The Season Of Passage Part 16

That meant it was from a friend or relative. Lauren hoped it was Jennifer, and that she had finally joined Terry in Houston. Lauren worried about her, even though she was sure Daniel's family were fine people. Lauren worried about cosmic catastrophes.

'Who is it?' Lauren asked.

[Kathy Johnson, Lauren.]

Gary howled. 'My woman.'

'Use my screen,' Jim said. He erased the photo of his Martian rock. 'I'm through for the night.'

'Great,' Gary said, getting up quickly. 'On screen six Friend.'

[Yes, Gary.]

Kathy came on the screen, cute as ever, and started talking to a stoned, smiling Gary. Lauren continued her search out the porthole for Phobos, and pretended not to listen. Suddenly Gary howled again, this time in irritation.

'd.a.m.nit,' Gary said, his face crumpling. 'It's Lorraine.' He slapped his knee. 'She had me fooled for a minute. She was talking like Kathy. But listen to her now!'

'It was very hairy,' Lorraine was saying. 'I didn't know what to do. I've never seen a loaded cannon with ammunition like that. He tried to pin me, and I tried to squirm away. But Gary, I'm sorry, I guess I just didn't try hard enough. He had me greased. Somehow he slipped inside. Do you forgive me?'

Lauren would have thought no one could laugh harder than she was laughing if Jessica hadn't been in the same room with her. The two of them doubled up and fell off their respective couches. Jim's cheeks looked as if they were ready to burst; he was trying to restrain himself. Bill was another matter. In a ridiculously even tone, he said, 'If you don't want to listen to the young lady, Major, have Friend break the connection.'

'Turn that b.i.t.c.h off, Friend!' Gary shouted.

[Which b.i.t.c.h is that, Gary?]

Gary pointed at Lorraine. 'Her!'

[You mean the young lady on screen six, Gary?]

'Yes!'

[I apologize for the delay, Gary. I did not know the young lady was a female animal or a vicious or immoral woman, and could thus be cla.s.sified as a b.i.t.c.h.]

The screen went blank. But they weren't through yet.

'The rest of you shut up!' Gary yelled, turning red.

'Oh, my!' Lauren gasped from her place on the floor, clutching her sides.' "He had me greased"!'

' "I'd never seen a cannon loaded with ammunition like that"!' Jessica cried, choking on her laughter. 'Oh, Gary! You sure know how to pick them!'

Gary appealed to Jim. 'Would you tell these tramps that this is no laughing matter?'

Jim started to speak. But then he slapped his leg and burst into giggles. Lauren threw a cus.h.i.+on and hit Gary in the head. Even Bill began to chuckle. Finally, in the end, Gary began to laugh with them.

T could have sworn it was Kathy at first,' Gary said, when they began to sober up. 'Hey, Friend. Put the b.i.t.c.h back on. But leave the audio off. I can look at her and pretend she's Kathy.'

[Yes, Gary. The b.i.t.c.h on screen six.]

'No, look at this,' Lauren exclaimed, jumping back to the porthole. A dull elongated light outside the portal had caught her eye. It was rising too fast to be a star, and it was too big. The group gathered at her back and stared out into the night, where the temperature would have killed them in a minute without protection. Phobos inched steadily into the sky, and it seemed to Lauren a good omen that the moon appeared just at the end of their laughter.

Yet the night deepened, a night as long as Earth's, but darker and more silent. More empty.

Lauren awoke from a troubled sleep to find her arms moving in the air above her head. She'd been having a nightmare, and had been trying to push something away. Quickly she brought her arms back to her sides and glanced to the other bed where Jessica lay snoring peacefully. Try as she might, Lauren could not remember any other details from her nightmare, except that something heaving and repulsive had been trying to climb on top of her, and that it had been smothering her.

Lauren sat up and swallowed, wondering at the foul taste in her mouth. It was as if she had eaten spoiled meat for dinner. She considered going down to the bas.e.m.e.nt for a gla.s.s of water. She felt dry.

Instead, she got up and crossed to the porthole. The alien darkness drew her, although she couldn't see a thing. She looked for a few seconds and then climbed back into bed. A few minutes later, though, she was at the porthole again, watching and waiting. Still, there was nothing there. She leaned her nose against the gla.s.s. The chill of the contact made her whole body s.h.i.+ver. She felt suddenly alone, terribly alone.

'Jenny,' she whispered. 'Jenny.'

In time Lauren returned to her bed and fell asleep.

The footprints that had crossed in front of the Rover were gone. But the Rover's high-gain antenna had been snapped off its extension arm. It hung like a broken arm as they drove up to the probe in their jeep.

Lauren fingered the trigger on her laser rifle. Two miles in the distance she could see the Hawk, sleek and sharp in the afternoon sun. Bill and Jim climbed out of the jeep and stood nearby. Lauren had a headache. She'd slept very badly.

'Where do you think they went?' she asked.

Jim walked over in front of the Rover and knelt where the footprints had been photographed years before. 'I think a Martian brushed them away,' he said.

'Seriously,' Lauren said.

'The wind. I told you it's been much stronger than we antic.i.p.ated.'

'You think it's the wind that made the prints, don't you?' Lauren climbed down from the jeep, still holding the laser.

Jim smiled. 'Remember, I'm the one who saw ca.n.a.ls.'

'What are your plans, Professor?' Bill asked.

Jim kicked the sand at his feet. It was primarily composed of hydrate ferric oxide. Indeed, the planet's once respectable water and oxygen supply - if they listened to Jim - was not chemically bound in the soil.

'I would like to brush away the dust in the area where the footprints were photographed,' Jim said. 'If there are holes where the prints used to be, then we can be fairly certain they were created by the wind.'

'Do you wish to start on that today?' Bill asked.

'It could take me more than a day. But, yes, we may as well get going on it.'

'What equipment will you need?' Bill asked.

'The same equipment I was using to dig yesterday. It's back at the Hawk.'

'I was thinking that you should install the seismometer first,' Bill said.

'Fine,' Jim said. 'This can wait. We should stick to our program. But while we are here, I want the Rover photographed from every direction at a distance of fifty feet. I also want to examine the Rover itself.'

'Very well, Professor,' Bill said, removing a camera from the front seat of the jeep. 'I'll take the pictures.' He walked off.

'Come, Lauren,' Jim said. 'Let's inspect this 'nineties masterpiece.'

The Rover had been driving straight for a low hill when it stopped. Its oversized wheels appeared unharmed, and the ground immediately in front of it was as close to uncluttered as Mars got. Its cameras were filthy with dust. Still, it was the snapped antenna that held their attention.

'Well, did a monster do this or not?' Lauren asked.

Jim tugged unsuccessfully on the snapped arm, trying to break it free. 'I don't know,' he said.

'What about the wind?'

'It should be too thin to snap metal like this,' Jim said.

Lauren s.h.i.+fted the laser rifle's strap on her shoulder. She noticed they were in the patch of Bill's picture-taking. 'Let's move to the side,' she said, gesturing. 'I always feel self-conscious in front of a camera.'

'Why do you say that?' Jim asked, his voice oddly alert.

'We're in the way. You said you wanted the Rover photographed from every angle.'

'No, Lauren. Why did you say you felt self-conscious in front of a camera? I've seen you on TV. You could be an actress.'

The question caught her off guard. She had been looking back over her shoulder. She had done the same often during the entire drive to the Rover. It was fine to keep an eye out, but she realized she was being paranoid. Yet she felt suddenly defensive about her actions.

'It's natural to feel you're being watched when you're in front of a camera,' she said.

'Watched? Do you feel like you're being watched?'

'I didn't say that,' Lauren said.

'Did you have a good night's sleep?'

'No. Why do you ask? Did you?'

T slept horribly,' Jim said.

Lauren shook her head. 'I can't place you, Jim. You weren't excited about the footprints. You don't think a monster snapped the antenna. Yet you're worried about being watched. Or you're worried that I feel like I'm being watched. Now tell me, yes or no, do you think this planet's dead?'

Jim grabbed a handful of dust that had settled atop the Rover's temperature sensor and squeezed it in his gloved hand. 'Yes. I've never been in a place that felt so dead. We'll continue our exploration and our experiments, but there's no life here.'

'Then what are you getting at?'

Jim tossed the dust in the air. Rather than falling straight down, it trailed slightly to the west. 'I'm anxious to visit the spot where the Russians landed. We might find some answers there. But you see this dust? It's scattering. The wind is coming up. We should be careful about the wind.' He pulled once more on the broken antenna arm, and it dropped to the ground. 'Even a dead planet could kill us.'

Later, they drove back to the Hawk in silence.

That night, Lauren helped Jessica with experiments on the soil. They were performing three types. The first was designed to test for both plant and animal life. It relied on the fact that if you gave an animal or plant something to eat, it sooner or later gave off gas. Here they were talking about microscopic plants and animals hidden in the dirt. They fed the dirt a special broth, and were at first excited when it gave off substantial amounts of carbon dioxide. Unfortunately the amount quickly diminished, and then disappeared altogether, which shouldn't have happened if there was life in the soil; it should have been busy reproducing.

The second experiment also gave confusing results. It was designed specifically to test for plant life. On Earth, all plants took in sunlight and carbon dioxide. Would the soil sample absorb carbon dioxide when exposed to it? The answer was yes, and for a while they were excited again. But then soil continued to absorb carbon dioxide even when it had been baked to such a high temperature that all plant life should have been destroyed.

Their third experiment was the simplest, of all, and gave them perhaps the most information. They baked lumps of Martian soil and a.n.a.lyzed what gases were given off. All organic material gave off an aroma when it was heated. Yet the Martian soil didn't smell at all. It was dead. It was beginning to look more and more as though Jim was right, as were most scientists on Earth who had never seen the Rover's pictures.

It made sense to Lauren. Mars had no ozone layer to protect it from the sun's ultraviolet. Consequently, the soil should be sterile. However, Jessica seemed uncertain that ultraviolet bombardment alone could account for the experimental results. Jessica said there were still plenty of signs that there had been life on Mars long ago. There just weren't any bodies left behind.

Lauren removed her hands from the gloves attached to the inside of the Hawk's incubator and washed up while Jessica entered the bathroom to take a shower. Lauren was on the verge of leaving the bas.e.m.e.nt when she became aware of the dust blasting the Hawk's hull. It sounded eerie in a world where nothing was supposed to have changed much in a million years.

It sounds like an invisible monster.

Lauren climbed the ladder out of the bas.e.m.e.nt.

Gary was alone in the living area, sprawled on the couch with a book in his hands, the science fiction cla.s.sic Dune.

'What happened to Bradbury's Martian Chronicles?' she asked.

'I put it away,' Gary said.

'Why?'

'At the beginning of the book they talk about the first few expeditions to Mars. It was depressing me.'

'Why? I mean, what happened to them?'

'In which expedition?' Gary asked.

'Oh. The first one?'

Gary rested Dune on his chest and looked at her with tired eyes. She couldn't remember him having smiled all day. 'A Martian murdered them when they landed,' he said.

'I see.' It was only a story. 'How about the second expedition?'

'The same. But first the humans were mistaken by a Martian for insane Martians. Eventually they were all killed, though.'

'What about the third expedition?'

Gary reached for his book and continued reading. 'You don't want to hear about it.

'Was it bad?' Lauren asked.

'Yes.'

'Like the first two?'

'Worse.'

'I never knew it was a gloomy book,' Lauren said.

'Dune's not much better. They have sandstorms in Dune. Storms like we're having now.'

Lauren wanted to change the subject. 'Where's Jim? Has he gone to bed?'

Gary nodded. 'He told me he was exhausted.'