This is a fan translation of Road to Mars (Дорога к Марсу) by fifteen Russian science fiction writers.
This chapter was written by Igor Minakov.
I claim no rights to the contents herein.
Chapter 38
The Light of Mars
Before global cinema was dominated entirely by CGI and digital image processing, "Martian" landscapes were filmed through an orange filter. Later, this clever movie-making invention became the talk of the town. NASA specialists were even accused of hiding the truth by processing Martian images the same way. When in reality…
And now the notorious orange filter was gone.
"Mother of God…" Kartashov muttered.
"Mamma mia…" Piccirilli echoed.
"Gentlemen, I think we're now officially insane," Bull noted.
The others said nothing. They couldn't find the words.
The crew of the Ares was staring into every optical device of the ship that had anything to do with space outside the ship. They were drinking in the view. They regretted that the windows didn't provide a panoramic view, even in the observation dome. Maybe alien eyes were more used to other color combinations. Maybe they felt indescribable delight when seeing the coffee-and-cream disk of Jupiter, thrilled at the orange heat of Venus, or were invigorated by the deathly-metallic glint of Mercury. But human eyes were filled with tears of tenderness when the vast views of their white-and-blue home planet were spread out before them. Or when the irritatingly red Mars started looking like it in an instant, as if it were its long-lost little brother.
The crimson desert disappeared under the cover of gray and green vegetation. An enormous blue ocean covered nearly half the planet in the northern hemisphere. The Sun gleamed like a welding arc on the smooth water. The volcanic pimple of Olympus Mons was adorned by an icy cap. And next to it were the white tops of the triplets: Ascraeus Mons, Pavonis Mons, and Arsia Mons. The blue veins of rivers coming down the icy tops flowed into the insatiable ocean, spread through the gorges of Tharsis, washing the steppe plateaus of the southern hemisphere. Layers of rainbows rose over the waterfalls coming down to Valles Marineris.
The terminator line was coming. The shadow of the night was about to hide the magnificence of living, green-and-blue Mars, but the spacers had no intention of getting back to their routine work. All were hoping that the night hemisphere of the former Red Planet would turn out to hold surprises. The Sun didn't drown in the usual dusty and stifling darkness. For a brief moment, it flared like a clear ruby in white gold. Mars was a third of Earth's size, so the orbital sunset here was much faster, as was the sunrise. Soon the eyes of the observers got used to the darkness and could easily tell apart even the weak reflections on the planetary surface. The Italian's keen eyes made out the reflection of Deimos in the ocean mirror. The second satellite was glowing serenely high up in the sky. Meanwhile, Phobos, shimmering like embers, was on the other side of the planet. But the human eyes failed to detect the most important thing.
"Light!" Jeubin shouted, having managed to squeeze the nosy Italian out of the observation dome.
"Where? Where? Where?" the spacers started talking.
"To the south of the equator…" he reported. "Somewhere in the Mare Tyrrhenum quadrangle… or a little farther… There it is again!"
Two pairs of hands grabbed the Frenchman's legs and pulled him out of the dome. Kartashov and Bull took his place there and peered into the darkness of the night. Indeed, there was a weak purple glow appeared over Hesperia Planum and then immediately went out.
"Thunderstorm," Bull exhaled in disappointment.
"Look at this guy!" Kartashov said. "He thinks a thunderstorm on Mars is something unimportant now."
Tension broke, and the Ares crew burst into laughter, as if the Russian had said some incredible joke.
"But it's not a city glow," Bull said once everyone had their fill of laughing.
"Uh-huh," Kartashov replied in the same tone. "He wants cities."
But no one backed him up now. John Bull had voiced the secret hope in the heart of every member of the expedition. Now, when the former views of the fourth planet in the Solar System were gone, the existence of a Martian civilization had turned from a fairy tale into a scientific hypothesis once again.
"What if they don't have electricity yet?" the Italian asked. "How much would we be able to see from Earth's orbit in the sixteenth century?"
"Yeah," Kartashov drawled. "Can't really make out oil lamps and campfires from three hundred kilometers up…"
"All right, people," Anikeev called out from the cockpit. "That's enough chatter. Time to get to work. We have plenty of it. The entire research program is going to hell. Let's get started. For now, the primary parameters. Atmospheric composition, pressure, average temperatures. Someone write up a report layout for TsUP, but do it in such a way as to keep them from thinking we're crazy… Then again… who knows…"
"I'll do it!" Bull volunteered. "I've got a lot of experience."
"Good."
"I'll calibrate the equipment," Piccirilli said. "Or it's going to keep going off the scale… No one was counting on a catch like that."
"And I'll measure the height of the atmosphere, Captain," Jeubin said. "Don't want to scratch the paint…"
"Right, Jeubin," Anikeev said. "With density like that, the edge of the atmosphere has to be at about the same height as over Earth…"
"Everything here is about the same as on Earth, Commander," Kartashov butted in excitedly.
"What do you mean?" Anikeev asked, knowing his friend well. Andrei never would've butted into a conversation if he didn't feel the need to inform him of something truly important.
"A message has arrived while we were busy looking at Mars."
"Read it!"
Kartashov slid his finger on the tablet screen and started reading in a tense voice, "For hundreds of millennia, man grew up in nature, learned to make fire, clubs, axes, bows and arrows for hunting animals, cultivated the land, sewed, planted, harvested, abandoned the caves, finally moving into dwellings built by his own hands—"
"What nonsense is this?" the impulse Italian interrupted him.
"Bruno!" the Commander said. "Please be quiet…"
"Master, have mercy! I'm tired!"
Akim stuck his head out of the pit and looked pleadingly at his cruel "employer."
Apollinary Andreevich Kartashov, a student of the Saint Petersburg University, shifted his straw hat back and squinted at the sun. The sun was high up in the sky. Its rays were falling from the cloudless sky almost vertically. Everything living was hiding from the July heat, and only the tireless grasshoppers were chirping in the grass, and a goshawk was soaring in the blue sky with its wings outstretched.
"Fine," the student replied. "Climb out, we'll grab a bite to eat."
Pressing his black from the dirt and calloused hands on the edge of the pit, Akim climbed out. He walked up to the barrel with water for washing and scratched his head thoughtfully.
"Pour some on me, master," he whined. "Please."
Apollinary set the notebook where he'd been noting the dig sites aside, walked up to the barrel, filled a ladle with rotten swamp water, and started pouring it on the hands of his worker. The student's thoughts were far away, and he alternated between generous and sparing pours. Akim was grunting and rubbing his hands with tar soap, finally managing to get them washed. Then he took the ladle from the absentminded master, splashed a few handfuls at his own grimy face, quickly dried himself with a towel, and dashed over to the woven chest with provisions.
A piece of canvas soon had tomatoes and cucumbers, a bunch of green onions, baked potatoes, boiled eggs, and a bottle of milk. Akim was cutting rye bread with a scary-looking knife into thick slices. They were eating silently, crunching on the cucumbers and the onions, dipping the peeled potatoes in salt, only adding a few grains to the eggs. The milk gurgled, filling their clay mugs. Akim wiped his moustache with his sleeve, exhaled a "thank you," and lay back on the trampled grass. A moment later, he was producing a high-pitched snore like a child.
Apollinary wasn't in a hurry to wake his worker up. They'd gotten up early that morning, before the sunrise, so they could dig pits in the cool air. It was the peasant Akim who was digging, while the student Kartashov was sifting through the extracted soil through a wide-mesh sieve, picking through the wet marl with his sensitive fingers, and setting suspicious-looking stones aside. Over the three days of work, he had nearly forty pounds of rocks he suspected of having extraterrestrial origins. Apollinary's knowledge in meteoritics was insufficient to confidently separate meteorites from terrestrial rocks, so he intended to take the load to the Pulkovo Observatory to show Professor Savich.
It was hot. The grasshoppers were now quiet. The goshawk disappeared somewhere. The silence of the summer midday was broken only by Akim's snores and the jingling of the iron harness rings. Akim hadn't bothered to unharness the patient gelding, afraid of it wandering off. The worker preferred not to exert himself any more than necessary. Opening his hairy maw, he started snoring in a very non-childlike manner.
Apollinary covered Akim's head with a piece of canvas and wondered if he ought to get into his tent and take a nap until evening. It wasn't like they were going to get any work done in this heat. But the student fought down the laziness, picked up the barrel with drinking water, and dragged it to the gelding. They were going to have to refill their supplies tonight anyway…
The gelding was standing with its head bowed, only swishing its tail in annoyance, chasing away the horseflies. Seeing Kartashov, the poor horse snorted happily and reached out with its furry face. The student slammed the barrel on the ground, and immediately forgot about the gelding. He seemed to be drawn to the tarp with the "suspects" lined up on it.
Apollinary crouched and selected a conical stone. The stone was heavy, at least three pounds. Of all the "suspects," this one was the most suspicious. In the sun, the stone was clearly glinting with metal, and its sharp portion was pockmarked with parallel grooves, as if the stone had dug through something thick at great speed before finding rest in the ground.
Meteorites the originated in the interplanetary aether slammed into Earth's atmospheric shell and were heated to high temperatures from the air friction. Most of the meteorites burned down, but the largest ones reached the surface, sometimes falling apart into pieces. Apollinary hadn't chosen this useless, weed-covered field randomly. It had the shape of a bowl, ringed by a low wall. Almost like a lunar crater. The local peasants didn't like the field. There were rumors of a dragon with a fiery tail, of the demon Morningstar coming down from the sky to tempt the souls of Christians.
The student Kartashov had barely managed to talk the peasant Akim into helping him with the digging. After realizing that the master was kind and not greedy, and that he was looking for ordinary rocks rather than demonic gold, the peasant started treating the student indulgently. The master may be an odd one, but as long as he fed him and didn't force him to slave away too much, then it was fine. Apollinary was surprised at the change displayed by the initially timid man, but he tolerated his laziness and vagaries. The work was going slowly but surely. Even Kartashov's weak knowledge of meteoritics was enough to realize that a single half-baked expedition wouldn't be enough. Based on his finds, the "heavenly visitor" had been a large one, and a single cart would be enough to carry it all out.
Turning over the stone in his hands, Apollinary tried to mentally picture the path of the "heavenly visitor." Had it spent millions of years wandering through the aethereal space, or had it been only recently expelled from the maw of some extraterrestrial volcano? And if it was a volcano, which one? Mars was the closest. The newspapers were writing that an Italian named Schiaparelli had been able to make out some sort of "canali" on its surface, but there was nothing there about any volcanoes. Still, if Mars was very much like Earth, then there had to be volcanoes on it too. Maybe they were dead, dormant for eons, but once they'd also been actively erupting in lava and volcanic bombs.
Apollinary saw a mighty Martian Vesuvius in his mind's eye. Like a giant cannon, it was hurling red-hot cannonballs into the interplanetary abyss. He saw them slowly cool in the fierce cold of the void, then picked up by the pull of the Sun and start to move faster and faster towards it. And in that accelerating movement it ran into Earth's air shell. A strike! An explosion! And the flaming debris was falling on the thistle field, scaring cows, and sending a shepherd boy running and whispering the Lord's Prayer while crossing himself…
"Get up, master!.. Going to sleep through the Kingdom of Heaven…" a deep voice rumbled from somewhere above.
Kartashov opened his eyes, groggily staring up at a huge figure towering over him against the backdrop of the cooling steel of the skies. Only a moment later did Apollinary realize that it was only Akim.
"Time for dinner, master," Akim went on. "While you were sleeping, I started a fifth pit… Found something, take a look…"
The worker was handing his employer a shapeless object. Apollinary rose on his elbows, trying to figure out what it was. But either the student hadn't woken up fully yet, or the dim evening light was playing a joke on him. In any case, the amateur astronomer thought he saw the object in the peasant's hand covered in some gray slime. The slime was bulging like his grandmother's sauerkraut and crawling up Akim's arm, getting under his shirt sleeve.
"Come on, master, take it!" the worker said. "I still have to wash my hands, they're all dirty…"
"…And he was always surrounded by flowers, grass, trees that served him, protecting and raising him up! He was used to seeing them, smelling them, tasting them, listening to them. And they warned him of danger with the rustling of leaves, crackling of dry branches, and their silence made him feel calm and dream of a brighter future," Kartashov finished.
Silence fell on the Ares.
"What does it all mean?" Jeubin inquired.
"It means, guys, that it's time to complete our mission," a voice that hadn't been heard aboard the ship in a long time replied.
"Ed!" Bull shouted.
"Yes, sir!" Givens Jr. barked, appearing in the cockpit.
The crewmembers scattered all over the ship gathered. All of them wanted to get a look at the living and, based on his voice, cheerful Edward Givens. To touch him to make sure that he was flesh and blood, not a ghost. For a ghost, Edward was far too excited, his eyes were shining like those of a drunk, and a blade of grass was stuck in his beard — where had it come from? There was also a powerful wave of smell coming from Givens. It was a smell of something long-forgotten: the sun, sand, river water…
When the general excitement abated, Givens addressed Kartashov, "Andrei, would you please bring the postcard?"
"Postcard?"
"Yeah, the one with the Russian painting… Sokolov, was it?.. Your talisman."
"One second!"
Without asking for explanations, Kartashov dashed over to his cabin and immediately returned with the colorful postcard and handed it to Givens. He accepted Yana's gift and suddenly changed. The familiar features of astronaut Edward Givens Jr. took on an unnatural sculpture-like monumentality. A living statue, not a man. Then again, that was what a Caretaker was supposed to look like…
The Caretaker spent several moment examining the landscape: mysterious towers with sharp spires, two humans in clumsy spacesuits, and a huge alien planet glowing crimson overhead.
"Everything looks right," he said. "Mr. Sokolov was only wrong about one thing… Then again, it wasn't just him…"
The Caretaker passed his hand over the postcard, and the landscape on it changed. The structures of the advanced civilization on the surface of Phobos were now filled with the cheerful blue-and-green light instead of a menacingly crimson one. Exactly the way it was seen through the ship's windows.
"By the way, my friends," the Caretaker said. "Don't you think that this eggshell…" he swept the hand holding the postcard… "it a little cramped?"
The spacers, shocked at all the miracles, gave forced smiles.
"And stifling," the Caretaker went on. "Plus the resources… I have no idea how you're planning on landing on Mars…"
"Mars?!" Anikeev, Jeubin, and Piccirilli asked as one.
Bull exchanged glances with Kartashov, as if asking which of them was crazy. Andrei shook his head to indicate that none of them was.
"I'm not even talking about getting back to Earth," the Caretaker kept on talking and added in a very different one, "Quit staring at me like that! I'm not crazy. And neither are you. The program provides for transforming the Orion module into a ship meant for evacuating the Ares crew. As well as for conducting multiple orbital and landing operations."
"Whose program?" Bull inquired venomously.
"What do you mean 'transforming'?" the Commander asked.
"You'll find out in time," the Caretaker said. "My purpose is to transform the Orion. The process will begin in five minutes. You have time to get your personal effects and gather in the landing craft. The countdown has begun!"
"Attention!" Anikeev said. "Did you all hear? Emergency gathering at the Orion."
"Yes, but—" Bull began.
The Caretaker stopped him with an impatient gesture and said, "Let's leave all questions and explanations for later."
John Bull nodded glumly and floated to his cabin.
There was nothing for Kartashov to bring. His only valuable item—the postcard from his wife—was in the possession of Edward Givens, or rather the Caretaker. Andrei threw a farewell glance at the cockpit's consoles. What was happening felt like a crazy dream, but then this entire mad flight was like a dream. And who but Andrei Kartashov knew that dreams weren't always chaotic signals in the neurons. And if there was even the tiniest chance of ending on the green Mars for real, then he, an astrobiologist and contactee, has to take it.
"Andrei! Where are you?" the Commander called.
"Sixty seconds to the beginning of the transformation," the Caretaker announced.
Kartashov only then noticed that Edward was still next to him.
Are you coming? Andrei wanted to ask.
But the Caretaker pressed a finger to his lips, handed the postcard to Kartashov, and gently pushed him towards the Orion.