Analog SFF, September 2008

by Dell Magazine Authors

  He lowered his voice to a piratical bass as he reached for her. “So, my buxom wench, you may as well surrender now—”

  Martin winced as Katerina's stiff index finger poked him hard in the abdomen and stopped his advance. She laughed, “No ‘surrendering’ until our wedding night, after we return to Earth early next year. Besides, today really isn't my birthday.”

  “Well, the chronometer inside says its March 7. Unless you're being technical with me about the International Date Line or something, we're both now thirty-three years old.”

  Katerina's hazel eyes twinkled. “Remember, we're on Mars. Even in its new orbit so close to Earth, a month here is about a week longer than one back home. I still have several more neomartian weeks to go before it's my birthday.”

  “No fair! You didn't use those rules when I had my birthday last month!”

  “Is it my fault you don't consider yourself a Martian yet?”

  Martin's eyes wandered over his fiancee's lovely face, curvaceous torso covered by a thin plaid shirt, and lightly tanned legs extending from rose-tinted shorts. “If Wells’ Martians had looked like you, they could've conquered every red-blooded Earthman without firing a single heat ray. You can experiment on my body any time—”

  Katerina prodded him backward and giggled, “That's enough, Martin! Our space agencies expect us to earn our pay by exploring, not acting like characters in a soap opera!”

  “Okay, I'll go clean up.”

  As Martin retreated back through the openings in the module's science laboratory and other compartments, his voice faded as he intoned, “Can a simple farm boy from Marshfield, Missouri win the love of an exotic Russian beauty? Find out tomorrow on ‘As the Red Planet Revolves'!”

  A puff of wind caressed Katerina's Mona Lisa lips as her eyes returned to the world outside the module. The rain had stopped. The Sun, almost as bright and large as it shone in the skies of Earth, melted through thinning clouds and suffused the rusty sands with a golden luster. She prayed that God would let her gaze in innocent wonder at many more mystical Martian dawns.

  It was a prayer that wouldn't be answered.

  * * * *

  “Hurry up, Katerina! The pickup truck's loaded!”

  Katerina's tennis shoes tapped with a ballerina's delicacy on the short ramp that led from the habitation module, elevated a meter on multiple stubby landing legs, down to the paprika-colored ground. As she ran outside, the large heavy three-barred golden cross she wore—a traditional symbol of her devout Russian Orthodox faith—swung across her chest from a gold chain around her neck.

  “Sorry, Martin. I had to finish my morning prayers.”

  She hurried to where her crewmate stood by his “pickup truck.” The two-seater rover was a sophisticated descendent of those used on the last three Apollo missions a little over sixty years earlier. The vehicle's skeletal open-frame-with-wheels appearance like a dune buggy's was similar to its forebears.

  But this rover used the latest regenerative fuel cells for power and lightweight modern alloys strong enough to endure the rocky Martian landscape. The electronics in its navigation and other onboard systems rivaled the processing power of the entire Mission Control Center in Houston during its original heyday in the 1960s. The vehicle's glossy lime-green paint job was designed to stand out against the planet's predominantly reddish-orange hues.

  Martin said, “I tested the radio and packed our supplies.”

  He grinned and pointed his companion toward the rover's passenger seat. “Remember, it's my turn to drive!”

  Katerina sighed as she settled into her black cushioned seat on the right. She secured the safety harness and leaned her head tensely against the seat's headrest. Although the rover's technical specs said its maximum speed was fifty kilometers per hour, the way Martin drove made it seem faster. And “his turn” also meant he had the choice of music.

  She silently prayed for patience. After all, Martin hadn't grumbled too much when she'd been the driver on their last trip. Traveling southwest to the base of Olympus Mons, she'd played classical pieces with astronomical themes or nicknames. Holst's panoramic paean to the IAU-approved Solar System. Mozart's massive Symphony No. 41. The pianistic “moonlight” masterpieces of Beethoven and Debussy. Haydn's “Sun” string quartets, his opera Il mondo della luna, and fleet-footed Symphony No. 43.

  She knew the melodies played today would be in a very different style.

  Martin plopped down into the seat on her left and fiddled with his baseball cap. After activating the rover he pulled back and twisted its vertical metal control bar. As they sped away toward the Boreal Ocean he poked at their portable music player.

  A country music tune replete with twanging guitars and thumping bass erupted from the small-but-mighty speakers he'd duct-taped around the vehicle. Katerina squirmed as a female vocalist lugubriously enumerated the heartaches of rural American life.

  Martin mercifully turned off the player after stopping the rover a kilometer from the habitation module to check what he'd dubbed “the north forty.” It was a rectangular field ninety meters by sixty meters, used to test whether terrestrial food crops could grow in the sandy mineral-rich soil of Mars. Shortly after they landed early in the northern hemisphere's spring he'd used the rover like a tractor, pulling a long thin metal scraper blade attached to its back to level and clear the ground here. Then they'd carefully planted various vegetables and grains.

  Despite Katerina's disapproval Martin had placed a plastic pole and placard reading “Garden of Eden” at one end of the field. Earth's media, who'd already dubbed them the Adam and Eve of a newly recreated Mars, loved it.

  They'd harvested a crop of radishes last week. Though the red-and-white roots looked edible, the space medicine experts back home denied Martin's request for a taste. Tests in the module's science lab hadn't shown any toxic chemicals in the radishes. But even the tiniest risk he might get sick was considered unacceptable.

  Both had been chosen for this mission over older, more experienced space veterans on the assumption that their youth gave them a relative advantage in resisting illness or recuperating from injuries. The limited supply of medical equipment and medications in the module was adequate to treat minor maladies. But with the nearest Emergency Room millions of kilometers away, calling 911 for a serious ailment or accident wasn't an option.

  The biology experts’ fears that mice or other lab animals might escape into the Martian wilderness meant there were none in the module to use as taste testers. And so, despite Martin's pleas with the physicians back home, the radishes remained uneaten.

  Martin examined the delicate yellow blossoms on his green bean bushes. “Looks like we'll have our first batch soon.”

  Katerina stood at the perimeter of their garden, looking out over the stubby cornstalks and verdant wheat low against the ground. “It's amazing how well everything's growing.”

  Her crewmate kicked a patch of powdery pumpkin-tinted soil with his boot and replied, “I wonder what the ground was like before the aliens started working on it. The hematite and other minerals on the surface aren't good for growing crops, but the clay we found digging deeper with our shovels obviously is.”

  Katerina sighed, “I suppose we'll never really know what the planet was like before the aliens changed the ecosystem so radically. Even with too little atmosphere and too much radiation, the ‘old’ Mars was still worth going to. But I think this new one is better.”

  Martin grinned. “Nice speech, but you're preaching to the choir.”

  The young Russian frowned. “I've never heard that expression.”

  “It means I agree with you. But I'd feel better if the aliens told us why they changed Mars.”

  As they settled back into the rover Katerina said, “When do you think the aliens will tell us?”

  Martin shrugged. “The sooner the better. I appreciate what they've done to Mars, but I hate how sneaky they've been.”

  Katerina smiled slyly. “You're still mad ab
out that trick they played on us with their artifact the day we landed.”

  Her companion started the vehicle accelerating toward the northeast. “Yes, I am. The fact that metal slab was gone the next day, with nothing but a shallow one hundred-meter-square hole in the ground where it used to be, tells me it was a colossal red herring. And I hated the way that alien—or aliens, I'm still not sure which—snuck into the habitation module with us and acted more evasive than a politician at a news conference.

  “Heck, I can't even describe what the alien looked like! I heard it breathing and almost smelled it hovering over me, like it was a Kodiak bear stretched upright and ready to have us for supper. But all I saw was this vague shimmering shape—like something you'd see in a nightmare.”

  Katerina nodded, grateful that Martin hadn't turned the music player back on. “At least we had similar impressions about it.”

  Her driver scowled. “It still irks me that all the alien did was make a deal that the two of us could stay on Mars if no other humans came here. Our ‘landlords’ spent ten years moving Mars closer to the Sun, giving it a breathable atmosphere, and increasing its gravity to nearly one g. So why couldn't our visitor spare us a few more minutes to answer your questions about where they come from and what we have to do to ‘buy’ the planet from them?

  “Instead all we got from ‘ALF’ before it disappeared was that oh-so-mysterious ‘All will be clear.'”

  Katerina gasped as Martin angrily gunned the rover over rocks undisturbed for millennia, crushing them into a spray of gravel behind them. When he started running over the delicate lichen-like plants dotting the plain and turning them into shredded roadkill she shouted, “Martin, slow down! If you keep driving like this we'll never find out about the aliens! You'll just get us killed and show them how stupid we humans are!”

  The rover slowed. “Sorry. I'm from Missouri. It's called the ‘Show Me’ state because we natives aren't impressed by fancy words and tricks. We want people—even extraterrestrial ones—to be honest and straightforward with us.”

  Katerina replied softly, “I'm from Russia. There's some truth to the stereotype that we're a patient people, able to quietly endure many things—including the machinations of the powerful.”

  The Sun peeked from behind a cloud and cast an aureate glow over them. It reflected off the deeper gold of the cross suspended from her neck. Katerina said, “Keep praying that perhaps today we'll learn the answers to our questions. And if it doesn't happen today—then tomorrow, pray for it again.”

  Martin murmured, “I wish I had your faith.”

  Katerina sighed. “I wish my faith were as strong as you think it is.”

  * * * *

  “Look, Katerina! Surf's up!”

  The rover sat atop a low saffron sand dune. Katerina shaded her eyes, enthralled at their panoramic view of the Boreal Ocean. Martin's grin made her even happier.

  They'd said little during the last kilometers of their journey. It was rare for the darker side of their situation to surface like that. Though they had each other, they were still strangers in a strange land, far from home or help—their lives at the mercy of powerful aliens whose intentions were still unknown.

  But those worries dissipated when they reached their destination. The shallow ocean before them paled compared to the roiling, majestic Pacific or Atlantic. But, until a decade ago when the aliens began their massive renovation of Mars, its waters had been imprisoned for billions of years in the planet's north polar ice cap.

  Now covering the vast lowlands of the north polar region, the Boreal Ocean rippled gently under the influence of a Sun only seven million kilometers farther than Earth's average distance from it. The fourth planet's two midget moons would never produce the powerful tides that the Moon created on Earth. But the presence of any liquid water and waves on Mars was miraculous.

  Martin parked the rover near the shoreline. Carrying small packs of collection containers, they walked close to murmuring waves tinged red by rusty sediment from the ocean floor. After obtaining soil samples, they ventured to the ocean's edge and collected milliliters of its water into capped plastic vials for later analysis.

  Their task done, they returned to the rover and freshened up. Martin removed a large Mylar blanket from the back of the rover and laid it flat on the ground. He extracted two foil-wrapped trays from their thermal-controlled container and grinned, “Ready for lunch? I know you love reconstituted chicken and noodles, so I packed some especially for you.”

  Katerina removed a bottle of water from the rover and sat on the blanket. “Martin, I told you this is the first week of the Great Lent. That's why I fasted and only drank water for two days beginning on Monday. Besides, this is Friday and I wouldn't eat meat today anyway.”

  Martin grimaced. “Sorry, I forgot. Wait, does this mean you're following Earth's calendar again and today really is your birthday?”

  Her fiance's smile looked forced. Katerina said, “I didn't mean to offend you. I know you were trying to do something nice for me.”

  Martin shrugged. “That's okay. We'll work out these culture clashes eventually.”

  He put her tray back into the rover. After pausing pensively, he replaced his tray too and sat down beside Katerina. “If you aren't a Martian anymore, maybe I should be one instead. After all, even if it doesn't last a million years, we're having a picnic on Mars. I can change my name to ‘Martin the Martian'—isn't that lovely, hmm?”

  He laughed. “Hey, I just realized my big brother and sister-in-law did me a favor by naming their firstborn ‘Timothy.’ Remember when we visited my hometown last September? After we gave that talk to his kindergarten class Tim said that ‘Uncle Martin’ was his favorite spaceman.”

  Katerina sipped her water. “What you said is probably very clever, but I don't seem to understand it.”

  “Never mind. I guess I wasted too much of my youth reading science fiction and watching ancient movies and TV shows.”

  Katerina shook her head. Though she was fluent in English and several other languages, her knowledge of Martin's American “culture” had yawning gaps. She'd fallen victim before to her fiance's impish exploitation of that ignorance—especially during that visit they'd made to see his family late last summer. Sitting together on the couch in his parents’ living room, he'd turned on the television and shown her what he said were old black-and-white “home movies” about his mid-twentieth-century ancestors.

  She was shocked at how her future husband's relatives seemed more ignorant and uncouth than any Americans she'd ever met. Unlike the elderly woman on the television, her own sweet grandmother in Russia would never have made illegal vodka. And she didn't understand how, if his family was so wealthy, Martin himself had grown up in this comfortable but modest farmhouse.

  The expression on her face after her future father-in-law walked in and scolded his son for “pulling her leg” made Martin laugh uncontrollably. His father informed her that, while the family on the television was indeed supposed to have originally come from this part of the Ozarks, the Slaytons weren't related to the Clampetts.

  But after Martin shared his genuine family photos and movies with her, she'd forgiven him. Well, not at first—especially when he showed her the ones with him playing with the childhood friend and companion who, he said, she'd replaced as the one he loved most in the world. It was when Martin took her to a far corner of the family farm that she realized he really wasn't joking this time. As they visited the small stone that marked where his erstwhile greatest friend lay buried for twenty years, she felt the heartfelt joy and tears in his memories.

  And when they'd driven by the replica of the Hubble Space Telescope in Marshfield, Missouri's town square—a monument to the great astronomer Edwin Hubble from the small town where he was born—she understood the man she loved even more. Before he explained how seeing that model so often as a boy had inspired and led him to the planet they now shared, she saw the dream in his face. It was the same look she'd seen
in the mirror as a child after reading about her own country's achievements in space.

  Martin got up and grabbed the microphone attached to the transceiver inside the rover. “Breaker, breaker, Mission Control. We're having fun at the beach and collected some souvenirs for you. We'll be moving in the monster lane to our next stop after we cut the coax. By the way, is Dr. Stone on duty? I'd like to talk to him about some radishes. Over.”

  The signal he'd transmitted to the transponder at the habitation module was relayed to an orbiter overhead and from there sent back to Houston. As they waited the several minutes it would take for his message to reach Earth and receive an answer, Martin laughed, “Don't look at me like that. I don't criticize you when you talk to your bosses at the Russian Space Agency.”

  “That's because we act more serious. And don't pester Dr. Stone about the radishes. It's his responsibility to keep us healthy, not please your tastebuds.”

  “Well, as head of space medicine at NASA he's also responsible for our mental health. He'll come around eventually.”

  “I don't know. I respect him as a physician, but he's always seemed rather cold.”

  “Nah, he's a Midwesterner like me, and I recognize his type. Hard and professional on the outside—soft and sentimental on the inside.”

  As Katerina folded the blanket a voice squawked from the rover's transceiver, “That's a big ten-four. Dr. Stone will be here soon. I'll tell him you want to ragchew about the radishes again. I'm on the side for you.”

  Martin handled the microphone. “Copied, Harv. I'm pulling the plug at this end.”

  He chuckled, “Harvey's a good guy. We may be romantic rivals over you, but he and I speak the same language.

  Katerina sighed. “I wish I spoke it too.”

  * * * *

  As they drove parallel to the beach, Martin reached for the music player. Katerina quickly said, “Did you listen to the newsfeed from Mission Control before we left this morning?”