Fear Above, Terror Below
By James Denney
Illustrations by Michael Carroll
PART II - NOW AVAILABLE!
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PART I
"Hello, Earthlings! I'm Mason Callahan, the first Martian."
Standing under a rose-pink sky, with the tiny yellow Martian sun shining over his left shoulder, Mason waved to the vidcam. He wore a white and blue Mars-Skin—a thickly insulated but flexible suit with a clear bubble-helmet. Despite the glare reflecting off of Mason's helmet, the vidcam recorded an image of the boy's unruly dark hair, golden-brown eyes, and broad smile.
The vast rust-colored plain on which Mason stood was bordered to the north by rugged stone cliffs. The cliffs were so distant they were obscured by a pink-orange haze.
"You may think I look like a normal human being, fourteen Earth-years old," Mason continued. "But since I was the first person born here on Mars, I like to think of myself as the first Martian. But enough about me—I want you to meet my best friend in the whole universe. Hey, Tregon, come on out from behind the vidcam and say hello to everybody on Planet Earth!"
Mason's friend stepped away from the vidcam and bounced over beside Mason. Grinning, he gave the vidcam two thumbs up. Like Mason, Tregon was attired in a white and blue Mars-Skin with bubble-helmet. His mischievous eyes and wide grin contrasted sharply with his brown skin and dark hair.
"Hey, people," he said, "what's happening back on Mother Earth? I'm Tregon Zuniga-Hernandez, and my bud Mase may have been the first human being born on Mars, but he was just an experimental prototype! I'm the new, improved, and totally mogul Martian!"
"All right, all right," Mason said, shaking his head. "Stop clowning and get back behind the vidcam where you belong!"
With a final wave, Tregon went back to the vidcam—a fist-sized device mounted on a tripod. It had two lenses, spaced apart like human eyes, so that it could record stereoscopic three-dimensional images. It also had an ultra-sensitive microphone for recording in the thin Martian air, plus a radio receiver for recording everything Mason and Tregon said into their helmet microphones.
Mason gestured around him and said, "I'm standing on the floor of the eastern end of Melas Chasma, one of the central canyons of the Valles Marineris." Tregon panned the vidcam around to show the broad plain and towering cliffs.
"Back in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries," Mason continued, "people on Earth looked at Mars through telescopes and thought they saw canals cutting across the face of the planet. They imagined that Martians had dug the canals to irrigate farms to grow food. Most of the early science fiction novels about Mars mentioned the canals, including The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells, the Barsoom novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs, and The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury.
"Finally, in 1972, the Mariner spacecraft came to this world and took detailed photos of Mars. Those pictures proved that there were no canals—unless you think of the Valles Marineris, where I'm standing, as one gigantic canal! The Valles Marineris system is the biggest, deepest crevice in the Solar System. It's ten times longer and seven times deeper than the Grand Canyon in Arizona. Those canyon walls over there—" Mason pointed to the cliffs behind him. "—are about eight kilometers high. That's five miles for you Americans. There are places where the canyon walls are even higher—"
A shadow passed over Mason and Tregon.
Startled, Mason stopped talking and looked around him. A shadow! That was impossible. In order for a shadow to pass over them, something would have to be flying in the air above them. And nothing flew in the skies of Mars. Mason squinted upward, but he saw only the tiny sun glaring through thin, high clouds, dazzling his eyes. He looked at Tregon. "Did you see—" he began.
But Tregon had already unlatched the vidcam from the tripod and was pointing it toward the sky. "I saw it!" Tregon shouted. "It went that way—but I can't see it in the viewfinder! Wait! There! I had it for a moment! Oh, craters! It's gone!"
Mason looked where Tregon pointed the vidcam, but the flying thing—whatever it was—couldn't be seen. It was lost in the distance and the jumbled rocky background of Melas Chasma. "Did you get a shot of it?" Mason asked, running toward Tregon. "Run the vid back! Let's take a look."
Tregon replayed the last few seconds of his recording. There were a few jerky images of pink sky and dark canyon walls, then—
"There!" Mason said. "Freeze that!"
Mason and Tregon looked at the still image in the vidcam's viewfinder: A smeared and shapeless blob of blackness, surrounded by Martian sky. It was an image of the mysterious flying object all right, but vague and indistinct. There was no way to tell what its actual shape or size might have been.
"What is it?" Mason asked.
"How do I know?"
"Well, you saw it. How big do you think it was?"
"I dunno," Tregon said. "I saw it against the sky and I couldn't tell how far away it was. Maybe it was a meter and a half or two meters across. But it went by so fast—"
"If you're right," Mason said, "that thing is even bigger than a really large Earth bird, like an owl or eagle. It couldn't be a living creature. Not on Mars. It has to be artificial—a flying device of some sort."
"Where would it come from?" Tregon asked. "Let's see, there are six major settlements on Mars—ours, the Chinese Collective, Eurobase, the Japan-India Consortium, the Brazilian Alliance settlement, and the Russian Derevnia. Plus, there are those scientific outposts and mining camps scattered around the planet—"
"And none of them are operating in Melas Chasma," Mason said. "You saw the map. There aren't any camps or settlements in this canyon." He bit his lower lip. "Of course, some of the scientific stations release weather balloons, and those balloons can travel for thousands of kilometers—"
"Oh, come on, Mase! You're not going to tell me that thing was a weather balloon! Going that fast? It was streaking like a meteor!"
Mason shook his head. "I know. That was no balloon. But what was it?" "
All I know," Tregon said, "is that we saw something we can't explain—and whatever it was, it was real. This vid is proof!"
"Proof of what? A picture like that will never convince anyone that we didn't make the whole thing up."
"Maybe not," Tregon said, "but at least you and I know that we saw it."
Mason placed his gloved hand against the faceplate of his helmet, shading his eyes, and he swept the horizon with his gaze. He had lived his whole life on this world. For all of its danger and cold strangeness, it was his home. But at that moment, Mars seemed like an alien and unknowable world, forbidding and foreboding.
"Let's get back to the rover," Mason said. "I want to show that vid image to Dad."
For a moment, Tregon seemed about to argue. Then he shrugged and packed the vidcam and tripod in the carrying case. Together, they walked the short distance to their two all-terrain vehicles. They climbed onto their ATVs and sped away east with Mason in the lead.
* * *
Mr. Callahan's brow creased as he held up the vidcam and studied the still image in the viewfinder. A tall, broad-shouldered man in his early forties, Mason's father had blue-green eyes and thick, dark hair. His jaw was square, chiseled, and stubbled with a two-day growth of beard—he hadn't shaved since they had left the settlement for a week-long mineral-hunting expedition in the rover. Mr. Callahan held the vidcam out so that his wife, Adrianne, could see as well.
Mrs. Callahan brushed her long brown hair from her eyes and peered into the viewfinder. "It's not a very good image," she said. "It's so blurry, you can't tell anything about its shape."
"The thing was moving really fast," Mason said.
"It sure was," Tregon added. "I was lucky to get any kind of shot at all."
The four of them—Mason's parents and the two boys—were gathered in the front section of the pressurized rover. The rover was a huge six-wheeled vehicle used for long-distance transportation on Mars. Within its crowded confines were seating and bunks for four people, a toilet-shower-sink closet, a modular scientific lab, and storage space for gear and rock specimens.
Mason's dad advanced the digital counter on the vidcam, examining a few more frames of Tregon's video footage. "I think I may have a pretty good idea of what this thing is," he said. "In fact, I'm sure of it."
Tregon's eyes widened. "You do? What is it?"
"One of your practical jokes," Mr. Callahan said. He clicked the power off and handed the vidcam to Tregon.
Mason looked wounded. "Dad, honest," he said, "this isn't a trick."
"That's right," Tregon said defensively. "We saw something fly over us and head west. We don't know what it was, but we're not making it up. It was real."
"Real, huh?" Mason's father frowned. "Tell me, Tregon, was it as real as the time you programmed EMMA to follow me around all day saying, 'I love you, Drake! You're so handsome!' A robot with a crush on you is not funny."
Tregon tried not to laugh—but couldn't repress a chuckle. "Yeah, I admit I did that, but—"
"Oh," Mason's mother said, "and what about the time you boys sneaked a few drops of a certain heterocyclic aromatic chemical compound into the coffee pot at the Commons? Mase, you had a dozen adults in a complete panic—including your father and me!"
Mason put his hand to his mouth and pretended to clear his throat—but he couldn't keep from snickering at the memory of those shocked faces as people emerged from the restroom having just discovered that their pee had turned blue! "Mom, Dad," he said, trying to make his face serious once more, "I know we've pulled some pranks in the past, but this is no joke! Honest! How can I make you believe me?"
Mr. Callahan stroked his chin. "Look, son," he said, "you're asking us to believe something that's simply not possible. You say it was too fast to be a weather balloon. And it's a sure bet that there are no birds out there. You showed me a black smudge on a vidcam monitor, which may be nothing more than a rock that Tregon tossed in the air."
"But the image—" Tregon began.
"That image doesn't prove a thing," Mr. Callahan interrupted, "except that maybe you should clean your vidcam lenses. Look, you fellas shouldn't be fooling around out on the surface. We let you guys roam the canyon unsupervised today—but that's a privilege we can easily take away if you guys abuse it."
"But, Dad—" Mason began.
"Drake," Mrs. Callahan said. Her eyes flashed, half-hidden by a few strands of her Mediterranean-dark brown hair. Mason knew the look in his mother's eyes—and that look meant trouble.
"Drake," Mrs. Callahan said again. "We need to talk." She turned to Mason and Tregon. "Would you boys excuse us?"
"You want us to step outside?" Tregon said. It was a joke, of course. The boys had already removed their Mars-Skins and helmets, so stepping outside would result in three different kinds of death at once: freezing, suffocation, and decompression.
But Adrianne Callahan was not in a joking mood—and Mason knew better than to cross his mom when she had that look in her eyes. He tugged at his friend's sleeve and said, "Come on, Tregon. Let's go to the back of the rover and let them talk."
There wasn't enough room in the rover for a truly private conversation. Up at the front, Mr. and Mrs. Callahan talked softly enough that Mason and Tregon couldn't actually hear what they were saying—but the boys could tell that they were the subject of discussion. Mason could see that his mom was worried about something and his dad was trying to reassure her.
Finally, his parents seemed to come to a conclusion, and Mason's dad came back to the rear of the rover where the boys waited. "Look, guys," Mr. Callahan said, "I still think this flying whatchamacallit is some kind of practical joke—"
"Dad, I really—" Mason protested.
"Hear me out. We're not going to discuss it anymore. If you see it again and get some really sharp, clear shots of it, great, we'll talk. But for now, let's just forget this happened, okay?"
"Well," Mason said, "I guess. But—"
"Glad that's settled," Mr. Callahan said. "Problem is, your mom's kinda concerned. This flying thing has her spooked. She's saying, 'What if there really is something out there—something unknown, something dangerous?' You guys know I had a hard time convincing her to let you go out by yourselves on ATVs. Coming back with this wild tale of an unidentified flying object doesn't help your case any."
"Dad," Mason said, "you know we're super-careful out there."
"I know, I know," Drake Callahan said. "Your mother knows that too—but she wouldn't be Mom if she didn't worry, right?"
Mason nodded. "Right."
"So listen, guys, don't let me down. No messing around or taking stupid chances on the ATVs. Mars may be your home, but it's still a hostile world. There's nothing but your Mars-Skin between you and a very cold and deadly atmosphere. If you guys mess up, you could lose a limb—or your lives."
"We won't let you down, Mr. C," Tregon said.
"I know you won't," Drake answered with a wink.
Even so, Mason caught a glimmer of doubt in his father's eye. Dad doesn't believe us, he thought. He thinks we made it all up.
* * *
Mason and Tregon arose early the next morning, gulped down a pre-packaged breakfast, and suited up in their Mars-Skins. Before they could put on their helmets, a call came in from the settlement. It was Mason's eleven-year-old sister, Mariah.
"Hey, Mase!" Mariah said from the flat-screen comm monitor. She was holding her gray cat Apollo in her arms.
"Hi, sis," Mason said. "What's up?"
"I'm glad you haven't left yet," Mariah said. "Lian has a question for you. Here she is."
Mariah moved out of the image and another girl came into the frame. Lian had delicate Asian features and shiny black hair. She was a thirteen-year-old who was born in the Chinese Collective, about 500 kilometers from the settlement. Like Mason, Tregon, and Mariah, she was one of the first generation of native-born Martians.
"Ni hao ma, Mason," Lian said, smiling shyly.
"Ni hao, Lian," Mason said. "What did you want to ask?"
"I want to know," Lian said, "why you and Tregon are making vidcam recordings out in the canyon."
"Well," Mason said, "there's this big broadcasting company on Earth, Transglobal Educational Media. I submitted one of my homework essays to them. It was about the history of Earth literature about Mars. One of the Transglobal producers contacted me and said he wanted me to get a vidcam and go around to some actual places on Mars and talk about some of the legends and stories that people have been writing about Mars for hundreds of years. They're planning to use the vid we shoot in a documentary that'll be shown in schools all over Earth."
"Oh," Lian said, "that is a very cool idea!"
"I thought so, too. So I talked Mom and Dad into letting me and Tregon go around and shoot the vid by ourselves and—"
"Hey, Mase," Tregon said, standing behind Mason, "the sun's already up. We've gotta get going!"
"Okay, okay," Mason said over his shoulder. He turned back to the flat-screen. "Sorry to cut this short, Lian, but we're going EVA in five minutes."
"EVA?" said Lian. "That means—?"
"Extra Vehicular Activity. Walking or riding around on the surface of Mars."
"Ah," Lian said. "Well, have a safe trip, Mason."
Mariah stuck her head into the picture. "Yeah, Mase," she said, "be safe out there—and don't let Tregon get you into any trouble!"
"You little squirt!" Tregon said behind Mason.
"What was that?" asked Mariah.
"Tregon said he loves you, too," Mason said, laughing.
"What—!" Mariah began.
But Mason clicked off the communicator channel before Mariah could finish.
"Mase," said a gruff male voice behind him.
Turning around, Mason saw his father approaching from the front of the rover.
"Pull up the map of the canyon," Dad said. "Show me the route you're taking today."
Mason turned back to the flat-screen, tapped a few touch-icons on the screen, and called up a map of the eastern end of Melas Chasma. A few more taps and he zoomed in on a particular section. "There are some mogul rock formations here," he said, pointing at the screen, "and some really awesome dunes over here. And we're going to shoot here, in front of the caves."
"That's fine," Mr. Callahan said. "I just want to make sure we're clear on three rules. First rule: Stay on the path. Do not, I repeat, do not take off cross-country on your ATVs, capice?"
"Capice," said Mason.
"Capice," said Tregon, "whatever that means."
"It's an Italian word that means, 'I read you loud and clear,'" Mr. Callahan said with a wink toward his Italian wife. He turned back to Mason and Tregon. "Second rule: Check in every hour like clockwork. We're trusting you guys to stay safe out there, but you've got to keep in touch.
"Third rule: Stay out of those caves. It's okay to stand in front of the caves and shoot some vid, but don't go inside. Those holes are unstable. They could collapse. If I find out that either of you fellas has set one little toe inside those caves, it'll be years before I ever let either of you go EVA again."
Mason gulped hard. He lived to go EVA. There was no greater thrill than leaving the confines of the settlement structures and actually standing on the surface of Mars. A year on Mars is 668.6 Mars-days long—and Mason had no intention of having to wait several Martian years before his next EVA!
* * *
Before going out through the airlock, Mason and Tregon did a "buddy check" of each other's Mars-Skins, helmet seals, safety kits, O2 canisters, and other equipment. After the safety check, they went outside and unhitched the pair of all-terrain vehicles from the racks on either side of the rover. Each ATV had room for two people, but Mason's father had insisted that they each have their own vehicle so that there was a backup in case one of the ATVs broke down or got stuck. The boys loaded up their equipment, did a final radio check, and took off, heading west.
It was easy for the two friends to carry on a conversation as they rode along. The helmet microphones and earpieces made it easy for them to talk and hear each other even over the noise and vibration of the ATVs.
"Hey, Mase," Tregon said, "how much are those guys paying you to do this?"
"What guys? You mean Transglobal? They're paying me in baseball games."
"Baseball games? What do you mean?"
"Who's my favorite baseball team, Tregon?"
"The St. Louis Cardinals, of course."
"My favorite player of all time?"
"That guy who played for the Cardinals a long time ago—"
"Yep. Ozzie Smith, the greatest shortstop of all time. Had a batting average of .262, thirteen Gold Glove awards, and set records for most assists, double plays, hits, and stolen bases. And the producer at Transglobal is transmitting vid files of a hundred of Ozzie's best games from the 1980s and '90s."
"Geez," Tregon said in a disgusted tone. "Those guys are getting off cheap!"
Mason laughed. "Are you kidding? At the cost of data transmission bandwidth between Earth and Mars? Sending those files will cost them a fortune!"
After nearly an hour of travel, they came to the first location on Mason's list. The place had not been officially named, but Mason called it Castle Spires because of its hundreds of tall rock formations shaped like the towers, spires, and turrets of a storybook castle. The rock towers were made of calcium carbonate, and areologists (or Mars geologists) believed that those towers proved that water had once flowed through Melas Chasma. The spires rose up to a hundred meters high, and had been sculpted by millions of years of erosion.
Mason made his first check-in call to his dad by helmet radio. "Thanks for checking in, son," his dad said. "Talk to you in an hour." After the call, Mason looked over his notes and thought about what he would say. Meanwhile, Tregon walked around the spires, taking a variety of shots.
"Okay, I'm ready," Mason said.
Tregon positioned the vidcam on its tripod, then gave Mason the "go" signal.
Mason said, "I'm standing in front of some incredibly tall, thin rock towers that I call Castle Spires. When I look at these spires, I'm reminded of the Mars novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs. You may know Mr. Burroughs as the author of the Tarzan stories. But I think his stories about Mars are even more exciting. In books like A Princess of Mars and The Gods of Mars, Mr. Burroughs wrote about strange alien people who called this world 'Barsoom.' The spires behind me look like the fortress-temple on Mars where the hero, John Carter, fought the evil goddess Issus for the life of Deja Thoris, the woman he loved. . . . Cut! How was that?"
"Perfect!" Tregon said. "You got it in one take—no mistakes. If you want, we could—" His eyes went wide and his jaw dropped. He pointed heavenward. "Ohmigosh! Look up there! What's that?"
Mason looked up where Tregon pointed—then he groaned. "Tregon, you idiot! Don't scare me like that! There's nothing in the sky but Phobos!"
In the sky above the southern wall of the canyon, a pale white speck made its way slowly across the pink Martian sky.
Tregon was laughing uproariously. "Hah-hah! You looked!"
"Okay, okay, I admit it, you tricked me," Mason said. "Now go ahead and point that vidcam up and let's get some shots of Phobos. While you shoot, I'll do the narration."
Tregon found Phobos in the viewfinder and Mason began to talk. "What you see now," he said, "is Phobos, one of the two moons of Mars. Phobos means 'fear' in Greek. The other moon is called Deimos, which means 'terror.' So the planet Mars, which was named after the Roman god of War, is constantly orbited by fear and terror.
"Now, there's something really amazing about those two moons of Mars. Both moons were discovered by an American astronomer named Asaph Hall in 1877. But in 1726, a century and a half earlier, a writer named Jonathan Swift wrote a book called Gulliver's Travels. In that book, he mentioned that the planet Mars was orbited by two moons—and he described the orbits of both moons as being almost exactly what the orbits of Phobos and Deimos turned out to be. No telescope in Jonathan Swift's day could have possibly located the two moons of Mars, and no one knows how Mr. Swift was able to predict the existence of Phobos and Deimos so accurately."
Tregon replayed the vid for Mason, and Mason was satisfied with it. So Tregon packed up the vidcam and the boys hopped aboard their ATVs and sped off toward the next site.
After a while, the flat, rocky canyon floor gave way to a region of rolling sand dunes. The sands of Mars are not like the coarse, gritty sand found on Planet Earth. Martian sand is finer than talcum powder. The wheels of the ATVs kicked up rust-orange clouds of the stuff which drifted and dispersed upon the thin Martian breeze.
Mason led the way, conscious of his dad's first rule: "Stay on the path." Of course, there wasn't an actual path that you could see. Though that part of Melas Chasma had been well-explored by rovers and ATVs over the past dozen years, the tire tracks had been erased by sandstorms and shifting dunes, leaving no trace. The "path" that Mason's father referred to was a "virtual path" Mason followed using a global positioning system (GPS) that told him his exact location in relation to several areostationary satellites.
Finally, Mason heard Tregon's voice in his earpiece. "Hey, man!" his friend called, "look at all these mogul dunes! This'd be a great place for the next shoot!"
"Let's keep going," Mason said. "There are better dunes up ahead."
As they went, the peach-pink Martian dunes grew even more majestic in their lofty swells and deep valleys. The pale sunlight sparkled on the crests of the dunes as if they were dusted with finely ground rubies.
"What do you think?" Mason radioed to his buddy.
"You were right, Mase! This place is perfect!"
They stopped. It was time for Mason's second hourly check-in. While Tregon set up the vidcam, Mason called his dad at the rover and reported his location. Then he called his sister Mariah at the settlement. "Hey, sis!" he said. "Check the coordinates on our transponders. Make sure they agree with the GPS signal." All of the Mars settlers had electronic transponders implanted in their right ear lobes, so that they could be located at any time. Mason gave Mariah his GPS coordinates and she replied, "The coordinates agree, Mase."
Tregon had the vidcam ready, so Mason signed off. He took his place in front of the sea of rolling dunes and glanced over his notes. Tregon looked through the viewfinder. "Move a few meters to the left," Tregon said. "The sun is glaring on your helmet and I can't see your face. . . . No, not that left! Your other left! Okay, right there, that's great." He raised his hand. "Ready!"
Mason looked into the twin lenses of the vidcam and said, "Of all the old books and stories ever written about Mars, my favorite is The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury. The Martians that Mr. Bradbury wrote about were tall and slender, noble and peace-loving. They had dark skin and eyes like gold coins. They lived in cities made of delicate crystal, and they swam in the canals of Mars. Mr. Bradbury's Martians went from place to place in beautiful sailboats with blue sails and emerald hulls that never touched water. The Martian boats sailed across sand dunes like the dunes you see behind me. And the Martians all died from the diseases that the Earthmen brought with them when they settled this planet."
With that, Mason fell silent and he looked out across the dunes. Tregon followed his friend's gaze with the vidcam, panning slowly across the rolling desert of Martian sand.
After a few moments, Mason said, "Can you feel it, bud?"
Tregon looked up from the vidcam. "Huh? Feel what?"
"We're here," Mason said. "Mars is our world. We're so lucky to be born here. All those people who wrote stories about Mars—Ray Bradbury, Edgar Rice Burroughs, C. S. Lewis, Leigh Brackett, Robert Heinlein—they all dreamed of coming here to Mars. They imagined doing what we're doing right now, looking out over these dunes. All they could do was dream, but we're actually here. We were born here. This is our world."
Tregon and Mason were silent for a long time.
Finally, Mason said, "What are you thinking about, Tregon?"
"I'm thinking . . ."
"Yeah?"
"I'm thinking I'm glad I'm not some goofy dork who gets all sentimental over a bunch of sand dunes." Tregon tossed his head back and laughed.
Mason gave him a sour look. "Tregon, you jerk! Don't you have even a little sense of wonder in your soul?"
"I sure do!" Tregon said, giggling. "I wonder how much blackmail you'll pay me not to show Mariah and Lian this vid of you going all mushy over a pile of sand!"
Mason started toward his friend with his jaw clenched and his gloved hands balled into fists.
"Hey!" Tregon said, laughing as he back away—though he knew his friend was pretending to be mad. "I'm only kidding, man! Only kidding!"
* * *
The two boys continued west on their all-terrain vehicles.
"The caves are just a kilometer or so ahead," Mason said, checking the GPS map display on the handlebars of his bouncing ATV. "I think they're just over the next rise."
The path had taken them closer and closer to the northern cliffs on their right hand. The sun was almost directly overhead. They passed a few more towers and spires made of calcium carbonate, though these towers were not nearly as tall and spectacular as the ones they had stopped at earlier in the day.
Finally, they reached the place where the caves were located. If the caves hadn't been marked on the map, Mason never would have found them. The cave entrances were hidden behind dozens of erosion-sculpted stone formations. Those formations, Mason knew, were called karst towers. A karst is a limestone terrain in which water and chemical erosion has created unusual features like sinkholes, caverns, and towers. Acid in the water of ancient Mars reacted with calcium carbonate in the rock, eating the surrounding rock away and leaving the towers behind when the waters receded.
The ground leading up to the caves was too rugged for the ATV, so Mason and Tregon parked their vehicles near a large tower and dismounted.
"It's time for my hourly check-in," Mason said. He radioed the rover and his dad answered.
"Where are you, son?" Mr. Callahan said.
"We're about to go up to the caves."
"Remember what I told you about the caves."
Mason groaned. "Sure, Dad. Don't worry about us. We'll be safe."
"You've been gone three hours—and your O2 tanks are only good for four. As soon as you finish up by the caves, you should switch to your spare oxygen tanks and come back to the rover. That should give you plenty of safety margin."
"Okay, Dad. Will do." Mason signed off. "C'mon, Tregon. Let's go."
The boys trudged side by side up a slope of scree—loose rock debris that had fallen from the cliff and piled up around its base. The debris consisted of rocks of various colors and shades—ivory, red, gray, and black. Looking up at the banded canyon walls, Mason could see the various strata that the debris had come from—limestone, shale, sandstone, and volcanic basalt.
"I think I see the caves," Tregon said, pointing.
Mason looked up ahead and saw a row of irregularly spaced openings in the porous, pockmarked rock.
"Watch your footing on this loose rock," Mason said. "You don't want to slip and crack your helmet or rip your Mars-Skin."
Mason continued up toward the mouth of the largest cave. Looking down toward his left, he saw Tregon moving around the lower face of the slope with the vidcam case in his hand. When Mason was just three or four meters from the cave, he heard—
"Mase! Did you see that?"
Mason turned around and looked down the slope. "What? Where?"
"I thought I saw—" Tregon stopped and didn't finish the sentence. He was looking—
Toward the sky.
Icy fingers strummed Mason's spine. Not again, he thought. "What did you see, Tregon?" he asked. "And please—no jokes."
"Mase, I— I'm not sure. I thought I saw a shadow on the ground. A moving shadow. Just like we saw yesterday. And Mase, I swear I'm not joking."
Mason believed him. He could hear it in Tregon's voice. His friend was genuinely scared. "Hey, bud," Mason said, "you don't see anything now, do you?"
"No, Mase. Nothing."
"Then your eyes must have been playing tricks on you. C'mon, Tregon. Set up the vidcam and let's shoot this scene and get out of here."
"Yeah. I'm with you."
From the higher ground by the caves, Mason watched Tregon set up the vidcam. Mason pulled out his notes and thought about what he wanted to say. Occasionally, he sneaked a glance at the pink sky.
"Okay," Tregon said. "Ready when you are."
"I'm ready," Mason replied. "Let's go. . . . In the 1940s and '50s, Leigh Brackett wrote a series of novels that were set on Mars, including The Nemesis from Terra, Queen of the Martian Catacombs, and others. Her Mars novels focus on the clash between a dying Martian civilization and the human conquerors from Earth. One of Leigh Brackett's Mars novels was called Purple Priestess of the Mad Moon. Okay, it's a weird title, but it's really an exciting story, and there's an ancient Martian god who lives in a cave like the one behind me. The book is also about the struggle between science and superstition. In the story—"
A shadow passed over both boys like the angel of death.
Mason pointed upward. "Look!"
A flying thing swooped low overhead. It had a dark body and long wings that extended at right angles to the body. It was fast.
"Tregon!" Mason shouted. "The vidcam! Get a shot of it!"
"Ohmigosh!" Tregon grabbed the vidcam, tripod and all, and pointed it skyward. "There it is! I'm getting it! I'm getting it!"
"Mogul, man!" Mason yelled, jumping up and down. "This time we'll have proof!"
The flying thing made a gentle arcing curve and flew westward, disappearing behind some high karst columns.
"C'mon!" Mason shouted. "Let's follow it!"
The two white-and-blue-clad boys ran, jumped, and slid down the slope toward the parked ATVs. With a flick of his thumb, Tregon unlatched the tripod and dropped it on the ground to retrieve later. The light vidcam would be easier to carry without the bulky tripod. Gripping the vidcam in his left hand, Tregon used his right hand to stiff-arm the stone towers and maintain his balance as he ran.
Mason hopped over a large piece of rubble and realized that his momentum was carrying his upper body downhill faster than his feet could go. Sensing he was about to tumble headlong, he had a moment to imagine what it would feel like to go flying into a boulder, to shatter his faceplate, to feel the frigid, deadly atmosphere of Mars rush into his helmet—
An atmosphere that was 95 percent carbon dioxide and only 1/10 of 1 percent oxygen. An atmosphere that was 1 percent as dense as the life-sustaining artificial atmosphere inside the settlement structures. An atmosphere that averaged 63 degrees below zero Celsius, or 81 below zero Fahrenheit.
Then his booted feet hit level ground. He somehow managed to regain his balance and keep going.
Mason and Tregon leaped onto the ATVs and started them up. Mason gunned the accelerator and sped off in the direction the flying thing had gone. An instant later, Tregon revved his ATV and sped off after his friend.
The two boys bounced along over the rugged terrain, skirting the raised rim and ejecta material of a twenty-meter-wide crater. They steered toward a gap between a rock wall and a top-heavy wind-carved rock spire. Both boys searched the skies.
"Do you see anything?" asked Tregon.
"Not a sign of it!" Mason shouted into his helmet microphone.
Tregon swore. "We can't lose it again!"
"We won't," Mason promised—though in his own mind, he wasn't so sure. His heart pounded with excitement, and his breathing was quick and strained from running down the slope.
"I think it flew more to the north!" Tregon said.
"I know, I know!" Mason answered, a bit annoyed. "But if we steer north, we'll run into that rock wall! We have to go through the gap up ahead, then bend north."
They continued on toward the gap, pushing their ATVs at top speed, jouncing over small stones and pot holes while steering around the big ones. They zoomed through the gap between the rock spire and the rock wall and they reached a crest where they could look down the slope on the other side—
And they hit the brakes!
Their vehicles skidded to a stop amid clouds of peach-colored Martian dust. Both boys gasped in stunned amazement at what they saw below them.
END OF PART I
Mason and Tregon stared down a rugged slope toward a broad plain which ran up against the northern wall of the canyon. About two-hundred meters away stood the most unbelievable thing either of them had ever seen. It was such an astonishing sight that for several moments, their minds simply refused to accept what their eyes were seeing.
It was a palace. Or perhaps it was a fortress. Or even a temple.
It was a walled structure of brightly colored domes, spires, turrets, and parapets. The Martian sunlight sparkled on the gem-like crown of a lofty minaret. Around the base of the palace were scores of domed roofs, like the hovels of peasants who lived outside the palace walls.
Mason vaguely noticed that the flying object they had been chasing was banking and turning in the sky overhead—but the mysterious flyer, as strange as it was, hardly seemed important anymore, next to that magnificent, colorful palace which stood where no palace had any right to be.
Even more shocking than either the palace or the flying thing was the crowd of people on the grounds in front of the palace—
Because they weren't people. They were aliens. Some were green-skinned, four-armed, bug-eyed extraterrestrials. Others were red-skinned human men wearing loin-cloths and transparent bubble helmets. All were armed with swords, and the green aliens and red humans were fighting each other. Some fell wounded. Others lay as still as death.
"Get down!" Mason shouted into his helmet microphone. "Get down before they see us!" He turned his ATV around and urged it back toward the gap.
Tregon eased his vehicle backwards.
Mason crawled to the top of the rise. "Stay low," he said, "and bring the vidcam!"
Tregon jumped off his ATV and slithered up next to Mason. "This is crazy, man! This is freakin' impossible! Who are those— What are those things? They're aliens! Man, we gotta get outta here!"
"Easy, buddy," Mason said. "Don't panic. Here, hand me the vidcam."
Tregon handed the vidcam to his friend.
Lying on his belly, Mason peered through the viewfinder and zoomed in on the scene below. Pressing the RECORD button, he picked out one of the green-skinned aliens. He examined the creature as it lunged and parried with its flashing steel sword. Mason's heart pounded. His head swam as he recorded the scene. He couldn't believe what his eyes and the vidcam recorded—yet it must be true!
The green-skinned warrior had a bald, round head, with small, cup-shaped ears, bulging blood-red eyes, two vertical slits for a nose, sharp white tusks that protruded upward from his lower jaw, and a row of porcelain-white teeth. The creature stood on two legs. His upper body supported four powerful, muscular arms—two upper arms and two lower arms. The strange warrior had a leather-like harness around his midsection, cinched with a brass buckle. He wore bands of iron around his wrists and biceps; and plates of iron to protect his shins. He swung his sword in a glittering arc, and one of the red-skinned humans went down on the ground, clutching his throat.
"Tharks!" Mason said numbly, handing the vidcam back to Tregon.
"What did you say?" asked Tregon.
"Tharks!"
"That's what I thought you said. What are Tharks?"
"Those green-skinned guys," Mason said, looking at Tregon.
"How do you know?"
"It's in the books."
"What books?"
"The Barsoom novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs," Mason said. "A Princess of Mars, The Gods of Mars, The Chessmen of Mars, and all the rest. Those green-skinned guys are Tharks—and the red-skinned guys are Red Martians from one of the city-states of Mars, like Helium or Ptarth. The Green Martians and the Red Martians are killing each other down there."
"That's impossible!" Tregon said. "There are no Green or Red Martians on Mars!"
"Not on the Mars we knew," Mason said, pointing the vidcam here and there, recording scenes of war and death. "But we're not on that Mars anymore. We're on that other Mars, the fictional Mars. We're on Barsoom!"
* * *
"What do we do now?" Tregon asked.
Mason stopped the vidcam and handed it to Tregon.
"We get away from here," he said, "and head straight for the rover. And whatever you do, don't let go of that vidcam—it's the only proof we've got! Let's go!"
Both boys stood up. Mason turned and took a step toward the ATVs—but Tregon grabbed his arm and said, "It's too late!"
Mason looked. The flying object was soaring over the battlefield—headed straight toward them. Down on the plain below, the sword battle between the Green Martians and the Red Martians had stopped—
And all of the Red and Green Martians were looking right at them!
"They see us, Tregon!" Mason shouted. "Let's go!"
No sooner had he said that when all of the Martians, both Red and Green, started running in their direction, swords raised.
Mason pulled Tregon along toward the ATVs. Both boys leaped aboard their vehicles, hit their starters, and accelerated at top speed.
"Where are we going, Mase?" "Back to the rover. Mom and Dad will have to believe us now. We've got proof!"
They sped through the gap between the rock spire and the rock wall, zig-zagging around boulders and debris. The cluster of karst towers was up ahead.
As they went, Mason tried to call his dad by radio. No reply. Then he tried to call the settlement. Still no reply. Then Tregon tried calling on his suit radio. Still no reply.
"Why doesn't anybody answer?" Tregon asked, his voice rising in panic.
"I dunno," Mason said. "Could be magnetic interference. They've mapped some strong local magnetic fields in this part— Hey!"
A shadow passed over them. The flying thing swooped low over their heads then circled away to their left.
Tregon swore. "It'll be hard to lose those Martians with that thing spying on us from the sky," he said.
"I have an idea!" Mason said, pulling his ATV over near a karst column with a pile of stony rubble around its base. "You keep going! I'll catch up!" Mason leaped off the ATV and ran toward a pile of stones.
"But—"
"Go, Tregon! And don't let anything happen to that vidcam!"
Tregon gave Mason a worried glance over his shoulder, but he kept going.
Mason selected a roughly sphere-shaped rock in his gloved right hand and hefted it, testing its weight. He closed his eyes and imagined he was on grassy baseball diamond underneath a blue Earth sky. He rolled the rock between his thumb and fingertips and imagined he could feel the stitches in the leathery white hide of a baseball.
He opened his eyes and saw the flying thing swinging around for another pass.
"Bottom of the ninth, bases loaded, two away, Cardinals lead by one," Mason said aloud.
"Hey, Mase," Tregon's voice buzzed in his ear, tinny and distant. "What are you talking about?"
But Mason didn't hear. He was concentrating all of his thoughts on a ballpark on Planet Earth. "The pitcher throws, the batter swings—and it's a grounder to shortstop! Ozzie Smith is there to make the play!"
"Mase, have you gone crazy?"
Mason bent down and put his hands down as if to snag a ground ball coming his way—but the "ball" was already in his hands. "He scoops up the ball and fires it home!"
Mason hurled the rock as the flying thing swooped straight toward him.
The rock flew—
And slammed into the flying object, snapping off its right wing. The crippled flyer spiraled into the ground, landing with a puff of Martian dust.
"The runner's out at home!" Mason shouted, dashing to his ATV. "The Cardinals win! Woohoo!" He jumped aboard and sped off in pursuit of his friend. He could see the other ATV far ahead and could hear Tregon's rapid, frightened breathing over the suit-to-suit radio. Then—
"Aghhhhh!" Tregon shouted, hurting Mason's ears.
Mason saw Tregon's ATV swerve to miss a boulder—then roll over in a cloud of dust.
"Ohmigosh, NO!" Mason said shouted. "Tregon! Tregon! Are you okay?"
No answer.
Tregon had rolled the ATV. Mason rapidly considered all the terrible things that could result from such a crash. Tregon might have knocked off his O2 tanks! He could be suffocating at this very moment! He might have smashed his helmet or ripped his Mars-Skin or broken his leg or arms or neck! He might even be—
"Ooooh!"
Tregon's voice! At least he wasn't dead. Not yet.
"I'm coming!" Mason called into this helmet microphone.
Seconds later, he braked the ATV beside Tregon, who was curled up on the hard Martian ground. A few meters away, Tregon's vehicle was on its back with a twisted frame, a wheel missing, and assorted parts scattered on the ground. Mason went to his friend's side. "Man, your ATV's cratered," Mason said. "You've gotta ride with me. Can you move?"
"Yeah, think so," Tregon said through clenched teeth. "Ow! Suit ripped, lower leg! Ungh, hurts like crazy!"
Mason looked down at Tregon's lower right leg—and gasped. There was a five-centimeter rip in the Mars-Skin on Tregon's lower left leg. Bruised, purple skin bulged through the rip. The bruising was caused by bursting capillaries. The low-pressure atmosphere of Mars was trying to suck Tregon's flesh and blood out through the rip.
"How bad does it look?" Tregon asked.
"Quiet," Mason said, casting a worried glance behind him. There was a cloud of pink dust coming over the rise to the west. Emerging from that dust were a number of scurrying figures, some with four arms. The Martians were less than a kilometer off, and they were quickly closing the distance. But a depressurization wound was every bit as serious as a bunch of marauding Martians. Mason knew he had to seal the rip in Tregon's Mars-Skin fast or Tregon could lose his leg. There wasn't a moment to lose.
"Mase, how bad is it?" Tregon repeated.
"Easy, bud," Mason said. "You'll be okay, but I've gotta work fast." He took the safety kit from his belt and took out a suit patch. "Hold still," he said. "This may hurt." Without taking time to be gentle, Mason pressed the suit patch onto the damaged portion of Tregon's Mars-Skin. Tregon yelled and cursed the pain, but Mason knew he had to seal the hole for Tregon's own good. The suit patch would protect Tregon's bruised flesh from further depressurization damage.
"Okay, let's go," Mason said. "You're riding with me." He hooked his arms under Tregon's arms and dragged his friend toward the ATV. Mason smiled when he saw that Tregon still had the vidcam in his grip. But his heart sank when he cast a quick glance over his shoulder and saw that their pursuers were much closer, less than half a kilometer away.
"We've really gotta move," Mason said.
Tregon groaned as he painfully pulled himself onto the back seat of the ATV. Mason started the ATV and the vehicle leaped forward.
"Hold on!" Mason called.
It was a bouncy ride, with a lot of braking, accelerating, and swerving. There were more karst columns up ahead. Somewhere to the left of those stone towers, hidden from view, were the caves—the forbidden caves he'd promised to stay out of.
He weaved around between the tall, eroded columns, wishing the tires wouldn't kick up so much dust and give away their position.
He cast a quick glance backward toward the pursuers—and failed to see the rock in his path, about the size of a bowling ball. When he looked forward again, there was no time to brake. The vehicle hit the rock dead center, throwing Mason and Tregon over the handlebars. The boys landed in a pile of arms and legs.
"Oh, man, I'm sorry!" Mason said. "I didn't see that rock!"
"I'm okay," Tregon answered, his voice shaking. "But look at the ATV!" Mason looked behind him. The vehicle had dug itself into the dust and the handlebars and steering stem were bent way over to one side. Now both vehicles were ruined. He glanced toward the pursuers. They were kicking up a cloud of dust, and it was menacingly close. "We'll never make it to the rover. We need a place to hide."
"But the only hiding place around here is—" Tregon looked toward the cliffs.
"I know what Dad told us," Mason said, "but what choice do we have?"
In unison, both boys said, "The caves!"
"Can you walk that far?" Mason asked, climbing to his feet.
"Yeah—if I can lean on you."
So Mason put his arm around Tregon and they started toward the cliffs.
After a few paces, Mason said, "Hey! The vidcam—"
"Still got it."
Mason glanced at his friend's hand. It was true. Amazingly, Tregon had maintained his grip on the vidcam through everything that had happened to them.
"Hey, Mase! I see the caves!"
Mason raised his eyes and caught sight of the shadow-filled holes in the canyon wall. "Yeah," he said. "It's not far now!"
Together, they started up the slope of rock debris.
* * *
Mason found the scree slope much harder to climb while supporting his injured friend. Both boys were exhausted when they finally reached the mouth of the largest cave. Mason gave Tregon a shove and rolled him into the cave. Tregon's radioed groan vibrated Mason's earpiece. Mason gave a quick glance back down the slope to see if the Martians had spotted him.
No sign of them yet.
He climbed in after Tregon and helped his friend move a little deeper into the cave. Then he climbed in close to Tregon, making sure that his bright white-and-blue Mars-Skin was completely hidden by cave-shadows. Once he was sure he couldn't be seen, Mason settled back and tried to call the rover and the settlement on his suit radio. No luck. The high iron content of the cave walls blocked the signal to the ATV's radio relay—and he didn't dare go back out and try to call from outside.
After several moments, Tregon said, "You look grim."
"I am grim," Mason said. "And I'm mad at myself."
"Why?"
"I should have tried to call Dad again before we got inside this cave. I was so panicked about those Martians that I wasn't thinking clearly."
"Well," Tregon said, "it's hard to think of everything when you're running for your life."
"Yeah," Mason replied, "but that's when you really need to think of everything. That's when you need to stay calm and keep your head clear—or else you make bonehead mistakes like I did."
"You didn't do so bad out there," Tregon said. "You did a pretty good job of fixing up my leg. Thanks."
"Don't mention it," Mason replied—then he shook his head. "I just don't get it. I can't figure out how we got into this whole insane mess. There couldn't possibly be Martians here. This part of Melas Chasma was explored and mapped years ago. That huge palace or temple or whatever it was couldn't possibly have been missed by the surveys. Besides, those Martians were straight out of the Barsoom novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs! What are the odds that Mr. Burroughs could have written those books a century ago—and they would turn out to be true?"
"I dunno," Tregon said. "What about that other guy—what was his name? The one who predicted that Mars would have two moons exactly like Phobos and Deimos?"
"You mean Jonathan Swift," Mason said. "There's a big difference between guessing right about a couple of moons—and guessing right about Green Martians with red eyes and tusks and four arms."
"So how do you explain it? Are we dreaming this?"
"No."
"Man, how can you be sure?" Tregon wrapped his arms around his chest and shivered. "It's cold in here. We could freeze to death if we're here after dark."
Mase brushed his hand against the cave wall. A flurry of white flakes fell to the dirt floor. "It's cold, all right. Carbon dioxide frost." He turned back to Tregon. "Does your leg hurt, Tregon?" "It's throbbing like a pulsar."
"Yeah. So's my knee. I banged it when we took that spill. They say you can't feel pain in a dream—but you and I are hurting, right? So this is no dream. I've thought of every crazy possibility. Maybe we were hypnotized. Maybe we saw some kind of mirage. Maybe Edgar Rice Burroughs actually visited Mars more than a hundred years ago and wrote down everything he saw. Every theory I come up with makes no sense at all. The only thing I know for sure is that this is really happening and we've got tons of trouble."
"What do we do now, Mase?" Tregon's voice shook. His whole body was shaking. "We've wrecked both ATVs. We can't go back on foot. We'll run out of O2."
"Yeah." Mason nodded glumly. "I was just thinking about O2. That's another blunder on my part. In our panic to get away from the Martians, we left our spare oxygen tanks on the wrecked ATVs. We're going to have to wait until the Tharks and Red Martians go away."
"What if they don't go away?" Tregon said. "Or worse, what if they find us here? Or what if they take our oxygen tanks away and leave us here to suffocate? We've only got enough air to last—"
Tregon was interrupted by a loud chirping sound in his helmet—the low oxygen warning. He checked the O2 meter on his wrist readout. "Ohmigosh, Mase! I've only got thirty minutes of oxygen left!"
Just then, the same warning sounded in Mason's helmet. "I only have thirty minutes left myself."
"So what do we do?" Tregon asked in a voice edged with panic.
Mason sighed. "Hand me the vidcam. I have an idea."
Tregon passed him the vidcam. "What's your idea?"
"I'm going to get those O2 canisters."
"What? You're crazy! There are Martians out there! With swords! They'll see you!"
"That's why I want the vidcam," Mason said. "I'll point it out of the cave like a periscope. It's so small, they'll never spot it. If the coast is clear, I'll go down and grab the O2 canisters—and while I'm out there, I'll try to get a call through to Dad."
Tregon bit his lip. "I guess that's our only hope."
"I can't think of anything else," Mason said. Taking the vidcam in his right hand, he crawled on his belly to the mouth of the cave. He pressed the RECORD button and slowly extended his arm, pointing the vidcam down the slope. He moved it back and forth to record as wide an area as possible, then he pulled the vidcam in and crawled back into the darkness alongside Tregon and reviewed the recording he had just made.
The vid showed the rock-strewn slope below the cave, the flat ground beyond, the erosion-sculpted karst towers, and Mason's ATV with its bent handlebars and twisted steering stem, smashed against a rock. But there were no Green Martians or Red Martians. The place was deserted.
Mason grinned. "They're gone!" he said. "And they left the ATV! We're in luck!"
Tregon grinned back. "I wonder what happened to them?"
"I dunno," Mason said, shaking his head. "You know, it makes me wonder if they were ever really there. I wonder if we really saw what we think we saw."
Tregon frowned. "It all looked real to me."
"Okay," Mason said with a relieved sigh. "Wait here. I'll go outside and radio for help—and I'll be back with the extra O2 canisters, mine and yours. If the Martians left my ATV, they must have left yours too."
"Don't be long."
"I won't." Mason got to his feet, though he had to bend over because of the cave's low ceiling. He crouch-walked over to the mouth of the cave and peered out. Everything looked just as it had on the vid. No sign of Martians.
Mason stepped out onto the rocky scree slope—
And was grabbed by strong hands and yanked off his feet. Mason turned his head and stared into a green face with white tusks and bulging red eyes.
* * *
It was late afternoon—more than eight hours since the boys had left the rover. Mr. Callahan grimly steered the rover around the rim and ejecta material of a twenty-meter-wide crater.
"Can't you push this thing any faster?" his wife Adrianne asked from the right-hand seat.
"With all of the debris in our path?" he said. "The last thing we need right now is to break down out here. That won't do us or the boys any good. Besides, we're almost—"
"Look!" Adrianne pointed out the right side of the windshield. "An ATV!"
"The front end looks pretty smashed," Mr. Callahan said. "Maybe the rest of the vehicle can be salvaged."
"I don't care about the vehicle! I'm thinking about our son! He must have gone flying when the ATV hit that rock! I was right! We never should have let those boys go out on their own!"
Mr. Callahan winced at his wife's outburst, but said nothing. A minute passed as he drove on in miserable silence—then his wife pointed again, this time to the left. "Is that—? It is! The other ATV! Ohmigosh! It's smashed to pieces!"
Mr. Callahan sank lower in the driver's seat, feeling his wife's fiery Italian eyes glaring at him. The rover bounced along