“I sympathize, Mace,” Oxmire said. “I won’t let anything important go by without telling you. But I have enough to worry about without anyone, including the head of security, doing something stupid and getting hurt.”
“I understand there’s been a communications cordon put around us.”
“That’s right. I got the word when Ms. Guerrera came in.”
“Let me know if that changes.”
Oxmire nodded, still watching him. Mace headed back for the bunks. He picked an empty berth and climbed in.
Staring at the ceiling half a meter away, he tried to will his mind to stop working. He should sleep, he knew, but questions kept prodding at him.
The fabric that gave out had a near-perfect history of service. Molifiber was a light, deceptively strong material, the carbonile molecules bound more tightly together than anything found in nature outside degenerate matter. The stuff did not simply tear. But Mace knew of nothing that could do what had apparently been done. Unless the sheeting used had been defective.
He wondered what Helen had been doing here. As always, Mace had little idea what exactly she was doing. So much of her work she kept from him; most of it was sensitive, and the stuff she had told him about had been years old. He held security clearances one level below hers. She told him a lot more than she should, he suspected, which satisfied him that what she did had to do with experimental projects, or projects with substantial financial risk to the company, but nothing imminently life-threatening. Troubleshooting was a vague label for indeterminate functions. She had spoken to him about some of her jobs, showed him a few things she had done. From what he could tell, Helen was good at what she did. He wondered what she had found, if anything.
This had been a last-minute assignment, but at least she had been able to let him know about it. She had been on her way home, back to Aea from a long tour at Ganymede, when she was diverted to Mars. She had spent three days in Burroughs, then had headed for the new site. By the time Mace arrived on Mars, Helen had been there about two months, most of her stay spent at the new site. Mace himself had pulled strings and called in favors to get the assignment for security for Director Oswald Listrom’s trip to Mars. Listrom was one of the board members of Aea, as well as upper management in PolyCarb. Very important. He had given final approval for Mace to head up his security team for the Martian visit. Listrom and his party had arrived on Mars nearly thirty-two days ago.
Once Mace had contacted Helen, he felt relieved. Routine, she told him, nothing to worry about, just some pesky details no one on the site had the expertise or authority to deal with. The sandstorm kept connecting traffic grounded, so they would just have to wait, but she knew a good hotel.
Mace tried to add up how much time they had spent together since they met. He kept adding wrong. All he remembered clearly was that they had met on Mars, almost seven years ago—Aean years, which were close to Earth standard—and had married almost a year after that. Actual time in each others’ presence: less than two years total. No, he thought, that can’t be right. I must be missing some days here and there. I must be—
“You don’t really love me” she told him.
“Of course I do. I married you.”
“To get Aean citizenship. You can’t stand Mars. No, it’s all right, I don’t blame you. Nice place to visit, I can see that, but...”
“Helen.”
“It’s all right, I said. I like it this way. I know exactly what you want from me and I know exactly what I want from you. And I like you. I really like you.”
“I love you.”
“Maybe you do. But that won’t save our butts if anything goes wrong. Being friends might. Don’t look so worried. I asked you to marry me. I know what I’m getting and I like it.”
He opened his eyes, shocked at the memory. She had told him that during their honeymoon in Helium, up near the north pole, a few days before she took him back to Aea and he became a citizen. He had felt small and embarrassed afterward, because he suspected she was right. He knew she was partly—he had always wanted to get off Mars—but he wondered about the rest.
The last few days convinced him she was wrong.
He wanted to see her, touch her.
He checked the time. To his surprise, nearly two hours had passed. He must have slept after all.
Two raps outside the berth startled him.
“Mace,” Oxmire said. ‘They’re bringing up more bodies. And we’re close to the main bore.”
Mace entered ops and the conversation stopped. Oxmire, Cambel Guerrera, Winston Cavery, and another man Mace did not recognize stood at the main board. They all looked at him when he came in. Cavery barely suppressed a scowl. Mace knew he would have to do something to make up the last three days to Cavery; he had bulled his way in here, wresting control of security from the younger man for no good reason.
He walked up to the group. On the large screen that dominated the console, a grid of the site showed the location of the excavation teams. Two teams worked on the entrance to the magline shaft on the northwest wall. Red markers showed where bodies had been located. Most of them now had green checkmarks as well, indicating recovery.
Initial deep scans had located all but three bodies.
“Any IDs yet?” Mace asked.
“That process is just starting,” Cavery said. “Sir.”
“Are they into the tunnel yet?”
“Be opening it up in another half hour,” Oxmire said.
“How come you haven’t used the surface accesses?” the stranger asked then. He was slim, almost slight, with wavy brown hair and a thin, aquiline nose. He reached to the screen and tapped at points along the tunnel. “The emergency accesses.”
Mace felt momentarily surprised. Along the tunnel, at half-kilometer intervals, a series of shafts would be Sunk from the surface down to the base for use in case of shut-downs or other unforeseen problems with the line. He had known about them, but he had neglected to ask.
“They’re not opened yet,” Oxmire said. “The shafts are bored, but they aren’t cut through.”
“None of them?” the stranger wondered, frowning.
“Half hour you said?” Mace asked.
“We’ve recovered sixty-eight bodies so far,” Cavery said. “Several were clustered near the mouth of the tunnel.”
“You think they were trying to get in there?”
“Possibly,” Cavery said. “Or they just got blown in that direction until sand filled the hole.”
They would never know exactly what had happened, but their models suggested that when the molifiber ripped open, the trough funneled the winds for a short time, increasing intensity and velocity. The habitats in which workers sought refuge had been torn loose. Rescue workers had found many bodies beaten to death inside the prefab structures.
As sand poured in, the turbulence faded. Survivors suffocated because air supplies had been separated from habitats or because people were caught in the open and buried.
Mace noticed then that Oxmire wore an overskin. “You’re preparing to go out?”
Oxmire nodded. “I want to be there when they break through.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“You go see the pathologist first,” Oxmire said. “Check your fatigue toxins. I don’t need any casualties on this.”
Mace resented the suggestion, but nodded anyway.
“Doc clears you, you can join us at the hole.”
Oxmire moved away, then, followed by Cavery who still wore his overskin.
“Mr. Preston,” Guerrera said. “Before you go out, I want to speak to you. Privately.”
“Sure.”
Cambel Guerrera followed Oxmire and Cavery. She wore soft, loose utilities.
Mace leaned over the console, studying the grid. He tried to imagine the amount of debris, the strength of the winds, the chaos that must have exploded when the sheeting peeled away. Scraps of the molifiber had been collected and sent back to Burroughs for study, but no wor
d had come back from the lab yet.
“Specialist Preston?” the stranger asked.
“Yes?”
“We haven’t met. I’m Piers Hawthorne. I’m the adjuster—”
“Uh-huh. I was told you hitched a ride with Ms. Guerrera.”
“It was the last available transport here.”
“Was it so important that you couldn’t wait till everything was secured?”
“I believe it’s best to see things as soon after an accident as possible. Tidying up tends to obscure certain aspects.”
“Hmm.”
“I wondered,” Hawthorne continued, “if you might spare me some time for a talk. I understand that you suffered a loss here. I don’t intend—”
“Have you seen the site, Mr. Hawthorne?”
“—to be—excuse me? No. I mean, I did when I arrived, but only briefly. I’ve been... remanded to the confines of a carryall since. No one will take me. I’m not familiar with the protocols, or I’d just do it myself, but there are regulations—”
“Come on, then.”
Mace headed for the prep chamber. When he stepped in, the indicator above the lock showed that it had cycled less than a minute before. He went to a locker and pulled out two overskins. Wordlessly, he showed Hawthorne how to wear it, helping the man into the protective sheathe, then putting on his own.
“Ms. Guerrera requested that you see her,” Hawthorne said. “Don’t you think—?”
“Do you want to see the site?”
“Well, yes, of course.”
“Then let me worry about Ms. Guerrera.”
“Mace?”
Dr. Leong, the resident pathologist, leaned into the room, frowning.
“Mr. Hawthorne has requested a tour of the site,” Mace said, beginning a checklist on the breathers. “Everyone else is busy, so I’m taking him out. Would you care to monitor the lock for us?”
“Cliff wanted me to do an exam on you,” she said.
“You can do that when we get back in. I need to be there when they open the main tunnel.” He looked at her. “You can monitor or I’ll just set it on automatic.”
Scowling, she held up a finger and disappeared. A minute later she returned with a tray containing a syringe and cotton swab.
“What’s this for?” Mace asked.
“Don’t argue. You want to leave now, you’ll humor me. Give me your arm.” He shrugged out of one arm of the overskin and offered the bare bicep. She drew blood, pressed the swab to the puncture, and went to the console. “Cliff will still have my hide if anything goes wrong, but at least we’re both following his instructions.”
“Have a little confidence in me. Nothing will go wrong.” Mace helped Hawthorne with his breather. “Make sure the seal is tight here and here. A leak won’t kill you, only make your excursion time shorter. Try your comm. Can you hear me?”
Hawthorne nodded. “Stat check.”
“What?”
“Stat check. My link is fine.”
Mace gave Hawthorne a raised a thumb, then went to the lock. The part of his mind that concerned itself with rules, disciplines, logics, and limits seemed to stutter. He was not really violating orders, only Ox-mire’s expectations. He knew how to live on Mars better than all these Aeans, knew what his own capabilities allowed. He could sleep when they found Helen. Alive or...
The change in pressure sounded like a hollow whistle that faded to nothing just before the outer door slid aside. Then he stood at the top of the ramp, staring at the Martian landscape. Mace had never been able to find the beauty most Martians professed to see in it. To Mace, the reds, yellows, ochers, oranges, and bloody shadows comprised a singular idea: lifeless pride. It frightened him growing up with it and it intimidated him now He had been overjoyed to get away from the scarred deserts.
He had seen images from the early days of human settlement. The sky was a different color now, different even from his childhood memory, bluer, the clouds a bit muddier. Manufacturing, agriculture, the presence of a few million humans spilling gases, all combined over time to thicken the atmosphere. Then it had been an average of only eight millibars, less than one one-hundredth of a standard atmosphere. Now it averaged nearly thirty-five millibars. What that meant to Mace now, standing here above the ruins, was that fifty years ago the air lacked the carrying capacity to cause a disaster like this. The sandstorms of legend had been thin veils much more visible from orbit than on the ground. Now a few of them held real force.
“It’s really something,” Hawthorne said.
Mace glanced at him. “You’re not a Martian.”
“No, no. I’m from Aea.”
“And before that?”
“Why do you think there was a before?”
“An impression.”
“Hmm. As a matter of fact, I was born on Brasa, but my parents emigrated when I was three. I don’t remember very much. And you, Specialist?”
“Born and raised here.”
“But you live on Aea now?”
“Aea’s home, yes.”
Mace descended the ramp. Below, the siphon pumps stood idle. Sand no longer spewed from their ends, jutting above the lip of the trough. Diggers worked at clearing away the mounds of accumulation. Nearly a kilometer away, against the opposite wall, he made out a haze of reddish dust at the base of the now visible primary tunnel.
He followed one of the ersatz roadways left by the path of the diggers. Spurs and crossroads shot off at irregular intervals, trails leading to forage sites where debris or bodies had been uncovered.
The entire volume under the canopy had been pressurized. Not that difficult to maintain in the Martian atmosphere anymore, not nearly as difficult as on Earth’s moon where the seals had to be complete, the shells hardened against the occasional meteorite that still, after all these billions of years, fell from the residual debris of formation. The stanchions around the edge of the trough had held the canopy against a partially buried lintel, stretched tight, while the air pooled in the bottom of the trough, rising to billow the molifiber ever so slightly. Some leaked, but minutely and leisurely. The sheet was more than enough to keep the worksite viable while construction proceeded. Eventually, a harder ceiling would have replaced the sheet. Piece by piece, the trough would have become a buried town. When the canopy was finally rolled away and carted off to be used elsewhere, it would leave behind a complicated roof with built-in solar collectors, windmills and windstills, communications antennae, telescopes, and ventilators to outgas C02, CH3, and other byproducts of mining and manufacturing. Below this roof a town large enough for a few tens of thousands would eventually exist, one more stop along the CircumAres Transit, the planned transportation system that would one day circumnavigate the planet, with spur lines to every inhabited area.
Safety regulations required overskins worn at all times at such a site, but Mace knew better than to expect full compliance. Martians were obsessively conscientious people and understood the many ways death can come upon the unprepared. But less than half the personnel here had been Martian. Many had come from the orbitals, where the precaution of an overskin made little difference in a major accident.
“Specialist...”
Mace looked back to see Hawthorne lagging behind, working hard to keep pace, boots sinking to the ankles in the powdery drift. Despite the low g, walking on Mars took practice. Mace waited impatiently for the smaller man to catch up, then strode off at his normal gait, long Martian legs slicing scissors-like, overmuscled now after the adaptation treatments he had undergone for life in Aea. For life with Helen.
“Odd, it doesn’t look so deep from here,” Hawthorne said.
Mace looked to the right, at the rim of the eastern wall, nearly a hundred meters high. “Never does. Optical illusion.”
“Of course...”
Diggers kicked up reddish clouds around the mouth of the tunnel. Another siphon took the deposits from the insect-like machines and shoved it out somewhere over the western wall.
“Mace?” a voice snapped over his comm. “What are you doing out here? I thought—”
Oxmire broke off and Mace checked his comm display. The conversation would have gone out over the shared link. He saw the numbers change just before Oxmire spoke again, to a private channel.
“Did Leong clear you?”
“Mr. Hawthorne wanted to come down and see the site. Nobody else was available.” He looked at Hawthorne, but the man was not privy to this exchange.
“I didn’t particularly want him here. Last thing we need right now is an insurance adjuster making estimates around corpses.”
Mace did not reply.
“Well, as long as you’re here,” Oxmire said finally, “come on. We’re almost to the tunnel. They’ve broken through.”
Mace made his way among the big diggers. The machines moved, oblivious to his presence. The heat from their ventilators distorted the air and dramatically increased the temperature around them. Their treads had pounded the soil into a hard surface that only their considerable weight disturbed, keeping a mist of fine particulate constantly airborne. Walking became easier for Hawthorne on ground that did not yield fifteen to twenty centimeters with each step and he managed now to keep abreast of Mace. They covered the distance quickly.
Comm babble chattered in his ear, updates on digger timetables, crew reports worried over sifting the loads of dirt before dumping them into the siphon hoppers, and a foreman giving instructions to a crew erecting lights in the tunnel, the maw of which still seemed like a half-buried cave, so close now that the curve was less apparent. The smooth walls soaked up light and gave nothing back. Within, halogens glared like a jagged row of stars, leading into blackness.
“I understand this was to be the main anchor for the Elysium Planitia leg,” Hawthorne said.
“Will be.” Mace glanced at Hawthorne. “You don’t think it’ll be shut down, do you?”
“I wouldn’t know,” Hawthorne said. “A loss like this...hard to say what management will decide. Too expensive to clean up and start over, too much invested to let it go. If I were to guess...”
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