The City and the Stars / The Sands of Mars (50 page)

“Don’t drink it all before I come back!” warned Gibson, and departed in search of his Leica. When he reentered, Dr. Scott was attempting an interesting experiment.

“I’m fed up with squirting my beer out of a bulb,” he explained. “I want to pour it properly into a glass now we’ve got the chance again. Let’s see how long it takes.”

“It’ll be flat before it gets there,” warned Mackay. “Let’s see— g’s about half a centimeter a second squared, you’re pouring from a height of…” He retired into a brown study.

But the experiment was already in progress. Scott was holding the punctured beer-tin about a foot above his glass— and, for the first time in three months, the word “above” had some meaning, even if very little. For, with incredible slowness, the amber liquid oozed out of the tin— so slowly that one might have taken it for syrup. A thin column extended downwards, moving almost imperceptibly at first, but then slowly accelerating. It seemed an age before the glass was reached; then a great cheer went up as contact was made and the level of the liquid began to creep upwards.

“… I calculate it should take a hundred and twenty seconds to get there,” Mackay’s voice was heard to announce above the din.

“Then you’d better calculate again,” retorted Scott. “That’s two minutes, and it’s already there!”

“Eh?” said Mackay, startled, and obviously realizing for the first time that the experiment was over. He rapidly rechecked his calculations and suddenly brightened as discovering a misplaced decimal point.

“Silly of me! I never was any good at mental arithmetic. I meant twelve seconds, of course.”

“And that’s the man who got us to Mars!” said someone in shocked amazement. “I’m going to walk back!”

Nobody seemed inclined to repeat Scott’s experiment, which though interesting, was felt to have little practical value. Very soon large amounts of liquid were being squirted out of bulbs in the “normal” manner, and the party began to get steadily more cheerful. Dr. Scott recited the whole of that saga of the spaceways— and a prodigious feat of memory it was— which paying passengers seldom encounter and which begins:

“It was the spaceship Venus…”

Gibson followed for some time the adventures of this all too appropriately named craft and its ingenious though single-minded crew. Then the atmosphere began to get too close for him and he left to clear his head. Almost automatically, he made his way back to his favorite viewpoint on the observation deck.

He had to anchor himself in it, lest the tiny but persistent pull of Deimos dislodge him. Mars, more than half full and slowly waxing, lay dead ahead. Down there the preparations to greet them would already be under way, and even at this moment the little rockets would be climbing invisibly towards Deimos to ferry them down. Fourteen thousand kilometers below, but still six thousand kilometers above Mars, Phobos was transiting the unlighted face of the planet, shining brilliantly against its star-eclipsing crescent. Just what
was
happening on that little moon, Gibson wondered half-heartedly. Oh, well, he’d find out soon enough. Meanwhile he’d polish up his aerography. Let’s see— there was the double fork of the Sinus Meridiani (very convenient, that, smack on the equator and in zero longitude) and over to the east was the Syrtis Major. Working from these two obvious landmarks he could fill in the finer detail. Margaritifer Sinus was showing up nicely today, but there was a lot of cloud over Xanthe, and——

“Mr. Gibson!”

He looked round, startled.

“Why, Jimmy— you had enough too?”

Jimmy was looking rather hot and flushed— obviously another seeker after fresh air. He wavered, a little unsteadily, into the observation seat and for a moment stared silently at Mars as if he’d never seen it before. Then he shook his head disapprovingly.

“It’s awfully big,” he announced to no one in particular.

“It isn’t as big as Earth,” Gibson protested. “And in any case your criticism’s completely meaningless, unless you state what standards you’re applying. Just what size do you think Mars should be, anyway?”

This obviously hadn’t occurred to Jimmy and he pondered it deeply for some time.

“I don’t know,” he said sadly. “But it’s still too big.
Everything’s
too big.”

This conversation was going to get nowhere, Gibson decided. He would have to change the subject.

“What are you going to do when you get down to Mars? You’ve got a couple of months to play with before the
Ares
goes home.”

“Well, I suppose I’ll wander round Port Lowell and go out and look at the deserts. I’d like to do a bit of exploring if I can manage it.”

Gibson thought this quite an interesting idea, but he knew that to explore Mars on any useful scale was not an easy undertaking and required a good deal of equipment, as well as experienced guides. It was hardly likely that Jimmy could attach himself to one of the scientific parties which left the settlements from time to time.

“I’ve an idea,” he said. “They’re supposed to show me everything I want to see. Maybe I can organize some trips out into Hellas or Hesperia, where no one’s been yet. Would you like to come? We might meet some Martians!”

That, of course, had been the stock joke about Mars ever since the first ships had returned with the disappointing news that there weren’t any Martians after all. Quite a number of people still hoped, against all evidence, that there might be intelligent life somewhere in the many unexplored regions of the planet.

“Yes,” said Jimmy, “that would be a great idea. No one can stop me, anyway— my time’s my own as soon as we get to Mars. It says so in the contract.”

He spoke this rather belligerently, as if for the information of any superior officers who might be listening, and Gibson thought it wisest to remain silent.

The silence lasted for some minutes. Then Jimmy began, very slowly, to drift out of the observation port and to slide down the sloping walls of the ship. Gibson caught him before he had traveled very far and fastened two of the elastic hand-holds to his clothing— on the principle that Jimmy could sleep here just as comfortably as anywhere else. He was certainly much too tired to carry him to his bunk.

Is it true that we only look our true selves when we are asleep? wondered Gibson. Jimmy seemed very peaceful and contented now that he was completely relaxed— although perhaps the ruby light from the great planet above gave him his appearance of well-being. Gibson hoped it was not an illusion. The fact that Jimmy had at last deliberately sought him out was significant. True, Jimmy was not altogether himself, and he might have forgotten the whole incident by morning. But Gibson did not think so. Jimmy had decided, perhaps not yet consciously, to give him another chance.

He was on probation.

Gibson awoke the next day with a most infernal din ringing in his ears. It sounded as if the
Ares
was falling to pieces around him, and he hastily dressed and hurried out into the corridor. The first person he met was Mackay, who didn’t stop to explain but shouted after him as he went by. “The rockets are here! The first one’s going down in two hours. Better hurry— you’re supposed to be on it!”

Gibson scratched his head a little sheepishly.

“Someone ought to have told me,” he grumbled. Then he remembered that someone had, so he’d only himself to blame. He hurried back to his cabin and began to throw his property into suitcases. From time to time the
Ares
gave a distinct shudder around him, and he wondered just what was going on.

Norden, looking rather harassed, met him at the airlock. Dr. Scott, also dressed for departure, was with him. He was carrying, with extreme care, a bulky metal case.

“Hope you two have a nice trip down,” said Norden. “We’ll be seeing you in a couple of days, when we’ve got the cargo out. So until then— oh, I almost forgot! I’m supposed to get you to sign this.”

“What is it?” asked Gibson suspiciously. “I never sign anything until my agent’s vetted it.”

“Read it and see,” grinned Norden. “It’s quite an historic document.”

The parchment which Norden had handed him bore these words:

THIS IS TO CERTIFY THAT MARTIN M. GIBSON, AUTHOR, WAS THE FIRST PASSENGER TO TRAVEL IN THE LINER ARES, OF EARTH, ON HER MAIDEN VOYAGE FROM EARTH TO MARS.

Then followed the date, and space for the signatures of Gibson and the rest of the crew. Gibson wrote his autograph with a flourish.

“I suppose this will end up in the museum of Astronautics, when they decide where they’re going to build it,” he remarked.

“So will the
Ares,
I expect,” said Scott.

“That’s a fine thing to say at the end of her first trip!” protested Norden. “But I guess you’re right. Well, I must be off. The others are outside in their suits— shout to them as you go across. See you on Mars!”

For the second time, Gibson climbed into a spacesuit, now feeling quite a veteran at this sort of thing.

“Of course, you’ll understand,” explained Scott, “that when the service is properly organized the passengers will go across to the ferry through a connecting tube. That will cut out all this business.”

“They’ll miss a lot of fun,” Gibson replied as he quickly checked the gauges on the little panel beneath his chin.

The outer door opened before them, and they jetted themselves slowly out across the surface of Deimos. The
Ares,
supported in the cradle of ropes (which must have been hastily prepared within the last week) looked as if a wrecking party had been at work on her. Gibson understood now the cause of the bangings and thumpings that had awakened him. Most of the plating from the Southern Hemisphere had been removed to get at the hold, and the spacesuited members of the crew were bringing out the cargo, which was now being piled on the rocks around the ship. It looked, Gibson thought, a very haphazard sort of operation. He hoped that no one would accidentally give his luggage a push which would send it off irretrievably into space, to become a third and still tinier satellite of Mars.

Lying fifty meters from the
Ares,
and quite dwarfed by her bulk, were the two winged rockets that had come up from Mars during the night. One was already having cargo ferried into it; the other, a much smaller vessel, was obviously intended for passengers only. As Gibson slowly and cautiously followed Scott towards it, he switched over to the general wavelength of his suit and called good-bye to his crewmates. Their envious replies came back promptly, interspersed with much puffing and blowing— for the loads they were shifting, though practically weightless, possessed their normal inertia and so were just as hard to set moving as on Earth.

“That’s right!” came Bradley’s voice. “Leave us to do all the work!”

“You’ve one compensation,” laughed Gibson. “You must be the highest-paid stevedores in the Solar System!” He could sympathize with Bradley’s point of view; this was not the sort of work for which the highly trained technicians of the
Ares
had signed on. But the mysterious diversion of the ship from the tiny though well-equipped port on Phobos had made such improvisations unavoidable.

One couldn’t very well make individual good-byes on open circuit with half a dozen people listening, and in any case Gibson would be seeing everyone again in a few days. He would like to have had an extra word with Jimmy, but that would have to wait.

It was quite an experience seeing a new human face again. The rocket pilot came into the airlock to help them with their suits, which were gently deposited back on Deimos for future use simply by opening the outer door again and letting the air current do the rest. Then he led them into the tiny cabin and told them to relax in the padded seats.

“Since you’ve had no gravity for a couple of months,” he said, “I’m taking you down as gently as I can. I won’t use more than a normal Earth gravity— but even that may make you feel as if you weigh a ton. Ready?”

“Yes,” said Gibson, trying valiantly to forget his last experience of this nature.

There was a gentle, far-away roar and something thrust him firmly down into the depths of his seat. The crags and mountains of Deimos sank swiftly behind; he caught a last glimpse of the
Ares
— a bright silver dumb-bell against that nightmare jumble of rocks.

Only a second’s burst of power had liberated them from the tiny moon; they were now floating round Mars in a free orbit. For several minutes the pilot studied his instruments, receiving radio checks from the planet beneath, and swinging the ship round its gyros. Then he punched the firing key again, and the rockets thundered for a few seconds more. The ship had broken free from the orbit of Deimos, and was falling towards Mars. The whole operation was an exact replica, in miniature, of a true interplanetary voyage. Only the times and durations were changed; it would take them three hours, not months, to reach their goal, and they had only thousands instead of millions of kilometers to travel.

“Well,” said the pilot, locking his controls and swinging round in his seat. “Had a good trip?”

“Quite pleasant, thanks,” said Gibson. “Not much excitement, of course. Everything went very smoothly.”