Because now he remembered where they were. He’d been here hundreds of times in virtual reality, learning about Mars geology. Suddenly it all came back to him in vivid detaiclass="underline" the Twin Peaks, the oddly named rocks: Yogi, Flat-top, Barnacle Bill, Moe. As a kid, he’d spent whole days downloading the pictures of this place from the Internet; it was when he’d first become interested in Mars. More than anything else, this place was the whole reason he was here. It was the landscape of his dreams.
It was the Pathfinder site.
They were crossing Ares Vallis. Yes, of course, to get from Coprates Chasma to Acidalia they had to cross Ares Vallis, they had no choice. But of all the spots to cross it, right here! “But this is history,” he whispered. “We’re walking on history.”
“Say again?” Tana’s voice said.
Instead of answering, Ryan started to walk faster. It had to be right here, just ahead of them. He started to jog, barely even noticing the boulders he had to detour around. Right, exactly here. They couldn’t be far away from the actual landing site; it couldn’t be more than a hundred meters.
Right here!
He stopped abruptly.
Where?
The ridged terrain spread out in all directions. He could tell from the perspective of the mountain that they had to be at the right place. All the rocks looked familiar, but every time he looked closer at any one of them, it turned to be not quite right. It couldn’t be far away, but where, exactly, was it?
“Ryan!” It was Tana, coming up behind him, panting. “Are you all right?”
His legs ached. They had been walking for days, and even the brief exertion of breaking into a jog made him suddenly aware of the ache in his muscles. “This is the Pathfinder site,” he gasped. “Look!”
Tana looked around. “Say, you could be right. It does kind of look like it, doesn’t it? Is that why you were running?”
“It is! Take a look!” He pointed. “There are the Twin Peaks.” He swung around. “That big one over there? That rock is named Couch. Or maybe that one.” He stopped, momentarily unsure. It was easy to get confused. Was either of them really the boulder named Couch? Or was it another one that looked similar?
Tana looked around. “Wow,” she said. “Pretty neat. So, where’s the Pathfinder itself? It wouldn’t have moved, would it? So it must be here.”
“Let’s find it!” Ryan said.
“Wait a second,” Tana said. “You said that we weren’t going to make any stops, we weren’t going to go exploring.”
“It won’t take long,” Ryan said. “We must be standing practically right on top of it. It’s gotta be right around here. It’s got to stick out like a sore thumb in this.”
But it didn’t. After an hour of searching, Ryan finally had to admit that the Pathfinder was invisible. Even the inertial navigation system he had scavenged from the dirt-rover was no help; it told them exactly where on the planet they were, but the navigation system of the ancient spacecraft had only given its position on the planet to within a few kilometers. But they should be able to see it. “We know it’s here,” Ryan said. “So why can’t we find it?”
“Dust,” Tana said. “Think about it. How long ago did that land? Thirty years ago? How many dust storms have there been since then?” She thought for a second. “It’ll be so covered with dust that it will blend right in. Just a funny, lumpy patch of the soil.”
“Dust,” Ryan said, dejected. “You’re right. I didn’t think of that. Shit. We probably walked right past it and couldn’t see it. What now?”
“Onward,” Tana said. She quoted his own words back to him. “No sidetracks, no exploration, no sight-seeing, just speed. Agamemnon, or bust.”
“Agamemnon or bust,” Ryan echoed. “Okay. Let’s get a move on!”
2
The Arrow
Ryan Martin could not even remember a time when he had not wanted to be an astronaut. He could remember being six, and riding on his father’s shoulders. The Canadian night had been cool and clear, and he had leaned back and just gazed at the stars blazing above him, tiny lighthouses on the road to infinity. He could imagine that he was falling upward, endlessly falling among the stars, and thought, there. I’m going out there. He had leaned back, farther and farther on his father’s shoulders, and then let go, to feel himself falling upward.
His father had caught him by the legs before he hit the ground—his father had always had incredible reflexes—and all that he had felt was disappointment.
In the Scouts, he had been on the archery range. He hadn’t cared much about target shooting, and unlike the other boys, he had no secret longing to hunt and kill. But the bow itself seemed to him a thing of perfect beauty, an object that could not have been more elegantly designed. He marveled over its clean and simple design. One day he took his bow, drew it back as far as he could, and aimed it directly upward into the sky.
The arrow flew up, straight and true, and vanished with a whisper into the aching blue above, and he stared after it, his bow arm still extended in the air, mesmerized by the beauty of the flight.
“Martin!” the scoutmaster shouted. “What the hell are you—”
The arrow came down, so fast it was only a streak, and with a soft whickersnack buried itself to the feathers in the Earth.
The scoutmaster turned pale, his eyes bulging, and then he exploded. “Martin! Get over here!” He grabbed him, his fingers digging painfully into his shoulder, and ripped the bow out of his hands.
Ryan had almost forgotten he still held it.
None of the other boys had been watching when Ryan had launched his arrow skyward, and they all turned to stare, battled at the sudden inexplicable fury of the scoutmaster.
“You—you—” The scoutmaster was completely incoherent, and slowly, almost as if from a dream, Ryan came to his senses and realized, yes, it might have killed someone. It might have killed him. It had been a dangerous thing to do.
But in his mind’s eye he could still see it, that one perfect moment when the arrow hangs in the air, quivering, straining, longing to go higher, and then falls, defeated.
And he realized, that is me, the arrow is me. That is where I want to go.
To go upward, forever upward, and to never come down.
3
Camp Agamemnon
They were tired, and then more than tired, a complete weariness that transcended all consciousness. The world compressed down to one step, then another, then another. The landscape had changed color, darkening from the light, almost orange color of their original landing site to a dark burned-brick color. They were walking on bare bedrock. But none of them looked at the landscape, none of them focused any farther ahead than the next step.
Ryan kept a readout of their position using the inertial navigation system from the dirt-rover. Occasionally he would read out their progress—“Three hundred kilometers to go”—until at last Tana told him to stop; it was too depressing. None of them dared to think of what would happen if the inertial navigation failed, if they were unable to find the Agamemnon site as they had been earlier unable to find the Pathfinder.
Two hundred kilometers to go.
One hundred kilometers.
When they came to the edges of the Agamemnon camp, it took them several minutes before they even recognized it. A discarded drilling-lubricant cylinder. Not far past that, a seismic recording station. They were beyond curiosity now, and the technological detritus went unremarked.
They crested a dune, and started down the far side, and none of them looked up until they almost stumbled over the camp.