The Martian Race

by Gregory Benford

  “It's my allowance.”

  “Hey, just a friendly remark. Not trying to get between you two.”

  “Thanks for the thought, but I'll deal with Viktor. Ready to go? We're eating into my hard-bought hours.”

  They returned to the ledge where Julia had her accident, two hundred meters further in. On the other side of the fortuitous overhang they found a pool covered with slime on a ledge. It was crusty, black and brown, and gave reluctantly when she poked it with a finger.

  “Defense against the desiccation,” she guessed.

  Marc swept his handbeam around. The mat hung here like drapes from the rough walls. “Open water on Mars. Wow.”

  “Not really open. The mat flows down, see, and covers this pool. Keeps it from drying out. Saving its resources maybe?”

  She scooped out some of the filmy pool water and put it under her hand microscope.

  Marc said, “It's just algae, right?”

  She did not answer. In the view were small creatures, plain as day.

  “My God. There's something swimming around in here. Marc, look at this and tell me I'm not crazy.”

  He looked through the scope and blinked. “Martian shrimp?”

  She sighed. “Trust you to think of something edible. In a pond this small on Earth there might be fairy shrimp, but these are pretty small. And I don't even know if these are animals.”

  She hurried to get some digitals of the stuff. She scooped some up in a sample vial and tucked it into her pack. Her mind was whirling in elation. She studied the tiny swimming things with breathless awe.

  So fine and strange—and why the hell did she have to peer at them through a smudged helmet?

  They had knobby structures at one end: heads? Maybe, and each with a smaller, light-colored speck. What?

  Could Mars life have taken the leap to animals, bridging a huge evolutionary chasm? On the other hand, these could be just mobile algal colonies, like Volvox and other pond life on Earth. Whatever they were, she knew they were way beyond microbes. She bent down over the pool again, shone her handbeam at an angle.

  The swarm of creatures was much thicker at the edges of the Mars-mat—feeding? Or something else?

  She couldn't quite dredge the murky idea from her subconscious. The arrangement with the mat was odd, handy for the “shrimp.” What was the relationship there? Some kind of symbiosis? And how did the swimming forms get to the pool?

  She and Marc climbed down from the ledge, playing out cable. As they descended the mist thickened and the walls got slick and they had to take more care. The cable was getting harder to manage, too. She could not stop her mind from spinning with ideas.

  On Earth, hydrothermal vent organisms photosynthesized kilometers deep in the ocean, using the dim reddish glow from hot magma. The glow became their energy source. Could some Martian organisms use the mat glow? Wait a minute—

  “Marc, did you notice anything peculiar about the shrimp?”

  He paused before answering. “Well, I don't know what they should look like. They looked sorta like the shrimp I feed my fish at home.”

  “Did you notice their eyes?”

  “Uh …”

  “The knobby ends, those had lighter specks, remember?”

  “Yeah, what about them?”

  “So you saw them too.”

  “Why, what's the matter—Oh.”

  “Right!”

  “I see, they shouldn't have eyes.”

  “Good for you. I'll make a biologist out of you yet. On Earth, cave-dwelling organisms have lost their eyes. Natural selection forces an organism to justify the cost of producing a complicated structure. You lose ‘em if you don't use ‘em.”

  “So if they have eyes—”

  “On Earth, we'd say they were recent arrivals from a lighted place, hadn't had time to become blind.”

  “But that's impossible. The lighted parts of Mars have been cold and dry for billions of years. Where would they have come from?”

  “I agree. So my next choice is that it's not dark enough here to lose the eyes.”

  “That glow is pretty dim.”

  “To us, maybe. We're creatures from a light-saturated world. Our eyes aren't used to these skimpy intensities. Closest parallel on Earth to these light levels are the hydrothermal vents. There are light-sensitive animals down there, even microbes able to photosynthesize.”

  “Maybe they're not even eyes.”

  “They're light-sensitive. The critters clustered under the beam from my scope.” “Wow.”

  “I need more information, but at the very least it suggests that the glow is permanent. Or at least frequent enough to give some advantage to being able to see. And that means there should be something that can use the glow as an energy source. Maybe the mat is symbiotic—a cooperation between glowing organisms and photosynthesizers?”

  “Yeah … That suggests the glow is primary. What's it for?”

  “Don't know, just guessing here.”

  “Curiouser and curiouser, as Alice said.”

  “1 didn't know boys read Alice in Wonderland.”

  “It seems to fit what we're doing.”

  “Down the rabbit hole we go, then.”

  She gazed down and saw at the very limit of the weak lamplight bigger things. Much bigger. Gray sheets, angular spires, corkscrew formations of pale white that stuck out into the upwelling gases and captured the richness. One spindly, fleshy growth looked like the fingers of a drowned corpse, drifting lazily in the currents …

  She shook her head to clear it. Stay steady, here.

  Below the level of the pool ledge twisty side channels worked off at odd angles. These ran more nearly horizontal, and they explored them hurriedly, clumping along until the ceiling got too low. No time to waste crawling back into dead ends, she figured. They headed back to the main channel and then found a broad passage that angled down. It was slick and they had to watch their footing.

  The mats here were like curtains, hanging out into the steady stream of vapor from the main shaft of the vent. Some seemed hinged to spread before the billowing vapor gale. She was busy taking samples and had only moments to study the strange, slow sway of these thin membranes, flapping like slow-motion flags.

  “Must be maximizing their surface area exposed to the nutrient fog,” she guessed.

  “Eerie,” Marc said. “And look how wide they get.”

  “There's sure as hell a lot of biomass here.”

  “Wonder if any of it's edible.”

  “Hungry, huh?” They both laughed, a bit tensely.

  At turns in the channel the mats were the size of a man. She took a lot of shots with her microcam, hoping they would come out reasonably well in their lamp beams. Gray and translucent, under direct handbeam she could see her hand through one.

  These forms owed their origin to the warm, moist eras of the Martian antiquity.

  The mats—and what else?—lived in such labyrinths as this, all around the globe? They could harvest the moisture billowing from heat below, and perhaps melt the permafrost nearby. At the edges of Earth's glaciers lived plants that actually melted ice with their own slow chemistry.

  The thermal vents and their side caverns could be extensive. With an exposed surface area as big as Earth's, there was plenty of room for evolution to experiment.

  Marc whispered, “Nothing like this pale ivory cavern on Earth. For sure.”

  Ruled as it was by boisterous, efficient aerobic life. Anaerobes had long ago retreated to inhospitable niches like hot springs and coal mines. In that infertile ground they survived, but remained as microbes, spawning no new forms. On Mars, oxygen-loving forms never evolved. The atmosphere escaped too soon.

  Julia gently caressed a mat as it lazily floated on the vapor breeze. Plants, flourishing in the near vacuum. She could never have envisioned these …

  She dropped down a few more meters, blinking. How much was she seeing and how much was just illusion?—the product of poor seeing conditions, a
smudged helmet view, her strained eyes—

  “Hey. Time.”

  She felt her fatigue as a slow, gathering ache in her legs and arms. Experience made her think very carefully, being sure she was wringing everything from these minutes that she could. “How far down are we?”

  Marc had been keeping track of the markings on the cable. “Just about one klick.”

  “What's the temperature?”

  “Nearly ten. Almost toasty. No wonder I'm not feeling the cold.”

  “This vent could go down kilometers before it gets steam-hot. And we've just reached the cavern level.”

  “Julia …”

  “I know. We can't go farther.”

  “It'll be a long, tough climb out. Soon be dusk up there.”

  Be getting deathly cold on the surface, and fast, yes.

  She was on a small ledge, about five meters below Marc. A strange longing filled her.

  “I know. I'm not pushing for more, don't worry. Biologists need oxygen, too.”

  Automatically she started to cut a small sample out of the closest mat, a thick hanging curtain suspended just within reach. It was surprisingly tough, like thick kelp. She found she was puffing with the exertion. Her suit exhaled with a slight hiss. Suddenly the mat whipped around, pinning her against the rock wall. She was in the dark, as if someone had closed a thick curtain in front of her.

  Marc responded to her yell. “Jules, where are you? I can't see you.”

  “Here!”

  “You're behind that mat?”

  “Yeah.” Breathe deeply, speak clearly. “Must be some kind of reflex reaction. I was trying to take a sample, and this hanging mat slammed against me.”

  Training reasserted itself. Marc answered in calm astronautspeak. “What is your position? All I can see is the cable.”

  “I'm standing on a small ledge, being held against the wall by a lot of mat stuff. Can't see anything.”

  “Still got your scalpel?”

  “Negative. Must've dropped it. It wasn't much good anyway. This stuff is tough.”

  “You say it moved. Did it fall on you?”

  “Negative. It swung around.” She had a quick thought. “It must be suspended from above. Can you see how?”

  There was a short pause. “It's hanging from what must be a hinged branch just below me. The branch protrudes from a thick trunklike structure close to the wall.”

  She struggled ineffectually. “Try to make it move away again. I'm pretty stuck. And I don't want to risk burning out my winch motor.”

  “What do you suggest?”

  “Kick it!”

  She could hear his breathing over the suit radio. Reassuring, somehow. He was only a meter away, but she couldn't see a damn thing but the blotchy pattern on the mat.

  “Unh! Unh! Anything happen?”

  “Negative. What'd you do?”

  “Thunked it with my boot a couple times. Didn't seem to have any effect.”

  “Well, something I was doing caused it to move.”

  “How do plants move, anyway? No muscles, no nervous system.”

  “Don't know that this is a plant. Still, even plants on Earth can move. Lots of ‘em track the sun, and some can instantly collapse their leaves in response to a stimulus.”

  “Oh yeah, I remember that, uh, sensitive plant from botany class.”

  “But there's a downside. They have to grow the leaves open again, and it can take days.”

  “Cheery thought.” There was a short pause. “Say, there's another one of those brown spots forming on your mat. It must be your suit exhaust.”

  The thought struck both of them at the same time.

  “Hey, what about—”

  “Yeah, I'll try a short blast from my intake.”

  “Marc? Just tease it with the oxygen. We want it to twitch, not collapse.”

  “Right.”

  The seconds ticked slowly by. Then she heard, “Okay, I'm in position now. Ready to start. One-second jet coming up.”

  The mat pressing against her shuddered.

  “It just twitched.”

  “I barely grazed it. I'll try a couple more short blasts—”

  There was a sudden feeling of lightness. The mat heaved violently away from her. Her helmet was hopelessly smeared.

  “Climb, Julia! Quick!” Marc shouted.

  “I can't see. Visor's smeared.” She grabbed the lines to be sure they were unsnarled. A quick command to the winch cranked her up. “Tell me where I'm going.”

  “Go! You're coming up alongside it. Good! Just keep coming up. Okay, you're level with the hinge. If you clear it you're home free— Yes! you're clear!”

  She struggled on another couple of seconds, then stopped, sweat pouring off her face, suit fans humming. “Wow, hot on Mars. Surely a first.” She felt curiously exhilarated and exhausted at the same time.

  “We've got a one-klick climb ahead of us.”

  “I know. I'm okay. Just gotta clear my visor. I want to vid that hinge, then we can go. What incredible stuff we've found!”

  She went into automatic drive on the way back. Run the winch, negotiate around the ledges and rocks, run it some more. Steady does it.

  They stopped for new tanks at the ledge, took another food break, then finished the climb. They didn't say much. Astronaut training; talk breaks concentration, which you need all the more as you tire.

  But she could feel her mind working in the background, processing and sorting all the new information. When she sat down to write her report, it would all be there.

  It was dusk when they reached the surface. She climbed up into a ruddy sky darkening in the east.

  The residual moisture on their suits froze to rime and fell from their suits as a dusting of snow. The flakes fumed away within seconds.

  Marc dismantled and stowed their climbing rig as she carefully settled her precious samples, sealed safely away from their oxygen atmosphere. She was already planning how to culture them in the greenhouse.

  Then they were off, Marc carefully following their tracks back to the hab.

  They'd squirted the briefest of “we're back” messages before making final preparations for leaving. Now, a mug of hot tea in hand, she started to put in a call to base.

  The radio crackled to life. “Company is coming,” said Viktor.

  “Where?”

  “They are being, what you call it?—coy.”

  The next hour they were silent, letting Red Rover's sway massage them. Marc heated up a thick beefy soup and they wolfed it down. In the dark she moved the rover more carefully, following the microwave reflector telltales they had dropped on the way out. The pilot program kept her on track pretty well, so all she had to do as they approached the pingo hills was keep an eye out for really large rocks. The rover's ranging radar did a fair job at that, too, but they had had enough near scrapes during night drives to made her cautious.

  She was peering out the forward port—calling it a “windshield” was too much of a compliment to Red Rover's speed—and so was the first to see it.

  A hard, hot fire moving in the sky.

  Marc had seen it too. “Airbus,” he grunted.

  A boom slammed into the rover, startling her. “Shock wave?”

  “Reentry profile, lessee—that puts them maybe twenty klicks up,” Marc said.

  “Through their aerobraking, for sure. Pretty low, wouldn't you say?”

  “Yeah. Bright as hell!”

  “Nukes run hotter.”

  “We're seeing the exhaust plume. It's squashed, see, pushed back by ram pressure.”

  “Look, I can see its light reflecting on the ship.”

  A shiny silver needle atop a ball of orange fire.

  “It's close!” Marc stood up in excitement.

  “Going to land at our base?” She thumbed on her mike, preparing to tell Viktor.

  “No, look, it's—we can see it clearly! It's coming here.”

  “That's crazy!”

  But true. The fir
eball came steadily down, slowing, prowling across the cold night sky sprinkled with unwinking stars. The plume's brilliance made the stars fade as it got closer. They craned to look up as the blaring light arced toward them.

  “It's coming down wrong!” she shouted.

  “They must be off-target. Shooting for the hab, but fifteen klicks north.”

  “We copy,” came Viktor's voice.

  “It's coming down in the pingos,” she spoke into the mike.

  “Wait, it's stopped.” Marc pressed his face against the port. “Hovering there.”

  Sand and pebbles rattled on the rover. A steady roar was getting louder—the sound of the rocket exhaust.

  Julia realized that they were still moving, on autodrive. She turned to face directly toward the hard, fierce flame that hung on the horizon, then stopped the rover. The plume came lower, kissed the soil.

  “It's maybe a klick away from us,” Julia called to Viktor. “You figure it somehow locked on our carrier wave, mistook it for the hab?”

  “Dumb mistake, if so,” Viktor said.

  “It's hovering,” Marc called. “Maybe they're confused.”

  A big rock tumbled into view of their headlights. Hammering grit rained on them. Abruptly a loud smack rang out and she saw the glass before her face starred with thin white lines.

  “Turn around!” Marc said. “It's blowing a lot of crap around.”

  She steered them sideways, enough to still see through the small side window and not expose the forward port. “Viktor, it's still just hanging there.”

  “No,” Marc said, “it's drifting to the south.”

  “Looking for a landing spot?” Viktor called.

  Pebbles sang against the roof. “Nobody would take this long to land,” Julia said.

  “Look, fog!” Marc pointed.

  “Clouds under the plume,” Julia reported to Viktor.

  “Sure is not dust?” Viktor asked.

  “No, it's white!” Marc shouted.

  Julia remembered the fog in the vent. “Water!”

  “They are using water rocket?” Viktor said. “Axelrod's agents, they say the fuel is something else—”

  “There wasn't any fog before, not on the way down,” Julia said. “This is new.”

  Big billows of creamy clouds boiled out from beneath the gemlike flame. They reflected the brilliant light upward and she could see the shiny ship holding steady, several hundred meters off the ground, coasting slowly away to the south.