Lamont awoke the next morning and rolled from his cot with a headache and Madison’s question still ringing in his ears. “What’s the point of that?” He asked himself as he shaved three day’s growth of beard from his chin. He imagined the radio station orbiting that distant, frozen world, pointing out into the interstellar void. There were radio relay stations throughout the Solar system, built to capture and boost signals from vessels traveling among the planets. The stations could improve the quality of communications, but not the speed. Here on Mars, a radio signal took five to fifteen minutes to reach Earth, depending on the orbits. Out by Neptune, it had to take several hours, and that was at the speed of light. The fastest fusion rockets would take something like three or four months to get out that far. Lamont found himself unable to think of a reason why humans would venture to the outer edges of the system, where the Sun looked practically like any other star, frequently enough to warrant a relay station. Some scientific purpose, perhaps. After all, it was common knowledge that at least half of United Space’s budget—being, for lack of a better term, astronomical—was devoted to scientific research and development. Nevertheless, there had been a pattern emerging during his time spent turning over rocks on Mars, and this new detail from his neighbor seemed to reinforce it.
“Don’t jump to conclusions,” Lamont admonished his reflection in the grimy mirror of his medicine cabinet.
Lamont made careful note of the state of his apartment before leaving. He filed away his loose papers and straightened up his furniture. He washed his dishes and placed them on the drying rack in a specific order. He refilled his cigarette case and counted the number of cigarettes remaining in their package. On his way out, he locked the door slowly and consciously. If anyone tampered with the place during his absence, he would be sure of it.
His plan for the day took him to the shuttle terminal. He would be leaving the relative obscurity of Cerebus for the thriving commercial center that was Hellas. Common knowledge was that Mars contained some 300 million Western occupants as of January of 1997, and nearly a fifth of them resided in Hellas city or its suburbs. There were also a few tourist attractions.
The shuttle system was largely automated and ran like clockwork, connecting every Western settlement with a network of tubes that, like nearly everything else in the planet, were built into the preexisting infrastructure. Comparatively few of the residents of Cerebus 77 had reason to leave the district once they had settled at its bottom, and Lamont boarded the old chrome-detailed connection shuttle with only six other people. During the ride, he carefully memorized each of their features.
The connection shuttle brought him to the much more crowded central terminal of the Cerberus colony. He stepped out of the sliding doors of the car to be met with a bustling crowd of morning commuters. Office workers in black and blue suits traveled in flocks that passed conscientiously around brown and orange-clad packs of industrial workers with lunch boxes and thermoses tucked under their burly arms. While in much better repair than the district from which he had come, the terminal of Cerberus District One still reflected the mixture of bare utilitarianism and stylistic nostalgia peculiar to Mars’ first wave of mass colonization. The domed ceiling high overhead revealed nothing of whatever native structures to which it may have been anchored. Twelve elegant archways of reddish, riveted Martian steel formed a vault in the center of the dome. Between them were set copper-set portraits of scientists and innovators: Sir Isaac Newton, Nichola Tesla, Abraham Schultz and the like.
Lamont purchased a ticket at the automated kiosk and made his way to the Hellas tunnel. The sleek, modern train that waited there to onboard passengers contrasted starkly with the gilded decor of the older terminal. The newspaperman settled into the back of an empty car at the end of the train. He unfolded a newspaper and peered over its edge at the dozens of passengers that filed on after him. His back straightened involuntarily when he observed a man climbing into the nearly full car several minutes later. He was small-framed with high cheekbones, dressed inconspicuously in a neat black suit. Lamont felt certain that the same man had been on the train from District 77. The man bore a neutral expression, and his eyes never made an obvious effort to scan the car before he took his seat and opened his own copy of The Martian Chronicle. After all, why would he? It was now too full of commuters for Lamont to exit without making a scene. He set his jaw and waited patiently as the doors closed with the hiss of a sealing airlock. The train began to move, gliding smoothly into the dark tunnels of Mars. His plan already seemed to be working.
The distance between Cerberus and the Hellas settlement, named after the basin carved into the surface of the planet high above it, was roughly equal to the distance between Cornwall and Paris. The trip took 33 minutes. At the speed it was traveling, the widely-spaced tracking lamps set into the airless tube became two streaks of light that faintly flickered through the transparent canopy of the pill-shaped car. Twice during the trip, the oppressive black outside the window was replaced by faint views of monolithic native architecture, at which nearly all the occupants of the car simultaneously lifted their eyes to gawk with open curiosity or unsettled reverence. The first feature looked something like a vast orerary, except that it exhibited many hundreds of planets that all looked something like self-illuminated blowfish. There was no telling how large the structure was, except that the swiftly gliding train seemed to crawl past it for as long as it was visible.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
The second was a cavernous open space across which the train crossed on some bridge that was never itself visible to the passengers. The chamber was dark and would hardly have been noticed by anyone if not for the intermittent flashes of raw, crackling energy that flashed from one coil-like projection to another, momentarily filling the car with eerie blue light that elicited a cowed gasp from most of the riders. But not from the high-cheekboned man, Lamont noticed. For both wonders, he barely lifted his dark eyes from his paper.
When the train arrived at its stop, Lamont waited for the man in the neat black suit to disembark first. A full minute later, as passengers from Hellas were packing into the car, Lamont emerged into the large, brightly-lit station. Thoroughly modern, the terminal was divided into its various sections by sweeping architectural features painted in powder blues and bright reds. No hint of Martian architecture was visible in the space, which was criss-crossed by efficiently bustling lines of passengers moving to their next point of departure. Men and women in expensive suits carried briefcases to the tunnels for Hellas Districts One and Three. Workers in single-piece uniforms of blue, orange or beige filed toward Districts Two, Four and Nine. The collection of people purchasing tokens for the shuttle to District 12 was more diverse; a few businessmen or salesmen that tipped their hats at alert housewives and teachers who corralled groups of brightly dressed children. Tourists stuck out like sore thumbs, eagerly leafing through handfuls of collected brochures or tentatively double-checking the terminal signs. Some even carried emergency oxygen supplies, the telltale sign of a first-time visitor of Mars that was sure to get one targeted by opportunistic tour guides. Passing his eyes over the crowd, Lamont was unable to pick out his black-suited friend, but that was hardly surprising given the frenzy of activity.
Hellas District 12 was among the newest areas of Mars that had been built out for human occupation. The site of several interesting tourist attractions, it was bordered by fashionable hotels and expensive condominiums built in the newly popular Martian-rustic style, in which streamlined modern architecture was artfully merged with rough-hewn geologic features that had been untouched by the planet’s ancient occupants. Lamont’s shuttle stopped at a covered station that emerged into a cavern of staggering immensity, affording a panoramic view of tiered habitations, needle-like towers and large parks into which flora from all regions of Earth had been introduced. His eye was caught by the slow migration of a flock of birds, something that he realized he had not seen in months.
Momentarily overwhelmed by his choices, it occurred to Lamont that this stage of his plan for the day was somewhat vague. He watched as the crowd from the shuttle split into three rough groups: Mothers and teachers herding their wards onto trolleys bound for the museums and native attractions in the District’s center, tourists and holiday visitors hailing carts or wandering at a leisurely pace toward the hotels, salesmen and other people with less identifiable occupations boarding busses for the suburbs. He decided that it made the most sense to join this last group.
The bus carried Lamont through the center of the cavern, down into a bowl-shaped valley lined with surprisingly tall trees that he recognized as California Redwoods, of which he had only seen the haunting towers of petrified trunks on Earth. It followed a winding road along which a steel guardrail was the only barrier between the bus and a deep canyon cut into the bowels of the planet. On outcroppings across the chasm, Lamont could see clusters of sightseers gazing with awed fascination into the seemingly bottomless abyss, from which clear-domed tour helicopters occasionally emerged. Passing beneath the supporting columns of a glittering new hotel that overlooked the spectacle, the bus followed a tunnel that took them out of the district's central cavern and into the comparatively smaller area that had been converted into suburbs.
Magnificent suburbs, though, Lamont observed. Far from the reddish concrete and thick glass bricks that typified the residential sections of Cerberus, the town into which the bus emerged was a glittering grid of handsome geometric houses with broad glass walls and neatly manicured lawns. Small trees were planted at regular intervals along clean white streets, neatly illuminated by tall street lamps of overhanging globes. Overhead, a white mist reflected the light back downward, concealing the dark extremities of the cavern and all but eliminating shadows. The overall effect was that rose-hued softness associated with a fresh snowfall, except without the snow. Something about it felt surreal to Lamont, and he felt himself shutter.
After making several stops to let passengers off near houses, the bus reached its station in a commercial area at the center of the suburban section. Like the community surrounding it, the little village was idyllic; a single corridor of quaint shops and businesses that looked as if it had been lifted from a children's picture book of pre-Epiphany America. A supermarket, a candy store and an appliance repair shop occupied one block past which the bus rolled slowly before coming to a stop. Lamont took one last look along the length of the vehicle to make sure that he hadn't missed a small man with high cheekbones among the chattering passengers. Satisfied, he stepped off the bus in front of a small soda shop with several tables set out front in the style of a European café.
As the bus pulled away, Lamont stopped in his tracks, stunned. There, sitting at one of the tables with a cup of coffee and a book, was a face that he immediately, unquestionably recognized. It couldn't be, he told himself—the coincidence was unbelievable. But despite himself, he stared, and in staring he only became more convinced. Against all odds, here he was. There could be no mistake.
