Greg Bear: Moving Mars

“We’re off,” Sean said, and his teams began to walk away from the trench. Some of them waved. I caught a glimpse of Charles from behind as his group marched in broken formation toward the hills, a little south of the track we would follow. I wondered why I was paying any attention to him at all. Skinseal hid little. He had a cute butt. Ever so slightly steatopygous.

I bit my lip to bring my thoughts together. I’m a red rabbit, I told myself. I’m on the Up for the first time in two years, and there are no scout supervisors or trailmasters in charge, checking all our gear, making sure we get back to our mommies. Now focus, damn you !

“Let’s go,” Gretyl said, and we began our trek.

It was a typical Martian morning, springtime balmy at minus twenty Celsius. The wind had slowed to almost nothing. The air was clear for two hundred kilometers. Thousands of stars pricked through at zenith like tiny jewels. The horizon glimmered shell-pink.

All my thoughts aligned. Something magical about the moment. I felt I possessed a completely realistic awareness of our situation… and of our chances of surviving.

The surface of Mars was usually deadly cold. This close to the equator, however, the temps were relatively mild — seldom less than minus sixty. Normal storms could push winds up to four hundred kiphs, driving clouds of fine smear and flopsand high enough and wide enough to be seen from Earth. Rarely, a big surge of Jetstream activity could send a high-pressure curl over several thousand kilometers, visible from orbit as a snaking dark line, and that could raise clouds that would quickly cover most of Mars. But the air on high Sinai Planum, at five millibars, was too thin to worry about most of the time. The usual winds were gentle puffs, barely felt.

My booted feet pounded over the crusted sand and tumble. Martian soil gets a thin crust after a few months of lying undisturbed; the grains fall into a kind of mechanical cement that feels a lot like hoarfrost. I could dimly hear the others crunching, sound traveling through the negligible atmosphere making them seem dozens of meters away.

“Let’s not get too scattered,” Gretyl said.

I passed an old glacier-rounded boulder bigger than the main trench dome. Ancient ice floes had sculpted the crustal basalt into a rounded gnome with its arms splayed across the ground, flat head resting on its arms in sleep… pretended sleep.

Somehow, red rabbits never became superstitious about the Up. It was too orange and red and brown, too obviously dead, to appeal to our morbid instincts.

“If they’re smart and somebody’s anticipating us, there may be pickets out this far to keep track of the periphery of the university,” Sean said over the radio.

“Or if somebody’s tattled,” Gretyl added. I was starting to like Gretyl. Despite having an unpleasant voice and an unaltered, shrewlike face, Gretyl seemed to have a balanced perspective. I wondered why she had kept that face. Maybe it was a family face, something to be proud of where she came from, like English royalty’s unaltered features, mandated by law. The long nose of King Henry of England .

Damn.

Focus gone.

I decided it didn’t matter. Maybe focusing on keeping a focus was a bad thing.

The sun hung above the ridge now, torch-white with the merest pink tinge. Around it whirled the thinnest of opal hazes, high silicate and ice clouds laced against the brightening orange of day. The rock shadows started to fill in, making each step a little easier. Sometimes wind hollows hid behind boulders, waiting for unwary feet.

Gretyl’s group had spread out. I walked near the front, a few steps to her right.

“Picket,” said Garlin Smith on my right, raising his arm. He had been my classmate in mass psych, quiet and tall, what ignorant Earth folks thought a Martian should look like.

We all followed Garlin’s pointing finger to the east and saw a lone figure standing on a rise about two hundred meters away. It carried a rifle.

“Armed,” Gretyl said under her breath. “I don’t believe it.”

The figure wore a full pressure suit — a professional job, the type worn by areologists, farm inspectors, Statist police. It reached up to tap its helmet. It hadn’t seen us yet, apparently, but it was picking up the jumbled buzz of our coded signals.

“Keep going,” Gretyl said. “We haven’t come this far to be scared off by a single picket.”

“If it is a picket,” Sean commented, listening to our chat. “Don’t assume anything.”

“It has to be a picket,” Gretyl said.

“All right,” Sean said with measured restraint.

The figure caught sight of us about four minutes after we first noticed it. We were separated by a hundred meters. It looked like a normal male physique from that distance.

My breath quickened. I tried to slow it.

“Report,” Sean demanded.

“Armed male in full pressure suit. He sees us. Not reacting yet,” Gretyl said.

We didn’t deviate from our path. We would pass within fifty meters of the picket.

The helmeted head turned, watching us. He held up a hand. “Hey, what is this?” a masculine voice asked. “What in hell are you doing up here? Do you folks have ID?”

“We’re from UMS,” Gretyl said. We didn’t slow our pace.

“What are you doing up here?” the picket repeated.

“Surveying, what’s it look like?” Gretyl responded. We carried no instruments. “What are you doing up here?”

“Don’t bunny with me,” he said. “You know there’s been trouble. Just tell me what department you’re from and… have you been using code?”

“No,” Gretyl said.

We had closed another twenty yards. He started to hike down the rise to inspect us.

“What in hell are you wearing?”

“Red suits,” Gretyl answered.

“Shit, it’s skinseal . It’s against the law to wear that stuff except in emergencies. How many of you are there?”

“Forty-five,” Gretyl lied.

“I’ve been told to keep intruders off university property,” he said. “I’ll need to see IDs. You should have UMS passes to even be up here.”

“Is that a gun?” Gretyl asked, faking a lilt of surprise.

“Hey, get over here, all of you.”

“Why do you need a gun ?"

“Unauthorized intruders. Stop now.”

“We’re from the Areology Department, and we’ve only got a few hours up here… Didn’t you get a waiver from Professor Sunder?”

“No, dammit, stop right now .”

“Listen, friend, who do you answer to?”

“UMS is secure property. You’d better give me your student ID numbers now.”

“Fap off,” Gretyl said.

The picket raised his rifle, a long-barreled, slender automatic flechette. My anger and fear were almost indistinguishable. Dauble and Connor must have lost their minds. No student on Mars had ever been shot by police, not in fifty-three years of settlement. Hadn’t they ever heard of Tienanmen or Kent State ?

“Use it,” Gretyl said. “You’ll be all over the Triple for shooting areology students on a field trip. Great for your career. Really spin you in with our families, too. What kind of work you looking for, rabbit?”

Our receivers jabbered with the picket’s own coded outgoing message. More jabber returned.

The man lowered his rifle and followed us. “Are you armed?” he asked.

“Where would students get guns?” Gretyl asked. “Who in hell is giving you orders to scare us?”

“Listen, this is serious. I need your IDs now.”

“We’ve got his code,” Sean said. “He’s been told to block you however he can.”

“Great,” Gretyl said.

“Who are you talking to? Stop using code,” the picket demanded.