Geoffrey Landis - Mars Crossing

Ryan had brought one rock with him, the small fossil that Brandon had found that day at the wall of the Valles Marineris. The fist-shaped rock seemed small and tawdry next to the large fossils of the fault wall, but it was the one Brandon had found.

They had left Brandon’s body propped up where he had died, leaning against the wall and sightlessly staring toward the eastern horizon. Ryan leaned down, placed the little fossil in Brandon’s right hand, and closed his left hand over it. “Trevor—Brandon—whoever you are,” he said. “I guess it’s too late now to really even know. Goodbye, Brandon.”

He paused. “Wherever you are—good luck.”

When they returned to the habitat for the night, Ryan gathered them together to talk about their plans. It was frightening to see how few the expedition had become. We knew people were going to die, he thought. We knew it, and yet, when it happens, we still can’t quite get a grip on it. Chamlong, and then John, and now Trevor, gone. He knew that Trevor—Brandon, he should think of him as Brandon now—had deceived all of them, that he must have killed Radkowski, but somehow he still couldn’t quite believe it. He lied right from the beginning, he thought. He deceived all of us.

What secrets did the others have?

Ryan had liked him. The betrayal was somehow worse for that. And now he’s dead, too.

“We can’t afford any more accidents,” he said. “The expedition is already dangerously small. We can’t lose anybody else; we can’t make any mistakes. From here, we travel light and last, no sidetracks, no exploration, no sight-seeing, just speed. No more wandering. We make a straight-line dash for the Agamemnon site.

“We leave behind everything that we don’t absolutely need. Agamemnon was the Cadillac of expeditions. They had everything, and they abandoned it at the site, for the most part completely unused. We’ll resupply there.”

“Showers,” Tana said.

“Decent food,” Estrela whispered.

“All that,” Ryan said. “All that, and one thing, the most important thing of all.

“ Agamemnon brought an airplane.”

It gave him a sense of déjà vu.

Ryan had been here before. When could he have been here? Never; it was impossible. But yet he felt that the territory was familiar.

They had crossed an area of low hills, and then for two days they had walked through a region of immense buttes, imposing flat-topped mesas that loomed hundreds of meters above them. Ryan felt the pressure of the landscape, felt that they were as small as ants moving across an inhumanly large landscape.

Now they had left the mesa territory behind. The land was furrowed. Low, rolling ridges ran parallel to their direction of travel, with half-buried boulders tumbled in clusters around. It was a flood plain, Ryan realized. An ancient deluge had carved these grooves and moved these boulders. In his memory this rang a distant bell, but he couldn’t quite bring it to mind.

A low, lone mountain—a volcano, perhaps—rose up out of the plain, and it too looked weirdly familiar. As they moved across the land, and moved into a new perspective, he saw that it was doubled, like the twin humps of a Bactrian camel, and that didn’t surprise him. Of course it was a double peak.

Because now he remembered where they were. He’d been here hundreds of times in virtual reality, learning about Mars geology. Suddenly it all came back to him in vivid detail: the Twin Peaks, the oddly named rocks: Yogi, Flat-top, Barnacle Bill, Moe. As a kid, he’d spent whole days downloading the pictures of this place from the Internet; it was when he’d first become interested in Mars. More than anything else, this place was the whole reason he was here. It was the landscape of his dreams.

It was the Pathfinder site.

They were crossing Ares Vallis. Yes, of course, to get from Coprates Chasma to Acidalia they had to cross Ares Vallis, they had no choice. But of all the spots to cross it, right here! “But this is history,” he whispered. “We’re walking on history.”

“Say again?” Tana’s voice said.

Instead of answering, Ryan started to walk faster. It had to be right here, just ahead of them. He started to jog, barely even noticing the boulders he had to detour around. Right, exactly here. They couldn’t be far away from the actual landing site; it couldn’t be more than a hundred meters.

Right here!

He stopped abruptly.

Where?

The ridged terrain spread out in all directions. He could tell from the perspective of the mountain that they had to be at the right place. All the rocks looked familiar, but every time he looked closer at any one of them, it turned to be not quite right. It couldn’t be far away, but where, exactly, was it?

“Ryan!” It was Tana, coming up behind him, panting. “Are you all right?”

His legs ached. They had been walking for days, and even the brief exertion of breaking into a jog made him suddenly aware of the ache in his muscles. “This is the Pathfinder site,” he gasped. “Look!”

Tana looked around. “Say, you could be right. It does kind of look like it, doesn’t it? Is that why you were running?”

“It is! Take a look!” He pointed. “There are the Twin Peaks.” He swung around. “That big one over there? That rock is named Couch. Or maybe that one.” He stopped, momentarily unsure. It was easy to get confused. Was either of them really the boulder named Couch? Or was it another one that looked similar?

Tana looked around. “Wow,” she said. “Pretty neat. So, where’s the Pathfinder itself? It wouldn’t have moved, would it? So it must be here.”

“Let’s find it!” Ryan said.

“Wait a second,” Tana said. “You said that we weren’t going to make any stops, we weren’t going to go exploring.”

“It won’t take long,” Ryan said. “We must be standing practically right on top of it. It’s gotta be right around here. It’s got to stick out like a sore thumb in this.”

But it didn’t. After an hour of searching, Ryan finally had to admit that the Pathfinder was invisible. Even the inertial navigation system he had scavenged from the dirt-rover was no help; it told them exactly where on the planet they were, but the navigation system of the ancient spacecraft had only given its position on the planet to within a few kilometers. But they should be able to see it. “We know it’s here,” Ryan said. “So why can’t we find it?”

“Dust,” Tana said. “Think about it. How long ago did that land? Thirty years ago? How many dust storms have there been since then?” She thought for a second. “It’ll be so covered with dust that it will blend right in. Just a funny, lumpy patch of the soil.”

“Dust,” Ryan said, dejected. “You’re right. I didn’t think of that. Shit. We probably walked right past it and couldn’t see it. What now?”

“Onward,” Tana said. She quoted his own words back to him. “No sidetracks, no exploration, no sight-seeing, just speed. Agamemnon , or bust.”