Collected Short Fiction, page 209
Valoinen and his men were sitting on the unpacked crates, waiting patiently. Aherne walked over to join them.
“The Dome’s out that way,” Valoinen told him, pointing in the direction from which the crawlers were coming. An upthrust, jagged range of dark mountains cut off vision about four miles in the distance. “Behind those hills,” Valoinen said. “The Dome’s right back there.”
“And the other one?”
“That’s a little further on,” said Valoinen.
They fell silent—Aherne felt unwilling to prod for information about the second dome—and waited for the colonists to arrive. The sun, a sickly, pale green object, was high overhead, and the tailstanding Bernadotte cast a long, straggling shadow over the levelled, heat-fused sand of the landing clearing.
The crawlers were getting larger now, and Aherne could make them out clearly. They were long, ground-hugging vehicles with caterpillar treads spread out over a lengthwise grid, with room for a couple of passengers in a plastic bubble up front, and a cargo hold aft. There were six of them, rocking gently from side to side as they undulated through the shifting red sand.
Aherne could hear the grating, feathery sound of their treads sliding over the sand toward him. At length, the convoy breasted the final dune and pulled up in front of the Bernadotte.
A figure dropped lightly from the leading crawler and trotted toward them. Aherne could just barely see the man’s face behind his helmet, blonde hair swept back over a high forehead and piercing blue eyes. His body, concealed by the spacesuit, seemed long and rangy.
“I’m Sully Roberts,” he announced. “Hello, Skipper.”
“Here’s your cargo, Sully,” Valoinen stretched forth his arm in an expansive gesture. “You’ll find it all recorded on these invoices as usual.”
Roberts reached out and took the sheaf of invoices, carefully avoiding looking at Aherne. The colonist riffled quickly through them.
“Hmm. Well, at least the externals match. I can’t guarantee that you’ve actually got gyros in those boxes, and not toy teddy bears, but it won’t do to open ’em now, I guess.”
“Don’t you trust me?” Valoinen asked sharply.
“Of course,” said Roberts. “But this is the UN’s money we’re spending, and we don’t want to waste any of it. We have to be very careful with our appropriation, of course.”
“Of course,” said the captain lightly.
That was for my benefit, Aherne thought. They’re so terribly anxious to show me what good little boys they are.
“Oh,” Valoinen said. “Silly of me—I clean forgot to introduce you. Sully, this is Michael Aherne of the United Nations. He’s come to stay with you for a while.”
Roberts took a couple of steps forward and shook Aherne’s hand. “How d’ye do! I’m Sullivan Roberts, District Overchief for the Colony. I’m very glad to meet you, Mr. Aherne, and I hope to be seeing a lot of you while you’re here.”
“Glad to meet you, Roberts,” Aherne replied. He was determined to remain detached at all costs.
Roberts waved an arm and his men dismounted from their crawlers. Assisted by Valoinen’s crew, they quickly loaded the crates into the cargo holds.
“You can ride with me, Mr. Aherne,” Roberts said.
“Fine.” Aherne clambered up into the fore bubble of the sandcrawler, and Roberts got in beside him. Slowly, without any perceptible gradation between motionless and motion, the crawler began to move.
Aherne saw Valoinen grin and wave as he pulled out. Then, as the crawler started to surmount the hill, Valoinen climbed the catwalk of the Bernadotte and disappeared inside. His men followed, carrying the mail pouches from the Mars Colony, and the lock of the small space ship slowly closed.
Aherne was on his own now, with no contacts with Earth. He was here, and he had a job to do.
CHAPTER III
THE shining surface of the Dome loomed up before them like a yellow bubble extruded from the desert. Within the gleaming, high-arched curve of plastic, Aherne could make out a dim but busy world of buildings and people. The Dome rose to a peak height of nearly five hundred feet. Within, the artificial atmosphere was warm and breathable; outside, the cold, nitrogenous air of Mars offered little to Terran lungs.
“We go in this way,” Roberts said, pointing to an airlock at the base of the Dome. The lock opened at the approach of the sandcrawler, and they rode in. The other crawlers followed and the lock swung slowly shut behind the last one. Air came hissing in.
At Robert’s signal, Aherne got down from the cab of the crawler and stretched his legs. The journey across the sand had been slow and racking. The crawler had spun through the desert like a refactory camel, and Aherne found himself woozy at the end of the ride. Still, he admitted, it was the only efficient way of covering that sort of terrain.
He saw busy, efficient-looking men bustling around the crawlers, unpacking the cargo holds, carrying the crates through the lock inside. Following Roberts, Aherne moved through the inner door.
Mars Colony was spread out before him.
Aherne felt a warm sensation of pride, of admiration, run through him, but he squelched it. It was a forbidden emotion; much as he admired the hardy men and women who had erected this dome and built a city on inhospitable Mars, he was there as their judge now, and would have to put those feelings aside.
“There’s a committee waiting to see you,” Roberts said. “We’ve been looking forward to your visit ever since we found out you were coming.”
“Lead on,” Aherne told him.
THE committee that was waiting was assembled in a squat, unfancy corrugated-steel hut located at a crossroad near the centre of the Colony. Most of the buildings, Aherne noticed were constructed of this cheap, unattractive material. The accent was on economy in Mars Colony, not esthetic appeal.
The committee consisted of six. Sully Roberts introduced them hurriedly.
There were three District Overchiefs, and Roberts was the fourth. Aherne shook hands with them in turn—Martelli from the North Quadrant, Richardson from the East, Fournier from the West. Roberts represented the Southern sector of the Colony. Judging from their names and physical appearance, Aherne concluded that they each represented, not only a geographical district of the Colony, but one of the major population blocs as well. For the Colony, despite all talk of assimilation, was very much the product of a group of loosely federated nations rather than of a unified world. Each country, clinging to the last remnants of its sovereignty, had insisted on representation in the Colony, and so Mars was populated by a curious racial hodgepodge which only the passage of time and the succession of generations would efface.
If, Aherne thought, there were any succeeding generations on Mars.
The fifth member of the committee was Dr. Raymond Carter, General Co-ordinator of the Colony—a forty-ish, bespectacled man whose name had been in the headlines often before the Colony had actually been planted, five years before.
He had been the guiding spirit in the long crusade to build the Colony on Mars.
The sixth was Katherine Greer, introduced as a delegate-at-large, chosen by popular vote of the colonists to serve on the welcoming committee. She was a young, slender girl in her middle twenties.
“Well, Mr. Aherne,” Carter said—and the tone of his voice was unmistakable—”what do you think of the progress we’ve made?”
Aherne paced edgily up and back in the little room, darting nervous glances at the six colonists who hung, poised, on every word.
“I’d prefer to reserve judgment on such a sweeping statement, Dr. Carter. After all, it’s to determine the extent of your progress that I’m here—and I’d rather not be required to state my final conclusions ten minutes after my arrival.”
“Of course not,” Carter said, apologizing hastily. “I didn’t mean to imply—”
“Don’t worry about it,” Aherne said. He was surprised and relieved to find that these people were, if possible, even more tense than he. They were desperately anxious to make a good impression on him.
“We’ve arranged for your quarters to be set up in my district,” said Richardson, the East District Overchief. Richardson was a slim, lithe Negro whose precise British accent hinted at a West Indian ancestry.
“Fine,” Aherne said.
“I suppose you’d like to rest for a while now,” Dr. Carter continued. “You must have had a long, trying trip.”
“Excellent idea. I am pretty beat.”
“Mr. Richardson will conduct you to your quarters, and your meals will be taken care of. We’ve made considerable strides in developing synthetics—until the Martian soil is sufficiently re-nitrogenized to be capable of harbouring vegetables, of course.”
“Of course,” Aherne said wearily. He foresaw several weeks of uneasy verbal fencing, and decided that the eagerness of these colonists to impress him was going to become tiring.
“After you’ve rested,” Carter said, “we’ve scheduled a tour of the Colony for you. Miss Greer has been assigned to you as your guide.”
He glanced at Miss Greer. She was dressed in the utilitarian, unattractive singleton tunic that all the Colonists seemed to adopt, but her face was bright-eyed and interesting, and beneath the shapeless garment Aherne’s critical eye detected what probably was a much more than passable figure.
He felt himself relax. This survey trip wasn’t going to be as much of an ordeal for his conscience as he had been expecting.
HIS room was comfortable, if hardly luxurious, and he made himself at home immediately. He noticed several Colony tunics hanging in the clothes-closet, and he stripped his rumpled business-suit off and slid easily into one of the soft, clinging uniforms.
And then, just as he was beginning to loosen, to wriggle out of the tensions that had gripped him since the Security Council had given him the assignment, he remembered the Other Dome.
What was it? Who had built it? Everyone connected with the Colony here carefully avoided all mention of it, as if it were something shameful, something to hide from sight.
Aherne knew that he’d have to find out all the details before he committed himself on any final decision about Mars Colony. No matter how promising the Colony seemed, and no matter how many Miss Greers they threw in his way, he’d have to be in control of every information-factor before he could allow himself to file his report.
The Colonists had given him a pleasant room, with a soft-looking bed and attractive furnishings. There was a bookcase, in which half a dozen scarlet-bound volumes leaned at an angle against one wall, and when he drew the first out he saw it was a novel by a colonist, published there in the Colony.
They don’t miss a bet, he thought, feeling another forbidden tingle of pride go through him. It wouldn’t be hard to recommend continuation of a colony that showed such enterprise and such drive—provided everything else held up. So far, so good.
Aherne slept soundly that night for the first time in weeks.
CHAPTER II
HE expected the guided tour first thing in the morning—in fact, was positively looking forward to it. And so, when he heard a soft, gentle rapping at his door the next morning, he rolled out of bed and tried to look wide awake. He was almost positive that it was Miss Greer at the door.
He was wrong. He threw the door open and was confronted by a small, swarthy, almost copper-coloured man, with deep-set eyes and jet-black hair.
“Good morning, senor,” the stranger said blandly.
“Good morning,” Aherne replied, somewhat taken aback.
“I have been sent to get you,” the small man said. Aherne noticed, as the other stepped into the room, that he had an enormous barrel of a chest—the chest of a six-footer, not a man barely five-two in height. He spoke with a distinct Spanish accent.
“To get me?”
“Si. Please come quickly.”
Too puzzled to protest, Aherne dressed, washed—the colonial plumbing, he noted, was none too good—and followed the small man out on the street. It was still early in the morning, and few of the colonists were to be seen.
“Where are we going?” Aherne asked.
“With me,” the other said noncommittally.
Aherne wondered vaguely just where he was being taken, but decided to follow without argument. It was just possible that he might find out something about the Colony that he might not have known otherwise, had he limited himself to the official guided tour.
He patted the cold butt of the Webley blaster, nestling safely in its shoulder-holster. He could hold his own with that, in case of trouble.
THE little man seemed to be in a considerable hurry. He led Aherne speedily through the streets toward the outer edge of the Dome—toward the airlock.
Several of the colonists he passed on his way smiled at him, but no one seemed to want to stop him, to find out where he was going. It was just as well, Aherne thought.
They came to the airlock, and Aherne saw a sandcrawler parked outside. The little man had not said a word during the entire walk.
Now he indicated a rack of spacesuits hanging invitingly at the entrance to the airlock. “Take one,” he said. “Put it on.”
Obediently, Aherne did so, and Ins strange guide climbed into one of the smaller suits. Together, they passed through the airlock and outside the Dome.
“We go in this,” the other grunted, and got into the sandcrawler. Aherne, suspecting at last where he was being taken, got in also, and the vehicle rocked smoothly to life and started to undulate away.
The crawler slid through a gap in the hills, and followed a twisting, sharply-banked sand path in the desert. An hour later, they arrived at their destination—the second Dome.
It seemed to be constructed along the lines of the other. Aherne stared around curiously as he and his silent companion went through the by-now familiar process of passing through the airlocks. At last, he was out of his suit, and within the second Dome. It looked much like the first, inside and out.
But after a few steps, Aherne found himself panting for breath, and a few more and he could sense his pulse quickening. There was a difference: the air-pressure here was considerably lower than earth-normal. He felt his body gasping to take in the quantity of oxygen to which it was accustomed, and he swallowed hard to relieve the pressure on his eardrums.
As he stood there, reeling slightly from the change in pressure, he saw another, more familiar face approaching. It was another small, swarthy, Spanish-looking man, but this time it was one that Aherne knew well.
“You’ll get used to the low pressure soon, Aherne,” the newcomer said as he drew near. “We maintain it here for the benefit of our colonists.” He extended a box of tablets. “Here,” he said. “Aspirin. It’ll relieve the reaction a little bit.”
Aherne took the box, fumbled out one of the white tablets and swallowed it, dry. He waited a moment while the pounding in his head subsided a little, and then looked at the other.
“I’m in better shape now. I think,” he said. “But what are you doing here, Echavarra?”
“You haven’t missed me, Aherne? You haven’t noticed that I’ve not been expounding my crackpot ideas at the United Nations these past three years?”
“No,” Aherne said slowly. “Ever since the defeat of your proposal, I’d assumed you were off doing private research somewhere.”
The man addressed as Echavarra grinned broadly. “Exactly right. I have been doing private research.” He put an arm around Aherne’s shoulder. “Come,” he said. “Let us go to my home. The pressure is easier to take there.”
AS they walked into the heart of the colony, Aherne discovered it was populated almost exclusively by the small swarthy men, none of whom seemed at all bothered by the low pressure. The picture was starting to take shape.
Jose Echavarra had been a storm-centre at the United Nations Headquarters during the days of the hot debate over who should build the Mars Colony, and how, Echavarra, a Peruvian geneticist, had bitterly opposed the American, Carter, who seemed to have the inside track on the coveted UN appropriation.
Carter had favoured building pressurized domes on Mars, in which Earthmen could live in comparative comfort. Echavarra, raging, had declared that this was the wrong way to go about it—that man should adapt himself to fit the planet, not adapt the planet to fit himself.
He put forth as an example Andean miners who had been studied by Peruvian scientists. These miners lived all their lives at altitudes of 10,000 to 15,000 feet above sea-level, where the air was thin and the air-pressure low—and they had adapted. They were capable of existing comfortably with a pressure of only eight pounds per square inch. Echavarra had proposed to establish a colony composed of these hardy Peruvians, and gradually to breed them further along the lines they were already heading, until they were capable of living comfortably in the thin air of Mars.
Aherne remembered clearly what had happened. The volatile Dr. Echavarra had spent long hours explaining his plan, and then it had been turned down flat. After all, one delegate remarked, the Echavarra plan meant that only one nation—Peru—could send men to Mars. Other peoples, raised on the customary 14-pounds-per-square-inch pressure air, would be incapable of surviving.
That ended the discussion. Echavarra was rejected firmly, and Raymond Carter had been chosen to head the pioneer expedition that would build the pressure-dome and establish the UN colony, with the colonists, of course, to be chosen from all nations.
Echavarra had disappeared from sight. Now, here he was—complete with his colony of Peruvians, after all. And the air pressure was low, all right. Aherne, weakening, dragged one leg after the other painfully as he followed Echavarra through the streets.
“IN here,” the Peruvian said. Aherne stumbled ahead as he was told, and entered a small, austerely-furnished room whose warm, rich atmosphere struck his lungs with jarring force.
