The previous afternoon had left her physically and emotionally drained. So much so, that Demeter had fallen asleep in the middle of filing her evening report with the Texahoma Martian Development Corporation. Not that she had too much to report. She remembered discussing the expedition she would be taking this morning and her excitement about actually getting out on the surface. Not that she would learn much about the Valles Marineris today ...
There was something else she was supposed to report, or had reported . . . or at least had thought might be important. Something about geology—or did she merely dream that? Oh, well.. . The key item was that today she would get some valuable local experience by going out in a walker with Lole Mitsuno.
Coghlan looked around the airlock terminal. It reminded her of the elevator lobby of a Dallas mega-highrise. A long, open corridor slanted up from the underground complex and ended in this six-sided bay with a sealed door in each wall. They were very impressive doors, each operated by either servomotor or handcrank, with a readout panel to the right having both needle gauges and a digital display. There was a painted, red-bordered sign in seven languages across each set of paired panels. In the floor before the threshold was a steel trip plate. Each door was numbered, beginning clockwise from the left-hand side of the entry ramp. The lighting there in the lobby was day-bright, even though the tubes were baffled and recessed. Somebody was trying to prepare tunnel-sensitized eyes for the glare of sunlight on sand.
People came and went while she waited for Mitsuno. Whenever one of the doors opened, Demeter tried to peek past it into whatever lay beyond. Trouble was, that involved staring directly at whoever was coming out, which was the worst possible manners. Instead, she watched the backs of the people going in, and that gave her mixed clues. Sometimes the space on the other side of the door was a simple lock, no bigger than a commercial elevator, fitted with pressure suits and survival gear. But once or twice Demeter glimpsed whole rooms that were furnished with chairs upholstered in luxurious fabrics and the glow of electronics with LEDs and colorfully patterned screens.
She wondered about those pressure suits. Demeter had never worn one, although she'd traveled almost 280 million kilometers through interplanetary vacuum to breathe Mars's particular species of canned air. So she had questions. For instance, could she wear the suit over her own street—or tunnel—clothes? Demeter fingered the lapel of her jumper. If not, would she have to strip down in Mitsuno's presence? And if so, how far would she have to go? To the skin? Or was underwear allowed? . . . What was the etiquette of nudity in a strange society?
In the groups of strange faces coming and going on the ramp from the lower levels, she suddenly glimpsed the hydrologist. The outline of his golden hair, rugged jawline, and squinting eyes rode above the foreshortened tangle of heads as he strode up the corridor. Suddenly Lole was standing beside Demeter and she had to crook her neck to look up at him.
"Just how tall are you?"
"Two hundred ten cents," he answered. "About. . . eighty-three inches. Is 'inches' the correct unit for cowboy talk?"
"Feet," Demeter supplied. "You stand six foot ten, partner."
"All, so many foot."
Demeter shook her head. "You must have had skyscrapers for parents."
"Sky—? Oh, buildings. No, I'm just first generation. My parents were both emigres, no taller than you," he said appraisingly. Demeter stood five-nine in her stockings and, as a teenager, had been considered gawky. "It's the lower gravity, you see," he explained. "We Mars-born just shoot up, or so my mother always said."
"Then what happened to Jory?" Demeter burst out. It was an unfortunate personal remark, and she hoped Mitsuno wouldn't take offense for his friend.
"Jory is Creole. He was Mars-born, too, and of course fully human. But soon after puberty they did things to his body. Some you can see, like the impermeable skin. A lot you can't, like his entire endocrine system."
"Oh, right." She hurried to change the subject: "Where ate we going today?"
"Headed for a place called Harmonia Mundi, Mars Survey Reference CQ-6981. Wyatt's reserved a medium-sized walker for us. Door number five."
Mitsuno led her over to the airlock as he talked, where Demeter read the digital display: reserved t.m. resources department official business. Her guide spoke into the recessed mike: "Okay, Wyatt. Let s get this show on the road."
"May I have your thumbprint, please?" the panel replied coolly. A small square lit up white.
"Voiceprint me and open."
Without further comment, the doors servo-operated dogs unsealed themselves and the panel split and slid apart.
Beyond it was one of the elevator-sized varieties of interior space. When Mitsuno stepped aside for her, Demeter walked in and reached for the neck ring of the first pressure suit that came to hand.
"What are you doing?" he asked.
"Isn't this an airlock? Don't we have to get dre—?"
Mitsuno keyed a wallpad, and an internal door folded back. Demeter was looking into a truck cockpit, but one finished in steel and plastic instead of nice fabrics and simulated woods. Closest to the door was a utility space with facing benches and a pull-down table. Farther along was a driver's console with a minimum of instrumentation. Windows on either side and across the front showed red desert with various of the complex's buildings in the foreground.
"We'll use suits when we get to the worksite," he explained. "Until then, we travel in style."
Mitsuno secured the door behind them, waved her to a seat on one of the benches, and sat down at the console. He studied the board for a second, hit three keys, then swiveled around, away from the windshield.
"What do you think of Mars so far?" he asked casually.
"Big on the outside, small on the inside," she replied, thinking of lives that seemed to be lived mostly underground.
"Yeah, people up here go in for virtual simulations. Gives our brains room to breathe, anyway."
Demeter noticed that scenery was passing the window ahead of the driver's console without him paying the slightest attention. "Shouldn't you look where you're driving?" She gestured toward the front—bow? nose?—of the vehicle.
"No need. Wyatt knows the coordinates of the Mundi reserve better than I do, and this car's pattern buffers do a better job of keeping out of collisions than either of us."
The ground out in front did look hilly, with tall projections of gray rock that floated on past the side ports. Demeter craned her neck forward: the machine was following no road she could see. She sat back and sensed the ride with her butt. It felt like pneumatic tires on laser-aligned ferrocrete. Better even. Although the terrain outside was definitely shaping up into foothills, the vehicle's floor remained dead level.
"This buggy sure rolls along smoothly."
"Inertial compensators," Mitsuno replied, "built into the leg circuitry. From the outside, this thing moves like a spider doing ballet."
"You've actually seen a spider?" Demeter wondered. "I mean, they somehow got past your quarantine rules?"
"No, we raise 'em. It's the only way to keep down the flies."
The floor took a reeling step—a sudden lurch forward and a long circle back, like a camel with the staggers.
"Whoops!" Mitsuno grinned. "Spoke too soon. Wyatt, what the hell was that?"
"Sorry, Lole." The machine voice didn't sound at all contrite. "That was a chuckhole."
"Don't tell me you have gophers here on Mars!" Demeter broke in.
"No, Miz Coghlan-Demeter-Cerise," Wyatt replied with her full name. "'Chuckhole' is a colloquial human reference. The correct term is 'nonventing paleo-geological fumarole.'"
"Chuckhole will do," she said evenly. There it was again: geology... something to do with ... whatever.