Noon, 22nd Century, Page 2

  On the crest of a nearby dune, with its fearsome triangular head turned toward them, sat a mimicrodon—a seven-foot lizard, brick red in imitation of the color of the sand. Mandel threw a pebble at it, but missed. The lizard crouched there with its legs spread, unmoving, like a piece of stone.

  “Proud, beautiful, and imperturbable,” said Mandel.

  “Irina says that there are a lot of them around the settlements,” said Novago. “She feeds them.”

  By unspoken agreement they increased their pace.

  The dunes came to an end. Now they were walking over a level salt flat. Their lead soles slapped resoundingly against the congealed sand. Great patches of salt glittered in the rays of the white setting sun. Around the patches, spheres of cactus bristling with long needles showed yellow. There were a lot of these strange, rootless, leafless, stemless plants on the flat.

  “Poor Slavin,” said Mandel. “He’s worrying, no doubt.”

  “Me too,” Novago muttered.

  “Well, you and I are doctors,” Mandel said.

  “So we’re doctors. You’re a surgeon and I’m an internist. I’ve performed a delivery exactly once in my life, and that was ten years ago in the best clinic in Archangel, with a full professor standing behind my back.”

  “Never mind,” said Mandel. “I’ve done several deliveries. Everything will be O.K.”

  A prickly sphere appeared at Mandel’s feet. Mandel kicked it skillfully. The ball described a long, gentle arc in the air, then started rolling, bouncing up and down and breaking off needles.

  “It’s a kick, and the ball slowly rolls off,” Mandel said. “It’s something else that’s bothering me: how will the child develop under conditions of reduced gravity?”

  “That’s the one thing not bothering me,” Novago said firmly. “I’ve already spoken with Ivanenko. We can set up a centrifuge.”

  Mandel thought a moment. “It’s an idea,” he said.

  As they were skirting the last salt patch, there was a shrill whistle, and a sphere ten paces from Novago rushed high into the sky and, trailing a whitish tail of moist air behind it, flew over the doctors and fell into the center of the salt patch.

  “Damn!” shouted Novago.

  Mandel laughed.

  “What an abomination!” Novago complained. “Every time I go by a salt patch, one of these damn—”

  He ran up to the nearest sphere and kicked it clumsily. The sphere clung with its needles to the bottom of his coat.

  “Damn!” Novago snapped again. With great difficulty, as he walked, he tore the sphere first off the coat, then off his gloves.

  The sphere fell onto the sand. It was supremely indifferent. So it would lie, entirely motionless, sucking in and compressing the rarified Martian air, until suddenly it let it all out at once with a deafening whistle, and shot like a rocket for thirty or forty feet.

  Mandel suddenly stopped, looked at the sun, and brought his watch up before his eyes. “Nineteen thirty-five hours,” he muttered. “Half an hour and the sun will set.”

  “What did you say, Lazar?” Novago asked. He stopped too and looked at Mandel.

  “The bleating of the kid lures the tiger,” Mandel said. “Don’t talk so loudly when it’s almost sunset.”

  Novago looked around. The sun was already very low. Behind, in the valley, the shining salt patches had already winked out. The dunes were dark. The sky in the east had grown as black as India ink.

  “Right,” said Novago, looking back. “No sense in talking loud. They say it has very good hearing.”

  Mandel blinked his frost-covered eyelashes, bent down, and drew his warm pistol from its holster. He drew the bolt back with a click and shoved the pistol into the top of his right boot. Novago got out his pistol too, and inserted it into the top of his left boot.

  “You shoot left-handed?” Mandel asked.

  “Yes,” Novago answered.

  “Good,” said Mandel.

  “They say it helps.”

  They looked at each other, but by now it was impossible to make out anything above the masks and below the fur trim of the hoods.

  “Let’s go,” said Mandel.

  “Let’s go, Lazar. Only now we should walk single file.”

  “Okay,” Mandel agreed cheerfully. “Dibs on going first.”

  And they went on: Mandel first with the valise in his left hand, and Novago five paces behind him. It’s getting dark really fast, Novago thought. Twenty kilometers left. Well, maybe a little less. Twenty kilometers through the desert in total darkness… and any second it could jump us. From behind that dune, for instance. Or from that one, farther on. Novago shivered. We should have left this morning. But how could we know that there was a cavity on the route? Amazingly bad luck. But still, we should have left this morning. Or even yesterday, with the rover taking the diapers and equipment to the settlement. Or no, Mandel did an operation yesterday… It’s getting darker and darker. No doubt Mark is already fretting. Running to the tower again and again to see whether the long-awaited doctors are coming. But the long-awaited doctors are slogging through the sand in the desert at night. Irina tries to calm him down, but of course she’s worried herself. It’s their first child, and the first child born on Mars, the first Martian. She’s a very healthy and steady woman. A wonderful woman! But in their place I wouldn’t have had a child. Well, it will all work out. But if only we hadn’t been delayed…

  Novago looked steadily to the right, at the gray crest of the dunes. Mandel was also looking to the right. Consequently, at first they didn’t notice the Pathfinders. The Pathfinders were also a pair, and they came up from the left.

  “Hey there!” shouted the taller of the two.

  The other, short, almost square, slung his carbine over his shoulder and waved.

  “Whew!” Novago said with relief. “It’s Opanasenko and Morgan, the Canadian. Hey, comrades!” he shouted joyfully.

  “Fancy meeting you here!” said the lanky Humphrey Morgan as he came up. “Good evening, doctor,” he said as he shook Mandel’s hand. “Good evening, doctor,” he repeated as he shook Novago’s.

  “Hello, comrades,” boomed Opanasenko. “Fancy meeting you here.”

  Before Novago could answer, Morgan said unexpectedly, “Thank you—it’s all healed,” and again stretched out his long arm to Mandel.

  “What?” asked the perplexed Mandel. “I’m glad, whatever it is.”

  “Oh, no, he’s still in camp,” said Morgan. “But he’s almost well too.”

  “Why are you talking so strangely, Humphrey?” inquired Mandel, confused.

  Opanasenko grabbed Morgan by the edge of his hood, drew him close, and shouted in his ear, “You’ve got everything wrong, Humphrey! You lose!”

  Turning to the doctors, he explained that an hour before the Canadian had accidentally broken the diaphragms in his headphones, and now couldn’t hear, although he maintained that he could get along fine in the Martian atmosphere without the help of acoustic equipment. “He claims that he knows what people will say to him anyway. We made a bet, and he’s lost. Now he has to clean my carbine five times.”

  Morgan laughed and said that the girl Galya at the base had nothing to do with anything. Opanasenko waved his hand hopelessly and asked, “You’re headed for the settlement, the biostation, I assume?”

  “Yes,” said Novago. “To the Slavins.”

  “Say, that’s right,” said Opanasenko. “They’ll really be wanting to see you. But why are you on foot?”

  “What a pain in the neck!” said Morgan guiltily. “I can’t hear a blessed thing.”

  Opanasenko again drew him over and shouted, “Hold on, Humphrey! I’ll tell you later!”

  “Fine,” Morgan said in English. He walked off a few paces, looked around, and unslung his carbine. The Pathfinders had heavy double-barreled semiautomatics with magazines of twenty-five explosive bullets.

  “Our crawler sank on us,” Novago said.

  “Where?” Opanasenko quick
ly asked. “In a cavity?”

  “Right. On the route, about forty kilometers out.”

  “A cavity!” Opanasenko said joyously. “Do you hear, Humphrey? Another cavity!”

  Humphrey Morgan stood with his back to them and turned his head within his hood, scanning the dark dunes.

  “Okay,” said Opanasenko. “We’ll save that for later. So the crawler sank on you and you decided to go on foot? Are you armed?”

  Mandel slapped his leg. “I’ve got this,” he said.

  “Ri-ight,” said Opanasenko. “We’ll have to go with you. Humphrey! Damn—he can’t hear.”

  “Hold it,” said Mandel. “Why all the fuss?”

  “It is around here somewhere,” said Opanasenko. “We’ve seen tracks.”

  Mandel and Novago exchanged glances.

  “Of course you know best, Fedor,” Novago said indecisively, “but I had supposed… After all, we are armed.”

  “Madmen,” Opanasenko said with conviction. “You people at the base are, forgive me, simpletons. We warn you, we explain to you, and look what happens. At night. Through the desert. With pistols. What’s the matter—wasn’t Khlebnikov enough?”

  Mandel shrugged. “I had thought that under the circumstances—” he began, but Morgan broke in, “Quiet!” and Opanasenko instantly unslung his carbine and took a position next to the Canadian.

  Novago quietly let out a breath and slipped the pistol from his boot.

  The sun was almost gone—a narrow yellow-green stripe shone over the black serrated silhouettes of the dunes. The whole sky had turned black, and there was a vast multitude of stars. Starlight glinted off the barrels of the carbines, and the doctors could see the barrels slowly moving right and left.

  “My mistake—sorry,” Humphrey said, and they immediately started forward.

  Opanasenko shouted in Morgan’s ear, “Humphrey, they’re going to Irina Slavina at the biostation! They need an escort!”

  “Fine. I’ll go,” said Morgan.

  “We’re going together!” shouted Opanasenko.

  “Fine. We’ll go together.”

  The doctors were still holding the pistols in their hands. Morgan turned to them, took a good look, and exclaimed, “Hey, no! Put them away.”

  “Yes, please,” said Opanasenko. “Don’t even think of shooting. And put on your glasses.”

  The Pathfinders were already wearing infrared glasses. Mandel shamefacedly shoved the pistol into the deep pocket of his coat and transferred the valise to his right hand. Novago hesitated a moment, then put his pistol back into the top of his left boot.

  “Let’s go,” said Opanasenko. “We won’t take you by the regular route—we’ll go cross-country, through the excavations. It’s faster.”

  Now Opanasenko, with the carbine under his arm, was walking in front and to the right of Mandel. Behind and to the right of Novago paced Morgan. His carbine hung on a long strap over his shoulder. Opanasenko walked quickly, cutting sharply to the west.

  Through the infrared glasses the dunes looked black and white, and the sky empty and gray. It was like a drawing in lead pencil. The desert quickly fell behind, and the drawing showed less and less contrast, as if obscured by a cloud of smoke.

  “Why are you so happy about our cavity, Fedor?” asked Mandel. “The water?”

  “Well, what do you think?” Opanasenko said without turning around. “Water in the first place, and, second, one cavity we found turned out to be lined with flagstones.”

  “Yes,” said Mandel. “Of course.”

  “You’ll find a whole crawler in our cavity,” Novago muttered darkly.

  Opanasenko suddenly made a sharp turn, and skirted round a level sandy area. At its edge stood a pole with a drooping flag.

  “Quicksand,” Morgan said from behind. “Very dangerous.”

  Quicksand was real trouble. A month ago, a special detachment of volunteer scouts had been organized to locate and mark all the quicksand patches in the vicinity of the base.

  “But as I recall, Hasegawa proved that the appearance of those stone slabs could also be explained by natural forces,” said Mandel.

  “Yes,” said Opanasenko, “that’s just the point.”

  “Have you found anything lately?” asked Novago.

  “No. They discovered oil in the east, and they found some very interesting fossils. But nothing in our line.”

  They walked silently for some time. Then Mandel said thoughtfully, “It could be there’s nothing strange in that. Archaeologists on Earth deal with the remains of cultures that are at most hundreds of thousands of years old. But here they’re tens of millions. On the contrary, it would be strange if—”

  “Well, we’re not complaining much,” Opanasenko interrupted. “After all, we got such a fat tidbit right off—two artificial satellites. We didn’t even have to dig. But then,” he added after a pause, “looking is just as interesting as finding.”

  “Especially since the area you’ve already gone over is so small,” said Mandel.

  He stumbled and almost fell. Morgan said in an undertone, “Doctor Novago, Doctor Mandel, I suspect you’re talking all the time. You shouldn’t do that right now. Ask Fedor if you don’t believe me.”

  “Humphrey’s right,” Opanasenko said guiltily. “We’d better keep quiet.”

  They passed over the ridge of dunes and started down into a valley, where patches of salt glimmered weakly under the stars.

  Here we go again, thought Novago. Those cactuses. He had never chanced to see them at night. They radiated a bright, steady infralight. Spots of light were scattered over the whole valley. Very pretty! thought Novago. Maybe they don’t go off at night. That would be a pleasant surprise. My nerves are on edge as it is: Opanasenko said that it is out here somewhere. Itis out here somewhere… Novago tried to imagine what it would have been like for them now without the escort, without these calm men with their heavy, deadly guns at the ready. A belated chill of fear ran over his skin, as if the outside cold had penetrated his clothing and had touched his bare body. Amid the dunes at night with just those little pistols… He wondered whether Mandel knew how to shoot. He must—he had worked for several years at Arctic stations. But all the same… You didn’t even think to get a rifle at the base, idiot! Novago told himself. We’d be in fine shape now without the Pathfinders. Of course, there was no time to think of rifles. And even now I should think about something else—about what will happen when we get to the biostation. That’s more important. Right now that’s the most important thing period, the most important thing of all.

  It always attacks from the right, thought Mandel. Everyone says it attacks only from the right. No one knows why. And no one knows why it attacks at all. It’s as though for the past million years it had done nothing except to attack from the right those people who were careless enough to set off from the base on foot at night. You can understand why it’s the ones away from the base. You can imagine why it’s at night. But why people, and why from the right? Could there really have been Martian bipeds who were more vulnerable on the right than on the left? Then where are they? In five years of colonization on Mars we haven’t encountered one animal here bigger than a mimicrodon. At least until it appeared, two months ago. Eight attacks in two months. And no one here has got a good look at it—it attacks only at night. I wonder what it is. Khlebnikov had his right lung ripped out—they had to give him an artificial lung and two ribs. Judging by the wound, it has an unusually complex mouth mechanism. At least eight maxillae with incisor blades sharp as razors. Khlebnikov remembers only a long shining body with straight hair. It jumped him from behind a dune maybe thirty paces away. Mandel glanced quickly to both sides. There the two of us would be, walking along. I wonder, does Novago know how to shoot? Probably—for a long time he worked with the geologists in the taiga. He had a good idea there about the centrifuge. Seven or eight hours a day of normal weight should be quite enough for the little guy. Though come to think of it, why should it be a bo
y? What if it’s a girl? All the better—girls can stand variations from the norm better.

  They had left the valley and the salt patches behind. To the right stretched long narrow trenches, and pyramidlike piles of sand. In one of the trenches stood an excavator, its bucket drooping despondently.

  We should get the excavator out of here, Opanasenko thought. What is it standing around here for? Soon the storm season starts. Maybe I’ll take it myself on the way back. Too bad it’s so slow—less than a kilometer an hour on the dunes. Otherwise it would be just the thing. My legs ache. Morgan and I have covered around fifty kilometers today. They’ll be worried at the camp. Well, we’ll send a radiogram from the biostation. There must really be an uproar at the biostation by now! Poor Slavin. But still, it’s great. There’ll be a kid on Mars! So someday there’ll be people who will say, “I was born on Mars.” If only we’re not too late. Opanasenko started walking faster. And these doctors! Doctors think rules are made for other people. Good thing we met them. It’s clear that at the base they have no idea of what the desert is like at night. It would be a good idea to organize a patrol, or even better, a full-scale hunt. Use every crawler and rover the base has.

  Humphrey Morgan, immersed in silence, walked with his hands resting on his carbine. He looked steadily to the right. He thought about how at the camp everyone must be asleep already except for the night watch, who would be worrying about his and Opanasenko’s absence; about how tomorrow they would have to transfer a group to Quadrant E-11; about how he would now have to clean Fedor’s gun five evenings in a row; about how he would have to get his headphones fixed. Then he thought that the doctors were men with courage, and that Irina Slavina also had courage. Then he remembered Galya, the radio operator at the base. Whenever they met, he thought regretfully, she always asked him about Hasegawa. The Japanese was an okay guy, but lately he had been showing up a lot at the base too. Of course, there was no denying that Hasegawa was smart. He was the first one to come up with the idea that hunting for the “flying leech” (sora-tobu hiru) could have a direct relation to the Pathfinders’ mission, because they might put humans onto the trail of Martian bipeds… Oh, those bipeds! Building two gigantic satellites and then not leaving anything else behind!