by Corey Ostman
“What about Mazz?” Grace asked, with a sinking feeling in her stomach. Was Mazz about to go berserk? Is that why Tim was hearing it?
“I hear Mazz speak,” said Tim. “But at the same time, I hear others. Many others. I didn’t realize it was communication at first. It isn’t English. It isn’t any language I know. It’s raw data structured like speech. Does that make sense?” He turned his head away, though he still looked at her from the corner of his eye. Grace noticed he was trembling. She stroked his head and back, hoping to calm him.
“No, it doesn’t make sense,” she said. “But I’m here for you. Keep talking.”
“Mazz doesn’t seem aware of it, but Mazz and I are both connected to the twofers we’ve been passing. I can sense data coming from outside the ship. Like when my blue gel was at ITB.”
Grace remembered when she had used a bit of Tim’s blue gel ‘brain’ to spy on illegal activity at her former job. Once she’d dropped the gel into a port, Tim had been able to stroll through ITB’s networks.
“Can you, uh, firewall it or something?” Grace asked.
“No,” Tim said. “I can’t shut it off. I’m woven into it. Like it’s my network.”
Her ptenda pinged. It was Wragg.
“Look Tim, I’ve gotta—”
“I know,” he said. “Can we talk more when you return?”
“Sure.” Grace smiled. “But I want you to go to Raj with this. It doesn’t matter how much you think he likes Anna, or what you two said to each other. If he can spend days looking over a hollow twofer, he’ll surely spend time dealing in real problems with his best friend.”
“Yeah.” Tim’s answer was noncommittal.
Grace grabbed Marty and raced to the airlock. The captain was waiting for her, but she didn’t note any impatience on his part. He simply helped her into a suit, no questions asked. She was grateful for the respect.
Fully suited, they went through the airlock and onto the surface. Grace stopped and stared at the rolling dunes. The basin was beautiful: a gently undulating surface swathed in pastel shades of orange and blue. The rim of the crater was distant—like the purple haze of the Rockies—more suggestion than reality. Eyes on the horizon, Grace stepped forward, but rocked as the sand shifted beneath her feet. Wragg reached out a hand to steady her.
“Careful,” he breathed. “The footing here is difficult. More than usual. They must have had a storm.”
“It’s beautiful here.”
“Is it?” Wragg looked around as though noticing for the first time. “I guess I was too busy on the comm.”
“Did they answer?” Grace asked.
“Yes, they’re expecting us.” Wragg gestured to her left.
Grace turned. Evidence of human habitation was nearby: a jumble of orange-red mounds and weather-beaten slabs of metarm. Ahead was a hemisphere, its surface like a badly peeled orange, generously dusted with sand. Four smaller mounds were grouped nearby. A weathered sign read: ICHARDSO. The ‘R’ and the ‘N’ were missing.
Grace and the captain walked across the sand, thin ribbons of ice crunching underfoot. Wragg pointed toward a human-sized aperture inset near the base of the dome: their entrance.
The hatch pulsed green as they came within arm’s length, opening. Wragg motioned for her to enter first, then stepped into the confined space and spun the hatch shut.
“Cozy in here,” Grace said. Their helmets bumped, and she could see Wragg’s eyes smile in answer.
“A smaller lock than most cruisers,” he agreed.
“Now I’m wondering what’s on the other side of the door.”
“Not much,” said Wragg. “You’ve seen the best part.”
“Glad I did.”
She watched as the pressure indicator approached standard. It stopped just shy of the mark and the airlock opened with a loud thud.
A short, balding man in a red jumper waited for them inside. He glanced briefly at their sidearms, attached to clips outside their suits, then motioned to their helmets.
As Grace lifted her helmet, the stale, sickly sweet air hit her nostrils. Why am I removing my helmet? This smells worse than Raj’s Bod Town apartment.
“Welcome. Name’s Dawson,” he said, wiping his hand across his paunch and extending it toward the captain.
“Captain Wragg and Protector Donner.” The captain shook his hand and Grace did likewise, noting Dawson’s relief in her friendly handshake after the captain’s vise-grip.
She looked around the room behind Dawson. It was probably the main social space in this tiny outpost. A threadbare green carpet covered the floor. Six tables, two rows of three, lay empty in the center of the room. A food printer was on one wall and what looked suspiciously like a homemade still sat next to it.
“Anybody else around?” Grace asked.
“Yes, but I won the lottery,” Dawson said. “We have so few visitors that we hold a raffle to choose who interacts with outsiders.”
He motioned to the nearest table.
“C’mon. Have a seat. I want to hear everything about what’s going on in the north. How’re people holding up with the loss of the twofers?”
Grace and Wragg sat down.
“It was ugly up in Elysium a few weeks ago,” Wragg said. “It’s still a dangerous situation, but it’s quieted down now that martial law’s in place. How about you?”
Dawson shrugged. “We only had one, so no big deal. It went crazy one day heading out to service our rim telescope. Never came back.”
“Did you see many pass by here?” Grace asked.
“Quite a few twofers. We didn’t get in their way, though. We heard about the berserks.” He grinned at her. “And other people, of course. Three ships in the last two weeks alone. More’n we normally get in a year.”
“I can understand the attraction,” Wragg said. “I should’ve made it sooner. It’s beautiful down here.”
Dawson’s brow furrowed. “Don’t be coy, Captain. We all know the twofers were headed south.”
“So other cruisers came through?” Grace interrupted.
Dawson looked back at her. “Well, not nice ones like yours. Last one was a small craft. Kinda beat up. I only saw it for a moment. We had a bad sandstorm here yesterday.”
“Where were they going?” she asked.
“South, like I said! Same direction the twofers went. Don’t know exactly where. There’s still a lot of ‘where’ there, that way.” Dawson regarded them both. “Which ‘where’ are you going to?”
“Same. We’re curious about the twofers, too,” Grace shrugged. “And someone was willing to pay us to find out.” She was about to continue when Wragg touched her forearm.
“Could you tell us the geyser forecast?” he asked.
“Oh, I’m glad you asked. My boss Emil—he puts together the forecast—he’s been going stir crazy this season. I think he’s getting too old for Richardson, or Ichardso as the Red Lady was so kind to rename us, heh. Should probably head back to civilization.”
Dawson rolled up his left sleeve and tapped on a small commlink. He had no ptenda.
“Doctor Thomlin? They’d like a weather forecast.”
He smiled at them.
“He won’t be long.”
Grace heard running and a door behind Dawson opened. A tall, thin man stopped and panted in the doorway. He nervously ran a hand through his red curls and stepped into the room.
“Hello, visitors.”
Dawson smiled and pulled out a chair. “Have a seat, Professor.”
Thomlin rushed over to the table and perched on the edge of the offered chair.
“I’m Emil Thomlin—Doctor Emil Thomlin—but call me Emil, and I’m so happy to meet the two of—”
“Captain Wragg and Protector Donner,” Dawson said.
“Which is which?”
Dawson nodded toward the captain. “Wragg.”
Thomlin’s eyes shifted to Grace. “A protector? Why? Is someone in trouble?”
“Just hired crew,
professor,” Grace said.
Thomlin rubbed his hands together. “Oh, how thrilling! Dawson said you wanted a geyser forecast?”
Wragg nodded. “We’re headed directly to the south pole, and we’d like to know what to expect.”
“Understood. Well, you picked a perfect time of year. The sun has boiled off a large section of the main field and—”
“Boiled off?” asked Grace.
Thomlin stopped and smiled at her. “I do so love a healthy curiosity! Yes. There’s a thick layer of underlying carbon dioxide. As we enter spring, sunlight causes the geysers to erupt.”
He glanced down at the ptenda on his wrist. It was an interesting model—one Grace had never seen before. It looked like it had been taken apart more than once.
“If you make your heading two-eighty west, you should see a spectacular display without being in any danger.” He tapped quickly, and Grace’s ptenda lit up with forecast details. “Should still be valid. Those comm problems are messing with the relay network, so I haven’t been able to contact all of my sensors.” Thomlin smiled at Grace, leaning forward. “Are you going sightseeing, my dear? It’s the perfect season for gathering up ejecta…”
“Thanks for the forecast. We’d better head out.” Wragg rose, and Grace scrambled to follow.
“Oh, can’t you stay a bit—” Thomlin stopped short at the forbidding expression on Wragg’s face. “W-Well, thanks for stopping by. Come again soon!”
Dawson rose as well. “You can go back to work, Emil. I’ll show them out.”
Thomlin nodded and, with one last look at Grace, closed the door behind him.
“I’m sorry you can’t stay longer, too,” Dawson said. He got up and walked them over to the airlock. “Do watch your step, Captain. Protector.”
He was still talking as they sealed the inner door and put on their helmets. When Wragg evacuated the lock, he turned to Grace and smirked.
“Finally some quiet,” he said. “Poor men had better get back to a crowded dome, soon.”
“What’s ejecta?” Grace asked.
“Big hunks of basalt thrown out by the geysers. Bit of a novelty.”
The indicator on the exterior door flashed and Wragg unlocked it. They stepped out onto the rippled surface.
“I checked the mission plans before we left Gusev,” Wragg said as they walked across the shallow dunes and back to the Scout. “Nobody was scheduled to head south except for us.”
“Who, then?” Grace asked.
“I think it’s rogue prospectors. You heard Emil. Those ejecta souvenirs are hawked at all the major domes.”
“I didn’t quite understand what he meant by comm problems.”
Wragg scanned the horizon and then pointed to a lone figure far away.
“He was talking about twofer interference. See that twofer over there? Seems the robots have established a grid, and it’s causing problems for Richardson’s comm channels. Probably because the twofers scavenged circuits from local robot scrap.”
Grace remembered Tim’s dreams. The computer language. Are they AI? she wondered. Raj said he hadn’t seen anything to that end, but Tim’s talk of languages gave her pause.
Once aboard, Wragg went to the bridge to feed the forecast into the computer. Grace found Raj and Anna having tea in the dining hall.
“My PodPooch is still having communication problems,” Grace said. She poured herself a cup of tea.
“Tim Trouncer?” Raj was pretty good at faking surprise.
“Yeah, Raj, remember?” Anna said. “Grace’s dog is sensitive to the bands the twofers are using.”
“Oh, right.” Raj grabbed the cup with both hands and took a noisy slurp.
“Did you learn anything new about it?” Grace asked. She thought about the comm problem the folks at Richardson were having. “Could those twofers be messing with all Martian communication?”
“No—or not intentionally,” said Raj.
“From what we know, they’re involved in a large, one-way broadcast,” Anna explained. “The individual twofers are noisy, because they propagate the signal one to another. Communication disruption is a side effect.”
“Like Tim Trouncer?” Grace asked.
Anna and Raj nodded.
“Will it affect the Scout?”
“That was Richard’s question, too,” said Anna. “So far, so good. This system is fairly unique—must be the reason Mazz didn’t leave with the rest of the twofers.”
“But,” said Raj, “Mazz does register it, and was disrupted when it came into contact with one of the rogue twofers.”
“So the closer the Scout gets to wherever the robots are…?”
Raj and Anna exchanged a look.
“Wonderland,” said Grace.
Chapter 28
The next day, Grace found Richard and Wragg breakfasting on the bridge, pouring over navigation charts and pointing out landmarks. From their body language, they’d resolved their argument. They were now talking animatedly about the path ahead, Richard with his sugared tea and Wragg with his coffee black.
“The Essex went down in the winter. In the dark,” Richard said. “Somewhere out here. I can almost reach out…”
“We will have plenty of light,” Wragg said. “This time of year, the sun stays above the horizon for most of the day.”
Richard grinned. “We may see a glint from Essex and our journey will be over.” He snapped his fingers. “Simple.”
“Good morning, gentlemen,” said Grace.
Wragg saluted her with his mug. “Good morning.”
“Tea?” Richard poured a cup for Grace.
“Thanks. Seen anything yet?” She sipped. It was a fine, strong Darjeeling.
“Dunes,” offered Wragg unhelpfully.
“Not so many now, actually. Look,” said Richard, pointing to the view.
As the ship moved forward, the undulating terrain had given way to a glassy plain of ice. Grace noticed thin, dark, vertical lines near the horizon. They looked like silhouettes of trees.
“That’s the start of the geyser field,” Wragg explained when she asked. “As we get closer, you’ll get a better idea of the scale.”
“Are they like geysers back home?” she said.
“Bigger.”
An hour went by, and the lines got closer. They became columns that shimmered as they rose into the sun, their tops bending and falling into wispy arcs as the wind held sway. Grace leaned toward the viewscreen, eager to see.
Wragg deviated from their course for Grace, swinging the cruiser within a kilometer of a massive geyser. She guessed its base was nearly a hundred meters across. A red and brown plume extended from it high up into the thin atmosphere. Large chunks of ice were tossed out of the geyser’s violent maw. They slid and came to a stop, transparent jewels glittering in the sun.
Grace turned away from the spectacle outside to see Wragg also entranced.
“Nothing like this back home, Captain?” Grace said.
“To be sure,” he nodded.
Richard cut in. “We’re within a few degrees of the last location of the Essex,” he said. “Take us there and bring us to a stop, Captain. Then we’ll get our bearings; organize a search.”
“Very good.” Wragg entered the coordinates, and the geyser began to recede.
Two kilometers passed. The ice grew thinner and then disappeared altogether. The ground here was the familiar rust red of Mars, puckered by the occasional geyser, but their ion engines barely disturbed it. Frozen solid.
Wragg stopped the ship, hovering over the red expanse, geysers all around.
“Now what?” he asked. “Do I land, or…?”
Richard cleared his throat. He peered out the viewport.
“Let’s do a quick elemental sweep,” he said.
“You looking for something in particular?” Grace noticed Wragg frowning as he keyed the controls.
“Yes. Dial in two-thirty-two.”
Richard moved closer to one of the displays. She join
ed him, curious. The atomic mass sweep showed on the screen, a noisy spike to the right of two hundred and thirty-two.
“Wragg, bring us to the right, twenty-two degrees.”
“Yawing starboard.”
The view shifted away from the active geysers and toward a desolate plain marred by patchy brown stripes.
“What’s so special about two-thirty-two?” Grace asked.
Richard pointed to the nav display. “Atomic mass. Look at what the wide-sweep lasers are reporting. Thorium.”
“Why are you looking for thorium?”
“The engine on the Essex used it,” Richard explained. “And I hope by following it—Wragg! Look at the levels in the geyser there.”
“Interesting,” Wragg said. “But it’s probable that storms blew the thorium until it collected at the bottom of the geyser—”
“No.” Richard shook his head. “If that were so, there would be some in every geyser nearby.”
“So you think the Essex landed down there?” Grace asked.
“Probably not landed,” Richard said. “Two decades ago, this geyser may have been active. Perhaps this is where they crashed.”
“Just keep in mind, Richard. This thorium trace could be all that’s left,” said Wragg.
A fleeting look of pain crossed Richard’s face.
“Yes, yes. I’m well aware.” Richard said. “Now launch a probe.”
The captain nodded and tapped the tactical screen.
“Probe primed,” said Wragg. “Ignition in two.”
A small rocket leaped from the bow of the Scout, then ignited. The white glow of the engine shrank as it flew ahead.
“Infrared shows no thermal activity,” Wragg said, as the probe’s data began to scroll in.
Grace considered the display. The probe had marked the midpoint of the geyser’s ragged mouth.
“Does that mean the geyser is extinct?”
“Or dormant,” said Wragg. “But she’s not going to blow anytime soon.”
Richard was looking through the data. “Type D geyser. Many galleries off the main shaft. And thorium. A lot of it.”
“Must have been a monster when it was alive,” Wragg said.
“Could have brought down the Essex,” Richard murmured.