The Fourth World Page 23

  They were flying low now, gliding over the surface of the planet. They crossed a long plateau, with several craters at its bottom. In the distance they could see mountains, and as the ship turned eastwards, they could see mountains either side as they cruised to land in a deep rift between them. Finally they saw signs of life and civilization in the form of a cluster of domes.

  Iara was at the far end of the room, and she spoke up. “We put the domes here for several reasons. First of all, there are many devastating dust storms on Mars, and here the mountains protect us. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, the valley is almost completely obscured from earth-bound telescopes. That way we can do our work in secret – and we don’t have the luxury that the moon base has of always being invisible to Earth.”

  The ship touched down gently. “Be warned,” she shed, “that Mars gravity is about 40% of Earth Gravity, so tred carefully, and girls, you’re going to love it!” She winked.

  “I think I’m going to love it too,” said Zack under his breath, watching Iara in admiration as she unstrapped herself.

  *

  As he exited the ship, Fintan felt like a great weight was lifted from him. He walked out of the artificial gravity field and initially felt like he was beginning to float away, but his feet were firmly rooted on the ground. It was oddly disconcerting, like being in an elevator going downwards really fast. His stomach felt like it was in his throat.

  Again he was thankful he hadn’t eaten, and when he looked up he nearly laughed at several of the girls who were frantically holding their skirts down, thinking that the skirts were going to float upwards, but of course they didn’t as gravity still pulled them down.

  Zack was smirking at their discomfort too, but stopped after a glance from Ayako. “Kick me in this gravity and I think I’ll fly away,” he said.

  Ayako replied “I think you are giving me more reasons to kick you and not less.”

  “You’ve been hanging too much with Nizhoni,” he laughed. “You’re getting violent.”

  Fintan stood back as both girls faced him down, hands on hips.

  Zack tried to have a straight and sorry face, but couldn’t help himself. He laughed out loud.

  “Sorry,” he said between giggles. “But you guys look so cute when you’re mad.”

  The girls walked ahead of him towards the entrance of one of the domes.

  “Smooth,” said Fintan. “Real smooth.”

  *

  They assembled in the largest of the domes, and Fintan noticed that they were actually inflatable, as opposed to being hard-edged like the ones back on Earth. Fintan pointed at the bottom of the dome – it wasn’t sealed and under its edge they could see the rusty Martian landscape outside.

  “Air pressure inflates the dome,” said an adult, who from his bulk, and his uniform, was some sort of soldier.

  “The Earth-air being pumped in pushes the Martian-air out underneath the dome. It’s basically a big tent,” he added.

  “What about heat?” asked Nizhoni

  “There’s a heating element in the floor,” he said “which serves the purpose of heating us and expanding the air to increase the pressure.”

  It was simple, and elegant. Fintan was impressed.

  Mister Sinclair, as squadron leader, was also leader of the expedition. He gave the expected long boring lecture on safety, following instructions, staying within the marked boundaries ad nauseum before finally going offstage.

  Iara also had some announcements, which perked Zack up as she took to the stage. Ayako and Nizhoni shrugged. She demonstrated how their pressure suits work, including how to make emergency repairs.

  Finally she ran through the schedule for the trip. They’d be spending three days and two nights on Mars. The rest of this day would be free time, and they’d head out to the ‘dig site’ early the next day tomorrow. They’d spend a couple of nights on the dig site before heading back to Earth.

  “But how long is a day on Mars?” asked one kid.

  “Good question,” said Iara, “and unfortunately it’s not much longer than a day on Earth, being about 24 hours and 40 minutes long. We keep Earth time on Mars, and as a result, the clock stops at midnight and starts again 39 minutes, 35 and a quarter seconds later. We call this time ‘the witching hour’. Enjoy it!”

  Many of the students laughed.

  As they dispersed towards their sleeping quarters to drop their stuff and get their pressure suits, Zack called to Ayako and Nizhoni. “Meet back here in half an hour to go for a hike?”

  The two girls looked at each other, and then back to Zack. They nodded ‘yes’.

  *

  Their pressure suits were light-fitting and easy to wear. They were one-piece, blue grey jumpsuits that they zipped themselves into. They wore hard boots on their feet, and the helmet was built into the suit itself. Several small oxygen tanks were efficiently spread down the sides and across the back.

  “You look like you have a bubble on your head,” said Zack, laughing.

  “It’s a lot lighter and easier to move in than a traditional astronaut suit,” said Fintan. “And this fiber is like nothing I’ve ever seen before. It must also protect us from the atmospheric and radiation conditions on Mars in the same way as a traditional space suit. Must be some form of alien technology.”

  “Cool.”

  They left the boys dorms and found the girls near the airlock.

  “I definitely preferred them in skirts,” said Zack. Nizhoni sighed.

  The airlock was pretty simple, a tech unzipped the door, and they walked into a small space between the main tent and an outside one. The tech then re zipped the door, which was now inside of their position, and Zack unzipped the door in front of him. Outside it Fintan could see a red, rocky valley.

  “We’re on Mars!” he said.

  “Well duh,” said Zack.

  “Now I really feel like I’m here,” said Fintan.

  Ayako nodded in her suit. “Well, what are we waiting for? Let’s go!”

  They walked out through the airlock, and Zack zipped the door closed behind them. They were in a wide valley with a slope leading up at about a twenty-degree angle to their right. On their left was a steep cliff that climbed maybe a hundred feet.

  The ground was made of a red substance that was coarser than sand, but finer than gravel. It was littered with different rocks of different sizes, but of a pretty uniform dark grey color. The cliffs to their left were the same red as the ground, but in places darker rocks were peeking through.

  “Wind erosion is pretty bad,” said Ayako. “We’d better not be here if there’s a dust storm.”

  “I don’t think they get them here very often,” said Zack. “Otherwise we wouldn’t be living in a tent.”

  They walked along the valley towards its end. The cliff was getting lower now, and after about a quarter of a mile, it was gone. They looked back along the valley they had walked out of, and could see the main dome that they had left stretching across it from end to end. Beyond it they could see the other domes as well as the ship they had arrived on towering over everything.

  Zack reached down and dug some dirt away. A few inches down he found something and prodded it with is finger.

  “Frost,” he said. “Water ice. I guess that answers one of the big questions about this place.”

  “Yeah,” said Fintan. “I wonder if there’s life on Mars, or if they’ve answered that question.”

  “Well we know the answer now, don’t we?” said Zack

  “We do?” said Fintan.

  “Err. Duh” said Zack and pointed at himself, then Nizhoni, then Ayako and then Fintan.

  “We’re the life on Mars now!”

  *

  They backtracked and walked along the cliff top overlooking the base.

  “I’m tired,” said Nizhoni. “I think I’m going to sit for a bit. Go on ahead.”

  “No,” said Fintan, and he sat, legs dangling over the cliff, he held up a hand to help
her sit beside him.

  “Ok,” said Zack. “Rest stop.”

  “No,” said Ayako. “We can keep walking.”

  “But Nizhoni and Fintan have stopped, and there’s a beautiful view. Why don’t we stop and enjoy it with them.”

  “No,” said Ayako, evenly. “We can keep walking.”

  “Huh?” said Zack. “Oh. Yeah. Ok. Let’s keep walking.”

  Ayako rolled her eyes and winked at Nizhoni. She took Zack’s arm and practically dragged him along with her.

  From where they sat, they could look down over the valley, across to the plains on the far side. Dusty mountains lined the horizon. Nizhoni pointed and said “Can you see the crater?”

  Fintan squinted to see, but couldn’t. She pulled him a little closer to look along her arm towards what she was pointing at, and then he saw it. It was a perfect bowl shaped crater, with the rim on one side lit brightly by the sun, while a deep shadow crept across the other.

  “You know,” said Fintan. “Have you ever had the feeling that you were waiting for something? Like my whole life I knew that where I lived and what I did wasn’t my real life? And that something better was waiting out there?”

  She smiled a little and nodded.

  “Well, one of the first thoughts that came to my head when I got to the school was that my life is now starting. It’s starting for real. But even then it didn’t feel right.”

  She turned to look at him. The bright spot of the sun, and the red of the landscape reflected beautifully in her faceplate.

  “I was wrong,” said Fintan.

  She raised an eyebrow.

  “It’s only here, now, sitting with you that I feel that. I feel that my life is finally starting, that I’m finally making my own way in the world. And that it’s because you are here sitting with me. How do I say this Nizhoni? But I feel like I can’t imagine living without you. I feel that I-“

  She put her hand up to his faceplate. She smiled again. “I feel that way too. I knew it for sure when I saw how you interacted with my family. You’re a pretty slow learner.”

  Fintan laughed and took her hand from his face. She held onto his hand and didn’t let go.

  “Oh,” said Zack, who had approached from behind. “Don’t try to kiss, ok? It’s not going to work with the helmets on!”

  “Ewwww,” said Nizhoni and threw some sand at him.

  “Now what did I say?” said Zack.

  Chapter 34: The Dig

  The following morning they got onto a transport to head towards the dig site. They would be escorted by Simon and Red Two in their saucers.

  “All aboard the big yellow school bus,” said Simon as they began to board. “Next stop, the face on Mars!”

  They boarded and sat in rows of forward facing seats. “It really does look like a school bus,” said Zack.

  It lifted off and headed out of the valley towards the mountains that Nizhoni and Fintan had been looking at the night before. After twenty minutes they landed near a number of smaller dome shaped tents.

  Iara was their driver and tour guide. “So,” she said. “The dig that we’re going to visit is something that we started a few years back. It appears that some form of alien must have visited Mars a few thousand years ago. They left some evidence here, and we can’t help but wonder if it they did it deliberately near the mountains that, from orbit, would look like a face. If you squint real hard that is. But don’t worry – they didn’t really carve a face.”

  “Who were they?” asked Zack.

  “We have no idea,” she replied. “And neither do Trichallik’s people. This is why we’re digging here – to find some signs of their occupation and see what we can learn.”

  “Trichallik really doesn’t know?” asked Fintan, looking Iara in the eye.

  “Well, that’s what she tells us,” the teacher answered. “Or, if she does know, she isn’t telling. Maybe she wants us to figure it out for ourselves.”

  They exited the bus and walked through an inflatable airlock into one of the tents. There, they activated their pressure suits and made ready to enter the underground tunnels.

  *

  As Fintan entered the tunnels, he was still in awe that he was on Mars, but underground it was like anywhere on Earth. The tunnel was dark, though not quite damp.

  “Zack found permafrost under the surface near the camp,” he said. “How come there is none here, yet we’re going deeper underground?”

  Iara answered. “Good question. It appears our camp was near an ancient ocean and there are still signs of water underneath. This was further inland, so any water that was here is long gone.”

  The tunnel led downwards at a shallow slope, a line snaked along the ceiling and had perfectly normal lamps attached to it at regular intervals.

  “It’s a long way down,” said Iara “and as you get closer to the end, the tunnel will get narrower and lower, so watch your heads.”

  It took them a long time of carefully picking their way, but they finally made it into a wide red cavern.

  In the center of the cavern, they could see the top of an elevator shaft. The elevator was waiting for them, and was big enough to hold them all, but with a bit of a squeeze. Once they were all in, Iara reached over a grinning Zack to push the ‘down’ button.

  The elevator lurched into life, and they were moving downwards. It was an unusual feeling in the Martian gravity. After a few minutes the door opened and they were in a larger cavern.

  “The walls are smooth,” said Simon “like they’ve been built and not dug.”

  Iara found a wall panel and flicked on the lights. They revealed a room that looked vaguely familiar to Fintan. The walls were made of huge red stone bricks and they led up about forty feet to an angled ceiling. At the far side of the room was a large doorway.

  “No,” said Nizhoni. “I don’t believe it!”

  “What?” said Fintan.

  “We’re in a geofront aren’t we?” said Nizhoni. “Like the one in Nevada!”

  The others looked around, shocked. Iara raised an eyebrow at Nizhoni. “Lucky guess?”

  She strode forward to the wide doors. Now that Nizhoni had said it, the room they were in was almost identical to the one in which he had met Bob, back in the Nevada city.

  Iara led them through the doors and lit some spotlights that shone into the darkness.

  Through the gloom they could see some buildings and a similar platform to the one in Nevada that they had stood on to watch the welcoming ceremony only a few months before.

  “It’s a geofront all right,” said Iara. “But as far as we can tell, it’s been deserted for a long time.”

  *

  They had each been given different assignments. Iara had paired Fintan with Nizhoni. She smiled and said “for obvious reasons”. They weren’t actually going to be in the geofront itself, but would instead be helping with the excavation of some tunnels nearby. “We found some artifacts there,” said Iara. “See if you can find some more.”

  *

  Nizhoni and Fintan followed the path Iara had given them, to find another dark cavern. A ramp sloped downwards, turning back onto itself, and on the far side was a cave. Nizhoni grabbed a couple of lanterns from a bucket near the entrance to the cave and they walked in. The cave was still partially dug out, and there was a huge pile of debris on the far side. Nizhoni shone her lantern at the wall.

  “Look at this, Fintan,” she said. There were shapes scratched on the walls.

  Many of the drawings were of figures. There also random shapes such as circles and spirals. Dominating were three large semi-circles, inside of which were more stick figures.

  “They look like geofronts,” said Fintan. “And there are three of them.”

  “More than that,” said Nizhoni. “These are just like Anasazi carvings, commonly called petroglyphs. There are many of them back on Earth, drawn by my people and other related tribes. I’ll show them to you someday. But what are they doing here?”


  Chapter 35: Discovery

  Working with Nizhoni on the dig was hard, but pleasant. They had never spent so many hours together and they worked well, almost as one. Little by little they dug their way through the new tunnel exploring each rock or large chunk carefully, in case it was artificial. As they cleared their way along one rock wall, they could see more petroglyphs taking shape, so Nizhoni chose to dig in that direction.

  “I think,” she said “it’s telling some kind of a story. It’s almost like…”

  “Like what?”

  “I’m not sure. Give me a few minutes.”

  Fintan nodded and continued digging beside her.

  They heard some banging and rattling behind them and turned to see Simon entering the cavern.

  “Yo nuggets!” he said. “Check this out!”

  He held up a device about the size of a large power drill.

  “This,” he said, “is a nuclear powered stone cutter. This sucker has a tiny little nuclear reactor in it and it packs a hefty punch!”

  He smiled and walked through a side cavern. “I’ll be down here with Red Two. We think we found the remains of a ship, but it’s buried deep and likely thousands of years old!”

  *

  The hours blew past, and after a brief lunch break on the surface, Nizhoni and Fintan returned to work. She was carefully and slowly uncovering the carvings.

  “Did my father tell you of the Diné origin stories?” asked Nizhoni. “Of the worlds of the insect people and how they came to what we now call the Navajo nation?”

  There was a deep rumble above and behind them.

  “Simon’s having fun,” said Fintan. Nizhoni smiled.

  “It’s a story of a people that we call the insect people and how they left their world, to come to ours. But there were a number of stops along the way,” she said.

  The rumbling grew deeper. Fintan thought he heard someone shouting too.

  Nizhoni stopped, cocked her head to listen. “What is that?” she said.

  Fintan shrugged. “Probably someone goofing around.”

  “And Zack is no doubt involved,” she laughed.

  Fintan laughed along with her.

  “Anyway,” she said. “if you look really closely, you can see that there are colors on these pictures. They’re ancient so they’ve mostly faded, but much of what we see here had a blue or turquoise tint at some point, right?”