Philip Dick: Survey Team

Halloway came up through six miles of ash to see how the rocket looked in landing. He emerged from the lead-shielded bore and joined Young, crouching down with a small knot of surface troops.

The surface of the planet was dark and silent. The air stung his nose. It smelled foul. Halloway shivered uneasily. “Where the hell are we?”

A soldier pointed into the blackness. “The mountains are over there. See them? The Rockies, and this is Colorado.”

Colorado . . . The old name awakened vague emotion in Halloway. He fingered his blast rifle. “When will it get here?” he asked. Far off, against the horizon, he could see the Enemy’s green and yellow signal flares. And an occasional flash of fission white.

“Any time now. It’s mechanically controlled all the way, piloted by robot. When it comes it really comes.”

An Enemy mine burst a few dozen miles away. For a brief instant the landscape was outlined in jagged lightning. Halloway and the troops dropped to the ground automatically. He caught the dead burned smell of the surface of Earth as it was now, thirty years after the war began.

It was a lot different from the way he remembered it when he was a kid in California. He could remember the valley country, grape orchards and walnuts and lemons. Smudge pots under the orange trees. Green mountains and sky the color of a woman’s eyes. And the fresh smell of the soil . . .

That was all gone now. Nothing remained but gray ash pulverized with the white stones of buildings. Once a city had been in this spot. He could see the yawning cavities of cellars, filled now with slag, dried rivers of rust that had once been buildings. Rubble strewn everywhere, aimlessly ...

The mine flare faded out and the blackness settled back. They got cautiously to their feet. “Quite a sight,” a soldier murmured.

“It was a lot different before,” Halloway said.

“Was it? I was born undersurface.”

“In those days we grew our food right in the ground, on the surface. In the soil. Not in underground tanks. We—”

Halloway broke off. A great rushing sound filled the air suddenly, cutting off his words. Animmense shape roared past them in the blackness, struck someplace close, and shaking the earth.

“The rocket!” a soldier shouted. They all began running, Halloway lumbering awkwardly along.

“Good news, I hope,” Young said, close by him.

“I hope, too,” Halloway gasped. “Mars is our last chance. If this doesn’t work we’re finished. The report on Venus was negative; nothing there but lava and steam.”

Later they examined the rocket from Mars.

“It’ll do,” Young murmured.

“You’re sure?” Director Davidson asked tensely. “Once we get there we can’t come running back.”

“We’re sure.” Halloway tossed the spools across the desk to Davidson. “Examine them yourself. The air on Mars will be thin, and dry. The gravity is much weaker than ours. But we’ll be able to live there, which is more than you can say for this God-forsaken Earth.”

Davidson picked up the spools. The unblinking recessed lights gleamed down on the metal desk, the metal walls and floor of the office. Hidden machinery wheezed in the walls, maintaining the air and temperature. * “I’ll have to rely on you experts, of course. If some vital factor is not taken into account—”

“Naturally, it’s a gamble,” Young said. “We can’t be sure of all factors at this distance.” He tapped the spools. “Mechanical samples and photos. Robots creeping around, doing the best they can. We’re lucky to have anything to go on.”

“There’s no radiation at least,” Halloway said. “We can count on that. But Mars will be dry and dusty and cold. It’s a long way out. Weak sun. Deserts and wrinkled hills.”

“Mars is old,” Young agreed. “It was cooled a long time ago. Look at it this way: We have eight planets, excluding Earth. Pluto to Jupiter is out . No chance of survival there. Mercury is nothing but liquid metal. Venus is still volcano and steam—pre- Cambrian. That’s seven of the eight. Mars is the only possibility a priori”

“In other words,” Davidson said slowly, “Mars has to be okay because there’s nothing else for us to try.”

“We could stay here. Live on here in the undersurface systems like gophers.”

“We could not last more than another year. You’ve seen the recent psych graphs.”

They had. The tension index was up. Men weren’t made to live in metal tunnels, living on tank- grown food, working and sleeping and dying without seeing the sun.

It was the children they weic really thinking about. Kids that had never been up to the surface.

Wan-faced pseudo mutants with eyes like blind fish. A generation born in the subterranean world. The tension index was up because men were seeing their children alter and meld in with a world of tunnels and slimy darkness and dripping luminous rocks.

“Then it’s agreed?” Young said.

Davidson searched the faces of the two technicians. “Maybe we could reclaim the surface, revive Earth again, renew its soil. It hasn’t really gone that far, has it?”

“No chance,” Young said flatly. “Even if we could work an arrangement with the Enemy there’ll be particles in suspension for another fifty years. Earth will be too hot for life the rest of this century. And we can't wait”

“All right,” Davidson said. “I’ll authorize the survey team. We’ll risk that, at least. You want to go? Be the first humans to land on Mars?”

“You bet,” Halloway said grimly. “It’s in our contract that I go.”

The red globe that was Mars grew steadily larger. In the control room Young and van Ecker, the navigator, watched it intently.

“We’ll have to bail,” van Ecker said. “No chance of landing at this velocity.”

Young was nervous. “That’s all right for us, but how about the hist load of settlers? Wcecan’t expect women and children to jump.”

“By then well know more.” Van Ecker nodded and Captain Mason sounded the emergency alarm. Throughout the ship relay bells clanged ominously. The ship throbbed with scampering feet as crew members grabbed their jump-suits and hurried to the hatches.

“Mars,” Captain Mason murmured, still at the viewscreen. “Not like Luna. This is the real thing.”

Young and Hallo way moved toward the hatch. “We better get going.”

Mars was swelling rapidly. An ugly bleak globe, dull red. Halloway fitted on his jump helmet. Van Ecker came behind him.

Mason remained in the control cabin. “I’ll follow,” he said, “after the crew’s out.”

The hatch slid back and they moved out onto the jump shelf. The crew were already beginning to leap.

“Too bad to waste a ship,” Young said.

“Can’t be helped.” Van Ecker clamped his helmet on and jumped. His brake-units sent him spinning upward, rising like a balloon into the blackness above them. Young and Halloway followed. Below them the ship plunged on, downward toward the surface of Mars. In the sky tiny luminous dots drifted—the crew members.

“I’ve been thinking” Halloway said into his helmet speaker.

“What about?” Young’s voice came in his earphones.

“Davidson was talking about overlooking some vital factor. There is one we haven’t considered.”

“What’s that?”

“The Martians.”

“Good God!” van Ecker chimed in. Halloway could see him drifting off to his right, settling slowly toward the planet below. “You think there are Martians?”

“It’s possible. Mars will sustain life. If we can live there other complex forms could exist, too.”