THE TUNNEL HAD been bored straight through the wall of a large impact crater on the north-western periphery of Arsia Station. The tunnel was narrow, its low ceiling lined with electric lamps; it vaguely resembled the gallery of a coal mine. As he walked through it, Nash could feel a vibration through the soles of his skinsuit boots. There was a faint metallic clanking, conveyed even through the thin atmosphere, which managed to penetrate his helmet, but it was not until he reached the end of the tunnel that he discovered the source of the sound.
The airship hangar had been built inside the crater. The floor was paved with marsbricks on which had been painted a large white circle; high above, floodlights positioned around the rim illuminated the vast area. As Nash stepped through the hatch, he saw that the aluminum roof of the crater was slowly being accordioned back in two louvered sections: this was what was causing the metronomic clanking noise. As the slatted roof parted, the floodlights automatically switched off as bright morning sunlight washed into the hangar. This, though, was not what instantly grabbed his attention, causing him to reflexively suck in his breath.
The USS Akron didn’t look much like its namesake dirigible, which had crashed in the Atlantic Ocean off the New Jersey coast in 1933, but it was almost as huge. Over five hundred feet long and three hundred feet wide at its stern, the new Akron was a sleek silver wedge, held aloft just above the hangar floor by the hydrogen gas still being pumped into its internal cells by the ground crew.
A long, spoiler-like rudder rose above and across the stern; at the tapered bow, above and to either side of the bulge of the gondola, were the long canards of its forward elevators. The top one-third of the skin was lined with photovoltaic cells which shone dull-black in the sunlight. Near the bottom of the airship, just behind the gondola, were the small windows of its internal passenger compartment. On the underside of the hull, just behind the passenger compartment, the cargo bay doors were open, while workmen moved in and out of a maintenance hatch beneath the stern. Mounted on each side of the enormous vessel were two swivel-mounted Pratt & Whitney turbofans, dormant for the time being. The ship’s name and its registration number, MA-102A, were painted across the midsection.
Unlike the original Akron, which had been a true dirigible, the Martian airship was a semi-rigid hybrid, combining features of blimps, dirigibles and airplanes. It had a graphite-polymer internal skeleton which had been transported from Earth as collapsed rings and unfolded during construction in the crater-hangar; the outer skin was composed of layers of Mylar and Kevlar. The passenger compartment was modular, contained within the envelope and suspended by cables from the internal skeleton. Since hydrogen was readily available on Mars, but in the carbon-dioxide atmosphere didn’t have its flammable properties which had doomed the Hindenburg a century earlier, it was used as the lifting property; the airship’s delta-like ‘flying wing’ shape lent it greater stability and payload loft than its smaller predecessor, the ovoid Edgar Rice Burroughs.
Nash felt something bump against his calves. ‘Excuse me,’ Miho Sasaki said through his headset as she swung her aluminum case around him. Nash had forgotten that he was blocking the tunnel entrance; he began to mumble an apology and move aside, but Sasaki had already stepped around him and was walking across the hangar floor to the airship. She didn’t seem at all impressed with the giant airship. On the other hand, she had been almost completely uncommunicative during their brief ride from the habitat to the hangar. Perhaps she had something else on her mind today—or maybe she simply didn’t want to talk to him.
He hefted his own case as he heard Boggs’ disembodied voice come over the comlink from the airship: ‘Let’s move it along there, folks. Wind’s beginning to pick up at ground level and I want to get out of here before it gets too hairy.’
‘Coming right along, chief,’ Nash said, understanding what Boggs meant. Most airship accidents occur in the hangar, when wind-shear can catch the envelope and bang it against the doors during launch or landing. Although the crater made a perfect natural hangar for the Akron, protecting it from micrometeorites and dust storms between flights, making a vertical ascent could be a tricky business if the windsock was running high. He began to follow Sasaki across the hangar floor.
Once beneath the massive shadow of the airship, though, he paused near the open cargo bay. When he had exited from the condo’s main airlock twenty minutes ago, he had glimpsed a large payload container in the bed of another rover as it was hauled out to the hangar; serial numbers on the side of the container told him it had come from the Lowell’s cargo lander.
The container was here, but its aluminum sides had now been collapsed and packing materials were strewn across the bricks. A couple of cargo grunts were climbing over and around a massive, lumpish machine, hauling and attaching cables from the bay wrench over their heads. The machine itself was almost invisible within swatches of fiberglass padding stenciled with Japanese characters; all it needed was a bright red ribbon, a bow and a big card reading Do Not Open Till Xmas. One of the grunts carefully climbed off the front of the thing, looked upward into the cargo bay and gave a quick thumbs-up; the cables went taut as the wrench was engaged, and the strange device was ponderously lifted from the floor.
‘C’mon, Andy,’ Boggs said impatiently. ‘Miho’s holding the door open and we don’t have time for dicking around.’
‘Sorry. Coming right now.’ Nash walked to the ladder leading to the passenger compartment and climbed up into the airlock. Sasaki was waiting just inside; when he entered, she touched the keypad control which folded the ladder, then slammed the hatch shut and spun the lockwheel counter-clockwise to dog it.
‘It’ll be a few minutes,’ she said as she tapped codes into the keypad to begin the pressurization cycles. ‘I expect Waylon can manage by himself.’
‘I guess he can.’ The fact of the matter was that Nash was beginning to feel more like a passenger than a co-pilot. The airship’s avionics were largely computer-controlled, so his alleged role as first officer was academic.
The airlock was small and cramped; with both of them in there, it was like sharing a walk-in closet. Besides the exit hatch to the crew compartment, auxiliary hatches led into the cargo bay and, through the ceiling, into the airship’s envelope. Although he was standing right in front of her, Miho avoided his gaze and steadily watched the digital indicator above the keypad.
Nash let a minute go by, then cleared his throat. ‘Did you sleep well last night?’
‘Quite well, thank you.’ She continued to watch the indicator. He didn’t say anything; finally she turned her face toward him. ‘And you?’
‘I’m a little hung over. W. J. and I shared a bottle of whiskey last night, so…’ He raised his hand and waved it back and forth. Sasaki smiled a little and looked at the panel again. ‘Of course,’ he added, ‘you know about that already.’
Her eyes darted back to him. ‘Pardon me?’ she said.
Nash raised three fingers, then touched the appropriate digit on his skinsuit’s wristpad, switching to another comlink channel. Sasaki hesitated, then complied; they were now on a private channel. ‘You know that we were sharing a drink in the atrium,’ he went on, ‘because you were eavesdropping from the third-floor balcony.’
She immediately opened her mouth. ‘No, don’t bother to deny it,’ he added quickly. ‘I spotted you…but not before you heard everything that was discussed. I suppose.’
The astrophysicist glared at him and didn’t say anything for a moment. ‘So you caught me, Mr Nash…’ she began.
‘Damn straight.’ It was pointless to tell her that he had been bluffing; the fact that she had used his real name was confirmation enough. ‘So why don’t we end this charade and you tell me why you’re here?’
Sasaki thought it over for a few seconds. ‘All right,’ she replied at last. ‘Not now, though. Once we’re underway and we’re alone together, we can talk.’
‘Fair enough. At least we’ve got that part settled.’ The dust was almost gone now. Nash glanced at the indicator panel and saw that the LED bar was creeping closer to the green line; he clapped his hands a couple of times and noticed that the sound wasn’t quite as muffled. The pressurization cycle was nearly complete. ‘Switch back to One,’ he said as he reset the comlink to its original channel.
Boggs’ voice came over the comlink at once. ‘Hey, where did you guys go?’
‘Over to another channel,’ Nash said. ‘I wanted to tell Miho a dirty joke.’
‘Won’t work, buddy. I’ve told her all my best ones and she wouldn’t laugh or anything.’ Nash noticed that Miho blushed when he said that. ‘As soon as you two get out of there, come straight to the flight deck and get yourselves strapped in. Don’t even bother to take off your suits first. The wind’s still rising and I’m getting itchy.’
‘We copy,’ Nash said. At that instant the airlock buzzed; the panel lights flashed green. Nash and Sasaki unlatched their helmets and removed them, storing them in lockers along with their gloves. Miho pulled off her Snoopy helmet and shook out her hair, then undogged the hatch to the passenger section and shoved it open.
The passenger compartment was about the size of a mobile home. A narrow passageway brought them to the gangway leading down to the gondola; Nash caught brief glimpses of the bunks, the galley, the wardroom and the miniature laboratory before Miho led him down into the flight deck. Boggs was sitting in the forward left seat, a headset clamped over his trademark George Dickel cap; he barely looked up as Nash squeezed past him and plopped into the co-pilot’s seat on the right, while Sasaki took the passenger seat behind Boggs. ‘Took you long enough,’ he grumbled. ‘I was beginning to wonder if I was going to have to come back there with a bucket of cold water.’
‘Waylon…’ Miho began.
‘Sorry, kiddo. Don’t mind me. I’m always an asshole before I fly.’ Boggs carelessly dropped the clipboard he had been holding onto the floor. ‘Listen, Nash…shit, I mean Andy…’
‘Don’t worry about it.’ Nash found the straps and buckled them around his waist and shoulders. ‘That’s what we were getting straight back there.’ He glanced over his shoulder at Sasaki. ‘Right, Miho?’
‘Right…August.’ Again the slight, quickly-vanishing smile.
‘So we’re all friends here. ‘Bout time.’ Boggs looked as if he had eaten lemons for breakfast; Nash wondered how his hangover was treating him. ‘Okay, I didn’t expect you to know how to co-pilot the thing on your first go-round, so it’s all programmed auto on your side of the bench. Sit back and enjoy the ride…if we get out of here, that is.’
As he spoke, Boggs’ eyes were sweeping across the myriad digital and analog dials on his dashboard. He glanced at a board beneath his left elbow and swore under his breath. ‘Hey, Skip!’ he snapped into his headset mike. ‘Skip, you hear me?’ He paused, listening for a moment. ‘Listen, man, I got a red light telling me the rear maintenance hatch is still open…yeah, that one. You want to get somebody back there and close it or what?’
He cupped his hand over the mike and cast a sour glance at Nash. ‘Ground crew,’ he muttered. ‘They’re always leaving the blamed hatch open. I swear, if I didn’t have idiot-lights to tell me what’s going on…’ He stopped and listened again, looked down at the board to verify that the warning light had gone off, then unclasped the mike. ‘Okay, thanks. I owe you one.’
Boggs grasped the twin throttle bars next to his right thigh and pulled them down one-quarter. There was a slight vibration and a rising drone as the turboprops revved up. He glanced again at the center flatscreen, which showed an overhead computer simulation of the airship on the landing grid, then touched the lobe of his headset.
‘Akron to Arsia TRAFCO. We’re vectored for launch and ready for cast-off, you copy?’ He listened for a moment. ‘Thanks, Jeri. We’re on our way. I’ll bring home some M & Ms. Over.’
Through the wide wraparound window, Nash saw the forward mooring cable detach from the pad-wrench beneath the airship’s bow; it was quickly dragged across the hangar floor and pulled upward as it retracted into the bow spindle. There were similar lateral jerks as the port and starboard cables were released. Skinsuited ground crewmen were hastily backing out of the airship’s shadow; one of them bent, released his ankle bracelets, then straightened and did a forward somersault, alighting perfectly on his feet.
‘Showoff,’ Boggs grumbled. ‘Ted’s going to hurt himself doing that one of these days.’ He grasped the yoke firmly with his left fist and gradually pushed the throttles all the way down to the floor with his right hand. ‘Hang on, now. Here we go…’
As easily as if it were an elevator, the Akron ascended from its landing pad. Through the window, they could see the sloped walls of the crater falling around them. Up, up…
The rim of the crater approached, sunlight glinting off the edges of the retracted roof. Then, all at once, the massive airship cleared the hangar and rose into the pink Martian sky.
Wind immediately buffeted the airship. The blunt prow pitched sharply forward; for a second it seemed as if the Akron would plow into the ground. Through the gondola windows, Nash glimpsed skinsuited people below stopping, staring up at him. The large mound of the condo seemed dangerously close. ‘Oh shit shit shit shit…!’ Boggs hissed as he hauled back on the yoke.
The airship almost seemed to groan as he fought for control; its shadow raced across the red dirt. Nash clutched the armrests of his chair and gritted his teeth as the Akron made a shallow dive toward the ground. Perhaps the six million cubic feet of hydrogen in the gas cells couldn’t burn…but they could explode. He braced himself for the inevitable crash.
Boggs fought the yoke, snarling between his clenched teeth: ‘C’mon you fucker, climb climb climb…!’
Then—a precious foot at a time, then faster and faster—the bow tilted upward as the Akron muscled its way into stability. The creaking and shaking of the airframe lapsed; the throb of the engines became less urgent. ‘There we go, there we go…’ Boggs was whispering. ‘Good girl, easy does it, that’s my baby…’
The horizon appeared as Arsia Station fell away below them; clear of the treacherous ground winds, the giant airship gracefully ascended to cruising altitude. As Boggs turned the yoke to the right, they could see in the western distance the great cones of the Tharsis Montes volcano range: the vast looming mountain of Arsia Mons and, on the farthest horizon as a hazy yet insanely huge dome, the high caldera of Olympus Mons.
Then the airship was pointed to the north-east; the volcanoes drifted away to their left, and in the near distance, appeared the deep, meandering canyons of the Noctis Labyrinthis. From this height, the Labyrinth of Night looked like an endless maze across the face of the planet, its steep, windswept walls falling into the thin morning fog which still lay above the floor of the chasm. Below the fog, shadows veiled the furthermost depths of the great canyon. If the Akron had careened into that bottomless abyss…
Nash stared down at the canyon system until the Akron passed over it, then lay back in his seat and let out his breath. Behind him, he heard Miho Sasaki do the same thing. Beyond the Noctis Labyrinthis lay the equator and the vast central plains. Boggs pushed the throttle-bars forward to three-quarter power, keystroked the flight computer to autopilot, then pulled the headset off his head. He took a deep breath himself, then tipped back his cap. There was a fine film of sweat on his forehead.
Boggs lifted the cap off his head, swabbed at the sweat with its liner, then grinned at Nash with Tennessee-style humor.
‘Christ,’ he said. ‘Like having sex with a gorilla.’
Nash and Sasaki took turns in the airlock to peel out of their skinsuits and stow them away; once they were dressed in jumpsuits and sneakers, Boggs sent them into the cargo bay to inspect the payload. He was concerned that the cargo might have shifted during takeoff, thereby unbalancing the airship. ‘It’s the kind of thing you might not notice during flight,’ he said as he laid in their course on the navaids computer, ‘but it can be a pain in the ass during landing. If something’s moved around, just tuck it back in the right place and lash it down again.’
This was easier said than done. Several crates in the cargo bay had snapped their cords and toppled over; most were heavy enough to require handling by both of them. In addition, a large container of Russian food rations had broken open and spilled its contents across the deck. Miho righted the box and, on her hands and knees, began searching the hold for all the lost cans, wrappers and tubes while Nash tightened the cables holding the large piece of machinery which he had seen being loaded just before takeoff.
‘I had forgotten the pleasures of Russian cuisine,’ she commented as she pumped an armload of red-striped squeeze tubes into the container. ‘Sorrel soup…borscht…buckwheat kasha…liver with cream…’ She found a clear plastic-wrapped bundle of dry, tasteless-looking cubes. ‘And, of course, rye bread.’
‘Sounds terrific.’ Nash was probing the giant Kevlar-shrouded machine; it was still suspended from the overhead wrench-cables, so it had not fallen during the ascent. There seemed to be a claw-manipulator at its front end, but he couldn’t be sure. At the rear, though, was the unmistakable bulge of a methane fuel tank. ‘I hope there’s plenty of antacid tablets in the medical supplies.’
‘I’m serious,’ Sasaki insisted. ‘Russian food is badly underrated. Sort of an acquired taste, although this bread leaves much to be desired and I wish Glavkosmos would get away from putting the soup in tubes. They haven’t improved much over what they used to send up in the old days when…’
She looked up from her work and watched as he tried to pull aside a few inches of the shroud. ‘If you must know,’ she added coldly, ‘it’s a Jackalope manned reconnaissance vehicle, specially refitted for Mars work by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. Despite its size, it’s quite delicate, so I ask that you not paw at it like that.’
Nash dropped the shroud and stepped back. For all he knew, it could have been the prototype of a new Mazda solarcar, but he had to accept her explanation. ‘Excuse me. Maybe if you came straight out and told me some of these things…’
She glared at him. ‘And maybe if you acted a little less like a spy and asked honest questions instead of snooping…’
‘Whoa.’ He turned around and held up his hands. ‘Back off, lady. I’m not the one who was eavesdropping last night.’
‘This is true.’ Sasaki stashed the bread-cubes into the crate, refastened the plastic cover, and heaved it onto the stack of containers. She dusted off her hands on the thighs of her jumpsuit and turned toward the hatch. ‘If you’ll excuse me, I’ll go prepare some coffee in the galley for Waylon.’
She started toward the closed hatch, but Nash reached out and grabbed her forearm. ‘Not so fast, Ms. Sasaki…’
‘Pardon me, Mr Nash.’ She wrested her arm out of his hand. ‘And that’s Dr. Sasaki, if you please…’
‘Sorry, I forgot, Dr. Sasaki…’ He forced himself to relax a little. ‘Look, I apologies, okay? But you said you’d come clean with me once we got off the ground, and it’s time we had that conversation you promised.’
She hesitated, still ready to leave the payload bay. ‘Of course,’ he continued, ‘we’ve got two days in front of us before we get to Cydonia, so we can discuss all this another time. Like at dinner tonight, with W. J.?’
The sweet-and-sour treatment worked. Miho turned back around, folding her arms across the front of her jumpsuit. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘It’s actually very simple. My government had heard many reports about the peculiar actions of your Commander L’Enfant…’
Nash shook his head. ‘Not my Commander L’Enfant, believe me. Let’s get that straight. He was sent to Mars by the Pentagon, and my company’s client doesn’t like it any more than Tokyo.’
Again, that on-and-off smile. Nash had already noticed that Miho Sasaki was a very pretty woman; he wondered how much more beautiful she would be if she didn’t keep such a tight grip on herself. ‘Pardon me. Their Commander L’Enfant. Besides the fact that Japan considers Shin-ichi Kawakami to be a national resource, there’s also the large stake which we have in discovering the last secrets of the aliens, in terms of capital investment as well as possible scientific payoffs. Considering L’Enfant’s past record, particularly in regard to the Takada Maru incident, we have much to be alarmed about.’
Yes, of course: the Takada Maru would have to enter into this. ‘Sounds very much like the motivations of my clients,’ he said carefully.
She shook her head. ‘No need to be circumspect, Mr Nash. I’m already quite aware that you’re a field operative for Security Associates and that Skycorp has retained your company’s services. We have our own resources.’
Nash felt his blood pressure beginning to rise. Twice now in this operation his cover had been blown: first by Leahy, who had blabbed the secret to Boggs…and now by Sasaki, who could not have known all this simply by eavesdropping from the condo balcony the night before.
Sasaki hadn’t told him everything yet, despite her promise, but he could guess that she had been enlisted by Uchu-Hiko. That or, perhaps as a better possibility, JETRO. The Japanese External Trade Organization was essentially a government-operated commercial spy agency; it had been engaged in espionage against private American companies for many years now, often recruiting previously unattached Japanese nationals for the dirty work abroad. Turnabout was fair play; the CIA had done the same with American corporate officials in Asia and the Middle East, as well as in the old Soviet bloc.
‘So your…’ Nash was careful with his words ‘…employers asked you to return to Cydonia Base and find out what L’Enfant is doing.’
Sasaki didn’t fall for the bait. ‘Yes. Very much the same as your own assignment. Of course, I’m only supposed to be escorting the MRV to Cydonia. After I’m through, I am to return to Arsia Station to take up my new position as senior astrophysicist.’ She shrugged a little. ‘My report may be redundant to your own, but at least we’ll be able to verify each other’s accounts.’
‘We might.’ Nash mulled it over for a moment as he leaned against a stack of crates. ‘But if your people knew about what my people were doing, why didn’t they simply get in touch with Skycorp? We seem to have the same goals, and it might have saved a long trip for one or the other of us.’
Her furtive smile reappeared again. ‘For a very good and simple reason, Mr Nash…’
He grinned back at her. ‘C’mon, Miho. Call me August.’
‘Certainly, August.’ Absolutely immune to his charm. Miho turned again to the hatch. ‘The reason why we didn’t contact you earlier is because we don’t trust you.’
As she undogged the hatch and pulled it open, the glanced over her shoulder at him. ‘Please, though, don’t hold it against my country. I don’t trust you either.’
Then she left the cargo bay, shutting the hatch behind her. Nash let out his breath as he watched her go.
For the life of him, he couldn’t tell whether or not she was joking.