He walked over to the pavilion and back. The short walk did him good. Lance stopped and looked up. The sun looked pallid. It no longer seemed as strange to him as it had shortly after their landing.
Suddenly, a small hill appeared on the northern horizon. Lance noticed it immediately, because nothing in the Mars landscape ever moved. What was coming? What was that? Whatever was approaching the station wasn’t an ordinary rover.
“Mike, do you see that?” Lance asked the bridge over his helmet radio.
“Yes, there’s something there, on the horizon.”
“Can you make out details, Mike?”
“I have zoomed the surveillance camera in as much as possible, but there’s too much dust in the air. The image is very blurry, but it doesn’t look like a rover to me.”
“That was my impression as well. I’m going to move a little closer to the thing.”
“Are you crazy, Lance? What if it’s something totally different?”
“What could it possibly be? Ewa announced that she was coming today, so she’s got to be the one sitting at the wheel. I don’t believe in ghosts.”
Lance set off. It was a bright day, and he had enough air to last until sunset. The walk would do him good. Besides, this way he would be the first one to see Ewa’s present—or the first one Ewa would kill. Lance hoped he would be able to warn the others before that happened.
The hill on the horizon was slowly looming larger. The vehicle heading his way wasn’t moving especially fast. Lance looked over his shoulder. The base was about two kilometers behind him. He estimated that Ewa was approaching at about the speed of a bicycle. Thirty minutes later, he was able to make out a few details in the haze. There were two vehicles. One of them seemed to be driving behind the other, a little off to the side. Since Ewa was alone, she had to be driving one and operating the other by remote control. The vehicle at the back seemed to be somewhat flatter than the one at the front. That was as much as he could tell since the two of them were driving toward him.
“Bridge to Lance, you’re already fairly far away. You know that, right?” he heard Sharon ask.
Sharon and Mike have to be sitting together on the bridge by now, he thought. “No problem,” he replied. “I have enough air.”
“We’re still concerned. If something happens, nobody will be able to help you all that quickly.”
“What could go wrong, Sharon?”
“Listen, Ewa has five people on her conscience. What if this is a trick, and she wants to kill you, too?”
“That doesn’t make any sense to me. Why would she call in yesterday? And why would she bring a second vehicle with her?”
“What did you say? A second vehicle? Our camera can’t bring the image into focus,” Mike said.
“Yeah, she’s bringing it in tow. I’m fine out here,” Lance replied.
“Just be careful, all right?”
Lance was glad to hear that it was Sarah who was asking this of him. And, with that, he continued toward Ewa.
The vehicle rolling toward him was truly extraordinary. It seemed to be made up of four thick steel beams that were pointing toward him and were connected to each other by cross braces. The construction looked as if someone had tipped over one of those large electrical pylons from Earth before loading it onto a truck with its feet facing forward. Located at the upper center was a cab covered by a transparent material, looking like it had been deposited into the metal structure like a clutch of insect eggs. Ewa was presumably steering the strange vehicle from there. What purpose did it serve? Logic told him that it must be valuable. Otherwise Ewa wouldn’t have brought it along with her.
Objects on Mars weren’t valuable because of their costly materials, but because they were useful and aided in survival. He would swap a gold necklace for a roll of duct tape, for instance, any day of the week. If he could see the vehicle from the side, it would probably be easy to guess its use. A few minutes ago, when Ewa had been forced to steer around a small crater, Lance had noticed that the vehicle was relatively long and had more than two axles.
The second vehicle, which closely followed the other’s route, was an easier puzzle. Attached to the front, he had made out something that looked like a shovel. This was presumably a loader. Very useful, he thought. If Ewa left just this one vehicle with them, they could significantly speed up the expansion of their base.
Lance began to daydream. It would be nice to have a little more living space, but there were things more important than that. They could increase their greenhouse area tenfold and more quickly decrease their dependence on the supplies they had brought from Earth. These they could keep for truly bad periods. Of course, they would have to plan things out carefully since crop cultivation required water and energy, neither of which they had in endless supply yet.
“Lance to bridge,” he said.
“We can hear you,” Mike replied.
“The vehicle in the back seems to be a loader. You should go ahead and start imagining what all you’d like to do with it.”
He probably hadn’t needed to express the last sentence. His colleagues’ imaginations would have already started spinning at the word loader. He recalled their discussion from yesterday. Maybe they shouldn’t even accept a gift like this. Or they could accept it and pass it along to MfE. On the other hand, what harm would it bring for them to use the machine for the next three weeks to excavate their future garden space?
Lance gazed northward. Ewa should be close enough that he could reach her over his helmet radio. He tried the MfE frequency first, but nobody responded. Ewa probably didn’t have her old MfE suit any longer. He didn’t know which frequency the Spaceliner project would use for future communications, but he could try out the normal channels.
“Lance to Ewa, please come in,” he repeated over and over again, waiting a few seconds before switching to another channel.
“Ewa here. What...”
Click. Oh crap, he had moved too fast. He switched back to the previous channel.
“... middle of the desert?” he heard the last part of Ewa’s sentence.
“Lance here,” he repeated. “Somebody had to pick you up.”
“Do you just happen to be out here to see if I’m completely insane and plan to kill all of you?”
Yes, that was at least part of the reason he was here, but he would keep that to himself. “No,” Lance said instead, “that wasn’t my motivation. I didn’t plan to sacrifice myself for the others if that ended up being your goal.”
“Got it,” Ewa said. “I seem to have started this conversation on the wrong foot. Sorry about that. I assume you lose all your social skills when you’ve been on your own as long as I’ve been. It’s nice to hear a human voice.”
“I’ll be honest with you. We’re not sure what we should do with you,” Lance said. “There’s a possibility that we’ll send you back out into the desert tomorrow.”
“You’d be justified to do that. I told you that already.” Ewa’s voice sounded neutral, as if it really wouldn’t bother her to be banished again. “I’d just be glad to have a chance to try to make up at least a little for the damage I caused.”
“Aren’t your MfE colleagues the first ones you need to make up with?”
“Absolutely, Lance. But they’re probably still a long way from letting me make amends. I thought I’d have better odds with all of you.”
“We’ll see. What kind of vehicle are you driving my way?”
“It’s a surprise. I’ll see you in ten minutes.”
A man-sized rubber tire rolled silently toward him. It was slowing down. Lance watched as its tread churned the Mars sand. It came to a stop. Some of the sand it had picked up trickled back down to the ground. Lance took a step forward to touch the tire. He could feel the warmth of the rubber through his glove. The tread looked practically new. He dropped his hand from the tire and walked clockwise around the vehicle. It had ten axles. Even from the side, it looked like a fallen electrical pylon. A ladder
extended from the cab, somewhere near the center of the vehicle. He saw Ewa wave from behind the window, but decided to finish his inspection.
Lance began to see what this vehicle was used for. He had discovered the glinting metal of a drill pipe beneath the cab. If you set the metal structure upright, it created a stable drilling tower. With the drill pipe, you could dig far into the planet’s crust. Ewa had brought them a powerful drill that was probably twenty times as productive as their own robotic drill.
“Don’t you want to come in?” she asked.
“Is there an airlock?” he asked in return. He hadn’t seen one, which meant he couldn’t enter the cabin unless Ewa pulled on her spacesuit and expelled the air first, and that would be a waste.
“No, unfortunately not,” she said.
He had guessed that. “Then I’ll just ride along on the ladder. We don’t have all that far to go.”
“Whatever you say,” Ewa said. “Please grab on!”
Lance grasped the ladder and pulled himself up. His position wasn’t especially comfortable, but he could manage for half an hour or so. “All set,” he said.
“Then, let’s go,” Ewa replied.
The huge tires began to turn again. Lance watched in fascination as the vehicle gained speed. From up here—three meters above Mars’s surface—it felt much faster than it had looked before. “How fast are we going?” he asked.
“Fifteen kilometers per hour,” Ewa replied.
So, no faster than riding a bike. Lance glanced over his shoulder. He couldn’t see the other vehicle, but it was presumably trailing them. The pavilion, the antennae, and the KRUSTY soon came into view. “Watch out. The base is underground,” he warned Ewa.
“Don’t worry. I’ve been here already, remember? I’ll park a hundred meters away, just to be safe.”
“Thanks,” he said.
One thought darted through his mind. What if Ewa doesn’t stop the drill far enough away, but simply uses it to crash into the base? The bridge’s roof won’t be able to withstand that. I would only be able to watch as my friends and my partner died. But, no, that won’t happen.
Nonetheless, he climbed a few more rungs up the ladder. This put Lance closer to the cab, and if worse came to worst, he would try to break through the cab panels, incapacitate Ewa, and take over the steering.
“The glass structure up ahead is new,” Ewa said.
Lance groaned because his left arm, with which he had been holding on to the ladder, had fallen asleep. “That’s our pavilion. It’s connected to our base by a tunnel and it’s filled with air.”
“That’s smart. Now you can sun yourselves on the surface,” Ewa said.
“In theory. In reality, we’re already getting more than enough cosmic radiation. I’d rather not spend any more time lying out in the sun, unprotected.”
“I still like the thought. By the way, we’re only five minutes out.”
“Good.”
Lance brushed the dust from his helmet. With every rotation, the tires kicked up more dirt his way. “Lance to the bridge,” he called over his helmet radio. “We’re almost there.”
“Yes,” Mike replied. “We’ve been in contact with Ewa. We’ll be waiting for you on the surface.”
At that moment, Lance watched a person appear out of Mars. It was a strange image because the station was practically invisible. Suddenly there was a person in a spacesuit who hadn’t been there a moment before. One person rapidly turned into two, and then three. Lance couldn’t tell who was who—they were all pretty similar in size.
He realized that the heavy vehicle was slowing down. He climbed down a couple of rungs. When the vehicle reached walking speed, he hopped to the ground. It was only in hindsight that he realized what a bad call that had been. If he had stumbled, he could have fallen underneath the next tire. He was annoyed that, once again, he had acted so impetuously.
The drill slowly rolled to a halt. Lance walked over to his colleagues. Sarah greeted him with a hug. “Have you already guessed what Ewa’s brought?” he asked the group.
“Ewa told us. It’s a drill, and a doozy at that,” Mike said.
“I immediately thought about the water reserves Mike and Sharon found ten kilometers east of the base,” Sarah said. “If we could tap into them, we could increase our food production and stop relying on our stores within two months.”
“We’re not totally sure what we found was the actual water table, don’t forget,” Mike said. “All we know is that some of the radio waves bounced off something there. Don’t get too excited yet.”
“What else could it be?” Sarah asked.
“Maybe an iron deposit. Or simply a boundary layer between two rock types.”
“But with the drill, we could take a look without much effort. Then we’d know.”
“Yes, that’s true,” Mike agreed.
“By the way, Ewa’s getting out now,” Sharon cut in.
All four of them turned to look at the drill before slowly starting to move toward it. A slender figure climbed down the ladder that was attached to the side of the vehicle. Mike led the way. As Commander, he was responsible for official greetings.
Ewa slowly walked toward them. Lance was glad he wasn’t the one who had to break the ice.
“Hello, Ewa,” Mike said.
“Hello, Mike.”
“I... It’s a surprise to see you here. Nice suit, by the way.”
“Life is full of surprises,” Ewa said. “The suit is the most advanced Spaceliner technology. The joints are motorized.”
“And you?”
“I’m not motorized.” Ewa laughed. “I know what you mean. I thought that before I died a pointless death, I would try to atone for a few things.”
“That’s an honorable thing to do. You have to understand that we’re unsure about your actual motives. You weren’t exactly honest about them in the past. Are you now?”
“I’m offering you these two machines without any strings attached. Also, I have other supplies on board, including three of these amazing spacesuits.”
Lance had the feeling that Ewa wanted to neatly sidestep Mike’s question.
“It’s an offer,” Ewa continued, “that will definitely make your survival easier. You can expand your base. The times aren’t going to get any better. Whatever provisions you brought with you will eventually run out. By that point, your base will have to be completely self-sustaining. You’ll be able to get a good head start on that with this equipment.”
“That’s true,” Mike said.
“But you don’t have to accept it. That’s obvious. You might want to hand the machines over to my old MfE friends. That would be completely fine.”
“Why aren’t you taking the vehicles to them yourself?”
“I... I can’t do that. No, that’s wrong. They wouldn’t take them from me. Perhaps they would from you.”
“Okay, that makes sense,” Mike said.
“If I may jump in, Mike, what I wonder first and foremost,” Sharon said, “is how can we be certain that we can trust you? Is there any assurance that you can give us? Did something cause you to change your way of thinking? How can we know that you won’t return to your old ways the day after tomorrow?”
Those were Lance’s questions, too. He saw Sarah nod in agreement.
Ewa sighed. “I’ve been anticipating that question. I can’t give you an exhaustive answer without making you think that I’m crazy.”
“You’re speaking in riddles,” Sharon said.
“I know. It’s still a puzzle to me, in part, too. Please give me some time, and I will explain it to you. However, if you want some kind of instant assurance, I can show you something.”
“Yes, that would be good,” Sharon said.
Ewa sighed again before rummaging around in her tool bag. She pulled out an object that looked like a gun.
“Whoa,” Mike cried, apparently the first one to realize the object’s function. He leapt at Ewa to try to wrest the gun from he
r.
“Wait,” Ewa said wearily, holding the barrel against her chest. “If I ever prove to be a threat to any of you again, I’ll pull the trigger on myself. I promise.”
Those are sincere words, Lance thought. She looked sincere, and he had the feeling that she would follow through on her vow if the occasion arose. But he had no idea what was behind her promise. It sounded to him as though Ewa weren’t solely responsible for her murderous behavior—or at least, that was what she thought. Even so, he didn’t find that completely convincing. They would need to keep an eye on Ewa.
“All right,” Mike said. “That was an impressive performance. I suggest that we continue this conversation on the bridge.”
“I have a better idea,” Lance said.
8/14/2042, Spaceliner 1
“Hi, Terran. May I speak to you for a moment?”
Chad was standing in the engineer’s doorway. Terran had already agreed to take part in a small test, provided that it wouldn’t put him in a bad light somehow. Chad couldn’t blame him. Rick Summers, the administrator, seemed to have a problem with minority rights. This didn’t make the situation easier for Terran, who was open about his homosexuality. When Jean had been in command, he had believed she would never tolerate any form of discrimination. But now that the word of Summers had become law, Terran had to be careful in order to not lose his job, because after a short three-month period in space, engineers like him were going to be urgently needed.
“Come in and shut the door,” Terran replied, as they had agreed beforehand. “We don’t need to air this to everyone.”
Over the past weeks, they had met more frequently, so that today’s conversation would look like a normal conversation between close acquaintances.
Chad closed the door and sat down on Terran’s bed. The cabin was small. In addition to the two of them, a microphone was listening to their words. What they didn’t know was if someone was following their conversation live, or if everything was being recorded.
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