“My fat’er was a tail end of fift’ team. When t’ey pulled out, he set te sensors a let towns know when te hobo played down, sloshed ot’er way. T’ey planned a come back and resume mining. Ore a big lodes of iron, nickel, platinum, iridium, aluminum. Of course too much water, even for Martians. All could a let us build more towns. Many more. If we wor making more babies or bringing in more settlers. Neit’er which we do, now.”
“Because of the fighting.”
“Afore t’en. Te first troubles started afore I wor born.”
“Troubles?”
“Come wit’ me.”
She takes me through a narrower tunnel. Here, the star lights seem brighter—the walls reflect their feeble glow. Beneath the green dust, my fingers feel the neutral warmth of pure metal in large patterns, irregular and beautiful crystalline shapes.
Then it hits me. During daylight, Mars dirt is warmer than the thin air for the first couple of centimeters, but gets colder the deeper you dig. Down here, something is keeping the Drifter’s thick walls pleasant to the touch. The Drifter may be sitting above an old magma chamber, one of the last signs of Mars’s youth.
This place is fabulous. I doubt it would be possible to overrate its strategic importance. How could it have been kept secret from Earth? Or from the Antags, for that matter?
But if Gamecock heard the general right, maybe it isn’t secret—not to Command. Someone could have spilled the beans and told Earth, and Earth could have finally decided to look up satellite gravimetry from decades past.
Confirm an anomaly.
Maybe command decided this is something worth finding and fighting for. Enough water and materials to support a couple of divisions, thousands of drops and ascents, for decades to come. No need for fountains.
Yet the Antags are still dropping comets.
And nobody told us.
My head reels trying to figure the ins and outs.
Teal comes to a ladder, metal rungs hammered into one side of a square, vertical shaft about three meters wide, rising into darkness. I can just make out a platform ten or fifteen meters above.
“Climb wit’ me?” she asks. “I doan wanT go it alone.”
“What’s up there?”
“My father said a watchtower, dug inna rock near te top, face west.”
“There’s air?”
She gives me a tart look and takes to the rungs. There is indeed a platform about halfway up the shaft. I’m not at all good at orienting underground, not sure which way I’m pointed, but guess we’re well up in the hill that rises over and beyond the sunken entrance—the “head” of the Drifter. The pure metal gives way to dark reddish stone streaked with black. The platform is rusty, coated in greenish powder, and creaks under our weight. Rust-colored water streaks and shimmers down the stone.
How long since the flood subsided? Days? Weeks? And who would be alerted that the Drifter was again open to mining and manufacture? How long until they all decide to return, in force, and find us?
Niter. Sulfur. Depositors and printers. They could easily make weapons, explosives.
Another ladder climb and we pass through a metal hatchway into a cubicle, bare rock on three sides, metal shutters on the fourth—and cold. Deep cold. Electric heaters have been mounted low in the stone walls, but not turned on. The chill sucks the heat from our bodies. We obviously won’t be staying long.
“’Tis as I heard,” Teal says, shivering, stooping—too tall for the cubicle. “T’is was built a guard over ot’er camps shoving in.”
Where there are people, there will be competition. Conflict. It’s what humans do best.
“Maybe we shoulda worn skintights,” Teal mutters as she twists the plastic knurl. “Doan know if…”
With a ratcheting creak, the shutters pull up and aside. There’s thick, dusty plex beyond, lightly fogged by decades of blowing sand—despite another set of shutters on the opposite side. Teal keeps turning the knurl and the outer shutters lift as well. The wide port provides a view of the sloping entrance to the northern garage and the rocky plain beyond. That damned brown blur still rises in the northwest. Odd. The comets should have wiped away any weather pattern.
I point it out to Teal. “That’s been there since we arrived. Any idea what it might be?”
She shakes her head.
Because the plex sits under a meter of rock overhang, there’s no view of the sky much above the horizon. And we can’t look straight east or south.
Teal reaches up and unscrews a cover in the cubicle’s roof. My fingers are numb. I can barely feel my face.
“T’ree-sixty,” she says, swinging aside the cover and pulling down a shining steel periscope. She plucks at its metal bars, not to freeze her fingers. “As told.”
“Who told?” I ask.
“Fat’er. Look quick,” she says. “Canna stay long unless we find te control booth and gin te power.”
I keep my eyes a couple of centimeters from the nearly solid rubber eyecups, but manage a circling, fish-eye view of the land around the promontory and the cubicle. Like a submarine under the sand!
Nothing… nothing…
Around once more, and then, to the southeast, I see a dusty plume, much closer, and beneath that, approaching the Drifter: three vehicles, neither Antag nor Skyrine.
More buggies.
“Muskies coming,” I say.
She gives me attitude about that name, but takes the view. She rotates the periscope several times, always pausing in the direction of the buggies’ approach.
“From te Voor camp,” she announces.
“Voor? Who are they?”
“Voors, Voortrekkers,” she says. “You know not’ing of us!” She stows the scope, closes the shutters, and returns to the ladder, muttering, “Got a way gin main power.”
Right. She descends from the lookout and I follow, fingers so numb I can barely hold on to the rungs. If we find a control room and power switches and equipment, maybe we’ll also find the miners’ stock of reserves: medical supplies, skintight repair kits, food. Enough to give us time to wait for reinforcements. Which have got to be on their way. This was supposed to be a big shove, right?
Maybe we’ve found what command was looking for all along.
PATRIOTS AND PIONEERS ALL
Teal is in the tunnel, running east. I reach the bottom of the shaft barely in time to see her disappear into darkness. Training tells me to get back to my squad—Voortrekker sounds suspiciously old-school—but I’m conflicted. I don’t know what sort of trouble we could face, what exactly to tell Gamecock or Tak or the general, if he’s still with us. Would the buggies carry miners returning to their digs—happy to see us, happy to have our help? Somehow, I don’t think so. But can I trust Teal to tell the whole truth?
I doubt our angels will answer any of these local questions. They’re rarely conversant on matters not immediately important to our operations, and settlers have never been an issue.
And why not?
How stupid is that?
The star lights here still glow, but dimmer, doubtless on fading battery power. I cross through many gaps filled with shadows. I’m feeling my way and my pace is slower than Teal’s. The tunnel weaves for fifty or sixty meters through raw metal and then basalt and outcrops of what looks like pyrites—fool’s gold, crystals of iron sulfide. Lots going on in the eastern Drifter.
The tunnel opens into what could be another buggy barn—but empty. The green dust here is thick and pools of moisture stain the floor’s compacted sand. Teal stands on the far side, beside another lock hatch, feeling the seals with her long fingers, then pushes her face close to detect loss of air.