by Hogan, James
As the last in a series of prototypes, the Orion was intended primarily to prove
the feasibility of its scaled-up fusion drive and to test various engineering
concepts relating to long-range, large-capacity space missions; like the
experimental Victorian steamships that had preceded the gracious ocean liners of
later years, its design took little account of luxuries or spaciousness of
accommodation for its occupants. Its warren of cabins, cramped day rooms,
machinery compartments, stairwells, and labyrinthine passageways reminded him
more of a submarine than anything else, Massey thought as he lounged on his bunk
and contemplated the view of Earth's disk being presented on the screen built
into the cabin's end bulkhead. He and Vernon would share the cabin with two
others, both of whom they knew from the training course: Graham Spearman, an
evolutionary biologist from the University of California at Los Angeles, and
Malcom Wade, a Canadian psychologist. Spearman and Vernon had left to explore
the ship and Wade hadn't arrived yet; Massey, therefore, was making the most of
the opportunity to relax for a few minutes after arriving on board, checking in,
and unpacking his gear.
From his perspective in Globe II, the entire planetary surface of
Earth—continents, oceans, and atmosphere—revealed itself as a single,
self-sustaining biological organism in which the arbitrary boundaries and
differences of shading that divided the maps of men were no more meaningful than
they were visible. It was a truth that astronauts and other venturers into space
had affirmed repeatedly for over half a century, but it had to be experienced to
be understood, Massey realized. Only two days earlier he had paid a final visit
to Walter Conlon in Washington, where on every side the world of human affairs
scurried and bustled about its urgent business and consumed the output from
thousands of lives. But already the whole of it had shrunk to a speck of no
particular significance, barely discernible against the background that had
remained essentially unchanged since before Washington had existed, and which
might persist for long after Washington was forgotten.
The sound of the door being opened interrupted Massey's thoughts, and a moment
later Malcom Wade pushed his way in, holding two bags and a briefcase in his
hands and using a foot to shove a suitcase along on the floor. "Well, I guess I
must have found the right place," he said as he closed the door with his back.
"Hi, Gerry. I gather the other two are already here."
"Hello, Malcom. Yes—they've gone exploring. That top bunk's yours. How was the
flight?"
Wade took off his topcoat and hung it in the closet space by the door. "Oh,
fine—apart from taking half a day longer than it was supposed to. We had to
divert to the European base in Guiana." He sank down with a grateful sigh on the
bunk opposite Massey. He was a tall, thin-bodied man, with lank hair and pale
eyes that always seemed to be glinting with some inner fervor.
"I heard about it," Massey said. "Hey, I think Graham's got a bottle of
something stowed away over there. Could you use a drink while you're getting
your breath back?"
"Mmm . . . later maybe, thanks all the same."
"Okay. So who else was on the shuttle?"
"Let me see ... Susan Coulter, the geologist, and that electronics guy from
Denver that we had breakfast with one morning at Charlotte . . . Dave Crookes."
"Uh-huh."
"Karl Zambendorf and his people were on it too." Wade cocked an eyebrow at
Massey in a way that was partly expectant, partly curious.
"Oh." Massey did his best to keep his voice neutral. He didn't want to get into
a long debate just then. Although he hadn't advertised his prime interest in the
mission, the question of Zambendorf's being included had been a regular
conversation topic at the training center, and Massey had found himself obliged
on occasion to express his opinions. Wade described himself as a scientist and
was apparently an advisor of some kind to a number of government committees, but
he took Zambendorf quite seriously. Massey wondered exactly what he advised the
government on.
"I think I know why he's here," Wade said after a short silence. He paused to
wait for Massey to ask him why Zambendorf was there. Massey didn't. Wade went on
anyway, "It's well known that the Soviets have been conducting extensive
research into paranormal phenomena for years—and getting successful results
too." Massey swallowed hard but said nothing. There were always anecdotes of
anecdotes about things that people were supposed to have done, but never
anything verifiable. Wade took a pipe from his jacket pocket and gestured with
the stem. "It's been suspected for a while now that they've achieved some kind
of significant breakthrough, and a lot of experts have been saying that the main
Soviet center for that kind of work is their Mars Base at Solis Lacus—well away
from terrestrial interference, you see." Wade paused and began packing tobacco
into his pipe from a pouch.
"Well, I guess you know how I feel about all that," Massey said vaguely, while
wondering uncomfortably to himself if the conversation was an indication of what
to expect for the next fifty days.
"But it all fits," Wade said. "I know you're a bit of a skeptic and so on,
Massey, but I believe in being scientific about things, which means being
open-minded—in other words, willing to accept that there are things we can't
explain. Whether we can explain it or not, we have to accept that Zambendorf is
gifted with some abnormal abilities." He eyed Massey for a moment as if the rest
should have been too obvious to require spelling out. "Well, I think Zambendorf
is part of a classified Western research program to match the Soviets in
harnessing paranormal phenomena ... or maybe even to counter the Soviets. That
could be why they're sending Zambendorf to Mars." Massey stared at him
glassy-eyed, but before he could say anything, Wade added triumphantly, "And
that would explain why the military is here—to secure the project from possible
interference from the Soviets at Solis Lacus. Have you heard about that yet?"
Massey nodded. "We were told they're coming with us to do some training under
extraterrestrial conditions . . . that the Pentagon bought some places on the
ship at the last moment or something."
Wade shook his head. "Cover story. Do you know how many there are of them? There
were three shuttle-loads disembarking when I came aboard—U.S. Special Forces, a
British commando unit, French paratroopers. That's not a few seats bought at the
last minute. That was scheduled a long time ago . . . And they're docked at the
stem, which means they're unloading heavy equipment." He produced a lighter and
watched Massey over his pipe while he puffed it into life. "In fact it wouldn't
surprise me if the idea was to provoke a confrontation with the Soviets at Lacus
in order to take their base out. Maybe our people are onto things that you and I
haven't even dreamed about."
Massey slumped back and looked away numbly. Surely nobody at the Pentagon or
wherever was t
aking the nonsense about the Soviets that seriously . . . But then
again, large sectors of the government and private bureaucracies were dominated
by political and economic ideologists incapable of distinguishing sound
scientific reasoning from pseudo-scientific twaddle, yet commanding authority
out of all proportion to their competence. If they listened to kooks like Wade,
they could end up believing anything. Surely the insane rivalry that had
paralyzed meaningful progress over much of Earth for generations wasn't about to
be exported to another world over something as ridiculous as the "paranormal."
Massey stared again at the blue-green image of Earth with its stirred curdling
of clouds. Somehow the human race had to get it into its collective head that it
couldn't rely on magical forces or omnipotent guardians to protect it from its
own stupidity. Man would have to trust in his own intelligence, reason, and
ability to look after himself. The decision was in his own hands. If he chose to
eradicate himself, the rest of Earth's biosphere—far more resilient than popular
mythology acknowledged—would hardly notice the difference, and then not for very
long. And as for the rest of the cosmos, stretching away for billions of
light-years behind Earth's rim, the event of man's extinction would be no more
newsworthy than the demise of a community of microbes caused by the drying up of
a puddle somewhere in Outer Mongolia.
9
"AH, LET ME SEE NOW . . . WHEN I WAS A BOY OF ABOUT SIXTEEN, it must have been.
'Pat,' me father says to himself. 'With them Americans walking around on the
Moon itself and flying them hotels up in the sky, that's the place you should be
for your sons to grow up in.' So we ups and moves the whole family to Brooklyn
where me uncle Seamus and all was already living, and that's where the rest of
them still are today." Sgt. Michael O'Flynn of the NASO Surface Vehicle
Maintenance Unit reversed his feet, which were propped up on the littered metal
desk in his cubbyhole at the rear of a cavernous cargo bay, and raised his paper
cup for another sip of the brandy that Zambendorf had produced from a hip flask.
He had a solid, stocky body that seemed as broad as it was long beneath the
stained NASO fatigues, and his face was fiery pink and beefy, with clear blue
eyes half-hidden beneath wiry, unruly eyebrows, and a shock of rebellious hair
in which yellow and red struggled for dominance, each managing to get the better
of the other in different places. O'Flynn spoke through pearly white teeth
clamped around a wooden toothpick, in a husky whisper that had retained more
than a hint of its original brogue for what must have been thirty or so years.
"What part of Ireland did you move from?" Zambendorf inquired from his cramped
perch on a metal seat that folded out from the wall between a tool rack and an
equipment cabinet—more comfortable than it looked since his weight near the
ship's axis was barely sufficient to keep him in place.
"County Cork, in the south, not far from a little place called Glanmire."
Zambendorf rubbed his beard and looked thoughtful for a few seconds. "That would
be roughly over in the direction of Watergrasshill, wouldn't it, if I remember
rightly?" he said.
O'Flynn looked surprised. "You know it?"
"I was there a few years ago. We toured all around that area for a few days . .
. and up to Limerick, back down around Killamey and the lakes." Zambendorf
laughed as the memories flooded back. "We had a wonderful time."
"Well I'll be damned," O'Flynn said. "And you like the place, eh?"
"The villages are as pretty and as friendly as any you'll find in Austria, and I
found Guinness remarkably good once I'd gotten used to it. Those mountains,
though, what do you call them? Macgilly-something..."
"Macgillycuddy's Reeks."
"Yes—how is anybody supposed to remember something like that? Well they're not
really mountains at all, are they? You really could use a genuine Alp or two,
you know. But apart from that . . ." Zambendorf shrugged and sipped his own
drink.
"What are your Alps but more of the same?" O'Flynn said. "Ours have everything a
mountain needs to be called a mountain, except a man doesn't have to waste more
of the breath he could be using for better things getting to the top."
"The higher a man rises, the farther he sees," Zambendorf said, throwing out a
remark that was open for O'Flynn to take any way he pleased. "It's as true of
life as it is of mountains, wouldn't you agree?"
O'Flynn's eyes narrowed a fraction further for a moment, and he chewed on his
toothpick. "Yes, and the farther away he gets, the less he sees, until he can
make out no part of any of it," he replied. "The world's full of people parading
their high-and-mightiness, who think they can see everything, but they know
nothing." It sounded like a general observation and not a veiled reference to
Zambendorf.
"I take it that the noble and the worthy don't exactly inspire you to any great
feelings of awe and reverence."
"Ah, and who else would they be but those who make it their affair to mind the
rest of the world's business when the rest of the world is quite able to look
after itself? It's people whose own business isn't worth minding who mind other
people's business, I'm after thinking. A man has work enough in one lifetime
trying to improve himself without thinking that he's fit to be out improving the
world,"
A strange garb to find a philosopher in, Zambendorf thought to himself. "Well,
that's certainly been the old way," he said, stretching and looking around, as
if for a way of changing the subject. "Who knows? Perhaps Mars will be the
beginning of something different."
O'Flynn remained silent for a few seconds and rubbed his nose with a pink, meaty
knuckle, as if weighing something in his mind. "So, it's convinced you are that
it's Mars we're going to, is it?" he said at last.
Although nothing changed on Zambendorf's face, he was instantly alert. "Of
course," he said, keeping his voice nonchalant. "What are you saying, Mike?
Where else could we be going?"
"Well now, aren't you the great clairvoyant who sees into the future?" O'Flynn's
smile twinkled mockingly for just an instant. "I was hoping that maybe you were
going to tell me,"
Zambendorf had ridden out worse in his time. "What are you saying?" he asked
again. "What makes you think we might be going anywhere else?"
O'Flynn chewed on his toothpick and watched Zambendorf curiously for a second or
two, then crumpled the cup and dropped it into a trash disposal inlet. He stood
and inclined his head to indicate the doorway. "Come on. I'll show you
something." He cleared the distance to the bay area outside in one of the long,
slow-motion bounds that was the most economical way to move around in almost
zero-gravity surroundings. Zambendorf unfolded himself from his seat and
followed.
O'Flynn led between rows of packing cases and halted at a larger area where
three surface vehicles were stacked one above the other in their stowage frames
to just below the ceiling. At the bottom of the next stack, a co
uple of NASO
mechanics working at the open hatch of a tracked vehicle, and another who was
inspecting something from a movable work platform higher up, carried on without
paying much attention. O'Flynn gestured toward the lowermost vehicle in front of
them—a personnel carrier about fifteen feet high, painted mainly yellow, with
six huge wheels. An enclosed cabin with lots of antennas and protrusions made up
its forward two-thirds, and a clutter of girderwork, pipes, and tanks formed its
rear.
"See them wheels," O'Flynn said, pointing. "Them's high-traction, low-friction
treads—not what you'd need if you wanted to go joy-riding off across a place
like Mars." He ducked forward and indicated a pair of short, fat nozzles
projecting from below the vehicle's front end. "Know what they are? Plasma
torches and blowers—not the best thing in the world if you get bogged down in a
sand drift now, is it?"
"What would things like that be better for?" Zambendorf asked, peering more
closely.
"Ice," O'Flynn told him. "Lots of ice." He jerked his thumb stemward. "And the
equipment holds back there are full of things like steam hoses and superheated
suction tubes, which are also the kinds of things you'd want to take along with
you if you expected to be bothered by ice. Now, where would all that ice be on a
place like Mars?" He straightened out from under the vehicle and rapped his
knuckle on the outside wall of the cab. "Them walls will withstand four
atmospheres—outside, not inside. Mars has a low-pressure atmosphere."
Zambendorf searched O'Flynn's face for a second or two and then looked back at
the personnel carrier. O'Flynn stepped back a pace and pointed up at the
fuselage of a low-altitude, fifteen-man airbus secured in the top frame of the
stack. "And do you see that flyer up there? Its wings are detached so you can't
see them for now, but they're too short and small to be any use at all in thin
air. Now Mars must have changed quite a bit since I last read anything about it,
unless I'm very much mistaken."
"But . . . this is incredible!" Zambendorf injected an appropriate note of
astonishment into his voice while his mind raced through possible explanations.
"Have you asked anyone in authority about it?"
O'Flynn shrugged. "What business is it of mine to be asking people about