Old Mars

1 Martian Manhunt

MAC STONE WAS IN TROUBLE. HE HEARD THE STEADY SLAP-slap-slap of the P140 auto-Bannings and knew they’d licked the atmosphere problem. That gadget could now find a man, stun him, or kill him according to whatever orders had come from Terra. If necessary, the bionic “wombots” it carried could follow him into space. The things worked by popping in and out of regular space the way you bunch up a piece of cloth and stick a needle through it to save time and energy. Human physiology couldn’t stand those instant translations—in and out, in and out through the cosmic “folds”—but the wombot wasn’t human; it moved swiftly and easily in that environment. Flying at cruising speed for regular space-time, the wombot could cross a million miles as if they were a hundred. The thing was a terrible weapon, outlawed on every solar colony, packing several features into one—surveillance, manhunter, ordnance. If Mac were unlucky, they’d just use it to stun him. So they could take their time with him back at RamRam City.

Why do they want me this bad? He was baffled.

They had him pinned down. In all directions lay the low, lichen-covered Martian hills: ochre, brown, and a thousand shades of yellow-grey almost as far as he could see. You couldn’t hide in lichen. Not unless you could afford a mirror suit. Beyond the hills were the mountains, each taller than Everest, almost entirely unexplored. That was where he was heading before a wombot scented heat from his monoflier and took it out in a second. Four days after that, they hit his camp with a hard flitterbug and almost finished him off. Nights got colder as the east wind blew. Rust-red dust swept in from the desert, threatening his lungs. It whispered against his day suit like the voices of the dead.

If they didn’t kill him, autumn would.

Mac plucked his last thin jane from his lips and pinched off the lit end. He’d smoke it later. If there was any “later.” The IMF had evidently gotten themselves some of the new bloodhound wombots, so compact and powerful they could carry a body to Phobos and back. Creepy little things, not much bigger than an adult salmon. They made him feel sick. He still hoped he might pick the site of his last fight. He had only had two full charges left in his reliable old Banning-6 pistol. After that, he had a knife in his boot and some knucks in his pocket. And then his bare hands and his teeth.

They had called Stone a wild animal back on Mercury, and they were right. The Callisto slave-masters had made him into one after they pulled him from a sinking lavasub. He’d been searching for the fabled energy crowns of the J’ja. The rebel royal priests had been planning to blast Spank City to fragments before the IMF found the secret of their fire-boats and quite literally stopped them cold, freezing them in their tracks, sending the survivors out to Panic, the asteroid that liked to call herself a ship. But the J’ja had hidden their crowns first.

So long ago. He’d been in some tough spots and survived, but this time it seemed like he’d run out of lives and luck.

You didn’t get much cover in one of the old flume holes. They’d been dug when some crazy twenty-second-century Terran wildcat miners thought they could cut into the crust and tap the planet’s plasma. They believed there were rivers of molten gold down there. They claimed that they heard them at night when they slept curled within the cones. Someone had fallen into a particularly deep one and sworn he had seen molten platinum running under his feet. Poor devils. They’d spent too long trying to make sense of the star-crowded sky. Recently, he’d heard that the inverted cones were used by hibernating ock-crocs. Mac hoped he wasn’t waking anything up down there. He doubted the theory and did his best not to think about it, to keep out of sight and to drop his body temperature as much as he dared, release a few dead fuel pods and hope that the big Banning bloodbees would mistake him for an old wreck and its dead pilot and pass him by.

“You only need fear the bees if you’ve broken the law.” That familiar phrase was used to justify every encroachment on citizens’ liberty. Almost all activities were semicriminal these days. Mars needed cheap human workers. Keep education as close as possible to zero. The prisons were their best resource. Industrial ecology created its own inevitable logic.

Sometimes you escaped the prisons and slipped back into RamRam City, where you could live relatively well if you knew how to look after yourself. Sometimes they just let you stay there until they had a reason to bring you in or get rid of you.

And that’s what they appeared to be doing now.

Slap-slap-slap.

Why were they spending so much money to catch him? He knew what those machines cost. Even captured, he wasn’t worth a single wombot.

Wings fluttering, big teeth grinding, the flier was coming over the horizon, and, by the way it hovered and turned in the thin air, Mac’s trick hadn’t fooled it at all. Good handling. He admired the skill. Private. Not IMF at all. One guy piloting. One handling the ordnance. Or maybe one really good hunter doing both. He reached to slide off the pistol’s safety. Looked like he was going down fighting. He wondered if he could hit the pilot first.

Stone was a Martian born in the shadow of Low-Canal’s massive water tanks. The district had never really been a canal. It had been named by early explorers trying to make sense of the long, straight indentations, now believed to be the foundations of a Martian city. But it was where most of AquaCorps’s water was kept. Water was expensive and had to be shipped in from Venus. Sometimes there would be a leakage, and, with kids like him, he could collect almost a cup before the alarms went. His mother lived however she could in the district. His father had been a space ape on the wild Jupiter runs, carbon rods rotting and twisting as they pulled pure uranium from the Ki Sea. He’d probably died when the red spot erupted, taking twenty u-tankers with it.

When he was seven, his ma sold Mac to a mining company looking for kids small enough to fit into the midget tunnelers working larger asteroids and moons that were able to support a human being for a year or so before they died. His mother had known that “indentured” was another word for death sentence. She knew that he was doomed to breathe modified methane until his lungs and all his other organs and functions gave out.

Only Mac hadn’t died. He’d stolen air and survived and risen, by virtue of his uninhibited savagery, in what passed for Ganymedan society. Kru miners made him a heroic legend. They betrothed him to their daughters.

Stone was back on Mars and planning to ship out for Terra when his mother sent word that she wanted to tell him something. He’d gone to Tank Town with the intention of killing her. When he saw her, the anger went out of him. She was a lonely old woman lacking status or family. He’d only be doing her a favor if he finished her off. So he let it go. And realized that she’d been holding her breath as he held his, and he turned and laughed that deep slow purr she knew from his father. This made her note his tobacco-colored skin, now seamed like well-used leather, and she wept to read in his face all the torments he had endured since she’d sold him. So he had let her die believing a lie, that they enjoyed a reconciliation. What he said or thought didn’t mean much to the Lord she believed in.

After that, he’d started stealing jewels with a vengeance. Good ones. Big ones. He’d done very well. Hitting the mining trains. Fencing them back through Earth. Generous, like most thieves of his kind, and therefore much liked by the Low-Canal folk who protected him, he’d done well. He was one of their own, accepted as a Martian hero with stories told about him as V-dramas. Only two people had made it out of the Tanks to become famous on the V. Mac Stone was one, and Yily Chen, the little Martian girl he’d played hide-and-go-seek with as a kid, was the other. Yily now operated from Earth, mostly doing jobs the corps didn’t want anyone to associate directly with them. Her likeness had never been published. He remembered her for her lithe brown body, her golden eyes. He’d loved her then. He couldn’t really imagine what she looked like now. No doubt she’d become some hard-faced mother superior, pious and judgmental, like most tankers who grew up staying within the law, such as it was. She had put Tank Town behind her. He’d elected to stay. But he’d been sold out once again, this time to the Brothers of the Fiery Mount, whoever they were. They put him back to work on Ganymede with no idea he had family there.

Then some war broke out on Terra for a while. It couldn’t have come at a better time. It destroyed the old cartels and opened the planet up to real trade. And everyone wanted to rearm, of course.

By the third month of Stone’s return, his clan, riding a wave of similar revolutions through the colonies, had conquered a significant number of exec towers and looted a museum for a heliograph system they’d been able to copy. Communications. Codes. Bribes. Clever strategy. Guerrilla tactics. By the sixth month, as they prepared for the long tomorrow, they had won the moon and were doing business with four of the richest nations of Terra and New Japan.

Meanwhile, over at the freshly built Martian Scaling Station, the “black jump” was opening up the larger universe hidden in the folds of space-time through which the wombots traveled. They’d begun to realize that they were part of a denser, mostly invisible cosmos. Until recently, the “cosmic fog” had obscured so much from the astronomers. The discovery brought about new power shifts and unexpected alliances. With the right start, they said, some of those worlds could be reached in days! Now it didn’t matter if Terra was dying. Was that really the prevailing logic?

Mac knew that he and the human race were at some sort of crossroads, poised at last on their way to the stars. They might find an unbeatable enemy out there. Or beatable enemies. Or they could learn to negotiate. The game Mac knew best wasn’t necessarily the best game. For now, however, he needed capital to play with the big guys, and he was never going to get that kind of money in one piece. Not while he remained an outworld Martian wolfshead. He knew enough about those odds. He knew who the men were who owned the worlds. All of which was to his advantage. His equal share of the Ganymede profits wasn’t large enough, and he didn’t like his public profile getting bigger. He’d made his ex-brother-in-law boss and quietly returned to Mars and his old trade. He—or really the pseudonym he’d chosen—developed a serious reputation. He was credited with any number of unsolved cases. No one knew what to expect from him. Few knew his face or his real name. A fist diamond had paid to have every mug shot and most records wiped. He began to build his pile. The first thing he needed was a good ship of his own. He went into water brokerage. He had a half share in an atmosphere factory. He was earning that ship when he’d been, he assumed, betrayed. He wondered if that had anything to do with the sneaky little Venusian lep who had come to see him with a suspicious offer a week or two before his arrest.

To his surprise, because it was a special private prison, they took him straight to Tarpauling Hill. Or meant to. Escaping his escort had not been difficult. Escaping a planet was going to be harder.

This was his eighth Martian day on the run. There were no real maps of the hinterland. He knew the Interplanetary Military Force. They let their big robot Bannings loose if they thought that someone was hiding in an area. He could have stayed in RamRam City, hidden in the Tanks, but it would get expensive in terms of human lives. He’d had to lead them into wild, unpopulated country or they might have killed half Low-Canal’s population. Out to the wide valleys and high mountains of the Monogreanimi, where, it was said, the old high queens of Mars still dreamed in the deep ice.

Mac was trying to find one of the legendary “blowholes,” sunk by Mars’s last race, who had been seeking air for the shelters in which they’d taken refuge from the Long Rain, the incessant meteor storms pulverizing the planet. The falling meteors had destroyed almost every sign of the dozen or so major civilizations that had once ruled a Mars almost as lush as Venus.

Mac hated Venus. He hated her fecundity as well as her unpredictable gas storms, which regularly wiped out hundreds. Terran Venusians went crazy just to survive the extremes. He hated native Venusians, the smelly little green people nicknamed leprechauns by Terrans. He hated Terrans, too. And he really hated Mercury. Mars, he could not help loving. He loved her vast, tranquil deserts, her hills and high, wild mountains where nothing breathed. Once he’d longed to make her self-sustaining again. He’d dreamed of bringing in enough water to make her bloom as she had in the days when the few surviving pictograms and engravings had been created. When she still had seas. There were other legends of how she had been, but these could all be traced back to myths created in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

All Mac wanted was the reality. To see the canals running again while sun and moons illuminated blue forests and small fields of brass-colored crops. To settle down on a few acres of land, growing enough to sell and sustain himself. Then maybe a family. To make a new Mars, a peaceful Mars where kids could grow. That’s what he’d dreamed. That’s what had kept him alive all these years. He let out a brief, not particularly bitter, laugh. Now the best he could hope for was a quick death.

He wondered if he could gain any time by giving himself up in the hope that he’d find another chance of escape. It would avoid what was probably an inevitable death out here. He had to take control of his own determined soul, which would rather fight and die than wait for another chance. But that was all he could do. He got hold of himself and, disgusted by his chosen action, he snarled and pulled a big white silk scarf out of a leg pouch in his leathers.

He was tying this to the barrel of his Banning when he felt something moist, cold, and scaly slip around his ankle and give it an experimental tug.

He yanked free. It took a tighter hold. It seemed patient. It knew he couldn’t escape. He’d done his best to keep clear of the wombot’s sensors, but his movement had already alerted the thing. It chickled out a challenge. Again, he tried to yank his leg away.

The wombot spit a bubble of death syrup all over the nearby rocks. They weren’t going to waste valuable gas or darts on him unless they had to. At least he wasn’t going to need a white flag. Now he knew that they wanted him dead rather than alive.

Below Mac, the ground powdered. The tentacle tugged harder and the area beneath him broke open, dragging him down a fissure, scraping every inch of his day suit. The suit’s circuits wouldn’t survive another attack. Suddenly, it was inky-dark. He heard the odd rattle and boom of the thing’s heart-lung. He forgot the native name someone had guessed at, but it was without doubt an ock-croc.

Mac Stone prepared himself for death.

2 To Destroy the Future

HE WAS STILL TRYING TO POINT HIS PISTOL WHEN THE FISSURE became a tunnel, thick with something caked around its sides. The worst stink in creation. Croc dung! Threat of death really did sharpen the memory. That’s what it coated its long burrow with. The Martian wanal or ock-croc was the only large predator left. These giant, tentacled reptilian insects drove deep burrows using old blowholes or wells; they weren’t particular. They hibernated for years, woke up very hungry. The first hatchling typically ate all its siblings and sometimes its parent. Then it ate whoever was still hibernating. Although not radioactive themselves, they preferred areas still “buzzy” and lethal to humans. If the croc didn’t eat Stone right away, the chances were he’d soon die painfully of radiation poisoning.

“Oh, damn!” He couldn’t do anything with his holstered gun. The thing seemed to know precisely how to catch him so he did it the least damage. He had to be many meters down now, the Banning long since passed out of sight and no longer his main fear. A bionic wombot might follow him, but so far he felt relatively sanguine about that. The chances were the croc would also eat the wombot, built-in explosives and all. The thought gave Mac a brief moment of satisfaction.

The tunnel opened into a pit occupied by a huge pulsing head with six round eyes the size of portholes, which slowly retreated from him as a single tentacle—one of many—dragged him deeper.

Mac did all he could to slow his descent into the pit, where its own green-yellow luminescence revealed the croc’s enormous carcass. A nightmare of snakelike waving arms with a long snout full of dagger-size needles for teeth, the wriggling body a black blob of scaly horror. More tentacles snared him so that he couldn’t move any part of his body without making things worse. He was resigned to what must happen next.

He heard a double click as the thing disconnected its jaw, ready to swallow him. Then he thought he heard human speech. One tentacle released his right arm. If he could only get hold of his gun, he might not kill the croc but he’d give it the worst attack of indigestion it had known in all its long, quasi-reptilian life. He made one last lunge. His fingers clutched for the butt.

As his Banning came loose, something else fell out of the air and rattled on the rock. He looked down and saw a tiny blue flickering of flame. Voices seemed to jeer inside his head.

He felt horribly cold. At this rate, he’d freeze to death before the croc ate him. The questor had found him just as he was making camp. He’d had to move fast. When the Martian night caught him without his Hopkins blanket, it would be over anyway. The wanal only had to wait for him to lose a little more heat. They were famous for their cunning patience. Once, there had been a dozen varieties of the creature. Mac had seen pictures of them in the old hunting cubes of the Sindolu, the extinct nomads of the northern hemisphere, from whose encampments a few artifacts had been miraculously preserved. The wanal they had feared most had massive mandibles and ten tentacles. This was that kind of wanal.

It reached out for him again, giggling its nasty pleasure. Then it hesitated. Something red and dripping was thrown to it over the edge of the pit. Then a sharp command came from the darkness and it backed off, peering hungrily from him to the meat.

Snagging the hard case containing the flickering blue flame, Mac pocketed the thing and made haste to clamber as best he could up the other side of the rough pit. The slippery shale made climbing difficult, but he virtually levitated himself out of there. He took the case with the flickering flame out of his glove and put it on the palm of his hand. It made a small hiss. What in the nine inhabited worlds was it? He sensed danger, glanced to his right.

Mac glared in utter disbelief at a bulky “noman” staring down at him from illuminated eyes, hooked hands resting on its metal hips. A type of robot he’d never seen. It looked local. Like something he’d come across in the Terran Museum of Martian Artifacts. Only that one had been about a foot high and carved from pink teastone. The archaeologists thought it was a household god or a child’s toy.

Just above the faceless noman, a pale green pillar fizzed like bad Galifrean beer. Then it coalesced into a figure that Stone was surprised to see was human. A bronzed man in the peak of physical condition, wearing less than was considered seemly even on Jam-bock Boulevard. Except for the little signs of regular wear and tear on his leather harness, the man looked like something out of a serial V-drama. At his right hip was a big, old-fashioned brass-and-steel pistol. Scabbarded on his left was some kind of long antique sword. For a wild moment, Stone wondered if he had been captured by those crazy reenactors who played out completely unlikely battles between invented Martian races. He’d seen groups of them in Sunday Field on vacation afternoons.

The guy in the green pillar fizzed again and broke up a few times before he stabilized long enough to say clearly: “You can’t fight me. I’m not actually here. I’m a scientist. I’m from Earth like you. I came to Mars millennia ago, long before the meteor storms. I’m projecting this image into my future. It’s interactive.”

He smiled. “I’m Miguel Krane.” Evidently, he expected Mac to know the name. He had an old-fashioned accent Mac associated with Terra. “We call this little device a chronowire. It sends images and sounds back and forth across time. It is the nearest we’ve been able to come to time travel. Living organisms get seriously damaged. We discovered to our cost that people and animals can’t travel physically in time. The wanal won’t bother you now. Her old responses are still reachable in her deep subconscious. In our time, we domesticate and use her ancestors to find lost travelers. Their natural instinct is to eat us, but thousands of years of training changed their brains. We found her down here with our explorer noman. We sent her for you. In case of any problems, we fed her some sleepy meat. I’m sorry about the crude robot, too. Believe it or not, he’s code-activated! We have to work through remote control with what we can find. In this case, very remote! What do you want to know from me?”

Mac shuddered as he scraped gelatinous stuff from his battered day suit. He looked around. A man-made room. Two doors. A kind of stone box at his feet. He was surprised how warm it was. “You’re not fooling me. Time travel? How the hell could you have gotten from Terra to Mars thousands of years ago? Before anyone had space travel?” He looked around at the cavern. Ingeniously reflected light. The walls were bright with luminous veins of phosphorescent ore and precious stones sparkling like stars. If he kept his knife, he might be able to dig out a few long diamonds and get away. Assuming he could dodge this madman.

The man in the projection shrugged. “Malfunctioning matter transmitter. Lost control. I traveled backward to Mars. One way. You’ve probably heard of me. Captain Miguel Krane? Haven’t you read my books? About my life on Mars? I’m surprised you don’t know them. They didn’t appear under my name, but I dictated them myself.”

“I don’t listen to books much.”

The man in the green pillar seemed thrown by Mac’s illiteracy. But Mac could read forty-seven interplanetary languages and write fluently in most of them. He had taught himself for purely practical reasons. He wasn’t a scholar. He was a thief. He would have been insulted to be thought of as anything else.

For his own part, Mac was uneasy, still checking for his gun, reassured by the feel of a knife in his boot. Miguel Krane’s voice was amused, but Mac didn’t like to hear it in his head like that. Too creepy.

Yet Krane had been instrumental in saving his life. Somewhere over their heads, on the Martian surface, a wombot was still searching for him with the objective of covering him with jelly that could seep through his skin and eat his bones from the inside out. He was in no doubt about his preference. He’d take his chances here.

“Those chances aren’t much better, Stone.” Krane’s voice was still amused. “Let’s just say you’d be dying for a good cause.”

Mac laughed. “When I hear words like that, I reach for my Banning. Where is my gun, by the way?”

“Look for yourself. I didn’t take it. Neither did the noman. Want to know why I sent the wanal after you?”

“I guess.” Mac looked down into the pit, where the nasty thing was finishing its bloody meal. He saw his gun some way up, where it had lodged on a shelf of rock.

“Do you recall a lep coming to see you a few weeks ago?”

“Yeah. Little green man about so high. One of those freaks from Venus. Had some sort of deal. I wouldn’t go for it. I didn’t like the smell of it. Thought he was lying. Too dangerous.” He was on his belly, stretching for the Banning.

“So you told him.”

“Was it him fingered me to the IMF?”

“Not exactly, but you didn’t do yourself any favors turning him down before you listened.”

“He was lying. I know leps. I didn’t want to know what his pitch was. I used to get crazies like him all the time, offering to cut me in on some fantasy in their heads.”

“The poor little guy was scared out of his wits. He’d found one of our time seeds and he thought we were magic. Ghosts of ancient Martians or something. Still, he did what I told him to do and he only once looked inside the bag. That nearly killed him. He almost dropped it and ran. The lep wasn’t just bringing my message. He had a bag of indigo flame sapphires with him.”

“A bag?” Stone laughed. The rarest jewel in the system, indigo flame sapphires couldn’t be cut, polished, or broken up. They had extraordinary properties. There were three known existing sapphires. One was in the Conquest of Space Museum on Terra, one was in the hands of United System President Polonius Delph—he was the richest man in seven worlds, or had been until he’d paid cash for his jewel. The other had been stolen soon after its discovery. Maybe Delph had it. “There’s no such thing.”

“There is. And Delph wants them. He thinks you’ve got them on you. They tortured Gunz, the man I sent after the lep. He told them you had them.”

“Oh, great! So I was set up by a Venusian leprechaun who was set up by a V-Image! That’s why they’ve been willing to spend so much money hunting me down. They just want to know where those mythical jewels are. They don’t care if they kill me. It’s just as easy to interrogate a fresh corpse using a couple of ccs of dreme. You remind me of my mother!”

“I can only guess what strange patchwork of information comes through the time seeds. We scatter them into our future, more or less at random. Often they are destroyed or are recalled, damaged. Enough land unharmed to broadcast back. We aren’t talking linear time as you imagine it, but radiant time. From what I understand of your world, Delph isn’t the only one who wants the sapphires. He has rivals in the Plutocracy. Another mysterious collector? Or those rivals are competing for the presidency or they think they can ruin him. As you know, it’s a vicious circle in politics. You can’t get to be president unless you have the wealth, and you can’t make really massive sums until you’re president. It was much the same in my day.”

“Your day?”

“That depends where you’re counting from.” The more he listened, the more Stone recognized the tone coming through the old accent. Miguel Krane spoke with the economical style of an army man. “Or which planet. So. Was this particular scenario set up by the IMF in order to trick you into giving up the jewels? No. The Interstellar Military Force has nothing to do with us. That was not an IMF ship pursuing you. Probably it’s Delph’s. I know you don’t have the sapphires. The lep was too scared to keep them. He brought them back and left them with the noman.”

In spite of this denial, Stone grew cautious again.

“Then who are you with?” he challenged. “And why are you so interested in me? Someone’s spending a great deal of dough on hunting me down. A real pro, that’s for sure. So—really—who are you?”

“My military experience was in Korea, in the middle of the twentieth century,” said Krane. “I’m a scientist. Later, I worked on a matter transmitter for the Pentagon. I tested it on myself. It went wrong. I was dragged back to old Mars instead. The Karnala—the clan I fell in with—have access to ancient knowledge and technology left behind by an earlier intelligent race, the Sheev. This machine is some of it. We call it a ‘memory catcher’ in Karnalan. This is the most sophisticated type.

“What is it? It’s an interactive device that can communicate across time. We’ve been studying them for years. We’re not sure we’re using the technology appropriately, but we’ve rigged it so it works for us, after a fashion. We have clear visuals and, when we get over language and other problems, can exchange information or even casual ideas! The Sheev scientists were masters of time. Many believe they abandoned Mars for past eras or the future of another planet, wherever conditions were ideal! Some think they had colonies on ancient Earth or in our future! But that is unlikely. This is about the best use we’ve found for their technology. And it’s to ask of you, Mac Stone, something that I would do myself if I weren’t merely an ethereal image in your world.”

“So you want to make a deal. Isn’t that usually the size of it? What can I do for you that you don’t want to do yourself? Isn’t that usually the deal?”

Krane’s image smiled. There was a sense of rapport between the two men. “Usually.”

“OK,” said Stone. “What’s the score? Oh, and don’t forget to tell me more about those indigo flame sapphires. Presumably they come into your deal at some point. Let’s hear it. I have plenty of time to listen.”

Krane did not smile in reply. “Unfortunately,” he said, “you haven’t.”

3 The Star Bomb

“THERE WAS A WAR,” SAID THE BRONZED TERRAN. “WE WEREN’T ready for it. We thought we’d earned an era of peace. But we had enemies who hated all we stood for. A tribe that had hidden itself underground years earlier, after my people had defeated it. We have our own technology, but that earlier race—the Sheev—developed horrendous weapons. They never used most of them because everyone got scared at the same time. So the weapons, with many of the scientific instruments that helped make them, were locked away by common consent. We didn’t know about one particular cache. Our enemy discovered it. An n-bomb probably powerful enough to destroy a whole planet. They planned to use the underground Ia canal to float it under our city, Varnal of the Green Mists, and blow us up. Meanwhile, our scientists found out about it. Thanks to many of the enemy’s own people rebelling against their leaders, who were perceived as reckless, we defeated them. Only when we were discussing terms did we learn about the n-bomb and where it was. It would shortly be directly under Varnal, and would blow within hours.

“We got our best people down there. They could find no way of stopping the thing from detonating. All they could do was adjust the timer. Which they set about doing. By unlocking seven wards in sequence, the timer could be advanced but not neutralized. So the first thing our scientists did was to set the timer to detonate close to a million years into our future. The maximum the timer allowed. We figured that would be more than enough time to find a solution. I thought that Mars would no longer be highly populated by then. We would work on the problem until we had it licked. A million years—plenty of time! The second thing we did was to move the bomb away from the city. We did this by floating it farther on down the canal until it was under a barren, uninhabited part of the planet. Are you familiar with the Ia trans-Martian canal and its story?”

Stone jerked his thumb at the roof. “All the old canals have dried up. There’s nothing left of them apart from traces of their beds. And no records, of course. Pretty much everything was lost during the great “four-millennia cannonade,” when asteroids and meteors pounded Mars to dust, down to most of her farthest shelters. There are a few freak survivals. Nothing much. The canals were deep and wide once, designed to get the most from dwindling water supplies. The meteors leveled them. But this Ia canal? It was underground?”

“My clan’s ancestors planned to build this great underground canal, protected from all foreseeable danger, completely encircling the planet, with branches serving other local systems. The canal was named for an ancient water goddess, Ia. Ia would connect to a series of hubs serving other canal systems. Its creators thought that it would, through the trade it would stimulate, bring peace to the entire planet. Ia would circle Mars from pole to pole, where the melting ice caps would continuously refill it. The project was abandoned long before my time.”

“Abandoned? What happened?” In spite of his circumstances, Stone found the story engaging. “It sounds a great idea.”

“During construction at the Pataphal cross-waterway intersection, after hundreds of miles of the Ia system had already been built, a terrible disaster struck. A whole section of the great Nokedu Cavern floor, which had been tested and found solid, fell away. Hundreds were killed. More of the cavern kept falling, until it formed a massive chasm, miles deep and far too wide to bridge. Black, unfathomable, the Nokedu Falls dropped deep into the planet’s heart. The entire project was abandoned. It was considered folly to attempt another sub-Martian watercourse. No more would have been said had not an extraordinary phenomenon occurred maybe a month after the project was closed for good. A guard reported seeing the canal slowly filling with water!

“Some freak of natural condensation created a system that had the effect of filling the Ia canal with enough water to float a good-size barge. But of course, at Nokedu the water again rushed into the great chasm. Damming didn’t work. It became pretty clear that the water had to circulate. Several expeditions had been made into the Nokedu Deep to find the cause of the phenomenon. The expeditions were lost or returned without success. The water supply remained continuous. Then, about five hundred years in your past, a quake dislodged the bomb.”

Mac played dumb. “What—and sent it down the falls where it could explode harmlessly?”

“You don’t seem to understand. The Sheev originally planned war against nearby planets, especially Terra. The bomb was too powerful. It was never meant to be detonated on Mars. Even in space, it had limited useful targets. It was a star bomb, intended to be launched at another planet and turn that world to cosmic dust!”

“And that’s what’s down there somewhere now?” Stone jerked his thumb toward his feet. “Ticking away as we speak. When’s it due to go off?”

“In just under seven hours,” said Krane.

“Great! So you simply made your problem our problem?” Mac didn’t try to disguise his disgust. Fear began to tie his insides together.

“Not deliberately. We only recently learned that Mars was still populated—or repopulated. This wasn’t the first time we’ve tried to contact someone like you or to defuse it. This was the closest we could get to you on this time-line.”

“If you know the future, you know what will happen.”

“This is the farthest we can get in time. We get nothing back if we go farther …”

Mac was silent, thinking that over. He was familiar with Gridley’s theories of radiant time. “So there might not be any future for us?”

The image shimmered as Krane picked up some kind of yellow gossamer scroll on which symbols sparkled. “Our best minds have worked on the problem ever since we knew about it. We have at last determined how to neutralize the n-bomb.”

Mac still didn’t speak. He just wanted to hear Krane’s pitch.

“OK. So where do I come into it?”

“We need you to do the neutralizing.”

“For what?”

“To save your planet. Research says you’re a Martian, even more than I am. You’re a survivor.”

“Except that there are easier ways to live.”

“That’s why you’ll get the sapphires.”

“A bag of indigo flame sapphires?”

“What the lep tried to show you. What Delph heard about.”

Mac grinned. “It’s a sweet incentive. If you’re right, I haven’t a chance of getting out of this alive. I might as well take the lot of you—or them—with me. You’re all as crooked as I am.”

“Except that’s not your style, Stone. You’re a Martian. You were born on Mars. You don’t want Mars to die like that. Not blown to bits.”

“OK. Let’s assume you’re right. How would I get down to this canal and do what I need to do to the bomb?”

“It’s not quite so simple,” said Krane. “The bomb moved, as I told you. After the ’quake it actually floated down the canal. Until it hit white water. Happily the casing is very strong and relatively light. By luck, it eventually caught between some rocks above the falls. Water currents coming in from three sides actually held the thing steady. It’s still there.”

“Rapids? That’s why your robot can’t reach it?”

“One reason.”

“Is it hard to dislodge?”

“That, unfortunately, isn’t a problem. It should dislodge relatively easily.”

“So? Where exactly is it?”

“It’s pretty much on the brink of that chasm,” said Krane. “Where the water of the Ia rushes over the broken canal floor and gushes down into we don’t know what. Into the heart of the planet.”

“On the brink of hell, in other words.”

“Pretty much,” said Krane. “But you’ll have help. Look over to your left. At the noman’s feet.”

Stone saw a large steel-and-slate chest, about a meter square. It had some odd markings stenciled on the side.

“Look inside,” said Krane. So Stone bent and lifted the catches, opening the lid, which eased up on its own. Inside was soft kalebite packing used for delicate scientific instruments. He picked this off carefully. The contents looked unexpectedly sturdy. He reached in both hands and took it out.

“It looks like a big helmet. Like one those old Terran firefighters had.”

Krane said, “It’s a Gollowatt’n battle hat. They once fought the Kolvini through the Martian catacombs and never once saw the light of day.” Quickly, he described the helmet’s intuitive features. “Modified for your use. It’ll let you see in the dark for a start. Heat pictures. And there’s a sensor that tunes to your own eyes so you can use them as supersensitive binoculars. There are extrapowerful lights for when you need to do fine work, such as on the bomb itself. There’s a set of force-tools you can project and use. But it’s a lot more than that. There are a million neurolinks so the helmet works intuitively according to the wearer’s normal responses. We built a detector into it, too, if it survived the journey.”

“Force-tools?”

“They’re modified and mostly intuitive, tuned to your brain so you only have to visualize the problem, not the tool itself. Best make appropriate head movements.”

“OK.” Stone was dubious. “So what’s the magic word?”

“There is none. The helmet was made for a Gollowat’n medic, believe it or not. That’s why it was built with an empathy conceptor, so the medic could work on a wounded soldier or an injured civilian at the scene, usually in a battle situation. Empathy was a Gollowat’n middle name. The greatest doctors on seven worlds. They’re porcine, of course, but close enough to humans for the helmet to work pretty well. It should be compatible with your suit. The noman will make any adjustments you need.”

“It’s no more than a couple of planets at stake.” The helmet was light and felt unexpectedly organic. It shifted like flesh to his touch. It had a faint, pleasant smell, like brine. He lifted it over his head and brought it slowly down, fitting it like a hat. Then it seemed to flow over his skull and snuggle around his throat, his forehead. His suit suddenly buzzed recognition codes. Rounded blinkers fitted over his eyes, but he could see well. If anything, his eyes were sharper. For a moment, his cheekbones itched and he saw an uncomfortable series of cherry-colored flashes. Then a wash of dark red, almost like blood, gave way to enhanced clarity of vision.

The noman extended its arms, touching him gently here and there. His suit settled more comfortably on his body. He was surprised how healthy the thing made him feel. Maybe Gollowat’n medics had to be healthy in order to empathize with their patients. He had a sudden thought.

“This bomb? Is it sentient?”

“Not much,” said Krane.

“So what do I have to do to turn the timer off?”

“You have to open a series of locks. Numbered right to left in what they call G-script. We coded them to a particular melody in a particular time signature. It’s a tune, with each note representing a complex number. Do you know the old Earth tune ‘Dixie’? Just whistle it to yourself. That number should cancel out the existing sequence and effectively baffle the bomb’s key and register. The locks will snap off and it will probably simply go dead in your hand.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

“Well, it will still be live.”

“And ready to blow.”

“Yes. I’m assured there is very little chance of this going wrong, Mac Stone. Our people worked it out. Essentially, all you have to do is memorize that simple little tune. Oh, I wish I was in the land of cotton—”

“There is a problem.” Stone was almost embarrassed.

“What’s that?”

He flushed. “I’m tone-deaf,” he said.

4 Dancing in the Dark

“THEN TRY TO REMEMBER THE INTERVALS.” KRANE SEEMED bitterly amused, like a man who believes he’s thought of everything only to be told of one obvious unconsidered fact. “The helmet should help you. We’ve entered the code and the helmet should translate it automatically.”

Stone shrugged. “And if I succeed, I come back here and you give me the sapphires?”

“The whole bag. I promise.”

Stone didn’t have much choice now. He had to make a decision. Believe this strange Earthman or not? He laughed his long, low purr and tested the helmet’s responses. He pulled the casque down a little more firmly, settling the bond with his suit. Somehow he knew what to do next. He blinked to make the lights come on. Then he lay down on the side of the pit, fishing up his gun. The wanal made an unpleasant noise but went on eating.

Stone wiped slime off the barrel of his Banning and shoved it back in its holster. “What now?”

“The helmet’s programmed to help you find the bomb. If you leave this chamber, you’ll be at the top of a flight of stairs leading to a wide walkway. It runs beside the canal. All the Sheev waterways were made like that and their successors copied them.” There was a warm, Terran voice speaking to him now. Was this what Miguel Krane really sounded like? “There’s a numbering system still based on Sheev. The Sheev system used predominantly eleven. One, two, eleven, eleven, twenty-two, and so on.

“The Ia was rediscovered by the last Martians. They followed us. They built cities where they could shelter from the meteors. Air enough and water. They cultivated plants that grew well in the hydroponic fields. They built the atmosphere factories. They traded up and down that stretch of the canal. They sustained their particular civilization for another thousand years or more. When the meteor storms had passed, as you know, the whole planet had been pulverized. Almost all trace of Martian life was wiped out, except for things that lived belowground. They never really came back to the surface.”

Mac wondered what his own chances were. As he found the wide black steps that led downward, he thought of those ancient Martians who had built them back when the planet was still a world of gentle seas and green hills, of endless forests and big skies, before humans had evolved at all. And then came the Five Ages. The ages of the humanoid Martians. And then the meteors. The Martians would ultimately grow lonely as the remaining scraps of their culture were buried by the rusty Martian sands. They elected to find solitude below the surface and fade into death surrounded by the massive black stones of their eerie necropolis.

For all he was a loner, Stone found it hard to understand their mind-set. From the moment he burst out of his mother’s womb, he’d had to fight to remain alive and had relished every second he won for himself, grateful for whatever air he could drag into his gasping lungs, for every sight and sound that told him that he still lived. Mac Stone had a human brain and he was proud of his Martian heritage. He didn’t care whose lives he was saving or what reward he would receive. Mars was all he cared about. His battered flitboots echoed down wide steps of black pearl marble, as smooth and as stately and as beautiful in their subtle curvature as they had been on the day they were finished. He hardly noticed their grandeur. He thought of the big reflective tanks he had played among as a little boy and what so much water could do for the Low-Canal.

He breathed vanilla air, which reminded him of the shows he’d watched as a kid on the big public V-drome screens, sometimes as real as life, sometimes better, and he wondered if this was like that. Was this his life starting to replay at faster-than-real speed as his brain got ready to die? Was he already dead, remembering the high moments, the fine moments, of his wild life before he’d been sold? When he and Yily Chen would scamper like scorpions in and out of the blackness cast by the vast tanks and at night chase the flickering shadows cast by Phobos as she came sailing from the west, shreds of darkness skipping before her like familiars, spreading a trail of shades behind her … Oh, that raw intemperate beauty! Alive or dead, Mac swore he was never again going to leave Mars.

The noman had thoroughly repaired and recharged his day suit. Mac felt pleasantly warm as he reached the bottom of the stairs and stood on the edge of the great canal and looked out over it. He was stunned by the amount of water the planet was keeping secret! It could have been an ocean, with no far shore visible. To his left and right, the canal was endless. From what he could tell, much of it followed an old watercourse, but other parts were hollowed out by something that had sliced easily through the dark Martian granite and decorated it with deep, precise reliefs showing half-human creatures and unlikely beasts. Machinery of alien design and mysterious purpose. There were walkways cut into the canal walls, allowing animals or machines to drag boats beside them. Characters etched into the granite counted off glems, close to a meter, in what Stone knew as “Dawson,” named for the script’s first Terran translator.

He moved his head to his right. In the helmet’s crisp illumination, he saw black water rippling, making its rapid way toward the falls, which had to be miles away and yet were already distinct. A distant roar. At a discreet sound from the helmet, Stone turned right, keeping the water on his left as the walkway widened, revealing the dark bulk of buildings, low houses, all abandoned. This had been a busy, thriving port. People had traded down here and been entertained, had families and lived complex lives. Mac wished that he had time to explore the town. Unlike the canal itself, the settlements along the bank were on a human scale and in different styles. This was where the last humanoid Martians had lived. The place had a bleak atmosphere. Mac saw no evidence for the legends he’d grown up hearing in the Low-Canal of enduring pockets of Martians still living down here.

They were not the last native Martians. Those were the raïfs. Never wholly visible, they flitted around the Low-Canal settlements—the so-called mourning Martians, whose songs sometimes drifted in from the depths of the dead sea-bottoms and whose pink-veined outlines were almost invisible by noon. They drifted like translucent rays, feeding on light. Their songs could be heartbreaking. Storytellers insisted that they were not a new race at all but the spirits of the last humanoid Martians, forever doomed to haunt the Low-Canal.

Stone had never felt quite so alone. The buildings were thinning out as he walked, and his helmet showed him an increasing number of great natural arches, of stalagmites and stalactites forming a massive stone forest beside the whispering waters of the Ia canal. Some had been carved by ancient artists into representations of long-since-extinct creatures. Every so often, he was startled by a triangular face with eldritch, almost Terran, features. Mac, used to so much strangeness, felt almost in awe of those petrified faces, which stared back at him with sardonic intelligence.

Nothing lived here, not even the savage crocs. Nothing flew or scampered or wriggled over the smooth marble, among the stone trunks of stone trees whose stone boughs bent back to the ground. The only noise came from the rushing water, and even that was muted.

He thought he heard a faint rustle from within the stone forest. He paused, and heard it again. A sound. Nothing more. He couldn’t identify it. But he did know that he probably shouldn’t be hearing that sound. Maybe some remnants of a civilization did still live down here after all?

He moved his jaw, his ears. As Krane had promised, the helmet responded intuitively and amplified some of the outside sounds while filters dampened others. All he heard was the steady flow of the canal waters. Had he imagined something? When it came again, he knew what it was. A biped in shoes was following him. Or keeping pace with him, out there in the endless caves. Louder. There it was. A light, steady footfall in step with his own. When he stopped, it stopped. It came from the seemingly endless stone archways on his right. His laugh was almost demonic. He reached to loosen his Banning in its holster and bent to feel for his knife, still in place. He recalled boyhood tales of fierce monsters down here, of horribly disfigured mutants who lived off human flesh. Until now, he’d believed none of them.

Another step. Stone blinked to turn off the helmet’s lights. He crept as silently as he could into the nearest stone arch. The faintest scuttling sound came next. Carefully, he drew his blaster, dialing a swift instruction with his thumb. When he leveled the gun, it shot out a group of tiny light bursts, like so many brief, brilliant stars slowly arcing through that natural crypt, throwing a shadow against the curving stone pillars. A human. He was being followed. Somebody sent by Krane? Unlikely. The lep? Certainly not that noman. One of Varnal’s ancient enemies? He now had a charge and three-quarters left in his Banning. Logically, there was only likely to be one other person in the catacombs—whoever had chased him down here in the first place. They would be very well armed!

He snarled into the blackness. “Listen, I don’t know what you expect to get from me. If it’s sapphires, not only do I not have them, I don’t know where they are. And if you have any idea that I’m lying, I ought also to tell you that I’m on a mission. If I’m stopped, Mars will be blown to bits, and you with her. Now, I don’t much care for what they’ve done to Mars, but I was born on this planet, and I’d like to spend a few more years here. So whatever you’re after, Mister, maybe you should back off. Or show yourself. Or just come into the open and fight. I’ll take whatever option you like.”

No answer came out of that cold blackness, just the echo of the water whispering on its way to oblivion.

Keep moving.

Crunch!

A stunshell went off where he had been moments earlier. Only an amateur would have missed him. A suspicion became a thought in Stone’s mind.

It had to be the same hunter who had been trailing him since RamRam City. He should know who it was by now. If it was a bluff, he’d been bluffed by a pro. Yes, there was no doubt. Someone was playing a game, maybe searching for his weaknesses.

With that, Stone snapped the helmet lights back on. There it was! A human shape fluttering among the stalagmites. He switched the light off, listening. Then, very quietly, he left the wide path. He passed among those great natural arches, seeking whoever hunted him. By the way they darted through the darkness, he couldn’t help wondering how long they had lived on Mars. He recognized that same characteristic movement. A habit of approaching everywhere from the side or from behind. A habit of caution. The anticipation of attack. So this wasn’t some Terran bounty hunter after his hide. This was a Martian.

Stone knew all the Martians likely to be offered the job and this wasn’t their style, no matter how high a reward he had on his head. Except—

Again, he brought his lights into play, and this time he got more than a glimpse. A red-and-black night suit. Carrying extra air. Two Banning 22-40s. Every bounty hunter had a signature.

Could it be Yily Chen? Or someone working with Chen?

Crunch!

Now he knew that they didn’t really want him dead. It had to be Chen. They had just been pretending up there before the croc got him. They had wanted him to think he was as good as dead. Or maybe they’d wanted to get him down here where they could take their time with him?

“If that’s you, Yily, why are you after me? You’re on Terra. I’m on Mars. We were never at odds.”

Her voice hadn’t changed as much as he’d expected. A sweet, light, lilting brogue came back out of the darkness. “Maybe the price was never high enough, Mac.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“OK. Then you tell me why somebody wants you alive and doesn’t want me to talk it over with you.”

“You wouldn’t torture me. I know it. Not me.”

“Maybe. Circumstances change, Mac. Times change.”

“Very true. But you don’t. I don’t. We’re Martians. You’re more Martian than I am. You don’t have anyone they can get at you through. Same with me. We have identical reasons for keeping free of ties.”

“We’re different, Mac. Fundamentally. I’m a hunter. You’re a thief. Sometimes hunters are commissioned to find thieves.”

“So who gave you the job? Who wants you to bring me in?”

“Can’t you guess?”

“Delph. And he has most of the money in the universe. But not enough to pay for me.”

“Maybe so much money that I got curious. I wanted to know what he wanted that is worth such a lot. A bag I’m not supposed to look in. And which you don’t have. I know you don’t or you’d have used it as a decoy by now. I’ve hunted you for nearly a week, Mac. I’ve almost killed you half a dozen times. I’ve given you a chance to try all the angles. And you’ve tried them.”

“What? You were testing me?”

“I guess.”

She stepped out into the open, into the beam of light, a quick, boyish figure. Not at all what he’d imagined. She held her helmet in her left hand, one of her guns loose in the other. Her brown curly hair framed an impossibly beautiful triangular face with heavily slanted golden eyes. Her brows were thin and sloping, her lips red and bright as fresh blood. Few of those she hunted ever saw that face. Her clients rarely saw Yily Chen at all. She just delivered her “commissions,” like packages. She’d been his sister. He’d played with her every day as a young child. For all he remembered her as smart and pretty, Mac could hardly believe how truly beautiful she had become.

“Hello, Yily. What are you really after?” He lifted his visor.

“Hi, Mac.” She smiled and holstered her pistol. “You’re a hard guy to fool. And hard not to kill, too. I guess I wanted to know what Delph needs so bad from you that he’d let me name my price.”

Now he had a good idea what this was all about. He holstered his own Banning. She slipped her gun into its sheath and went back to drag something from the shadows. A bulky pack. She knelt to check the harness.

“And did you find out?”

Mac wondered why he remained so wary of her. The answer was probably simple. The strongest man, usually able to keep control of his emotions and stay cool, would find it hard to resist that beauty.

“Sure I did.” She straightened her back. She moved toward him, half-smiling, looking up from under heavy lids, her voice husky. “But I couldn’t trust him to pay.”

Stone caught himself laughing. “I last saw you twenty years ago, stealing water from the tanks.”

She grinned. He remembered that grin from when he had chased her through the bazaars of the Low-Canal and she had mocked him for his clumsiness. She boasted then that she had true Martian blood from a time when the great Broreern triremes had dominated the green seas swelling under a golden sun in the autumn of the planet’s long history. Stone could easily believe her. Cynics said Yily’s mother was a Terran whore and her father a Martian prison guard. But, with that glorious light brown skin, her beautifully muscled, boyish frame, that curly hair, her long legs, those firm, small breasts, her sardonic golden eyes, no one who saw her ever believed she was anything but a Mars woman reincarnated.

There were very few career possibilities on Mars for a girl of Yily’s background and looks. She had chosen the least likely: first as Tex Merrihew’s sidekick, learning the bounty hunter’s trade, then as a fixer on her own account. Mac wondered if Yily Chen had other reasons for helping him. She was known to be clever and devious. Was her word as good as they said? “So what are you proposing, Yily?”

“A partnership, maybe.”

“I didn’t know you liked me that much.”

“I don’t like Delph at all. I don’t like what he’s done to Mars or what he will do if he gets what he wants. What does he want, Mac?”

“He believes I have a bunch of indigo flame sapphires.”

“A bunch?”

“A bunch.”

She was silent. He could almost hear her thinking.

“What was that about a bomb?” she said.

He saw no reason not to. So he told her all he knew.

When he had finished she said, “Then, I guess I’d better help you.”

He asked why.

She grinned. “Because I’m a Martian, too.” She bent and picked up her heavy pack. “And I’m not tone-deaf.”

5 Whistling “Dixie”

THEY CAME TO THE FALLS, INCREASINGLY COMMUNICATING through their filtered helmet radios. The sound was deafening. An eerie pink light glared up from the chasm’s depths.

“Some say that’s Mars’s core down there.” She didn’t elaborate.

“Have you been here before?”

“Once. Guy jumped bail on Terra. Thought he had immunity here. He did, but they framed him anyway because the judge in Ram owed the judge in Old London a favor. So I was in for double reward. A share of the bail money if I brought him in alive. Well, it turned out he had friends here. Archaeologists. Academics. They crack easily. They told me how they’d found evidence for what they called the lost canal. You know the story?”

He nodded. “Guy’s out in the desert. He beds down for the night. Wakes up suddenly. He hears water. He listens more carefully. Running water. It’s the ghost canal. A kind of mirage, leading travelers astray so they die of thirst convinced there’s water all around them.”

“They told him about a cave system. Legends said it was a way into another world. Some argued it came out on Terra, in Arizona somewhere. Some thought ancient Mars. Others linked it to the discoveries of the so-called hidden universe obscured from our astronomers by drifting clouds of cosmic fog.” She shrugged. “You don’t have to break many fingers before they put two and two together. I found the cave, found this place, found him, hauled him up, took him in, and took the money.”

“Why didn’t I ever hear of that entrance?”

“Because I destroyed it. Didn’t want those archaeologists to be embarrassed again. My guy had two reasons not to talk. He might escape and hide out down here. And he knew what I’d do to him if news of the falls ever reached the surface. They sent him to Ceres. You don’t live long there. As far as I know, he died with the secret.”

The falls mesmerized them. They both found themselves walking too close to the edge, drawn by the vast, rearing walls of water spraying blue and gold, emerald and ruby, in that strange light. Old light, thought Mac without knowing why. Light that appeared to be pressed down by the cavern’s impenetrable blackness. Mac saw all kinds of shapes in there. Faces from his past. People he had hated. Nobody he had loved. Men with weapons. Women wanting his money or contempt or both. Cruelty ran through interplanetary society like a fuel. Not his drug of choice. Peace. Why was he thinking like this as the pink flume blew into a million shapes and offered to hold him like a baby, safely, safely …?

“Stone!”

Her strong hand grabbed his arm and yanked him back from the edge. “Damn! I thought you could look after yourself.” Her anger was like a slap across his face. He swore. Those eyes, those glaring eyes! What had they held in that moment when she raged at him?

He shook his head. “Don’t worry. I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”

She was frowning now, peering through her distance glasses out across the raging falls and pointing. “What’s that?”

A flash of electric lime green. An obviously unnatural color. Nothing like anything surrounding it. He switched over to the helmet’s optics and brought it in sharply as instruments reported distance and size. She adjusted her own glasses to check it out.

About 1.5 meters square, the star bomb lay balanced between a rough circle of rocks. Almost peacefully, white water whirled around it. Contrary currents held it in suspension. Any one of the currents could alter course slightly and take the bomb over the brink, from where it would never be recovered. And would ultimately detonate, splitting the planet apart.

The falls bellowed, echoing through the vast cavern whose roof lay beyond sight in the glittering darkness. According to the helmet, its walls held deposits of gold, silver, diamonds, and many other metals now very rare on Terra. Stone could imagine what would become of the place once the likes of Delph found out about it. He scanned the falls as far as he could see, pointing out a possible pathway through to it, where a great slab of black granite formed a canopy on which tons of water fell by the second. The rocks beneath the canopy were given a little potential protection, at least for part of the way. Some of the rocks disappeared behind another great massing of fallen debris. They formed a blind spot. Neither Stone nor Chen could see what danger might be waiting for anyone who tried to cross beyond that point. There didn’t seem to be a better route anywhere else.

“We’d best rope up.” She lowered her heavy pack to the walkway. “We can’t work on that thing out there. We’re going to have to fetch it.”

“I could try firing a grapnel from my Banning.” He showed her the tonkinite hook on his belt. “It’s attached to fifty meters of spiderwire. But even if it was a good idea, there’s no way we could do it from here. We need to be sure we have the bomb securely held. We can’t make mistakes. We need to switch over to gravity equalizers. They should hold off the worst of the force from the water. Does your suit have equalizers? Doesn’t matter. We’ll use mine. Both of us will probably have to go out there for at least as far as that route takes us.”

They had little left to discuss. First, they tested the GE potential. This took the power of anything threatening them and, using the threat’s own energy, converted it into a force field theoretically capable of equalizing any outside pressure. The idea behind the technology was brilliant, but there had been more than one infamous GE accident. You didn’t get any second chances. They contacted Miguel Krane. He assured Stone that the helmet had been tested for all environments, particularly for the power of the falls. He was surprised to learn that Yily Chen was involved, but he saw no problem in both of them using the suit. “One or a dozen, it can theoretically protect against a considerably stronger power. Of course, we haven’t allowed for human error. Just remember, it only takes one break in the circuitry and you’ll both be swept over those falls in a blink.” He suggested that they have her suit run on low power as a backup. “You’ll have to decide between you if that would work.” Krane sounded a little uncertain.

Soon they were ready. They roped up, using Mac’s spiderwire. It was unwise to rely on their helmets’ intercom. They would rely as much as they could on visual signals. Even with everything turned to minimum input they could still hear the heavy beating of the water against the rocks, the yelping gush of the canal as it spilled over into that bottomless gorge. Together, they inched out over the slippery causeway, hands, feet, elbows, and knees on full suction, allowing them to gain traction with every limb. The vast weight of water, even though not the full mass, smashed against their force converter, allowing them to move forward. They were tiny specks caught above those gigantic liquid walls. Able to see less than a meter ahead, they clung together, taking careful steps, often crawling on hands and knees, blinded by the screaming spray surrounding them. More than once, Stone lost his balance. She remained sure-footed and caught his cord before he followed his momentum down into the hungry core of the planet. He calculated that she’d saved his life at least seven times in as many minutes.

Above them, the wild spray boomed and shrieked. Their heads rang under the hammerblows of the surging current. Once, she was almost swept over the rim. He held on with hands and feet as he extended the field, hauling her back, kicking an impossible surge of power out of his equipment and falling backward as something caught his shoulder. Recovering, he saw that debris was also being carried down the falls, effectively doubling their danger. They watched for larger objects as much as possible, another eye on their chronometers, which were telling them roughly how much time still remained before the bomb was due to blow. Forty minutes. They reached a place where the water was suddenly quiet and even the sound seemed muted. For a moment or two they rested, gratefully recovering their strength in calm water forming little pools beneath the huge canopy of granite. They made up some of their lost time.

Once or twice, Stone looked back toward the bank, now invisible to him. Was all their effort worthless? Wouldn’t it be better to accept the impossibility of their mission? He began to think Krane was mad. If there was a threat, then inevitably they would die. Death was the future of all people, all planets, all universes. Their struggle was symbolic of the futility of living creatures who fought against their own inevitable extinction. What were a few more years of existence compared to the longevity of a cosmos? In those terms, the whole history of their species lasted for less than a fraction of a second. And then, sheltering beside him under the protection of the energy equalizer, she looked up for a second, and, obscurely, he understood that the effort always would be worth it. Always had been worth it.

They emerged eventually from the overhang. They saw the gaudy lime-green box glittering on the far side of a rocky cleft. Stone could see no obvious way down to it. For a moment, it seemed that they had come this far only to fail. Then Yily nodded and signaled that if he held on to the spidercord, she might be able to swing down and snag the box. But it would mean switching over to her own untested equalizers. Whether her suit had enough capacity was uncertain. She shrugged and began tying herself on.

The falls coughed and grumbled, always treacherous.

Stone grew concerned that there wouldn’t be enough spiderwire. He had trouble gauging the distance properly. He braced himself. He would have to switch off as soon as he could after she switched on, conserving power and maintaining stability for split seconds. He raised his hand and gave the signal. They knew a sickening few moments while the switch took place, then she was dropping out of sight before coming back into view, a far smaller figure than he had expected.

The blue and red of her suit was just visible, flashing on and off as she fell through a sickening weight of water. Her relative gravity, thanks to the converter, gave her extra resistance, and she stretched out her arms and clasped the n-bomb to her, swinging free over the rosy abyss. She cried out her triumph in a wild yell, her body curving back into the trajectory. He thumped the control and brought her up to where he perched, hanging on with everything but his nails and teeth. He was laughing like a fool as she swung to stand beside him, counting out with elated blows on his arm the measure to activate his helmet’s converter so both were again protected. He could feel her elation as he hugged her tight.

They had the star bomb!

Now, somehow, they had to follow the steps back to the sheltering rock. Inch by inch, they crossed the exposed falls, feet feeling for holds as the minutes slipped by, and they dared not waste a moment trying to see how much time they had before the bomb did what it had been designed to do. The climb back to the walkway seemed to take longer than the whole rest of the mission. Increasingly, the strain on the equalizer became greater. Little bubbles of energy flinched and disappeared into the wavering field.

Stone was almost convinced that they had run out of time and strength. He gasped his surprise when, suddenly, his boots stood on the smooth granite and the bomb was on the ground before them. Manhandling it to the relative quiet of the stone arches, they were at last able to turn off the equalizers. The suit crackled and zipped, revealing flaws that moments later would have meant sudden death.

Stone triumphantly announced their success to Krane over the radio. The Earthman seemed less than overjoyed.

“You have twenty-seven minutes left,” he said. “Do you think you can do it, Stone?”

Yily grinned and began to whistle.

“What’s that?” Krane asked.

“It’s not doing anything,” she said. “ ‘Yankee Doodle,’ right?”

But, even when the tune had been relayed back to them by Krane, only four of the eleven locks protecting the n-bomb snapped open. They needed seven in sequence. “The Yellow Rose of Texas” snapped open two more. “Moonlight on the Wabash” made two snap back. She tried different keys and speeds, new sequences. Two more. One more. But after that it was no good. She was embarrassed. “My grandma came to Mars in the Revival Follies. We used to sing them all before the dope took her.”

“This is getting dangerous,” Krane told them. “Something has jammed. Stop!” Oblivious of his growing concern, they kept trying and kept failing as the minutes and the seconds died. “You’ve got to stop!” Krane told them. “Unless every lock is undone in order, the bomb can’t be neutralized. It took us years to work out those codes. We encrypted everything in easily remembered traditional tunes. We—we haven’t time to work out the codes again! If anything, we’ve complicated the situation. We have eight minutes left.”

Mac hovered over the bomb, trying different force-tools on the remaining locks. “This is hopeless. We could explode the thing at any moment.” He watched the most recently tried force-tool fade from his glove.

“I guess neither of us is musical enough. Time for plan B.” She reached with both hands into her pack and pulled out a large square metal container. Quickly, she dragged off the box’s covering, revealing a compacted canister covered with government warnings, which, as she stroked it with her gloved fingers, began to expand, flopping and twitching like a living thing until it lay in her lap like a long khaki-colored barracuda. “I’d better set this now.”

Stone recognized the unactivated B-9 wombot. He guessed her plan, but he said, “What are you going to do with that?” It was his idea too.

But she wouldn’t stop. “I’m a lot lighter than you. Give me your big scarf,” she said. “Hurry! And some of those tools might prove useful here. I’ll tell you what to do. We need that spiderwire. Can you disconnect it from your suit?”

“I can try.”

So he dragged out his long white scarf. She began to wind the thing around her waist. No clocks or numbers on the bomb told them how much time they had left. They had only their own chronometers. “Seven minutes.”

He was still planning to do the thing himself. “Now,” he said, “get those magnets situated. The scarf will be useful. It won’t bear any serious strain, but it’ll keep the bomb in position while we spiderwire it to the wombot. Leave those ends free. Screw drill might help.”

The thing grew firm in her hands as she helped give the cables a few more turns. “OK,” he said. “More magnetic clamps. As many as we have between us.” The bomb was settled on the ground, the wombot beside it. At his count, they seized the bomb, rolled it, and bound it with the wire while they fixed the eight magnetic manacles she normally used for heavy-gravity truants. They held the wombot squarely on the bomb. Six minutes. He took a deep breath.

Then, while he was still thinking about it, she had straddled the whole contraption, binding herself to it with the scarf and the remaining spiderwire, leaving her limbs free. There wasn’t time to argue. Stone grew more and more unhappy. He realized that he couldn’t take over. Too late to start arguing.

Soon she had the whole contraption firmly beneath her, the wombot now fighting like a fish to be free. He gripped it as hard as he could with his numbed hands. Then she began powering up her suit.

He couldn’t find any more words. He felt sick. He had an unusual set to his jaw as he watched her first switch her own equalizer to run, then eased the bomb but not the wombot outside her suit’s circle of power. She tapped in codes on her arm. Wouldn’t she need a helmet? There was a faint flash and she winced. Not a suicide mission! Don’t say it was that! The sound of the falls still drowned any noise they made without using the radio. The powerful bionic drone jumped in her hands and lifted over Stone’s head with Yily still clinging to it. It bucked and pirouetted and bucked again. He yelled for her to let go, that he would catch her.

“I have to test it first,” she said. “There isn’t much time.”

“Maybe we should say good-bye.” Suddenly calm, though scarcely reconciled, he stepped back.

“Maybe.” And then she released the wombot.

It leapt into the air, looped once, with her hanging on for dear life, her e-suit flickering and flashing. The wire secured the bomb. She was held only by a few magnetic clamps, spiderwire, and her own strength. But Stone could have sworn he saw her grinning.

The contraption began to move in a straight line. Out over the Nokedu Falls—out through the distant spray, gold and silver in the pink light—and, to Stone’s utter horror, down!

Down flew Yily Chen. Down she flew! Out of sight as she was dragged by the wombot into that vast rosy chasm and those wild, dancing, deadly waters. Stone had never known so much fear before. Never so much fear than when he saw her vanish. “Oh, God!” He tried to get his radio back on, but there was no reception. “Oh, Yily!” He felt ill. He scanned the gold-flecked air with his enhanced eyes. Nothing.

The Nokedu Falls shouted its beautiful, monstrous laughter.

Then, triumphantly, the wombot leapt like a salmon up the falls, into the air above the canal, and seemed to hover for a moment with Yily flying behind it, going through some weird contortions, maybe to gain altitude. Up she came, then back, hurtling almost directly toward him. He dove clear of the thing as it seemed to home in on him. Was he the nearest heat? Had he really been the target all along? Then here she came, just in time, jumping clear of the flying bomb, down onto the walkway as the wombot performed a perfect turn and flew like a radium ray straight and true back along the way they had first come—then vanished from normal space-time. Now it would push through the folds of unseen space, seeking maximum heat, blinking up to the surface through the rock until it hit thin air, still skewering through the folds of space-time, on its way to Sol.

He rolled over as she switched off her suit and fell, laughing, into his arms.

Then Stone did what unconsciously he had wanted to do since he’d first chased the tousled, brown-skinned Martian girl playing hide-and-go-seek in and out of the deep shadows of the tanks. He took her in his arms, tossed away his helmet, and kissed her full on her blood-red lips. She kissed him back with a passion, biting his tongue and grinning as he responded.

Up in RamRam City, a scummer lying on his back, high on jojo juice, saw a quick blossom of brightness appear in Sol’s NW quadrant, a crimson flower against dull orange, and had no notion how lucky he was to be alive or what that brief moment had earned.

Soon Stone and Yily followed the long walkway of polished black granite beside the wide canal and up the great staircase to the chamber where he had first met Krane. The Earthman was gone, but on a hook extending from the deactivated noman’s right arm was a soft grey ratskin bag, and when Stone poured the contents into her open palm Yily gasped.

Stone lit the last three inches of his jane, drew deep, smiled, contentedly watching her as she laid them out, side by side on the bag: seven perfect flame sapphires, pulsing with constantly shifting shades of indigo. Each was a different world. Each was utterly fascinating, ready to reflect and amplify your secret dreams. Should you wish, you could live in one forever.

“Yeah,” said Stone happily. “Quite a sight.”

EPILOG

THEY KNEW WHAT WOULD HAPPEN, OF COURSE, WHEN THE mining companies and the archaeologists discovered a plentiful supply of water. That water would still be contaminated by centuries of leakage from an alien superbomb and would have to be filtered, probably not very thoroughly. That wouldn’t be much of a problem, especially with expendable prison labor working down there. Stone guessed what the exploiters would do with the great calm waterway perpetually pouring into a bottomless canyon to be captured and recycled, by some mysterious process, back into the canal again. Power.

“It’ll all go,” said Yily Chen. “It’ll be sensationalized and sanitized. People will run boat tours to the safe parts. There’ll be elevators directly down to the falls. Tourist money will bring a demand for comfortable fiction. Guides will play up invented legends and histories. Art critics will explain the grandeur of her design, the beauty of her reliefs, the ingenuity of her architects and engineers. She’ll give birth to a thousand academic theories. Crazy theories. Cults. Religions. And that won’t be the worst of it when people like Delph start tearing out the metals and the precious jewels …”

“No,” he said. “It doesn’t have to happen. We can keep it to ourselves. Just for a while.”

It was what Yily wanted too. She smiled that sweet, sardonic Martian smile. “I guess I was planning to retire,” she said.

So they bought Mars. She only cost them two indigo flame sapphires, sold to a consortium of Terran plutocrats. For the pair, Stone and Chen got the mining companies, a couple of ships, RamRam City and other settlements, the various rights of exploration and exploitation, and the private prisons Stone had known so well and subsequently liberated so promptly.

Later, it might be possible to create on Mars a paradise of justice and reason, a golden age to last a thousand years where their Martian descendants could grow up and flourish. But meanwhile, for a few good months, maybe more, they had the lost canal to themselves.