Mars Prime (28 page)

"You must be hungry," Corvan said sympathetically.

"A little," the geologist agreed, "but I've been eating these. They fill you up and give you one helluva high at the same time."

So saying the scientist reached into a pocket of the suit seated next to her and withdrew something small and round. She held it up to the light.

Corvan recognized it right away. A berry! Just like the ones that Sharma handed out! His mind raced. All sorts of things fell into place.

"Tell me something Dr. B . . . have you seen any evidence of another ship?"

"Besides Phobos?"

Corvan felt his eyes bulge. "Phobos? Phobos is a ship?"

The scientist shrugged and rubbed her injured leg. "Who knows? Some lucky dog will get to check it out. But if my guess is right, Phobos is hollow and packed with scientific samples."

Her entire face lit up. "Imagine! Samples taken from the other worlds in our solar system, or who knows? From the other side of galaxy!"

Redfern frowned. "So Phobos is a trailer?"

"Not a bad analogy," the scientist said thoughtfully. "Assuming I'm right, that is. One thing's for sure, though. The mystery of how Mars acquired two moons is solved. They were
parked
rather than captured by a long-vanished atmosphere."

"That's interesting, Doc, real interesting," Corvan said impatiently, "but
not
what I had in mind. I meant down on the surface. Are there any signs that a shuttle or similar ship landed on Mars itself?"

"I haven't seen anything to support such a hypothesis," McKeen replied, "but I haven't seen anything that would rule it out either."

She frowned. "Wait a minute ... up there ... towards the right. The rectangular shot. It changes frequently but covers the same locations over and over again. One of the shots looks the same way this room does. I had assumed that it was some other part of Deimos or Phobos, but it could be a video of a third ship."

"It must be," Corvan said firmly. "And I'll bet you dollars to doughnuts that a guy named Barbu Sharma found it. Not only that, but some berries just like yours, which he used to start his own religion."

"And speak of the devil," Redfern said, "look up there!"

Corvan looked, and sure enough, there was Sharma in living color. A little out of focus, but still Sharma. It was the same shot he'd noticed before, the one of the mess hall and the throng of people.

Sharma stood on a table top and wore the same anatomically correct E-suit that the reop had seen before. He raised his arms over his head, looked out over the assembled multitude, and mouthed words they couldn't hear.

There were others present as well, lined up to Sharma's left and right, shoulders slumped, and wrists bound with tape. Corvan saw Peko-Evans, Fornos, Jopp, and a woman with black hair, who unlike the others, looked anything but cowed. Her head was held high, her eyes sparkled with anger, and her body was poised for action. Kim!

The picture was worth a thousand words. Sharma had taken control of Mars Prime ... and his wife, too.

Redfern growled and got to his feet. He'd seen the video and come to the same conclusions.

Corvan gestured toward the ceiling. "The transporter . . . how does it work? Can we control it?''

"I think so," McKeen said cautiously. "Assuming we can reach the control panels. Each picture represents a place where the transporter can reach. The only problem is that while it can reach through the dome and into the mess hall, it can't pull things back out. I think that it was capable of doing so in the past and keeps on trying."

"Which accounts for the fact that the junk, plus both of the people, were snatched from
outside
of Mars Prime," Redfern said thoughtfully.

"Wait a minute," Corvan put in. "You said that while the transporter can reach
into
Mars Prime it can't pull objects
out.
At least not anymore. But it can move things around inside the dome, right?"

The scientist rubbed her leg. "I guess so . . . but I don't see . . ."

Redfern brought his fist down onto the palm of his hand. "I get it! The Ochoa and Wu murders! The transporter system accidentally beat them to death while trying to pull them out through the ceiling!"

"Exactly," Corvan said grimly, "and it deactivated some robots, too."

The reop looked up toward the ceiling. "Wait right there, Sharma baby—have we got a surprise for you!"

 

 

 

 

Chapter Twenty

 

 

Sharma had talked so long that Kim wondered if he'd ever finish. The man liked the sound of his own voice, that was for sure. Still, judging from the flowery rhetoric, it sounded as though he had begun to wrap things up. Kim shifted her weight from foot to foot and did her best to restore some circulation to her tightly bound wrists.

"And so,” Sharma concluded, "it is with a tremendous sense of humility that I accept the mantle of leadership so unexpectedly thrust my way—"

And it was at that exact moment that the miracle took place. Suddenly, and without any warning whatsoever, Sharma was lifted up into the air.

A collective gasp went up from the crowd. There were cries of, "It's a miracle!" and "Praise the great Membu!"

But instead of the beatific expression that many expected to see, Sharma's face went slack with shock and his eyes started to bulge. They watched in shock as their religious leader hung in midair, kicked his legs, and windmilled his arms.

"What's happening? Put me down! Someone help me!"

But before anyone could react, the invisible force that held Sharma aloft did its best to pull him up through the ceiling. His head made a horrible thumping sound each time that it hit. Three such blows were sufficient to render him unconscious.

Then, as if bored with its new-found toy, the force released him. Sharma's body drifted downward, hit the salad bar, and cartwheeled away. A medic chased it down, found that it had gone into cardio-pulmonary arrest, and started CPR.

A long silence descended over the hall.

Kim looked around, saw the shocked expressions, and held out her wrists to a man with a likeness of Mickey Mouse painted on his chest.

"Cut me loose. I have work to do."

So the man did, and others did likewise, until all of the prisoners had been freed.

That was when Peko-Evans climbed up on a table, ordered everyone to surrender their weapons, and suggested a return to work. Much to her surprise most of them did as they were told.

There would be an investigation, followed by consequences for those who had taken part in the fighting, but that could wait. The dome's security cams had captured who did what to whom, and all of them could be rounded up with very little difficulty. No, the most important thing to do right now was to disperse the crow and let emotions cool.

Peko-Evans climbed down from the table. Kim passed nearby. The administrator touched her arm. The editor stopped.

"Yes?"

Peko-Evans gestured towards Sharma. The CPR had been successful. Medics were loading him on an auto stretcher. "What happened? Do you know?"

Kim looked at Sharma and shook her head. "Nope, but this should make one helluva news story."
 

 

The bed was surprisingly comfortable, in spite of the fact that it was a makeshift affair, put together in the back of a crawler. It was cold, even with the heaters on, so Kim snuggled deeper under the covers. She ran a hand over her husband's stomach.

"We could get dressed. It would be warmer that way."

"But not as much fun," Corvan answered lazily. "Besides, Scheeler said we could have the crawler until morning."

Kim nodded. Someone had killed the woman with the mace a fraction of a second after her weapon made contact with Scheeler's helmet.

So, while three of the metal rods had punched their way through the helmet's outer surface, they remained in place, plugging the holes they had made.

That, plus the semi-liquid sealer sandwiched into the helmet's construction, had saved Scheeler's life. She was up and around now, as was Sharma, though under widely differing circumstances. The security chief was back at work and the religious leader was awaiting trial for armed insurrection and murder.

The crawler, and the opportunity to get away from Mars Prime, was the security officer's way of saying thank you for the help that both the Corvans had given her.

Corvan gloried in the feel of his wife's smooth flesh, the warmth of the blankets, and his exotic surroundings.

There was a skylight above him, rimmed with ice crystals and filled with diamond-bright stars. Deimos crept into view and the reop smiled.

"ALIEN MOON-SHIP FOUND OFF MARS!" "MARS REVOLT FAILS!" "ALIEN TECHNOLOGY TO JUMP-START PROGRAM EXODUS!"

Headlines like those had dominated the Earth-nets for days now, but only he and a few others knew how easily things could have gone the other way.

The challenge had been to incapacitate Sharma before he could leave the mess hall and disappear into the 99% of Mars Prime that Corvan couldn't see. McKeen believed that the transporter beam could be moved to focus on any part of the habitat, but the methodology was far from clear, so they couldn't be sure that it would work.

That meant time was critical. Corvan knew Sharma would be gone by the time he and Redfern built a second scaffolding. And that's where the robo cam came into play.

The reop had reestablished his link to the camera, caused it to hover in front of the correct control panel, and used its manipulator arms to operate the controls.

Dr. B provided instructions and watched the ceiling video to judge the effect of her words. The arrangement had worked rather well, as evidenced by the condition of Sharma's head.

The fact that Corvan had recorded the whole episode and sent it to Earth hadn't hurt either. The furor, plus the confirmation of extra-terrestrial life, plus the infusion of technology, had given the Mars program a huge boost.

In the meantime Corvan had been given a seat on the executive council, Dr. B was hobbling around on crutches and making a nuisance of herself, Sharma was locked up, and everyone was awaiting an independent investigator from Earth.

An investigator who would arrive accompanied by a small army of specially equipped scientists.

It would be their job to dissect the alien ships, find out what was inside the sealed casings, and answer some critical questions: Could the transporter system be repaired and duplicated? Did the berries have medical applications? And perhaps most fascinating of all, did the aliens have a taster-than-light drive? The questions were endless.

And that, Corvan thought to himself, is every reop's dream. Endless questions with fascinating answers.

Kim did something with her hand and got the predictable response. Flesh encountered flesh, words were exchanged, and the stars winked above.

 

 

 

 

Author's Note

 

 

It seems to me that every science fiction author worth his or her salt must eventually write a Mars novel.

This stems from the fact that Mars is relatively close to Earth, is well studied, and would be a relatively nice place to live (compared to Venus, for example).

Never mind the fact that a zillion such books have already been written, or that most (including this one) incorporate common plot elements—that's what makes them fun!

Mars novels are a genre in and of themselves in which colonies struggle against all odds and aliens lurk around every corner. Or, in the case of alternate universe novels, where entire tribes of barbarians roam the plains.

Mars Prime
was written in that spirit, and if it has any value beyond that of entertainment, is intended to point out some of the problems that real journalists may encounter someday.

I was a journalist once. I wish them luck.