Whittaker had taken him first to the administrative center, the tallest building in the city. If one stood on its roof, one could almost reach up and touch the dome floating above. There was nothing very exciting about Admin. It might have been any office building on Earth, with its rows of desks and typewriters and filing cabinets.
Main Air was much more interesting. This, truly, was the heart of Port Lowell; if it ever ceased to function, the city and all those it held would soon be dead. Gibson had been somewhat vague about the manner in which the settlement obtained its oxygen. At one time he had been under the impression that it was extracted from the surrounding air, having forgotten that even such scanty atmosphere as Mars possessed contained less than one per cent of the gas.
Mayor Whittaker had pointed to the great heap of red sand that had been bulldozed in from outside the dome. Everyone called it “sand,” but it had little resemblance to the familiar sand of Earth. A complex mixture of metallic oxides, it was nothing less than the debris of a world that had rusted to death.
“All the oxygen we need’s in these ores,” said Whittaker, kicking at the caked powder. “And just about every metal you can think of. We’ve had one or two strokes of luck on Mars: this is the biggest.”
He bent down and picked up a lump more solid than the rest.
“I’m not much of a geologist,” he said, “but look at this. Pretty, isn’t it? Mostly iron oxide, they tell me. Iron isn’t much use, of course, but the other metals are. About the only one we can’t get easily direct from the sand is magnesium. The best source of that’s the old sea bed; there are some salt flats a hundred meters thick out in Xanthe and we just go and collect when we need it.”
They walked into the low, brightly lit building, towards which a continual flow of sand was moving on a conveyor belt. There was not really a great deal to see, and though the engineer in charge was only too anxious to explain just what was happening, Gibson was content merely to learn that the ores were cracked in electric furnaces, the oxygen drawn off, purified and compressed, and the various metallic messes sent on for more complicated operations. A good deal of water was also produced here— almost enough for the settlement’s needs, though other sources were available as well.
“Of course,” said Mayor Whittaker, “in addition to storing the oxygen we’ve got to keep the air pressure at the correct value and to get rid of the CO2. You realize, don’t you, that the dome’s kept up purely by the internal pressure and hasn’t any other support at all?”
“Yes,” said Gibson. “I suppose if that fell off the whole thing would collapse like a deflated balloon.”
“Exactly. We keep 150 millimeters pressure in summer, a little more in winter. That gives almost the same oxygen pressure as in Earth’s atmosphere. And we remove the CO2 simply by letting plants do the trick. We imported enough for this job, since the Martian plants don’t go in for photosynthesis.”
“Hence the hypertrophied sunflowers in Oxford Circus, I suppose.”
“Well, those are intended to be more ornamental than functional. I’m afraid they’re getting a bit of a nuisance; I’ll have to stop them from spraying seeds all over the city, or whatever it is that sunflowers do. Now let’s walk over and look at the farm.”
The name was a singularly misleading one for the big food-production plant filling Dome Three. The air was quite humid here, and the sunlight was augmented by batteries of fluorescent tubes so that growth could continue day and night. Gibson knew very little about hydroponic farming and so was not really impressed by the figures which Mayor Whittaker proudly poured into his ear. He could, however, appreciate that one of the greatest problems was meat production, and admired the ingenuity which had partly overcome this by extensive tissue-culture in great vats of nutrient fluid.
“It’s better than nothing,” said the Mayor a little wistfully. “But what I wouldn’t give for a genuine lamb-chop! The trouble with natural meat production is that it takes up so much space and we simply can’t afford it. However, when the new dome’s up we’re going to start a little farm with a few sheep and cows. The kids will love it— they’ve never seen any animals, of course.”
This was not quite true, as Gibson was soon to discover: Mayor Whittaker had momentarily overlooked two of Port Lowell’s best-known residents.
By the end of the tour Gibson began to suffer from slight mental indigestion. The mechanics of life in the city were so complicated, and Mayor Whittaker tried to show him everything. He was quite thankful when the trip was over and they returned to the Mayor’s home for dinner.
“I think that’s enough for one day,” said Whittaker, “but I wanted to show you round because we’ll all be busy tomorrow and I won’t be able to spare much time. The Chief’s away, you know, and won’t be back until Thursday, so I’ve got to look after everything.”
“Where’s he gone?” asked Gibson, out of politeness rather than real interest.
“Oh, up to Phobos,” Whittaker replied, with the briefest possible hesitation. “As soon as he gets back he’ll be glad to see you.”
The conversation had then been interrupted by the arrival of Mrs. Whittaker and family, and for the rest of the evening Gibson was compelled to talk about Earth. It was his first, but not by any means his last, experience of the insatiable interest which the colonists had in the home planet. They seldom admitted it openly, pretending to a stubborn indifference about the “old world” and its affairs. But their questions, and above all their rapid reactions to terrestrial criticisms and comments, belied this completely.
It was strange to talk to children who had never known Earth, who had been born and had spent all their short lives under the shelter of the great domes. What, Gibson wondered, did Earth mean to them? Was it any more real than the fabulous lands of fairy tales? All they knew of the world from which their parents had emigrated was at second hand, derived from books and pictures. As far as their own senses were concerned, Earth was just another star.
They had never known the coming of the seasons. Outside the dome, it was true, they could watch the long winter spread death over the land as the Sun descended in the northern sky, could see the strange plants wither and perish, to make way for the next generation when spring returned. But no hint of this came through the protecting barriers of the city. The engineers at the power plant simply threw in more heater circuits and laughed at the worst that Mars could do.
Yet these children, despite their completely artificial environment, seemed happy and well, and quite unconscious of all the things which they had missed. Gibson wondered just what their reactions would be if they ever came to Earth. It would be a very interesting experiment, but so far none of the children born on Mars were old enough to leave their parents.
The lights of the city were going down when Gibson left the Mayor’s home after his first day on Mars. He said very little as Whittaker walked back with him to the hotel, for his mind was too full of jumbled impressions. In the morning he would start to sort them out, but at the moment his chief feeling was that the greatest city on Mars was nothing more than an over-mechanized village.
Gibson had not yet mastered the intricacies of the Martian calendar, but he knew that the week-days were the same as on Earth and that Monday followed Sunday in the usual way. (The months also had the same names, but were fifty to sixty days in length.) When he left the hotel at what he thought was a reasonable hour, the city appeared quite deserted. There were none of the gossiping groups of people who had watched his progress with such interest on the previous day. Everyone was at work in office, factory, or lab, and Gibson felt rather like a drone who had strayed into a particularly busy hive.
He found Mayor Whittaker beleaguered by secretaries and talking into two telephones at once. Not having the heart to intrude, Gibson tiptoed away and started a tour of exploration himself. There was not, after all, any great danger of becoming lost. The maximum distance he would travel in a straight line was less than half a kilometer. It was not t
he kind of exploration of Mars he had ever imagined in any of his books….
So he had passed his first few days in Port Lowell wandering round and asking questions during working hours, spending the evenings with the families of Mayor Whittaker or other members of the senior staff. Already he felt as if he had lived here for years. There was nothing new to be seen; he had met everyone of importance, up to and including the Chief Executive himself.
But he knew he was still a stranger; he had really seen less than a thousand millionth of the whole surface of Mars. Beyond the shelter of the dome, beyond the crimson hills, over the edge of the emerald plain— all the rest of this world was mystery.
CHAPTER
9
Well, it’s certainly nice to see you all again,” said Gibson, carrying the drinks carefully across from the bar. “Now I suppose you’re going to paint Port Lowell red. I presume the first move will be to contact the local girl friends?”
“That’s never very easy,” said Norden. “They will get married between trips and you’ve got to be tactful. By the way, George, what’s happened to Miss Margaret Mackinnon?”
“You mean Mrs. Henry Lewis,” said George. “Such a fine baby boy, too.”
“Has she called it John?” asked Bradley, not particularly sotto voce.
“Oh, well,” sighed Norden, “I hope she’s saved me some of the wedding cake. Here’s to you, Martin.”
“And to the Ares,” said Gibson, clinking glasses. “I hope you’ve put her together again. She looked in a pretty bad way the last time I saw her.”
Norden chuckled.
“Oh, that! No, we’ll leave all the plating off until we reload. The rain isn’t likely to get in!”
“What do you think of Mars, Jimmy?” asked Gibson. “You’re the only other new boy here besides myself.”
“I haven’t seen much of it yet,” Jimmy replied cautiously. “Everything seems rather small, though.”
Gibson spluttered violently and had to be patted on the back.
“I remember your saying just the opposite when we were on Deimos. But I guess you’ve forgotten it. You were slightly drunk at the time.”
“I’ve never been drunk,” said Jimmy indignantly.
“Then I compliment you on a first-rate imitation: it deceived me completely. But I’m interested in what you say, because that’s exactly how I felt after the first couple of days, as soon as I’d seen all there was to look at inside the dome. There’s only one cure— you have to go outside and stretch your legs. I’ve had a couple of short walks around, but now I’ve managed to grab a Sand Flea from Transport. I’m going to gallop up into the hills tomorrow. Like to come?”
Jimmy’s eyes glistened.
“Thanks very much— I’d love to.”
“Hey, what about us?” protested Norden.
“You’ve done it before,” said Gibson. “But there’ll be one spare seat, so you can toss for it. We’ve got to take an official driver; they won’t let us go out by ourselves with one of their precious vehicles, and I suppose you can hardly blame them.”
Mackay won the toss, whereupon the others immediately explained that they didn’t really want to go anyway.
“Well, that settles that,” said Gibson. “Meet me at Transport Section, Dome Four, at 10 tomorrow. Now I must be off. I’ve got three articles to write— or at any rate one article with three different titles.”
The explorers met promptly on time, carrying the full protective equipment which they had been issued on arrival but so far had found no occasion to use. This comprised the headpiece, oxygen cylinders, and air purifier— all that was necessary out of doors on Mars on a warm day— and the heat-insulating suit with its compact power cells. This could keep one warm and comfortable even when the temperature outside was more than a hundred below. It would not be needed on this trip, unless an accident to the Flea left them stranded a long way away from home.
The driver was a tough young geologist who claimed to have spent as much time outside Port Lowell as in it. He looked extremely competent and resourceful, and Gibson felt no qualms at handing his valuable person into his keeping.
“Do these machines ever break down outside?” he asked as they climbed into the Flea.
“Not very often. They’ve got a terrific safety factor and there’s really very little to go wrong. Of course, sometimes a careless driver gets stuck, but you can usually haul yourself out of anything with the winch. There have only been a couple of cases of people having to walk home in the last month.”
“I trust we won’t make a third,” said Mackay, as the vehicle rolled into the lock.
“I shouldn’t worry about that,” laughed the driver, waiting for the outer door to open. “We won’t be going far from base, so we can always get back even if the worst comes to the worst.”
With a surge of power they shot through the lock and out of the city. A narrow road had been cut through the low, vivid vegetation— a road which circled the port and from which other highways radiated to the nearby mines, to the radio station and observatory on the hills, and to the landing ground on which even now the Ares’ freight was being unloaded as the rockets ferried it down from Deimos.
“Well,” said the driver, halting at the first junction. “It’s all yours. Which way do we go?”
Gibson was struggling with a map three sizes too big for the cabin. Their guide looked at it with scorn.
“I don’t know where you got hold of that,” he said. “I suppose Admin gave it to you. It’s completely out of date, anyway. If you’ll tell me where you want to go I can take you there without bothering about that thing.”
“Very well,” Gibson replied meekly. “I suggest we climb up into the hills and get a good look round. Let’s go to the Observatory.”
The Flea leapt forward along the narrow road and the brilliant green around them merged into a featureless blur.
“How fast can these things go?” asked Gibson, when he had climbed out of Mackay’s lap.
“Oh, at least a hundred on a good road. But as there aren’t any good roads on Mars, we have to take it easy. I’m doing sixty now. On rough ground you’ll be lucky to average half that.”
“And what about range?” said Gibson, obviously still a little nervous.
“A good thousand kilometers on one charge, even allowing pretty generously for heating, cooking, and the rest. For really long trips we tow a trailer with spare power cells. The record’s about five thousand kilometers; I’ve done three before now, prospecting out in Argyre. When you’re doing that sort of thing, you arrange to get supplies dropped from the air.”
Though they had now been traveling for no more than a couple of minutes, Port Lowell was already falling below the horizon. The steep curvature of Mars made it very difficult to judge distances, and the fact that the domes were now half concealed by the curve of the planet made one imagine that they were much larger objects at a far greater distance than they really were.
Soon afterwards, they began to reappear as the Flea started climbing towards higher ground. The hills above Port Lowell were less than a kilometer high, but they formed a useful break for the cold winter winds from the south, and gave vantage points for radio station and observatory.
They reached the radio station half an hour after leaving the city. Feeling it was time to do some walking, they adjusted their masks and dismounted from the Flea, taking turns to go through the tiny collapsible airlock.
The view was not really very impressive. To the north, the domes of Port Lowell floated like bubbles on an emerald sea. Over to the west Gibson could just catch a glimpse of crimson from the desert which encircled the entire planet. As the crest of the hills still lay a little above him, he could not see southwards, but he knew that the green band of vegetation stretched for several hundred kilometers until it petered out into the Mare Erythraeum. There were hardly any plants here on the hilltop, and he presumed that this was due to the absence of moisture.
He walked over
to the radio station. It was quite automatic, so there was no one he could buttonhole in the usual way, but he knew enough about the subject to guess what was going on. The giant parabolic reflector lay almost on its back, pointing a little east of the zenith— pointing to Earth, sixty million kilometers Sunwards. Along its invisible beam were coming and going the messages that linked these two worlds together. Perhaps at this very moment one of his own articles was flying Earthwards— or one of Ruth Goldstein’s directives was winging its way towards him.
Mackay’s voice, distorted and feeble in this thin air, made him turn round.
“Someone’s coming in to land down there— over on the right.”
With some difficulty, Gibson spotted the tiny arrowhead of the rocket moving swiftly across the sky, racing in on a free glide just as he had done a week before. It banked over the city and was lost behind the domes as it touched down on the landing strip. Gibson hoped it was bringing in the remainder of his luggage, which seemed to have taken a long time to catch up with him.
The Observatory was about five kilometers farther south, just over the brow of the hills, where the lights of Port Lowell would not interfere with its work. Gibson had half expected to see the gleaming domes which on Earth were the trademarks of the astronomers, but instead the only dome was the small plastic bubble of the living quarters. The instruments themselves were in the open, though there was provision for covering them up in the very rare event of bad weather.
Everything appeared to be completely deserted as the Flea approached. They halted beside the largest instrument— a reflector with a mirror which, Gibson guessed, was less than a meter across. It was an astonishingly small instrument for the chief observatory on Mars. There were two small refractors, and a complicated horizontal affair which Mackay said was a mirror-transit— whatever that might be. And this, apart from the pressurized dome, seemed to be about all.