Aurora

by David A. Hardy

  “I hate to say this, but as to how I did it, well, I just thought. Honestly! I literally thought open and then close, visualizing the canopy—and it did. And it comes back to me now: just before I passed out, back at the Igloo, a picture of the canopy had come into my head. Even though I hadn’t seen it by then. I thought I was just imagining it after hearing your descriptions, and then I fainted so I forgot all about it.”

  Orlov said, “Can you open the canopy again, Anne? We’ll have to put on our suits and helmets for a while, until you close it once more. I must try to contact Robert. It will be interesting, afterwards, to see how quickly the air refills this chamber again—assuming it does.”

  It took the three of them a few minutes to work out how Aurora could safely touch the Beacon with her bare hand yet keep her suit on for when the air rushed out and the Martian cold rushed in. In the end it was Aurora herself who pointed out the obvious. It was cold on Mars, but not that cold: she wasn’t frightened about exposing her hand on its own to the environment for a few seconds. She picked up her suit and removed the padded outer mitt from the end of one of its flaccid arms. Underneath there was an airtight inner glove, silk-thin but made of material that offered adequate insulation against the chill for up to a few minutes—the system had been designed to allow astronauts to perform any emergency fine manipulations with their hands in the depths of space. The inner mitt was course integral to the arm of the suit; she borrowed Beaumont’s belt-pick to cut it loose. So long as she always kept the outer glove on, the inner was redundant.

  The three of them donned their suits. None of them could stop looking at Aurora’s exposed hand. It was alive and yet outside the confines of any manmade structure. Whatever their brains told them, their instincts were yelling that this was an anomaly—a supremely vulnerable anomaly.

  “The Beacon itself is going to be cold,” said Beaumont abruptly. “As cold as the air. It’s going to freeze the moisture on your skin. Your hand’s likely to stick to it....”

  She shook her head at him. “It’s got its own warmth,” she said. “That’s another thing I found out.”

  He quieted.

  Fixing her gaze earnestly on Orlov’s, Aurora reached out to the Beacon. Open, she thought.

  It did.

  “See?” she said, rapidly pulling on the thick outer mitt. “Nothing to it.”

  Her ragged breathing, loud in their helmets, belied her words.

  Orlov grinned at her, then popped his head above the level of the cabin and spoke to Lundquist, explaining what had happened. The physician was relieved to hear from them—he’d been trying to raise them without success.

  “I think we could just about hear you,” said Orlov. “You sounded like Donald Duck. There seems a lot of static in here, though. Can you hear it? Over.”

  “Yes, it’s still there, but way in the distance. You’re coming through loud and clear now. Over.”

  “We’re going to try to close the canopy again, so don’t worry if we go off the air for a while,” explained Orlov. “With any luck, we’ll have more news about the interior when I speak to you again. Over and out.”

  “Over and out,” concurred Lundquist.

  “OK, Anne, do your stuff,” said Orlov, nodding.

  The band was still glowing ruby red. More relaxedly this time, Aurora removed her glove and put her fingertips on the Beacon, thinking: Close.

  A moment later the dome once more covered the bright sky with its pattern of scars and milky markings.

  Beaumont started to tap the Beacon in a regular rhythm. Slowly the “thunk” became louder. As soon as he was satisfied the cabin was once more fully pressurized, he took off his helmet, clutched his throat and made a strangled sound, his tongue protruding, eyes wide.

  “Doctor Beaumont, behave yourself! This is a serious scientific expedition!” said Aurora, turning away to hide her smile.

  Orlov chuckled briefly, but then sobered. “Anne’s right. A bit of fun’s OK for lightening the tension, but there’s such a thing as crying `Wolf!’ too often.”

  “Right-oh, message received.” Beaumont did his best to look apologetic.

  Ignoring their byplay, Aurora placed her ungloved hand in the small depression on the blank wall and frowned in concentration.

  Nothing happened.

  Acting on a hunch, she went over to the Beacon and put her hand on it instead, still focusing her thoughts on the wall.

  There was an audible click! and a section of wall opened—but only a little way. It stopped, leaving a gap of some fifteen centimeters.

  Beaumont and Orlov grasped either side of the opening, pulling hard, trying to widen the gap.

  The sides of the opening wouldn’t budge.

  The band on the Beacon had turned black again.

  “I think it gets exhausted,” said Aurora. “It must recharge itself somehow—perhaps just from solar power. Though it wouldn’t have got that when it was under the sand.” She looked exhausted herself, her face drained of color.

  “Doing that takes it out of you, doesn’t it?” said Beaumont solicitously, putting an arm around her shoulder.

  “Yes. It was the same when I played with the Gas Giants. I used to feel physically washed out after every rehearsal, every gig. Mental powers, whatever they are, seem to require a lot of energy.” Fitting actions to words, she took a long swig of glucose drink from her suit pack.

  Orlov unhooked his suit flashlight and shone it through the gap now opened in the cabin wall. Peering, he let out a long, low whistle.

  Beaumont and Aurora stepped to his side. The bright halogen beam reflected from three curved rows of seemingly semitransparent ovoids, placed one above another, but staggered. There must have been at least three dozen.

  “Eggs! It’s like in Alien!” said Beaumont. “That’s another classic old movie, you know,” he added for Orlov’s benefit.

  “Can’t you be serious for a moment?” said Aurora vexedly.

  Beaumont looked contrite, but only briefly. It was obvious he was in his element. “I wish we could get inside.”

  Aurora, the color returning to her cheeks, touched the Beacon again. As if in sympathy, the red color glowed once more along the black band, but fluctuating. Her brow creased. Then, with a faint rumbling sound, the panel opened completely to form a doorway over a meter wide. As with the canopy, none of them saw it actually move.

  “Abracadabra! Your wish is my command, oh master. I mean, mistress,” muttered Beaumont.

  “In your dreams,” drawled Aurora automatically.

  The three stood around the entrance as if afraid to go inside. In the end Beaumont was the first to put a foot over the threshold. As he did so, light came on in the shadowy chamber. It had no apparent source, and it faded in gradually—like dawn on a stage set. Within a minute the entire area was bathed in a soft yellowish light, not unlike early-morning sunlight.

  The “eggs” gleamed dully.

  Softly, as though they might wake someone, they moved over to the semicircle of ovoids. Each was nearly a meter and a half long and, while they looked as if they should be translucent, it was impossible to see anything of their contents—assuming there was anything to see, that they weren’t just solid.

  Beaumont wiped his hand over one of them as though clearing a misted or dusty car windscreen, but whatever was making the “egg” opaque was either inside or a quality of the material, for his efforts had no effect. There was no dust inside the ship except what they’d brought in with them.

  Orlov, noting there was a faint line running around the midpoint of each ovoid, tried to pry one open. His efforts, too, were wasted.

  He looked questioningly at Aurora.

  Sighing, she placed her bare hand on the nearest egg. Soundlessly and smoothly, the upper half swung upward. They all stared, speechless.

  Inside was a baby.

  A tiny human baby, no more than a few months old, its eyes closed, its tiny hands clenched.

  “Close it!” ordered Orlo
v sharply.

  Aurora simply pushed the lid down, and it remained that way.

  “We don’t do any more until we have Robert with us,” said Orlov.

  “Hibernation!” cried Beaumont. “It has to be. That would explain how the craft could be so small! It had no crew except that woman—the pilot—who was perhaps trying to get help after they crash-landed. But it carried lots of babies in hibernation so that when they reached a suitable planet....”

  “Let’s leave the theorizing until later,” said Orlov. “But you might like to consider how human beings came to be visiting Mars from another star. And there’s still the question of what fuel this ship used. Look how much space is taken up by these...these incubators. Or deep-freezes. Whatever.”

  “Well, that’s obvious—” started Beaumont.

  “Enough!”

  The Russian put on his helmet, and it was obvious from his expression that he expected the others to do the same. As they left the chamber the light inside faded away behind them.

  When all were fully suited up, he nodded to Aurora.

  The band on the Beacon was an intense red-black that made Aurora think of infrared. The light hurt her eyes, as if it were shining far more brightly than she could see. She concentrated on thinking of the canopy open.

  It did start opening, but then, like the door panel, it stopped. Even half-open, however, it gave them plenty of room to climb out.

  Orlov looked back down into the cabin before he slid off the side of the vessel to the ground. “I was just thinking,” he said to no one in particular, “that this cockpit was open for quite a while before we came back and closed it—before Anne closed it. You’d have thought at least some dust and sand would have blown in and piled up on the floor.

  “Interesting.”

  * * * *

  Lundquist, via the relay on the rim of the canyon, reported that Minako and Verdet had made good progress and were almost back at Base Camp. He had the impression that they had fallen out over something. Verdet was obviously curbing his comments.

  Told about the discovery of the baby, Lundquist wanted to come straight out. But by the time they had returned with the one rover, grabbed new supplies and pliss packs, then turned around and came back to the ship, it would be sunset. Lundquist wanted to do it anyway, pointing out that the alien ship had its own lights; but Orlov vetoed the idea.

  “Better to make a fresh start tomorrow,” he said. They all sat down to take some food and liquid before the trek back to the Igloo. Purple shadows crawled up the canyon wall.

  * * * *

  That evening, most of their time was spent listening to and sending messages to Earth. The public at large might not yet have heard about the discovery of the babies but it was making the most of what it did know.

  The established churches were divided on Aurora’s healing powers, some sects wanting to canonize her, others wanting to have her exorcised as an instrument of the Devil. The Church of Jesus Christ Astronaut wanted her to agree to be its new Leader, and was aggrieved when Aurora refused. They were said to be considering adopting the dead female astronaut in her place. Perhaps the spaceship had been Mars’s own Star of Bethlehem—only it had crashed?

  Many Christians saw no problem with the human appearance of the woman. Had not God created Man (and presumably Woman) in His own image? they asked. So wouldn’t the people He placed on other planets also be in His image?

  “Poor old Darwin must be turning in his grave,” commented Beaumont. “And what will the Christ the Astronaut lot say when they hear about our babies? A whole cargo-load of Baby Jesuses!”

  To everyone’s surprise, Orlov turned on Beaumont angrily and grabbed his shoulders.

  “I’ve had about enough of your snide remarks!” he shouted, his cheeks red. “All scientists aren’t atheists, you know. Me, for example. I’m not ashamed of my religious beliefs, even if I do usually keep them to myself. Do you really think our wonderful Cosmos came into being by accident?”

  He subsided as rapidly as he’d erupted, his arms dropping to his side.

  Aurora drew Beaumont away to sit beside her. “You know, you have been rather a pain in the arse today, Bryan,” she said. “Why don’t you cool it now?”

  His only answer was a glare.

  Aurora knew something of Orlov’s background; of how his father had been an elder of the Russian Orthodox Church, serving directly under the Patriarch of Moscow. The old man had kept his faith despite his life being made a misery during the attempted suppression of religion by the Communists, but lived just long enough to see the revolution that had taken place in the early 1990s, with the collapse of the Soviet Union setting millions of his fellow-countrymen once again free to observe their religious practices. The events of the past few days must have been very difficult for Orlov—especially having Beaumont’s perhaps unintentionally tasteless remarks to cope with on top of everything else.

  “Sorry,” said Beaumont barely audibly in Orlov’s direction, having apparently thought all this through for himself.

  They went to their bunks that night in a subdued mood. They squabbled among themselves often enough, usually half in jest, but serious flare-ups were rare. The Igloo seemed much smaller than usual, the walls encroaching, the air heavy.

  “WE HAVE A PROBLEM....”

  Next morning Verdet called in to say that all was well back at Base Camp. He and Minako had collected everything on their list, and were about to return. Orlov started to fill them in on what had been happening, but Verdet, oddly, interrupted to point out that they had seen and heard most of the exchanges with Earth on the main comm desk. He did not seem to want to elaborate, and he did not put Minako on the air to them.

  Meanwhile Mission Control was still relaying the news and views from their home planet:

  Anthropologists have so far been quite unable to come up with a tenable hypothesis for the presence of an apparently human female astronaut on Mars. The great public out there are not so restrained, though! One of the favorite theories is based on Erich von Däniken’s ideas, first put forward in the nineteen-sixties. Sometimes these are modified so that the ancient “gods”—who were of course, according to von Däniken, alien astronauts—responsible for everything from the Pyramids to the lines on the desert at Nazca, which were runways for spacecraft, and who took away cavemen from Earth fifty thousand years ago. The descendants of those deportees have now returned, having grown up among and been educated by the aliens. Got that?

  Another favorite is Atlantis. According to fans of the lost continent, refugees from the ancient super-civilization escaped in spacecraft just before their volcanic island blew its top and vanished without trace below the waves, leaving only the scattered isles of Thera. They found a habitable planet of another star, colonized it, and their descendants are now coming back to explore the Earth. Their first attempt, eighty years or so ago, may have failed—but they’ll try again!

  Quite why they went to another star instead of just moving to another continent on Earth doesn’t seem clear.

  None of these theories is being taken seriously by the scientific establishment, of course, but you have to admit there could be some seed of an explanation buried in some of them—and, as I said, no tenable “serious” ideas have come up yet. But you guys can rest assured that we’re working on it. I guess you are too, huh?

  Mission Control,

  over and out

  “I can think of another theory,” said Beaumont. He had regained his good humor, though relations between Aurora and himself were definitely strained. “It’s not new, of course, but what if humankind—all life, even—was originally brought to Earth from another star system? It didn’t have to come on a spaceship, it might have somehow “seeded” itself—spores drifting through space—that Martian meteorite even!—that kind of thing, anyway. There’d be no need for parallel evolution then. We’d all have evolved from the same stock.”

  “I can’t buy that,” snorted Lundquist. “Life in the nea
r-vacuum of outer space, drifting between the stars?”

  But Beaumont was warming to his theme. “Yes, why not? Suppose an Earthlike planet blew apart for some reason—a nuclear war or something. We know that life can exist in a vacuum, and at extremes of temperature—look at those still-viable spores that were found on Surveyor by the astronauts on Apollo—Apollo 12, I think it was. Yes, the second Moon landing. And how some desert plants and even animals, like that frog, can encapsulate themselves and remain dormant for years and years, until the rains come.

  “Well, look, there has to be some explanation for what we’ve found, doesn’t there? It’s no use throwing out every suggestion just because it sounds a bit way-out!”

  The others nodded tolerantly.

  * * * *

  This time all four returned to the alien craft, leaving the comm desk on automatic. Orlov, Lundquist and Aurora climbed in through the half-open canopy, leaving Beaumont outside as a safety precaution—though whether there was anything useful he could do if they got trapped inside seemed doubtful. He seemed happy to dowse a few areas he had so far missed. It was obvious to Orlov that Aurora was equally happy that Beaumont should be some distance away from her. The big engineer thought Lovers’ spat to himself and made no comment.

  The door panel was still open, just as they’d left it.

  “See? There’s still no trace of dust anywhere—not even what we must have brought in with us yesterday,” he said. “I think there has to be an automatic vacuum cleaner somewhere.”

  “Now why doesn’t that surprise me?” murmured Lundquist.

  Aurora stripped off her glove and used the Beacon to close the canopy over them. After allowing time for the cabin to pressurize, they doffed their suits.

  As they entered the chamber, the lights again brightened.

  Orlov tried to see where the air had come from, but there was no sign of a ventilator or duct. He turned his attention instead to the floor, and started carefully pacing from the dully gleaming ovoids to the center of the cockpit.

  “I thought so,” he said. “The cabin and chamber don’t take up all of the space inside this ship. There’s an outer ring. That would explain where the propellant goes. Or went. Or maybe it houses some sort of drive mechanism. There’s room there for something, anyway.”