Arthur Clarke - Firstborn

“I wouldn’t be stuck in this ice coffin otherwise. But we’re not concentrating any more. After what we found under the ice, nobody cares about all this stuff. The ice cap, the cores. It’s all just in the way.”

Bisesa thought that over. “I’m sorry.”

He laughed shortly. “It’s not your fault.”

Myra asked, “So what did you find?”

“You’re about to find out. If you’re done, I’m supposed to take you in to a council of war.” He stood up.

The Liberator sailed toward the Q-bomb, a spear of ice and fire. On the flight deck, Edna Fingal and John Metternes were in their pressure suits, helmets on, visors open.

Though it was still invisible to the naked eye, they were already

“seeing” the Q-bomb through its tug of gravity, its knot of magnetic energy, and the mist of exotic particles it emitted as it cruised through the solar system.

“It’s just as Professor Carel predicted,” John reported, scrolling through softscreen summaries. “Exactly like the spectrum you get from the evaporation of a mini black hole. Clearly a cosmological artifact—”

“There,” Edna whispered. She pointed at the window.

The Q-bomb was a blister of distorted starlight, a droplet of water rolling down the face of the heavens. Edna felt chilled to the bone actually to see this thing.

“That’s an Eye,” John reported. “A perfectly reflective sphere, a ball bearing a hundred meters across. All the classic signs: the distorted geometry, the anomalous Doppler shifts from the surface.

The radiation spectrum isn’t quite what was recorded of the Eyes found in the Trojans during the sunstorm, however.”

“So this thing isn’t just an observer. I guess we knew that already.”

“Five kilometers out and closing,” Libby said softly.

Edna glanced at John. She knew he had showered only an hour ago, but even so sweat stood out on his brow and pooled at his neck.

“Ready?”

“As I’ll ever be, cobber.”

“We’ll follow the agreed strategy. Libby, you got that? Four passes. And if anything changes—”

“We gun for home,” Libby said. “It will be just as we rehearsed.

Three kilometers to closest approach. Edna?”

“Yes, Libby?”

“History is watching.”

“Oh, Jesus,” John muttered.

The four base crew, plus Bisesa, Myra, and Alexei, sat in a circle on chairs and upturned boxes in Can Two, the Hotel Mars-Astoria.

Paula, it seemed, was sleeping off the journey.

And here at the Martian north pole, under a hood of carbon dioxide snow, about as remote and secure a place as you could find in the solar system, Bisesa was told the truth at last.

It seemed a relief to Alexei as he finally revealed what various Spacer factions had discovered through various routes: that something unknown and menacing was sliding through the inner solar system. “They’re calling it a Q-bomb. Best guess remains that it is a Firstborn artifact, here to do us harm. The navy have launched some kind of mission to take it out. They may even succeed. But if not—”

“You have a plan of your own.”

“That’s right.”

Bisesa looked around the ring of faces, all of them so much younger than her and Myra — but then, Spacers were young by definition. “This is covert. You’re obviously some kind of faction.

Running around, hiding from the Earth cops. Having fun, are you?

Do you have a leader?”

“Yes,” Alexei said.

“Who?”

“We can’t tell you that. Not yet. Nobody here.”

“And you brought me here because of something you found under the ice.”

“That’s right.”

“Then show me.”

Grendel Speth, astrobiologist and doctor, faced Bisesa. “You only just arrived. You’re sure you don’t need to rest?”

Bisesa stood. “I’ve been resting for nineteen years, and traveling for weeks. Let’s go.”

One by one the others stood, following her lead.

To reach the Pit, they would have to suit up.

They went back to Can Six, and then down another flight of steps to a small dome on the ice. Here Bisesa, Myra, and Alexei had to strip out of their coveralls. Knowing the Martian night-winter was only meters away, Bisesa felt illogically cold in her bare skin.

Doctor Grendel gave her a brisk physical check. “Aside from having your system systematically ruined in a Hibernaculum for two decades, you’re doing fine.”

“Thanks.”

Bisesa’s skin was briskly oiled. She had to don a “bio-vest,” a rather prickly waistcoat that clung to her bare skin, providing an interface to the biometric systems that would monitor her body’s performance during this jaunt. Then she put on an undersuit, bright green and clinging, with a helmet, boots, and gloves and a small backpack. This was a complete spacesuit in itself, Grendel told her, effectively pressurized by the tension of its elastic fabric, and would keep her alive for minutes, maybe an hour if there were an emergency, like a module breach.

But this undersuit was only the innermost layer in a double spacesuit design. She was going to have to climb into one of those Captain Ahab external suits.

She was walked to a small hatchway in the dome wall, which led to her outer suit, fixed to the exterior of the dome. She was helped into the suit legs first, then her arms into the sleeves, then her torso and head. Her visor was opaque. The suit was made of rigid sections; it was like climbing into a suit of armor. But the suit seemed to help her by adjusting itself this way and that as she wriggled into it; she heard the hum of servo motors. The trickiest part was getting her helmeted head through the hatch without banging it, and then interfacing it with the larger helmet structure of the oversuit.

Grendel called, “How are you feeling? These things aren’t custom-made.”

“Fine. How do I get out of it?”

“The suit will tell you when you need to know.”

At last Grendel snapped closed the panel at the back. The suit popped off the dome wall, and Bisesa staggered a little.

Her visor cleared. Framed by Martian winter dark, all she could see was the round, helmeted face of the support engineer, whose name was—

“Hanse,” he said, smiling. “Just checking your suit’s functioning properly. When you get into the rhythm of this you’ll learn to check mine; we work on a buddy system… Suit Five? What’s your status?”

A soft male voice spoke in Bisesa’s ear. “Nominal, Hanse, as you can see from my output. Bisesa?”

“Go ahead.”

“I’m here to assist you during your extravehicular activity in any way I can.”

Hanse said, “I know the suit design must seem a little odd, Bisesa. It’s all about PPP.”

“PPP?”

“Planetary protection protocols. We never bring our suits inside the terrestrial hab modules; we never mix environments. Protecting Mars and Earth life from each other.”

“Even though they are kissing cousins.”

“They’re the worst. And also there is the question of dust. Mars dust is rusty and toxic and full of peroxides, very corrosive. Best to keep it out of the habs, and our lungs. We must keep the suit seals brushed free of dust, in fact, or it becomes harder to make them, and you don’t want to be stuck out here. I’ll show you how later.”

The doctor’s face came swimming into view behind her own visor. “You’re doing good, Bisesa. Try moving around.”

Bisesa raised her arms and lowered them; there was a whir of servos, and the suit felt as light as a feather. “It feels odd not to be able to lower my arms all the way. Or to be able to scratch my face.

That’ll pass, I guess.”