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landscape was being submerged by a rising tide of interconnecting living
complexes, bubble towns, industrial buildings, and farm canopies, all tied
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together with a thickening web of roadways, tracks, power grids and
pipelines the ground-level testimony to the spreading of humanity that
Kieran had seen in his descent from orbit. Farther out, the desert reasserted
itself to preside over a scattering of domes and isolated structures. Kieran
remembered scenes he had seen in Japan, where cities flowed away into the
distance until the details of individual houses merged and were lost in
continuous ribbons that looked like glaciers filling the valleys between the
mountains. He wondered if it would be like that here one day.
Stony Flats was the new, hardly-more-inspired name for what had once been
designated Marineris
Central 2, one of the original bases from the first phase of manned landings
and consolidation on
Mars. Since then, the early huddle of domes and dugouts had grown to become a
collection of transport depots, maintenance hangars and freight buildings
clustered beside an airfield that had a rail link to the Cherbourg spaceport.
This was where off-planet shipments through Cherbourg connected to the surface
air, road, and rail network. Kieran called ahead and was directed along a
ravine to one of several truck-size airlock doors built into the base of the
escarpment on one side. Above the locks, the slope was cut into terraces of
building frontages with windows looking toward the airfield, where
long-winged, gooneybird-like soarers and thrust-assisted STOL/VTOL transports
came and went, stirring up flustered clouds of pink Martian dust.
After negotiating the double-lock doors, Kieran drove into a brightly lit,
concrete-walled cavern containing a number of ground vehicles with people
working around them in the main floor space, a workshop area to one side, and
a row of enclosed offices on the other. Large double doors opened through from
the center of the wall at the rear. He identified the gray-headed figure of
Walter
Trevany, wearing dirt-stained olive coveralls, standing with a man and a
woman, both younger, in front of a large, square-built truck suggesting a
military version of a miniature mobile home or RV.
Its side doors were open, and a litter of boxes and equipment lay around
outside. Trevany watched the
Kodiak draw to a halt and came over as Kieran got out to be greeted by the
noise of riveting from the far side and the intermittent flashes of welding in
a screened-off corner of the workshop area.
Dr. Thane . . . ? Ah, yes. I remember your face now.
Hi.
You found us all right, then?
No problem. Your directions were fine.
Oh . . . You re not alone. There was uneasiness on Trevany s face as he
stooped to peer into the car.
Stay, Kieran told Guinness, who was watching him inquiringly, ready to get
out. Guinness emitted a resigned snort, shook his head, and settled back down.
Trevany looked relieved. Not keen on dogs? Kieran said.
Oh, I don t mind them. In fact, I ve had a few. But in here . . . Trevany
swept an arm to indicate the surroundings. Machines and things. People would
get nervous.
I understand. Kieran stood looking over the vehicle with interest. Trevany
had described it over the phone as a mobile lab. There were a lot of
electronics inside, a desk extending from one wall with chairs facing on
either side, a work area with bench space, closets, tool and instrument racks.
I m only recently in from Earth, Trevany said, following Kieran s gaze.
Which is why I ve been staying at the Oasis. I m joining some colleagues who
have been setting up a base camp out in the highlands at Tharsis, as I think I
said. This lab will be leaving for there in the next few days.
Kieran nodded. The region lay about nine hundred miles to the west of Lowell
City, a little north of the equator. What are you up to out there? he asked
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curiously.
Are you much into Martian geology?
Some.
Basically, we re part of a revisionist school that s challenging the orthodox
thinking about Mars and its history. It all got bogged down in the same dogma
that held everything up on Earth for a couple of centuries: the conviction of
slow, uniform change that everything can be explained by the same processes we
see going on today, at the same rates, if you extrapolate them back far
enough.
So I take it that you and others in the business don t think so, Kieran
said.
Trevany shook his head. Everywhere you look, the evidence is staring you in
the face that the whole planet was torn up by violent upheaval in the recent
past tens of thousands of years, thousands maybe; not billions. It used to
have oceans and a denser atmosphere. What happened to them? Even by the
orthodox establishment s own figures for meteorite infall, wind erosion, and
dust transport, the water channels and most of the craters should have been
erased long ago. They re new, not even begun to be worn down in a lot of
places. Even the place we re in right now is part of a floodplain. And look at
the systems of crustal cracks and fissures. Something jolted the whole planet,
maybe wrenched it into a different orbit.
Do you think that could be connected with the catastrophe that some
scientists say hit Earth around twelve thousand years back . . . whatever it
was? Kieran asked.
Trevany looked surprised, as if he hadn t expected such a question. Nothing s
proved yet. But what do I think? He bunched his mouth and nodded. If I had
to bet, I d say they were both part of the same thing.
So, what about the advanced culture that existed before then? Kieran asked.
The Technolithic.
Yes. Where do you think it originated? Besides the form that the cataclysm
had taken and exactly when it had happened, that was another aspect that
different schools of opinion clashed and debated over. Some accepted this
early culture as having been native to Earth; others, less inhibited and more
iconoclastic, believed that it had come from elsewhere.
I d say the jury is still out on that one, Trevany said. But you never
know. Things that turn up in places like this, for instance, could throw more
light on it. Kieran got the feeling that the geologist could have said more.
Suddenly, he was curious to know what the expedition to the Tharsis region was
hoping to achieve and what was going on at the base camp that Trevany had
mentioned. But
Trevany halted things there with a shrug. Anyway, that s not what you came
here to talk about. Do you want to come inside, out of the noise? Maybe you
could use a cup of coffee or something?
Sounds good.
They began walking toward the row of offices. So what kind of a problem has
Leo been having? Trevany asked. Sarda, you said his name was over the phone,
right?
That s right. How much did he tell you about what he does?
Not a lot. It sounded like some kind of biological research.
They came into the office. There was an empty desk, a table strewn with [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
