Greg Bear - A Martian Ricorso.pdf - Greg Bear - widez2

A Martian Ricorso

a short story by Greg Bear

Note: only available until the end of July

2000

Martian night. The cold and the dark and the stars

are so intense they make music, like a faint tinkle of

ice xylophones. Maybe it's my air tank hose scraping;

maybe it's my imagination. Maybe it's real.

Standing on the edge of Swift Plateau, I'm afraid to

move or breathe deeply, as I whisper into the helmet

recorder, lest I disturb something holy: God's sharp

scrutiny of Edom Crater. I've gone outside, away

from the lander and my crewmates, to order my

thoughts about what has happened.

The Martians came just twelve hours ago, like a tide

of five-foot-high laboratory rats running and leaping

on their hind legs. To us, it seemed as if they were

storming the lander, intent on knocking it over. But it

seems now we were merely in their way.

We didn't just sit here and let them swamp us. We

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didn't hurt or kill any of them--Cobb beat at them

with a roll of foil and I used the parasol of the

damaged directenna to shoo them off. First contact,

and we must have looked like clowns in an old silent

comedy. The glider wings came perilously close to

being severely damaged. We foiled and doped what

few tears had been made before nightfall. They

should suffice, if the polymer sylar adhesive is as

good as advertised.

But our luck this expedition held true to form. The

stretching frame's pliers broke during the repairs. We

can't afford another swarm, even if they're just

curious.

Cobb and Link have had bitter arguments about

self-defense. I've managed to stay out of them so far,

but my sympathies at the moment lie with Cobb. Still,

my instinctual desire to stay alive won't stop me from

feeling horribly guilty if we do have to kill a few

Martians.

We've had quite a series of revelation the last few

days. Schiaparelli was right. And Percival Lowell,

the eccentric genius of my own home state. He was

not as errant an observer as we've all thought this

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past century.

I have an hour before I have to return to the lander

and join my mates in sleep. I can last here in the cold

that long. Loneliness may weigh on me sooner,

however. I don't know why I came out here; perhaps

just to clear my head, we've all been in such a

constrained, tightly controlled, oh-so-disguised

panic. I need to know what I think of the whole

situation, without benefit of comrades.

The plateau wall and the floor of Edom are so

barren. With the exception, all around me, of the

prints of thousands of feet... Empty and lifeless.

Tomorrow morning we'll brace the crumpled

starboard sled pads and rig an emergency automatic

release for the RATO units on the glider. Her wings

are already partially spread for a fabric inspection --

accomplished just before the Winter Troops

attacked--and we've finished transferring fuel from

the lander to the orbit booster. When the glider gets

us up above the third jet stream, by careful tacking

we hope to be in just the right position to launch our

little capsule up and out. A few minutes burn and we

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can dock with the orbiter if Willy is willing to pick

us up.

If we don't make it, these records will be all there is

to explain, on some future date, why we never made

it back. I'll feed the helmet memory into the lander

telterm, stacked with flight telemetry and other data

in computer-annotated garble, and instruct the

computer to store it all on hard-copy glass disks.

The dust storm that sand-scrubbed our directenna and

forced me to this expedient subsided two days ago.

We have not reported our most recent discovery to

mission control; we are still organizing our thoughts.

After all, it's a momentous occasion. We don't want

to make any slips and upset the folks back on Earth.

Here's the situation on communications. We can no

longer communicate directly with Earth. We are left

with the capsule radio, which Willy can pick up and

boost for re-broadcast whenever the conditions are

good enough. At the moment, conditions are terrible.

The solar storm that dogged our Icarus heels on the

way out, forcing us deep inside Willy's capacious

hull, is still active. The effect on the Martian

atmosphere has been most surprising.

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There's a communicator on the glider body as well,

but that's strictly short-range and good for little more

than telemetry. So we have very garbled

transmissions going out, reasonably clear coming

back, and about twenty minutes of complete blackout

when Willy is out of line of sight, behind or below

Mars.

We may be able to hit Willy with the surveyor's

laser, adapted for signal transmission. For the

moment we're going to save that for the truly

important communications, like time of launch and

approximate altitude, calculated from the fuel we

have left after the transfer piping exploded.... was it

three days ago? When the night got colder than the

engineers thought possible and exceeded the specs

on the insulation.

I'm going back in now. It's too much out here. Too

dark. No moons visible.

Now at the telterm keyboard. Down to meaningful

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Greg Bear - A Martian Ricorso.pdf

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