Marsquake! Read online

  Mickey had toughed it out for a few hundred paces and then had panicked.

  Alex said, “Really, man, nobody blames you.”

  Sitting at the table, Mickey flattened his palms and shook his head. “I blame me. Screaming like a coward.” He looked up, his face twisted. “It was like I couldn’t breathe. I mean, my lungs were working, but the air I was getting wasn’t doing me any good. It was too dark, too creepy.”

  “It’s ice, Mick,” Sean said, echoing Alex. “Hey, you can fly a ship, you can drive an exploration buggy—and you’re going to graduate after next term as a hydraulics specialist. That ought to count for something.”

  Mickey nodded, took off his glasses, and rubbed his eyes. “My claustrophobia never bothered me that much before,” he muttered. “Not until I was underground and in the dark.” He put his glasses back on, rubbed his nose, and said, “Hey, you guys, I’m gonna be okay. I’m sorry that I can’t go with you, but really, I’ll be fine. Mpondo’s going to let me work communications with the teams, so I’ll be in touch, huh?” He gave them a weak smile.

  “Sure,” Sean said. “Hey, let’s go to Town Hall. I’m supposed to meet Jenny and Nickie for lunch.”

  “I’m just going to grab something here,” Mickey said. “You go on. Really, I’m fine.”

  “Sure?”

  “Go, already!” Mickey said. He gave them a lopsided grin. “Just as well. Someone needs to stay back here, just in case you clowns get in trouble.”

  “Well depend on you to get us out again,” Alex said. “Later, Mick.”

  Mickey waved them off. As they made their way through the corridors, Alex said, “He scared me, man. You should have seen him.”

  “What did he do?” Sean asked, lowering his voice.

  Alex paused to open one of the heavy doors, a green-coded one—safe—because it was an interior door that had no close access to the surface. “First he kind of stumbled, and then I noticed he was falling back. I dropped back to see if he was having trouble. We were on full oxygen then because the deeper sections of the tubes aren’t pressurized at all—”

  “Sure,” Sean said. “Remember, I did the course Monday.”

  “Right. Anyway, I dropped back and switched my transmitter to his helmet frequency and asked if he was okay. He just looked at me.” Alex frowned. “His glasses looked all fogged up. I mean, you always get a little condensation on the inside of a helmet faceplate, but Mickey was dripping. And he was, like, gasping for breath. I thought his oxygen mixture was wrong. I said, ‘Let me check your tank.’”

  A couple of adults passed them, and Alex fell silent until they were out of earshot. “Then he stopped and I stopped, and the others went on ahead a little way. Well, his pressure and mix were fine, so I tapped him on the shoulder and said, ‘You’re ice, Mick. Let’s go.’ And then he started to yell.” Alex took a deep breath. “Mickey was screaming, man. ‘I’m dying! I can’t breathe!’ He was struggling and everything. I thought he was really sick, you know. Everyone heard him and turned around to see what was going on. Mick had fallen onto his knees, and he was flailing his arms and all, but it was like he couldn’t move his legs, right? Paralyzed. So we carried him back. The med expert said he’d hyperventilated. Panic reaction.”

  Sean shivered. He had sometimes felt weird when practicing in the tunnels too, as if he had been buried alive and forgotten, but had never reacted like that. “It’s cracked for Mick to freak like that. He’s been in rough spots before, and he’s never done it.”

  “Never been underground though,” Alex said. “I know he couldn’t help it, but man, it got to me. Even when we had him back inside, had his helmet off, he looked like he was dying, all pale, with his eyes rolling. You never know what punches a button, I guess.”

  “Guess not.”

  They didn’t talk about Mickey’s problem after that, and by the end of the week, Mickey himself seemed almost back to normal, making jokes and kidding around. Still, his eyes had a haunted quality behind their spectacles. Nobody in the dorm wing talked much about the expedition.

  Sean suspected that they were all a little worried. Mickey was one of the courageous ones, one of the guys who’d charge confidently into any danger, any trouble. Sean couldn’t really imagine Mickey behaving the way Alex said he had, thrashing his arms and screaming that he couldn’t breathe. He was the type who took charge and faced down his worries and fears.

  Sean reflected that he had never been deep underground himself. And he couldn’t help wondering, If it could happen to Mickey, then could it possibly happen to me?

  Another Monday morning, early, and three teams were heading out for the lava-tube complex. They rode in Martian trucks that functioned as surface rovers. There were eight rovers in all, and fifteen team members could just barely squeeze into their trailers. A road, if you could call it that, snaked along through the low hills, bulldozed out by the advance team that had blasted out an opening down into the lava tubes.

  The roadway was flat, meaning it didn’t have any boulders in it much larger than a soccer ball. And like everywhere else on the planet, it was dusty. The rover that Sean rode in happened to be third in line. That meant that his view was … dust. Dust hanging in red clouds in the air, dust swirled into miniature tornadoes and whirlpools by the wind of their passing. The people in the lead truck would get to see the early morning landscape, long shadows, white wisps of surface frost, a blue sky streaked with ice clouds, the orange surface, the rocks ranging from black to bloodred. They could see the distant hump of Olympus, and they could see where they were going on the so-called road. The next rover crew could barely make out the taillights of the first rover. The next one could barely see the lights of that one, and so forth.

  It was a problem on a low-gravity world. Dust hung in curtains in the air for ages unless there was a good wind to sweep it away. And this was an unusually calm morning. Very occasionally the dust clouds to the side would thin just enough for Sean to glimpse a hint of the rock-strewn Martian surface, but otherwise, he was as good as blind. Other team members were trying hard to play cards or even chess, with a small magnetic chessboard and miniature chessmen, but on a day like this, Sean had no patience for games.

  So he sat in the jouncing trailer, his teeth clacking now and again when they hit an unexpected bump, and fought to keep his balance. Jenny was next to him, and across from them, leaning back, his arms crossed, his flat brown eyes looking at them in what seemed to be quiet scorn, was Pavel Rormer. His gaze, Sean thought, was even more intimidating than the dark scowl of Dr. Ellman, and that was saying a lot.

  The trip seemed to take forever. Fifteen clicks—or fifteen kilometers—wasn’t much of a distance. On Earth, a man in good physical condition could walk that far in about three hours. On the other hand, the rovers didn’t move very fast, and the road was not only rough, but twisty as an addled snake.

  At last the rovers slowed, then screeched and lurched to a stop, and the crews spilled out onto the surface. They walked though the cloud of red dust, the Martian surface crunching under their boots, and emerged in the weak sunlight of a winter day. Sean’s helmet receiver crackled: “Team eight, to the left of the shaft, please. Team eight assemble to the left. Team nine, to the right of eight, ten meters from them, please. Nine, assemble ten meters to the right of team eight. Team ten—”

  Team nine shuffled into a loose formation, thirty colonists in blue pressure suits. Ellman, the thirty-first among them, wore the standard suit, but his arms were marked by bright yellow bands, and the back of his helmet was yellow as well, identifying him as the leader. His stocky figure stood impatiently, his finger stabbing as he counted heads. “Thirty,” he said when he had finished. “Okay, everyone in my team, switch receivers to nine, please.”

  Sean adjusted his helmet radio receiver. Now the team members could talk to one another or to Ellman, and their transmissions would not spill over to the other teams. That would avoid confusion.

  Ellman was explaining procedu
res, but Sean had heard them all before. He was staring at the entrance to the lava-tube complex. A miniature dome concealed it, but he knew what was inside: The pathfinders had blasted down through regolith to a depth of more than three hundred meters. They had rigged a simple lift that would carry the teams down and back up again. It would comfortably accommodate only six at a time, so the teams were going to go down in five different trips. It would be time consuming.

  The first group from team eight had already shuffled into the dome, and a few minutes later, a second group went in. For the seventh or eighth time, Ellman was droning on about safety procedures. He suddenly shot Sean a question. “If your air supply goes wrong, what’s the signal for help?”

  And even though Sean hadn’t really been paying attention, he said, “Tap the person next to me three times on the arm, one tap, pause, then two quick ones.” The response was almost automatic, because it had been drummed into everyone in the colony over and over, one of the basic safety rules for anyone working outside.

  Ellman was the kind of teacher who always seemed nearly as offended by a correct answer as by a wrong one. For a long moment he stood staring at Sean, and Sean could see the man’s scowl behind the faceplate of his helmet. At last Ellman, sounding displeased, snapped, “Everyone remember that. Now check your equipment.”

  Jenny obediently opened her waist pouch and took out the miniaturized digital camera. It would record up to ten thousand images and even movies—record them and also transmit them to a receiver that Ellman carried in his backpack, where backup copies would be made, just in case. She ran through the checklist to make sure the camera was working properly, and Sean supposed he had better do the same with his own equipment. His camera was fine. His suit lights were fine. Oxygen level, suit heater, everything was working just as it should. He was beginning to feel strangely eager and strangely anxious. Were they ever going to get their turn?

  Team eight had finally vanished, all of them now under the surface. Ellman stepped to the dome, looked inside, and called off six names, one of them Pavel Rormer. “Pavel will assemble you under the surface,” he said. “Follow his instructions until I arrive. First group, go.”

  Jenny and Sean shuffled to a different position until they could see the six team members file inside the dome. The lift was very primitive, an open cage of a compartment, suspended by a cable. Rormer turned, gave a thumbs-up signal, and pressed the button that lowered the lift. The cable paid out from its drum, and the group sank out of sight, leaving just the rectangular, dark opening leading far down into the planet’s surface. No sound came from the winch or the elevator. The Martian atmosphere was too thin to let much sound come through, and it was always a little odd watching things happen in silence.

  Minutes crawled by on hands and knees, and then the lift came up empty. Another group of six went down. Jenny nudged Sean and mouthed, “Bet we’ll be last.”

  They were indeed in the last group. Ellman joined them in the lift compartment, and everyone had to crowd together—six could fit fairly well, but seven was a real squeeze. The leader of team ten was standing at the dome opening. Ellman waved to him, pushed the button, and the winch turned.

  Now, Sean could faintly hear the grinding of the gears. It was transmitted not through the air, but down the cable, into the lift compartment, and up through Sean’s feet. The ride was not at all comfortable with the lift swaying and creaking, but it was interesting. The walls of the shaft were rock—Martian bedrock. The upper layers were a deep gray, peppered with many small cavities, like a slice of swiss cheese. Gas bubbles, Sean supposed. They had formed when the rock was liquid, and when the lava hardened, the gas had left these little pockets behind. Areologists loved those petrified bubbles because they preserved the ancient Martian atmosphere, an atmosphere that had been much richer in oxygen and other gases than the present-day Martian air.

  Then the walls became smoother and darker with a glistening surface that looked like glass. That was what happened when silica melted and rehardened. They were riding down through a patch of rock that, in the remote past, had been sand, melted by the sheer heat of an eruption.

  Deeper and deeper, and the rock continually changed in texture and color. Finally Ellman slowed their rate of descent. The lift settled into an underground opening, and now it was inside a man-made cage of girders, guiding it even farther down. Sean had expected it, but he still drew in a sharp breath.

  They had broken out into an underground cathedral, an immense pocket far beneath the surface. He swallowed hard. The first marsquake had resulted from the collapse of a chamber very much like this one. Tons of rock falling, burying everything for eternity. No wonder Mickey had—

  Get a grip, Sean told himself.

  They dropped nearly fifty meters until they came to the bottom. The lift cage slowed and slowed, then stopped with a bump, causing everyone to stumble. Sean’s helmet radio crackled with relieved laughter, and he realized he was not the only nervous member of the team. Ellman’s voice ordered, “Everyone out, please. Orderly, but hurry. We have things to do.”

  Sean left with the others, joining the group already assembled at the far side of this great cavern. He could see stacks of equipment there, tents and rations ferried down days before by the advance team, ready for the explorers to pick up. They would camp out for several days of exploration, camp out far beneath the surface of Mars.

  He felt a light tap on his shoulder and turned. Jenny had her camera out. She pointed, and then she took a picture of the empty elevator cage as it rattled its way back up through the girders, back toward the black opening far, far overhead in the smooth arched ceiling, barely visible even with the glare of work lights coming up from the chamber floor.

  Sean watched her. Once again he felt just a flutter of the kind of panic that had seized Mickey as the lift cage vanished into its shaft.

  There went the last, the only link to the surface. What if he never saw it again?

  “Doe, Laslo, any time you two are ready!” Ellman’s sharp voice sounded in his ear.

  Jenny made a face at Sean. He gave her a grin in return and hoped it didn’t look as sickly as it felt. Then they turned their backs on their lifeline to the surface and hurried over to join the team.

  From the huge cathedral-like opening, oversized lava tubes branched off in six different directions. Team nine drew for the middle tube leading south from the chamber, and their assignment was to follow it, map it, and explore it as far as they could over the span of eleven days.

  The tunnel slanted downward at a steeper angle than any of the others. The first few kilometers had already been checked out by the pathfinder crew, so for the first day, the explorers made good time. Jenny kept checking her wrist data recorder as if fascinated. At one point she nudged Sean and tilted her arm so he could see the readout. At first he didn’t understand the number, but then it registered: D/S -1.202k. The “D/S” meant “distance to surface.” The default setting for all of the recorders was the elevation at the entrance to the lift shaft, the equivalent of sea level back on Earth. The -1.202k figure meant they were now more than a kilometer beneath the surface of Mars.

  Sean kept photographing the walls of the lava tube. They were fairly smooth with great stripes of color in them, sometimes horizontal, sometimes vertical. He didn’t know what kind of minerals these were, but his job was just to record as much variation as he could, so he clicked away. At the end of several hours’ march, they were in unexplored territory. Evangeline Watts, one of Chris Wu’s apprentices, halted their progress every few hundred meters to take seismology readings. These showed strain patterns and indicated whether or not the tube was structurally sound. So far, all indications were good. They kept moving.

  They soon came to a very weird patch. The lava tube was still huge, larger by far than the one they had practiced in. The arched ceiling overhead was more than twenty meters up, and the thirty explorers could easily spread out across the rounded floor, marching along abreast of on
e another if they wanted to.

  In fact, they were walking in a long, straggling group, leaning back as if they were traveling down a steep hillside. Experts in rock formation were taking samples, atmospheric scientists were getting excited because the atmosphere was thicker and richer here than on the surface, and physicists were clustered in small groups animatedly arguing over the forces that left this huge tunnel system. Jenny and Sean were near the rear of the group, pausing to record everything in images. Sean didn’t notice how everyone ahead was clumping together until Jenny asked, “What’s up?”

  “Come and see,” someone responded.

  They hurried ahead. Sean stepped around the crowd and gawked. The tunnel ahead looked as if it had been transformed into a fairyland cavern lined with jewels.

  Or so it seemed. Sean raised his camera and began to take pictures. In the camera viewfinder a million colors sparkled back at him—reds, golds, greens, blues, all the colors of the spectrum, fragmented and glittering in the lights from the explorers’ helmets. And the floor of the tunnel had changed too. Not rock here, but … sand? A fine red sand? That’s what it looked like.

  “Over here! Quick, photographers! Over here!”

  “Where?” Jenny asked.

  A kneeling figure over on the far side waved an impatient arm, and the others made way as Sean and Jenny hurried over to him. “Who is it?” Sean asked.

  “Me, Ted Miles.” Miles was one of the biologists of the colony, and Sean knew that he was also one of Jenny’s tutors.