by Jack Dann
His head swam for a moment, and he shook it. His vision blurred and doubled as if his head was a giant bell that had just been struck. He gripped his perch tighter and held still. After a moment, it passed. The landscape streamed by beneath him, soothing and hypnotic.
We’ve always looked down at the surface of Mars and imagined things. First, God of War. Next, an arid desert world where intelligence clung to life with massive feats of engineering. Then the dead and dry thing we knew today.
But it wasn’t dead! He knew there was life here.
The landscape had changed again from dunefield to dark rocks, rectilinear and almost artificial in appearance. It reminded him of ancient Mayan ruins. Or was it Egypt? Or Stonehenge?
Details swam and ran and resolved themselves again. The rectilinear lines became sharper and more regular. Now he could see individual stones, etched into fantastic designs by the passage of time.
Etched? By what? He shook his head again, and details leaped out: fantastic whorls and patterns, ancient art of the highest order. It wasn’t etched by weather. It was etched by intelligence!
Were those patterns he saw in the sand as well? Did they cover ancient squares where people once gathered? For a blinding instant, he could see the entire city as it had stood towering over the rough Martian surface…
“Stop!” he cried. His voice sounded strangely high and strangled.
“What?” Wendy said. “Why?”
“It’s them!” Geoff said. “Intelligence! The city below us… there’s a city below us!”
The two looked down, scanning back and forth with puzzled looks.
“Geoff?” Wende said. “What are you talking about?”
“The city! Look at the stones! They’re square! Look at the language on them!”
“Geoff, that isn’t funny.”
A crackle. The voice of Frank Sellers from the Can. “What do you see?”
“A city,” Geoff said. “The remains of a city. Stones! Writing! Decoration!”
“Land,” Frank said.
“No way!” Laci said.
“The Roddenberry clause says you have to investigate any overt evidence of life,” Frank said. “Sorry.”
“But there’s nothing below us!” Wende said. “Just a rockfield.”
“Land. You have to. Contract breach if you don’t.”
“Shit!” Laci said. Wende grumbled, but they began to fall from the sky.
“Turn around,” Geoff said. “The best part is behind us.”
Wende wheeled around and he saw it all, the geometric perfection, the ancient city and all its splendor.
“I still don’t see it,” Wende said. “Frank, can you review our last imagery?”
“Yep,” Frank said. “Continue landing. It’ll take me a few minutes.”
Wende picked a relatively clear section of sand and for a moment they were all acting as landing gear, running over the sand.
Geoff ’s legs felt heavy and weak, and he buckled under the weight of the Kite. Down this close, he could see nothing. Rocks were just rocks. Sand was just sand. There was no great city.
“Geoff? You alright?” That was Wende. Pretty Wende. Nice of her to think about him.
Frank’s voice crackled back on. “False alarm,” he said. “I don’t see anything other than some regular volcanic cracking. That’s probably what fooled you, Geoff.”
“I’m no fool!” he shouted. He had seen it! He had!
Silence for a time. Finally: “What does Geoff look like? Is he blue?”
“No,” Wende said. “But he looks funny. Patchy, splotchy. Oh, shit. Does he have a bug?”
“More likely an oxy malfunction. He may be cranked up too high. Funny, that usually doesn’t cause hallucinations, but…”
“I saw it!” Geoff cried.
Wende was shrugging out of her harness.
“No,” Laci said. “Wende, get back in your harness. We need to fly!”
“It’ll only take a minute,” Frank said.
“It won’t kill him.”
“Yes it will. Eventually.”
“Then we take the chance.”
Wende had stopped shrugging out of her harness, under Laci’s hard glare. Frank said nothing. Geoff watched them for a moment, thinking, I saw it! I did! I really did! There was a distant babble on the comm and things got very bright.
Then Wende’s face bent over him. “I’m not like the other monster,” she said. “Let’s get him fixed up.”
“Good girls,” Frank said. “Here, open his panel and look for…”
He said it would only take a minute, but it took over ten. When they were all back on board and soaring into the sky, even the Rothman team had passed them.
RETRACTION
NASA came back. This time with two grinning executives and their own camera crew. Following them were fifty thousand people who jammed the Burbank streets in cars and on bikes and on foot, holding banners saying “Free Enterprise!” and “New frontiers, not new Oversight!” and of course, “NASA SUCKS!”
Jere and Evan couldn’t help grinning.
Within a day, the video of the NASA/Oversight shakedown had been posted on a thousand message boards and ten thousand blogs. The raw video almost brought the AV IM network to its knees in the US, Japan, France, Russia, and even parts of China. A thousand pundits spouted off about “The New Stalin,” “The New Face of Censorship,” the fact that the Constitution had long been paved over, the free-enterprise foundation of the country, and the “Taking of the New Frontier.”
The New Frontier had struck the core audience like a well-spoken diatribe supporting socialized health care at a meeting of Reformed Republicans. Survivalists polished their weapons and streamed out of the Sierras and Appalachians and half-forgotten Nebraska missile silos to demonstrate. TrekCon 18 turned into a huge caravan that converged on Sacramento, trapping senators in their buildings, demanding the governor secede so that Neteno could go about its business. Eventually, over a million people gathered there, some in overalls and prickly beards and armed with shotguns, some wearing Klingon outfits, some housewives in SUVs, some businessmen who worked in aviation and space and engineering. In three days, two slogans were posted at over ten million websites, plastered on bumper stickers, hung from suction-cups behind windows: Free Enterprise, and Give Us New Frontiers.
Three days after the video hit the net, Jere received a discreet phone call from a higher-up at NASA/Oversight. Jere made his own counteroffer.
A day after that, he received another phone call, politely accepting the prime sponsorship for the mission, for a price greater than the entire funds they had collected to date. The launch would go forward as planned. Jere and Evan were still the primes. The only difference was that there would be another discreet logo added on the ship and the suits.
Evan looked at Jere as the NASA muckty spouted off about “New Partnership with Business,” and how wonderful this opportunity was under the big Neteno sign out in front of the building. The press had built a wall around the crowd with cameras and laptops and transmission equipment. The crowd looked happy, vindicated, relieved. As if they were thinking, Good, good, we still have the power, we still live in a free country.
“We are proud to be able to support this effort,” the muckty said. “For less than the cost of a single robotic Mars lander, we are sending the first manned mission to Mars. With this mission, we have again leaped ahead of the Chinese. We see this as a model for future exploration of space: USG Oversight and private industry, working hand-in-hand to accomplish our goals.”
Some applause, some boos, some catcalls. But it was done. They were back on track. It even got them their advertising hook: Free Enterprise. That was really catching on in a big way, simmering around the net.
So now it’s more than a game, he thought. It’s a demonstration of some of the things that people will need to do to conquer the red planet. Or at least we spin it that way.
He looked at Evan and his hard, unblinking eyes.
To him, it was still just a game.
A game played hard, winner take all.
DYING
Frank was lying to them again. Mike Kinsson didn’t blame him. What was he going to tell them otherwise? Sorry, you’re out of luck, best to just ditch the headers and pop off quick.
“We’re still seeing if we can rig one of the Returns for remote operation,” Frank said.
“How much longer?” Juelie whined.
It was the morning of the third day. Later, Mike would go and wander around. Juelie and Sam looked like two teenagers who had just discovered sex, and they were probably happy to have the privacy. He’d already walked over to the nearby cliffs, turning over rocks, hoping beyond hope to see the tell-tale carpet of a lichen. He still remembered the first time his mother and father had taken him to the Griffith Observatory, and they had talked about what life might be like on other planets. Lichens and primitive plants for Mars, they’d said. It had fascinated him in a way that nothing had ever done, before or since.
“We’re hoping to have a definitive answer by the end of the day,” Frank said.
“What if it takes longer?” Sam said.
“Then we wait.”
“We’re running out of food!” Juelie said.
“We know. Please conserve your energy.”
They both looked at Mike. Mike looked right back at them, thinking, Like what you were doing wasn’t more strenuous than my walk.
He edged away from them. What would they do when they found out there really wasn’t any rescue coming? Maybe it would be best just to wander off, and stay wandered off.
“He’s walking away!” Juelie said.
“Mild physical exertion won’t hurt,” Frank said.
They didn’t come after him.
He walked past the cliffs from the day before and came to a place where sand and rocks made a steep slope down into a small valley. Rivulets had been cut in the surface of the slope, some still knife-edged.
He remembered old satellite images. Could he be near a place where water was near the surface? He paused to dig into one of the little channels, but turned up only dry sand and dust and pebbles.
He wandered on. He’d keep walking and see where his feet took him. Until it was time to lie down and turn down the heaters as far as they went. Maybe some real pioneer, fifty years from now, would find his desiccated body and say, This is the other guy, the one who wandered away from camp.
It wasn’t a pleasant thought.
But it was better than imagining Juelie and Sam, when the real news came down.
LAUNCH
Russian summer was the same as Russian winter, except the black ice had been replaced by mud. And it was an entire caravan this time, reporters and pundits and hangers-on, all loudly complaining about the facilities. They swarmed the tiny town, like ants on a dead cockroach. Reporters slept in taverns, in houses, in barns, in the street if they had to. NO FOOD signs hung from many of the restaurants and bars.
“Shouldn’t they pay us extra for the tourism?” Evan said.
“It won’t last,” Jere said.
“Sure it will. There are enough bored reporters around here to crank out five thousand local-interest pieces. And people will travel anywhere.”
Then it was launch day, and Jere didn’t know how to feel. He should be worried. He should be thinking about what would happen if the whole shebang blew up on the ground. If that happened, everyone would howl for blood. They would be crucified. If they were lucky.
All because they didn’t get their daily dose of excitement. A-muse-ment, Ron used to call it. Non-thinking. To muse is to think, and to A-muse was not to think. Which is what most people wanted. Give them a roof and food and someone to screw, let them buy a few shiny things from time to time, and all they really cared about was filling the gaping void of their lives. They didn’t want to muse. They wanted to A-muse.
And God help the person who promised amusement, but didn’t come through.
It was a short ride to the launch site. The crowd outside the gates parted for them as they drove to the official grandstand and made their way to the little box at the top. Ron collapsed in his seat with a grunt. Jere and Evan book-ended him. They were sitting on camp chairs that looked like they could have come from a Napoleonic campaign.
“Crunch time,” Evan said softly.
“Yes,” Ron said.
“Anyone in a betting mood?” He rubbed his hands.
“Shut up,” Ron said.
Again, Jere was glad to have the old man. Without Ron, Evan would have woven a web tighter and tighter. Evan still held too many purse strings, and was hiding a lot of money, but they could deal with that later.
Ahead of them, the ship towered over the bleak landscape. Gleaming steel and clouds of vapor, a high-tech pillar aimed at the deep blue sky.
One minute. The few people on the field scampered to cover.
Ten seconds.
Jere held his breath.
The numbers flickered down on the big board.
There was an explosion of light and a mind-numbing roar. The Plexiglas windows of the little booth jittered and shook.
Jere held up a hand to shield his eyes. It’s exploded, it’s all over, it’s done, I’m done.
But then the cheering of the crowd roused him. He looked at them in disbelief. What were they cheering for? Were they crazy? Did they actually want to see blood?
Then his father pointed and shouted, “Look!”
The pillar was rising into the sky.
Slowly at first, then faster. It was a hundred feet up. Two hundred. Then as tall as a skyscraper, balancing on a long white tail of flame. The wind battered the grandstand and beat at the throngs, standing hundreds deep. The smell of burnt mud and concrete worked its way into the shelter. Sand and dust and grit pattered against the Plexiglas.
My God, Jere thought, as Mars Enterprise rose higher. Its flame no longer touched the Earth. It gathered speed like a jet, shrinking smaller and faster as it rose up and arced out.
Eventually, the roar reduced itself to a shout, then a mild grumbling. Mars Enterprise was a bright speck in the sky.
They had done it.
“Congratulations,” Ron said.
“For what?” Jere said.
His dad allowed himself a thin grin. “You’ve done something that no government has ever been able to do.”
“But… it wasn’t… it was just a…”
Ron held up a hand. “Shh,” he said.
HONEYMOON
“Come on!” Alena said. “Come on come on come on!”
The Can had been embargoing the status of the teams for an hour, but Glenn knew they were close. They’d made it from dead last to nearly tied with the Paul guy before the Can shut up.
“What can I do?” he asked.
“I don’t know! I was talking to the Kite, not you!”
“I’ll think positive thoughts.”
“Good for you!”
Glenn smiled. And what could he do, other than stay lashed up under the belly of the Kite for minimum aerodynamic drag? Nothing.
The next one they should make more manual, he thought. Human-powered Kites and Wheels. None of this motor crap.
“Look!” Alena pointed.
Glenn strained his eyes. Very far in the distance, he could just catch the glint of metal. “Is that it?”
“Yeah, that’s it! Come on come on come on come on!”
Alena looked at him, and he saw the girl who he’d fallen in love with, the woman he’d proposed to. She was smiling, her color high and eyes flashing. It was impossible not to love her when she was winning.
Where was Paul? If the race was as close as he thought, he should be able to see his Kite, bright white against the pale sky. He scanned from left to right, but saw nothing.
Whoever makes it to the Returns, wins. They were automatic. There was no way to race to orbit.
Another look. No Kite. Was it possible that Paul had run int
o trouble? Could they really be first?
Karma will get you all the time, he thought.
From ahead of them, a bright flare. The Kite rocked as Alena started violently.
“No!” she said. “No no no no no!”
“Paul,” Glenn said.
“How much longer?” Alena asked.
“A couple of minutes. But it’s…”
“Go faster!”
“It only takes three minutes to orbit!”
“I don’t care!” Her face was twisted into a mask of anguish.
Glenn fell silent and let the only sound be that of the rushing wind and roaring motor. The Return field grew ahead of them, big enough so they could see the remains of Paul’s Kite. He had had a hard landing.
When they landed, Alena scrambled to the nearest Return pod and began the launch prep. But when the prep was still less than halfway done, the voices from the Can came back. This time it was the female PA. She sounded tired.
“We have a winner,” she said. “Keith Paul is now back on board the Mars Enterprise. To our other teams, thank you for a great competition. Please travel safely on your way back. There’s no need to hurry now.”
“No!” Alena wailed. She beat on the low bench of the Return pod. Glenn tried to gather her in his arms, but she pushed him away violently. He tumbled out onto the cold sand and lay for a moment, stunned, staring up at the alien sky.
“Glenn?” Glenn shook his head, but said nothing.
“Glenn?” Frightened.
She came out of the pod and knelt atop him, her eyes red from crying. “Glenn!” she said, shaking him.
“What?” he said.
“Glenn, I can’t hear you! Are you okay?”
“What?” He reached behind him and felt the suit’s radio. It seemed okay. Of course, he could have hit something in his fall… He shrugged and gave her the thumb-and-forefinger “OK” sign.
“I heard you hit and a big hiss and I thought you’d broken your header.” She was crying even more now, big tears hitting the inside of her header and running down toward her chest.