There was a big square red light on the console that flashed in what looked like a random pattern—but I knew it wasn’t; it was one of those lights that robots in old sci-fi flicks used to have that flashed in time with spoken words, once per syllable. Such lights didn’t really serve any purpose on robots, but they were handy to indicate that a computer was talking in a spaceship cabin that might or might not be pressurized. There wasn’t much air in the lander, and all of it was unbreathable, but it was sufficient to convey faint sound. I cranked up the volume on my suit’s external microphones. “Repeat,” I said.
“I said, can I be of assistance?” replied a male voice; in the thin air, I couldn’t say much more about it than that, although I thought it sounded rather smug.
“Yes, please,” I said. “Can you open the hatch?”
“No,” the computer replied. “Both egress portals are manually operated.”
“Can you blow the top hatch?”
“That functionality is not available.”
“All right,” I said, crossing my arms in front of my chest. “We’d like to take off.”
“Ten. Nine. Eight.”
“Wait!” I said, and “Hold!” shouted Pickover.
“Holding,” said the voice.
“Just like that?” I said. “We can just take off? You know we’re buried in Martian permafrost.”
“Of course. I engineered the burial.”
“Um, is it safe to take off?” asked Pickover.
“Well, safe-ish,” said the computer.
“What kind of answer is that?” I asked.
“An approximate one,” replied the prim voice.
“I’ll say,” I said. And then it occurred to me to ask another question. “Do you know how long you’ve been turned off?”
“Thirty-six years.”
“Right,” I said. “Do you know why Simon Weingarten marooned Denny O’Reilly here?”
“Yes.”
“Spill it.”
“Voiceprint authorization required.”
“Whose?”
“Mr. Weingarten’s or Mr. O’Reilly’s.”
“They’re both dead,” I said.
“I have no information about that.”
“I can show you O’Reilly’s body. It’s upstairs.”
“Be that as it may,” said the computer.
I frowned. “What other information has been locked?”
“All navigational and cartographic records.”
I nodded. If the lander ever was moved, no one but Simon or Denny could ask the computer how to get back to the Alpha. “All right,” I said. “We need to get out of here. That door”—I pointed to the other side of the ship—“is it an airlock?” I couldn’t see the computer’s camera, but I was sure it had one, and so it should have known what I was indicating.
“Yes.”
“The outer door is sealed?”
“Yes.”
“Does it swing in or out?”
“Out.”
I motioned to Pickover. He walked over and worked the wheel that opened the inner door, which swung in toward him. There was a chamber with curving walls between the inside and outside hulls of the ship, big enough for one person. “Is there a safety interlock that will prevent us from opening the outer door while the inner one is open?” I asked.
“Yes,” said the computer.
“Can it be defeated?” I assumed there must be a way to turn it off, since it’d be a pain in the ass to have to cycle through the airlock during testing back on Earth.
“Yes.”
“Do so.”
“Done.”
“Okay. I propose that you fire the engine to lift the ship up out of the ground so that the airlock is just above the surface. Can do?”
“Can do,” said the computer.
“All right,” I said. “Rory, are you ready?”
“As ready as I’ll ever be.”
I got out of the chair and moved over to stand behind him. “Nothing personal,” I said, “but if whoever is outside opens fire, you’ve got a better chance of surviving than I do.”
The paleontologist nodded.
“Computer,” I said.
“My name is Mudge,” the machine replied.
I heard Pickover snort; the name must have meant something to him. “Fine, Mudge,” I said. “We’re ready.”
“Ten,” said Mudge, and he continued in the predictable sequence.
There was a wheel set into the outer door, which was also red. Pickover moved over and grabbed it with both hands, ready to start rotating it as soon as it was above the ground. I grabbed onto a handle conveniently set into the wall of the airlock, in case it turned out to be a rough ride.
“Two,” said Mudge. “One. Zero.”
The whole ship began to shake, and I heard the roar of the engine beneath my feet and felt it transmitted through the deck plates and the soles of my boots. We did not explode, for which I was grateful. But we didn’t seem to be going anywhere, either.
“Mudge?” I called.
The computer divined my question. “The permafrost is melting beneath us and, by conduction, at our sides, as well. Give it a moment.”
I did just that, and soon did feel us jerking upward. I tried to imagine what the scene looked like outside: perhaps like a cork working its way slowly out of a wine bottle.
There was a rectangle in front of Pickover, above the wheel, that I’d stupidly taken as decorative, but it was a window in the outer airlock door. Light was now streaming in from the top of it, and the strip of illumination was growing thicker centimeter by centimeter as the ship rose out of its muddy tomb. I couldn’t make out any details through the window, though: it was streaked with reddish brown muck.
If whoever had locked us in had been standing guard, I hoped—old softy that I am—that he or she realized what was going on, since I imagined the superheated rocket exhaust would spray out in all directions once the cylindrical hull was fully above ground.
Soon the entire height of the window was admitting light. Our ascent was still slow, though. Pickover was craning to look out the port, presumably to see when the bottom of the door was above ground—
—which must have been now, because he gave a final twist to the locking wheel and hauled back and kicked the door outward with the leg that had the uninjured ankle.
Suddenly we popped higher into the air—free now from the sucking wet melted permafrost. Pickover threw himself out the airlock with a cry of “Geronimo!”
I scrambled to follow suit, but by the time I got to the precipice, we were already dozens of meters above the ground; even in Martian gravity, the jump would surely break my legs and probably my neck, too.
“Abort!” I yelled over my shoulder. “Mudge, lower us back down!”
The vibration of the hull plating changed at once, presumably as the computer throttled back the engine. We hung in the air for a moment, like a cartoon character after going off a cliff, and then started to descend.
Pickover had ended up spread-eagled in the mud, but was now getting to his feet and trying to run, despite his bad ankle. The cylindrical habitat had reduced its altitude by half. Pickover was having a terrible time gaining traction in the mud; I didn’t want to singe him. “Cut the engine!” I called to Mudge. The hull suddenly stopped vibrating, and we began dropping like a rock. I was afraid the ship would fall right back down into the hole it had previously occupied, especially since it was probably widened now by the rocket exhaust. When I figured my chances were at least halfway decent for surviving, I leapt out of the airlock, trying for as much horizontal distance as I could manage.
When I landed, my legs went like driven piles into the muck. No sooner had they done so than a shock wave went through the melted permafrost as the massive lander impacted the surface behind me. I twisted my neck to see. The lander had hit half-on and half-off the hole, and now was teetering toward me; it looked like it was going to topple over any second. I tried to pull myself up and out of the mess, but it was going to take some doing—and the chances of the ship falling precisely so that I ended up poking safely through the open airlock doors instead of being crushed seemed slim. It was too bad we hadn’t brought along the lasso that Lakshmi had used on Pickover earlier; he could have employed it to haul me out of the quagmire.