The engines’ roar increased. The vessel shook violently. These clunkers were lucky if they didn’t shake themselves apart during takeoff! He hurriedly strapped himself into his bunk as the ship heaved itself up.
He leaned back, relaxing. It was the only way to handle acceleration. Now he could sort out his slowly recovering memories, aided by what he had learned last night. So he was Hauser, a turncoat agent with a conscience. He liked that. He had seen enough of Agency methods to know that he didn’t want to be associated with it. But what was the secret he knew that made him so dangerous to them? That remained blank. Why had they gone to so much trouble to keep him alive and healthy, despite having to detail a crew to keep watch on him and keep him pacified? They must have wanted him for something. But that, too, was blank.
At least he was on the way to Mars, where the answers were. To Mars, where the woman of his dreams was. He was now certain she existed. He had dreamed her because he remembered her, on a level suppressed by the implant that had rendered him into Quaid. Somehow some of that memory had leaked, giving him a desire to return to Mars and an image of the woman. If he could find her, he could find the rest of his past.
He would also have to deal with Cohaagen. Hauser had told him that, and it rang true. He would not be allowed to live if Cohaagen and his deadly minions remained free.
The acceleration pressed him back, making breathing labored. He found himself thinking of three things: smashing Cohaagen, loving the Mars woman, and something else of overwhelming significance. But it wouldn’t come clear. Not yet.
He oriented on that third thing, knowing that in it lay the key to all the rest. It was—it was what he had been going after when he was with the woman, when he fell into the pit. It was there, under the ground of Mars. But what was it? Its physical aspect was only part of it. There was so much more…
He lost the thread. He let it go for the moment and pulled the curtain aside to gaze out the porthole. He imagined himself turning ghostlike, a hologram, flying through that port and out to pace the ship, then around to see the fiery, noisy exhaust of the engine. He zoomed right into it, until all his world was blazing red. If only he could burn away the whole of his false existence, and recover his real identity, and know what it was that haunted his deepest mind, that was so significant as to change the fate of a world…
CHAPTER 15
Spaceport
It was dark and silent. Then Phobos, the larger of the two potato-shaped moons of Mars, floated into view. It was about seventeen miles long, thirteen across, and twelve deep, which was pretty small as moons went, but still about twice the size of its companion, Deimos. It was as ugly as a barren rock could be, hardly more than a fragment torn from some larger body and frozen in its irregularity. But it was an excellent spot for a rendezvous, because it was solid without having any significant gravity of its own.
The space cycler came into view, closing on the moon. The ship looked tiny in comparison, a mere speck. Then, above the two, was the huge red mass of Mars, so large in proportion that only its arc showed. Yet Mars was one of the smallest planets, barely over a tenth the mass of Earth. How perspective changed things!
Quaid, aboard the small shuttle, watched Phobos and the space cycler recede. The other passengers paid no attention, bored with this as they had been with the rest of the journey out. All they wanted was tourist trophies and the gaming tables. But he was fascinated. The riddle of his life was here, and not just in the people here. There was something about the landscape of Mars…
The shuttle thrust up, closing the distance. Gradually Quaid’s orientation altered, until he no longer saw the planet as above, but as below. That was a bit more comfortable.
The shuttle crossed the landscape, ragged and pocked by craters of every size. Quaid was locked into it, unable to tear his eyes away. This was almost like his dream, only, only—
He shook his head. It just wouldn’t quite come. What had been done to his memory was like a thick rope wound around his body, tight, chafing, giving only a little in places, hurting him when he struggled. He needed more than just his thoughts to free himself… The terrain was violent, as befitted the planet named for the god of war. He saw part of the enormous equatorial canyon called Valles Marineris, the better part of three thousand miles long, dwarfing Earth’s Grand Canyon. In some sections its walls had collapsed, evidently washed out by flooding. Mars had once had water on its surface, a lot of it; now that water was locked in buried ice, in virtual glaciers under the dust and sand of the surface. No one was sure just how much water there was, if it could only be released, or what might lie below it. He saw the three great shield volcanoes sitting atop the Tharsis ridge. He knew this region; it was coming back to him as he gazed down at it! But where was the thing buried deeper in his memory? It had something to do with the ice…
Now the shuttle approached the peak of Olympus Mons, some fifteen or sixteen miles high according to his memory, a magnificent mountain unlike any other in the Solar System. It might have seemed odd that a planet much smaller than Earth had a volcanic mountain much larger than any on Earth, but this was because the gravity was less, and the mantle of the planet did not constantly shift. On Earth such a structure would have been brought down long ago by the forces of gravity and weather, and the shifting mantle tended to cut volcanoes off from their sources before they could do much.
The retro rockets fired for the shuttle’s vertical descent. On the boulder-strewn plain of Chryse, the spaceport roof opened up, revealing a landing pad inside. The shuttle dropped into the spaceport, and the roof closed over it. Such mechanisms were necessary because the air of Mars was far too thin to permit external unloading.
Quaid, in the guise of the fat lady, exited with the tourists. He showed his passport, the one provided by Hauser in the satchel, and an official seal stamped down on it. MARS FEDERAL COLONY / CONFEDERATION OF NORTHERN NATIONS. No one was really checking the papers; Mars wanted both tourists and colonists, and so kept the red tape to a minimum. That meant that a person could normally be processed through within a couple of hours.
It would be better, of course, if they got it down to two minutes. But bureaucracy was incapable of that. Even if there was only one little bag to check, containing no more than a Mars candy bar, that justified an hour’s delay. On other planets, where they didn’t care about making a good impression, it would justify four hours’ delay, and more if the victim fussed. Bureaucrats were little tyrants in their domains, never able to understand why visitors didn’t like them.
Fortunately, the Mars gravity made standing in line easy. Even a fat lady like him could handle it.
In the Immigration Hall of the spaceport the travelers were queued up in three long lines, waiting to be processed by the three immigration officers on duty. Why didn’t they have a dozen officers there, doing other chores between ships? Richter smiled knowingly. Because that would be too efficient. Visitors needed to feel the power of the bureaucracy, which was demonstrated by wasting their time. He approved of this. It was right that civilians be constantly reminded who had control.