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.
The ship slowed, hovering over the crown of a hill.
“The pingos!” Julia cried. “It’s blowing all the dirt and rocks off them, burning through, exposing the ice buried in them.”
Pebbles clattered against the rover skin, then eased away. Suddenly more fog burst from beneath the plume.
The roaring exhaust got louder. The ship coasted away again.
“It’s opening up several of them,” Marc said wonderingly.
They watched, dumbfounded. Again, after a moment’s intense blowtorching of a pingo, white clouds jetted up.
“It’s moving again,” Julia reported. “No, wait—coming farther down. Dropping.”
The radiance spread out at the base of the ship. “Landing! It’s setting down.”
The roar muted, abruptly fell silent.
Her ears rang. Even in the thin atmosphere, huge sounds could carry.
“They’re here. Landed,” Marc whispered.
For a moment no one spoke. Julia blinked in vain to get the afterimages from her eyes.
Viktor said, “Solves a minor technical question. What fuel will they use to go back? Water.”
She was dumbfounded. “What?”
“They took the trouble to save labor. No need to drill, like us. Blow off top of pingo.” Viktor chuckled in appreciation.
“My God,” Marc said. “They’re going to fly home on Martian meltice.”
Viktor said, “Is very intelligent. I will have to compliment their captain. If they let us come aboard.”
PART III
OUTPOST MARS
20
JANUARY 20, 2018
SHE SPLURGED ON WATER. BEFORE BREAKFAST SHE TOOK A LONG WARM shower, even longer than last night’s. Not exactly champagne, but a festive gesture.
The day down the vent in a cramped suit reeking faintly of old sweat—despite the new self-cleaning liners—had left her with aching muscles. Not so much from all the grunt work, but a suit never let you get the best leverage. The designers had never fixed the basic problem that most of the suit’s weight hung on the shoulders. She had built hers up into hard slabs of muscle, these last 500 days, but they always wailed. Untended to, they got other muscle groups to join in the concert.
Long experience had taught her to pay attention to her lower back pangs. She had one big goal: to study the vent samples she had waiting outside in the greenhouse. Worrying hurts could throw off her pace and judgment.
She dialed for steamy-hot water plus blue-ion gouts to stimulate her. When she reluctantly quit, she stepped out into one of her thick towels (a personal mass expense) and onto one of the few sensual details worked into the otherwise Spartan bathroom. The bath mat was cleaning up when she came out, but did not mind being stepped on. It crawled with cilia-like fibers, sopping up droplets, tissue shreds, and emitted a little oxygen to boot. It was actually a hybrid creature: fibers in the top of the mat had embedded algae, much like a polar bear’s furcoat. The algae were gene-engineered to photosynthesize maximally from the special full-spectrum lights in the hab. This produced more oxygen than the bottom fibers used in their cleanup work.
They called it Roger the Rug, and let it creep around the whole hab, cleaning corners and nooks. Roger was the most advanced biotech they had, deceptively simple.
She needed the pampering. Trouble started at breakfast.
“We will all go to greet our friends and losers of the race,” Viktor said.
“I want to stay here,” Julia said. “I’ve got plenty to do—”
“Axelrod’s orders. We look like happy people welcoming fellow brave explorers.”
Raoul said, “‘Showing them around the planet,’ was the way he put it.”
“When did this come in?”
“While you were oversleeping,” Raoul said.
“Like me,” Marc said. “That descent really took it out of us.”
“Let me see Axelrod’s song and dance,” Julia said, quickly finishing her oatmeal.
