Brian Aldiss - White Mars

The rock in her path was tumbled and treacherous. She climbed down with the roof overhead narrowing, until she was moving within a chimney and in danger of snagging her suit. She called up to the rest of the expedition not to follow, else she would have been struck by falling rock.

At last she reached the end of the chimney. Slipping amid scree, she was able to stand again—to find herself in a large cave, which she described over the radio as the size of a cottage—“contemptible by the dimensions of caves in the Mulu Park area”.

The floor of the cave contained a small pool of ice.

The rest of the team cheered when they heard of this.

Skirting the ice, Kathi explored the cave and reached a narrow cleft at the far end. Squeezing through it, she entered a small dark hole. She was forced to crawl on hands and knees to cross it, where she found a kind of natural staircase, leading down. This she reported to Dreiser.

“Take care, damn it,” he said.

The staircase widened. She squeezed past a boulder and found herself in a larger cavern, in cross-section resembling a half-open clam. The roof was scalloped elaborately, as if by hand, the ancient product of swirling water. And the floor of this cavern held a pool of water, unfrozen. She lobbed a small rock into it. Ripples flowed to the sides in perfect circles.

Her heart was beating fast. She knew she was the first person ever to see extensive water in its free state on the Red Planet.

She waded into it. The ripples stirred by her entry caused light patterns to play on the roof above.

The water came up to her breasts and no further. She plunged and swam below the surface. Her light revealed a dark plug hole on the stony bed. She swam vertically down it, to find herself in a chimney with smooth sides. As it narrowed, she had to push against the sides rather than swim. The fit became tighter and tighter. She could not turn to go back. Her light failed.

The team were calling her on the radio. She did not reply. She could hear her own labouring breath. She squeezed forward with great effort, her arms stretched out in front of her.

The tube seemed to go on for ever as she moved, head down. She thought there was a dim light ahead, or else her sight was failing.

She found herself shooting from the tube like a cork from a bottle. She was floundering upward in a milky sea. Her head emerged into the open. Breathing heavily, she managed to haul herself on to a dry ledge. She was in some sort of a natural underground reservoir. The ceiling was only 2 feet above her. She thought, “What if it rains?” But that thought came from back in Sarawak, where even a distant shower of rain might cause water levels to rise dramatically and drown an unwary speleologist. On Mars there was no danger of rain.

As her pulse steadied, she stared across the phosphorescent pool, whose depth she estimated to be at least 12 metres. Kathi knew that humble classes of aquatic animals emitted light without heat. But was there not also a mere chemical phosphorescence? Had she stumbled on the first traces of Martian life? She could not tell. But lying on the shelf of rock, unsure of how she would ever emerge again to the surface, she told herself that she was detecting a Martian consciousness. She looked about in the dimness: there was nothing, only the solemn slap of water against rock, reflected and magnified by the low roof overhead. Was she not in the very throat of the monster?

She lay completely still, switching off her radio to listen, there, at least a kilometre beneath the surface of the planet. If it had a heart, she was now a part of it.

The situation was somewhat to her liking.

When she switched on her radio, the babble of humanity came to her. They were going to rescue her. Chad was possibly in an adjacent chamber. She was to stay put. Was she okay?

Without deigning to answer that, she reported that the temperature reading was 2 degrees above zero Celsius and that she had taken a water sample. She still had a reserve of 3.6 hours of air. Sure, she would stay where she was. And she would keep the radio on.

She lay on the ledge, perfectly relaxed. After a while she swam in the phosphorescent reservoir. At one corner, water fell from the roof in a slow drip, every drop measuring out a minute.

Raising herself in the water, her fingers detected a crevice in the rock overhead. Hauling herself up, she found she could thrust her arm into a niche. With this leverage she could also wedge a foot in the niche, and so cling, dripping, above the water. By slow exploration, she was able to ease herself into the rock. She cursed the lack of light, and cursed her failed headlight. Inch by painful inch, she dragged herself through the broken rock fissures. She was in total darkness, apart from an occasional glint of falling water drops. She struck her head on rock.

The one way forward was to twist over on her back and propel herself by hands and feet. She worked like that for ten minutes, sweating inside her suit. Then she was able to get on to her hands and knees.

Gingerly she stood up. Hands stretched before her, she took a step forward. Something crackled beneath the flippers of her suit. She felt and brought up a fragment of ice. In so doing, she clipped her headlamp against rock. Feeling forward, she came on sharp rock everywhere. She stood in the darkness, nonplussed. When she stretched her arms out sideways, she touched rock on either side. As far as she could determine, she was trapped in a narrow fissure. In the pitch dark, the fallen rocks were too dangerous to negotiate. So she stood there, unable to move.

At length, with what seemed to her like unutterable slyness, the dimmest of lights began to glow. Slowly the illumination brightened. Coming from a distant point, it showed Kathi that she was indeed standing in the merest crack between two rough shoulders of rock. The floor of this crack was littered with debris. She recognised a vadose passage, formed by a flow of water cutting into the rock.

She summoned up all her courage. With her awe came a cold excitement. She was convinced that she had intruded into a lofty consciousness and that some part of it—whether physical or mental—was now approaching her. Her upbringing had accustomed her to sacred places. Now she must face the wrath or at best the curiosity of something, some ancient unknown thing. She felt her lower jaw tremble as the light increased. There was nowhere she could run to.

The light became a dazzle.

“Oh, there you are! Why did you rush off like that?” said Chad Chester, in an annoyed voice. “You could have been in deep shit.”

She was back in the buggy, sipping hot coffdrink. Dreiser put an arm protectively about her shoulders. “You gave us all quite a scare.”

“Why wasn’t your lousy headlamp maintained? You’re as bad as the slavedrivers in Sarawak.”

“At least we have established the existence of subterranean water, thanks to you,” he said comfortably.

Meanwhile our humdrum lives in the domes were continuing, but I at least was filled with optimism regarding our plans, which ripened day by day.

Adminex circulated our findings on the Ambient and published them on impounded EUPACUS printers. We emphasised that people must be clear on what was acceptable. We invited suggestions for guiding principles.

We suggested a common meeting for discussion in Hindenburg every morning, which anyone might attend.

We placed a high priority on tolerance and the cultivation of empathy.

We concluded by saying, What Cannot be Avoided Must Be Endured.

I received a message back on my Ambient link, saying, “Be practical, will you? We need more toilets, boss. What cannot be endured must be avoided.” I recognised Beau Stephens’s voice.