover. Minako and Verdet reported tersely that their journey was proving uneventful, and they were preparing to stop to rest for the night.

  “D’you think Minako’s safe with that Frenchman?” asked Beaumont when he had switched off.

  “Is he safe with her?” countered Aurora. But her attitude to him did not seem as warm as usual.

  A little later the four of them retired, exhausted by the day’s events. But none of them slept much. Their dreams were haunted by strange images.

  Especially Aurora’s dreams.

  INSIDE THE SPACESHIP

  Next morning at dawn, fog rolled down the canyon, undulating like a soft, pink quilt over a restless sleeper. The same three as yesterday waited for the Sun to burn it off before they departed for the spaceship, taking the Beacon with them. They left Lundquist behind to continue his tests on the dead female astronaut and make his full report to Earth.

  Once they’d reached the spaceship, Orlov climbed into the cockpit first. Beaumont lowered the Beacon carefully to him before he and Aurora got in as well; there was plenty of room for all three. Orlov gingerly slid the Beacon into its hole. It fitted so precisely that it looked as if it had been molded there.

  With no sound or warning, the transparent dome appeared above them.

  “Hey!” cried Beaumont, leaping up and pushing at it with his hands.

  “Don’t worry,” said Aurora, speaking with a calm that surprised her. “If it opened once it will open again.”

  “I just hope you’re right,” said Orlov. “But what made it open and close? We’ve been taking for granted that it needs your hand on the Beacon to get this thing functioning, Anne, but it looks as if we were wrong. So what’s controlling it? And suppose it runs out of power—what do we do then?”

  Aurora pointed at the Beacon. “If you were right about this thing opening the canopy the first time,” she said, reaching towards it, “it must act as some sort of remote control. It should work here, too.”

  She touched the smaller sphere confidently with her gloved hand.

  Nothing happened.

  She touched the larger sphere.

  Still no result.

  They tried to remove the Beacon from its recess, but now it appeared to be welded into place, seamlessly.

  “Great! We’re stuck. Let’s try the instrument panel,” said Beaumont, a note of desperation not far beneath the surface of his voice, no matter how flippant he tried to sound.

  Every control was dead, unresponsive.

  I’m surprised we’re all being so relaxed about this, thought Aurora. Bryan’s obviously scared shitless, but none of us are remotely near panic. It’s almost as if the ship itself were telling us we’ll be OK....

  Orlov changed his suit comm channel to that of the Igloo. “Hello, Robert? Come in please, over.”

  The only sound in their phones was a wash of static overlaying a tinny squawking noise.

  “Damn, damn! We shouldn’t all have got inside!” said the engineer angrily. “One of us should have remained outside at all times—we knew that.”

  He turned back to the Beacon and tapped it as sharply as he could with his gloved knuckle. It made a dull echoing noise. He tried to grasp it with both hands.

  “Hold on!” said Aurora. “Do that again.”

  “Do what?”

  “Knock on the Beacon.”

  He did so, and it made the same sound. “That’s just the sort of noise it made back at camp. Oh, you mean it shouldn’t, now that it’s so firmly in place?”

  “No, Vitali, you idiot! Just think—we shouldn’t be hearing it at all. Unless....”

  “Unless there’s air in here. And plenty of it,” said Beaumont. He paused. “So who’s going to take their helmet off?”

  “Nobody. Their air could be poisonous to us,” said Orlov firmly.

  “Robert says that astronaut is human,” said Aurora. “If she is, surely she must have breathed the same air as us.”

  “But it could have gone bad, or changed, or something, in the length of time this thing’s been lying here,” said the engineer firmly. “Even if it is less than a century, it’s been sealed up here.”

  “So we all die of suffocation in our suits,” said Beaumont. “Nice one. You’re not thinking straight, old chap.”

  He put his hands to his helmet.

  Orlov moved as if to stop him, but Aurora put a restraining hand on his arm. “If he takes it off just for a moment—just enough for a sniff—it shouldn’t do him any harm. Don’t forget, Robert hasn’t found any harmful micro-organisms on either the Beacon or the body—and it’s hardly likely there’s cyanide or something in the air.”

  “All right,” said Orlov grudgingly. “But I take no responsibility.”

  Once again, in the face of an unknown quantity, he had become indecisive and nervous, Aurora noted. Quite unlike his usual bluff, confident self. At such times his Russian accent thickened, yet he spoke English even more correctly, if anything.

  Beaumont lifted his helmet.

  His nose wrinkled. Then he opened his mouth and took a deliberate breath.

  “Best air I ever tasted!” he said. He winked at Aurora. “That’s from an old movie, too. Remind me to tell you about it some time.”

  “Are you sure?” asked Orlov worriedly.

&nb
sp; “Oh yes. It was When Worlds Collide.” He raised his palms towards the glowering engineer. “Sorry, sorry! Come on, try it for yourself. There’s a sort of—sort of ozony tang to it. And it’s cold. But it’s as good as anything I’ve breathed on this trip so far. Better, in fact. It’s beginning to stink a bit in the Igloo, don’t you think?”

  The others removed their helmets, Orlov very slowly, as if ready to replace it at the slightest hint of anything untoward. The accentuated rise and fall of his chest betrayed his anxiety further. Aurora felt her own heart racing.

  “Phew. Well, that will help a lot,” Orlov said at last, the taut muscles of his face relaxing. “And isn’t it getting quite warm in here, too? It should be freezing, surely?”

  “Never mind that. We still have to get that canopy open—and find out what’s in the outer part of this ship.”

  Orlov looked round at Aurora, surprise on his face. She was removing the upper, torso section of her suit.

  “I know we’re celebrating a bit,” said Beaumont, “but there’s no need for a striptease, is there? Not that I’m complaining, you understand.”

  Ignoring him, Aurora reached out her bare hand and touched the Beacon. Almost at once, the black band glowed dull red, pulsing a little.

  After a few moments its glow became steady and then the canopy vanished.

  They dived for their helmets, but they’d hardly had time to move when the canopy reappeared again.

  “What did you do?” asked Beaumont.

  “I haven’t told you before, but when I touched this the other day, back at camp, I’d taken my glove off.” Aurora glanced guiltily at Orlov. “OK, OK, I know I shouldn’t have, Vitali, but it seemed—necessary.”

  “It’s all right,” said Orlov with a wry smile. “You needn’t apologize. Or explain. I’ve gotten the message by now that you’re a law unto yourself, here on Mars.”

  “Hmm. Well, anyway, it seems that it needs to be touched by bare flesh—or perhaps it’s just that its power is low, so it needs that extra human contact. I’m just guessing....” She looked from one to the other, hesitating.