The Season Of Passage Part 8

'But you do believe their remote probes discovered something that inspired project Gorbachev?' Jim asked.

'Yes,' the president said, growing impatient. 'What is your point, Professor?'

Jim, who had been pacing slowly, stopped and leaned against the back of his chair. 'I have traveled to all parts of this globe. It's funny, but when you live in the city, you think the whole world's crowded. It's only when you travel in the country, or sail across the ocean, that you realize the world is mostly deserted. I find it amazing that our probes, and the Russian probes, should each come across evidence of life. No, not just life, but extremely evolved life - an animal of some sort. Don't you agree, Mr President?'

'The evidence speaks for itself,' the president said.

Lauren interrupted. 'Do the experts who have studied these pictures feel the creatures who made the footprints are intelligent?'

'They consider it highly unlikely,' the president said. 'You all know the reasons why. There is absolutely no sign of civilized life on Mars.'

'There's the ca.n.a.ls,' Gary said with a laugh. They all laughed, except Jim.

'But the Martian environment is hostile,' Jim said. 'Biologists agree evolved life could not have developed there in the last few million years.'

The president spread his hands. 'I'm not a scientist. But I have learned over the years that the universe is a strange place that doesn't always follow scientific laws.'

'That is true,' Jim agreed, thoughtfully. He fingered his s.h.i.+rt pocket.

'Perhaps this species evolved when the conditions on Mars were much different,' Lauren suggested. 'Then adapted.'

Jim nodded. 'It's possible.' He let go of his s.h.i.+rt. 'We know our own climate was greatly different in the distant past.'

'You can see why you were only informed of these pictures now,' the president said. 'Earlier, and you would have been too preoccupied with constructing theories to concentrate on your program. But I hope you are satisfied, Professor, with what you have seen tonight. There is another issue that we need to discuss before I return to Was.h.i.+ngton. For the first time in history, we are dealing with an alien life form. The question arises: do we have the right to protect ourselves? What would you say, Major Wheeler?'

Gary answered immediately. 'If they are not intelligent creatures, sir, I would say yes. If they are intelligent, I would have to think about it.'

The president nodded. 'Professor Ranoth?'

Jim was displeased. 'Protection at what expense? If there are such creatures, they may not be intelligent now, but who can say about the future? Or even the past. It is their planet.'

Lauren respected Jim's answer, but did not like it. She had her own reasons, the most significant of which was that she didn't want to be eaten alive.

'What do you say, Dr Wagner?' the president asked.

'If they are only animals,' she said, 'and they attacked us first, I would feel justified in protecting myself.'

The president nodded. 'Well, I got two out three votes. My decision matches the majority. You are to protect yourselves. I will not send you to Mars to be killed.'

Jim sat down. 'We would be the invaders,' he said.

'Oh, Jim,' Gary said. 'Don't be so idealistic. If they're only animals and can't think, what difference does it make if we have to shoot a few?'

Jim's face flushed, and Lauren thought he might be angry. When he spoke next, however, he sounded only hurt. 'Maybe they can do other things besides think.'

'I am giving you an order,' the president said firmly. 'All of you. Defend yourselves at all costs. If they are intelligent, they will not attack you.'

'If they came here,' Jim asked, 'what would we do to them?'

"This debate can go on all night,' the president said. 'I don't want to have to keep repeating myself.'

Jim leaned back in his chair. He looked weary. 'Are you so sure, Mr President, that we can protect ourselves?'

For the first time since showing his slides, the president seemed to stand on firm ground. 'Yes,' he said. He motioned to Dean who carried the bulky suitcase to the pressurized drop. Gary accepted it on their side, compromising their quarantine for a second time. The threat of the footprints suddenly hit closer to home for Lauren. Inside the suitcase was a laser rifle. Lauren had seen pictures of experimental models, but none as compact as this one. Gary whistled with excitement and swung the weapon to his shoulder. Mostly silver in color, the rifle was stubby, with a short barrel that culminated in a translucent ring. Nevertheless, it looked heavy.

First Martians and now ray guns.

'Careful, Major,' the president said. 'I've been told it isn't charged, but let's play it safe.'

Gary's eyes glowed. 'What can it do?'

The president treated them to a movie this time instead of slides. The clip came out of Dean's attache case. It showed a white-coated technician pointing the laser at a four-foot-thick brick wall and simply blowing it away. They learned the rifle weighed thirty pounds, and had to be recharged after every three shots. Its battery was a high-temperature superconductor - especially designed to provide instant energy to power the laser. The Hawk carried four such weapons. That was twelve rounds, Lauren thought. She was already counting her ammunition. She wondered if the Martians moved in packs. The range of the weapon was over a quarter of a mile. Nothing could stand in its path, the president said, and live.

'Very impressive,' Jim muttered, when the film was finished.

'I know you are unhappy, Professor,' the president said, his voice gentle now, 'with all this talk of weapons. We only want you to be able to protect yourselves.' He stood to leave. 'Let us pray this is all a foolish caution. Now, if there are no more questions...'

'Is the Rover still operating?' Jim asked, standing, too.

'No,' the president said. 'How could it be?'

'Was it suddenly destroyed?' Jim asked.

'We don't know,' the president said.

'I a.s.sumed when you showed us these slides that you believed whatever had made the footprints had tampered with the Rover,' Jim said.

'I never said that,' the president replied. He added, 'Your first landing will be near the Rover. You'll see for yourself what became of it.'

Jim pointed once more to the slides in the projector. 'May I examine these for a few more minutes?'

'Certainly,' the president said. 'For as long as you like -tonight. Anything else I can do for you, Professor, before I say goodbye?'

Jim smiled, his usual warmth surfacing. 'Tell me what became of Carl Bensk. But I guess I'll have to wait to know that. Forgive my many questions, Mr President. It's a tiresome habit of mine.'

Jim was one of the quietest people Lauren knew.

'I appreciate your alertness,' the president said pleasantly, perhaps because he was leaving. They all stood to say goodbye, hearing the usual. Farewell, G.o.d bless you, best wishes, and don't get killed. Then the president was gone, with Dean trailing behind him.

Lauren took a breath. 'Whew. That was heavy.'

'Martians!' Gary exclaimed. 'What did I tell you?' He patted the laser rifle. 'Would you look at this thing, Doc'

'Just remember, I'm not that brick wall,' Lauren said. She touched the barrel, and felt the comforting hardness of its cold metal.

'May I turn out the lights?' Jim asked. He stood beside the projector. 'I want to see these footprints before the sand covers them over.'

'Sure,' Gary said. He set down the laser. 'Boy, I have to hand it to you, Jim. You were really going at him. I think he spilled a few things he hadn't intended.'

Jim shook his head and flipped off the lights. The Martian landscape reappeared on the screen. 'The only thing he spilled was his confusion. He couldn't have answered any questions if he wanted to.'

The silence they had experienced at their first glimpse returned, as the red world held their attention. Lauren wondered how she had missed the footprints to begin with. They appeared obvious now, yet still mysterious, arousing a powerful curiosity in her, seemingly calling to her. Come, Lori, follow my trail. I will lead you to places you never dreamed of. It was difficult to turn away.

'The more you look at them,' Gary said, 'it's weird - the more you see.'

'Yeah,' Lauren whispered. i 'The more you look,' Jim agreed. 'The president must have looked at them for a long time. I'm sure they all did.'

Lauren tore her eyes away and turned to Jim. She studied his ascetic profile in the crimson light. When she had gone to fetch him after wrestling with Gary, she had found him sitting with his head down on his desk, in the dark. When she had turned on the light, she had found his eyes red.

'What are you thinking, Jim?' she asked now. 'Why were you asking those questions?'

He appeared not to hear her at first, and the mannerism was very much like Jennifer's. He stared at the alien terrain as if he were actually there, planting his own feet in each of the footprints, following the beast. At last, however, he sighed and looked away. 'I was only thinking about the Russians, Lauren. They probably brought lasers with them, too.'

'Oh,' Lauren said. Then the footprints called to her once more, and she looked their way. They were definitely larger than a human's, and the way they spread at the end, it was hard to think of toes, and not claws. A dark voice crossed her mind, the voice of a nightmare she still hadn't forgotten.

Come, Lori. Come.

NINE.

The s.p.a.ce shuttle waited for his woman, three miles away on the launch pad, bathed in the soft glow of the pre-dawn sky and the harsh beams of a dozen searchlights. It pointed at the sky like a multiheaded spear, and Terry hated the sight of it. Somebody of importance had decided that he and Jennifer were only to be given a few minutes to say goodbye to Lauren. Since four in the morning he had stood with Jennifer near the entrance to the isolation complex. It was now five-thirty, half an hour before Lauren would leave the complex and board the shuttle, but two and a half hours before the shuttle would actually take off. The excitement was killing him, and making him want to kill the people who wouldn't let him inside.

Terry did not feel well. He had an incredible case of heartburn, which was odd because he hadn't eaten in the last twenty-four hours. The ulcer he had considered getting for several years was making a strong case for itself this morning. He hugged Jennifer against his chest. They were surrounded by people, reporters like himself, and important people like his fiancee. Cameras stared at Jennifer and him to record how brave loved ones could be. It was all bulls.h.i.+t, he felt like crying. Officially, he was on a.s.signment for his paper, but he wasn't taking any notes. A tall fence separated them from the general public. On the other side, mixed in with the moms and pops and kiddies from across the country, was a group of hecklers. They were members of a cult Terry was vaguely familiar with - The Paul. Paul himself wasn't around at the moment, but his disciples were doing their best. They chanted slogans and carried banners questioning the integrity of the mission. Apparently they believed that the world was about to come to an end; that NASA was purposely inviting the wrath of the cosmos down upon mankind with their expedition to Mars. One banner read: only servants of the beast do the beasts bidding. Terry was uncertain of The Paul's origin, but their theology seemed to revolve around a morbid interpretation of Revelations. Had he felt better, they probably would have angered him. As it was, they just made him feel more miserable.

Jennifer pointed at the demonstrators. 'Are they bad people, Terry?' she asked.

Her voice was grave, as was the expression on her face. Those were her first words in a while. Terry hadn't felt much like conversation, either. 'No,' he said. 'They're just people who have been misled by a man more powerful than themselves.'

'They're saying bad things about what Lauren's doing.'

'Because they're afraid. They don't know that it's good for man to explore new planets. They're afraid of things changing.'

'Would they be afraid if Lauren was going somewhere else beside Mars?' Jennifer asked.

'Yes. It wouldn't matter to them.'

'Are you sure?'

'Yes,' Terry said.

'Positive?'

'Yes.'

Jennifer nodded, but appeared unconvinced. The previous night had been dreadful for her. The rooms Terry had booked had been unavailable when they arrived in Florida. Cape Canaveral was jammed. Only by begging and bribing a motel manager was he able to get a seedy room in a place thirty miles away. They had been there a week now. He had slept on the floor while Jennifer tossed and turned on the bed. Her nightmares had returned in force. Neither of them had told Lauren, although Terry suspected she knew. Sleep was a time of battle for Jennifer. He had never seen anything like it. She jerked uncontrollably, mumbled words and phrases in nonsense language, and even had something akin to asthma attacks. Yet it was seldom she actually woke up, though morning always found her drained. When he asked her what she dreamed about, she just shook her head and said she couldn't remember. For some reason, he didn't believe her.

Just prior to meeting Terry, Lauren had taken Jennifer to a psychiatrist in Houston to try to discover the source of her nightmares. It was the doctor's belief that Jennifer suffered from guilt over her parents' dying so close to the time of her birth, which Terry felt was a stab in the dark. Jennifer had hardly reached the age when she could talk when her mom and her dad had had their car accident. The psychiatrist had tried hypnotizing Jennifer, and had been unsuccessful, which had surprised the doctor; children were notoriously easy to hypnotize. In fact, Lauren, who had witnessed the procedure, had said the psychiatrist ended up accidentally hypnotizing himself.

'He sat right in front of Jenny, using a pendulum and talking real slow and soft, counting down from a hundred to one, making a variety of relaxing suggestions. He did this for about twenty minutes, trying to put her under, but nothing happened. Jennifer just sat there with her eyes closed and listened. Finally he asked her to open her eyes. I thought he was giving up. It was then he suddenly jerked in his seat, as if he had been shocked with electricity. His head fell on his chest and he pa.s.sed out. For a moment I thought he'd had a heart attack and died. I had a hard time waking him. I think Jennifer scared him. He didn't want to see us again.'

Terry thought of last night and a s.h.i.+ver ran up his spine. For hours he had lain listening to Jennifer convulse in her sleep, when suddenly she had grown still, and her breathing had softened. With relief, he began to doze - he couldn't remember when he had felt so exhausted. But when he was on the verge of slipping off, he heard Jennifer start to weep, the sound so full of anguish he could hardly bear it. He got up and sat beside her on the bed. At first he a.s.sumed she must be awake, but when he called her name she didn't answer. For a long time he stayed near her, smoothing her long hair, wiping off the tears that rolled over her cheeks. Eventually she began to quiet, and he moved to lie down again, but she grabbed his arm. She was still unconscious, but she gripped him with the strength of a full-grown man. Then she spoke softly, in a voice totally unlike her own. It had such depth and resonance to it, it didn't even sound human.

'They will come,' she said. 'They are waiting. For so long, they have waited.'

Then she released him, and he forgot any idea of waking her. He had hurried back to his spot on the floor and had buried his head under the blanket.

A couple of hours later they had dressed and come to the isolation complex, where they had been told to wait in the dark. Terry had not asked Jennifer about who was coming. He was sure she wouldn't remember the nightmare, and he didn't really want to hear about it, anyway. He was feeling kind of superst.i.tious these days. He supposed having a fiancee going to Mars could do that to a fellow.

A man the size of a gorilla approached. He was a security officer. There were a lot of them about. 'Are you Terry Hayes and Jennifer Wagner?' he asked.

'Yeah,' Terry said. 'Can we go in now?'

'Let me see your identification.'

Terry presented the two badges NASA had issued for visiting Lauren. The man inspected them closely.

'Please, sir?' Jennifer whispered.

The man looked down at her for the longest time. Then he thrust back their I.D.'s. 'Come this way,' he said.

Lauren was beginning to despair of ever seeing Jennifer and Terry. The government was taking no chances with the big secret. As if she really was going to tell her fiance and sister about the footprints.

"Hey, Terry, Jenny, guess what the president told us last night?'

Those people - whoever they were - were paranoid. Gary had tried to call Kathy in California, but had found their outside lines blocked. They weren't on TV as Gary had envisioned. They were alone in the conference room, wearing white flight suits. The hall on the other side of the gla.s.s was empty, sealed off and guarded by men who looked to be CIA agents - the president's own boys. Gary was disgusted. He had explained to Jim that he had to call a girl in California, and Jim had gone to his room and returned with a lunch pail full of tools. Now he was taking the video phone apart, with Gary leaning over his shoulder. There was nothing else to do. The time had been earmarked for visiting with friends and relatives. Along with Jennifer and Terry, Gary's parents were stranded outside. But Jim, it seemed, had no one waiting to say goodbye to him.

Jim had the video phone's guts exposed. Apparently he knew a way to circ.u.mvent the main switchboard. There wasn't much that Jim didn't know.

T-minus two hours and twenty-nine minutes,' the voice through the overhead speakers said.

'Half an hour,' Gary said, holding back a circuit board for Jim.

'Probably less,' Jim muttered. He took his soldering gun and picked up a microchip.

Lauren sighed. 'Why don't they let them in?'

Jim glanced up from his operation. 'You'll see them, Lauren, don't worry. You're not going anywhere until you do. I'm not.'

'd.a.m.n right,' Gary agreed. 'We'll go on strike.'

Lauren nodded without much hope. 'Thanks.'

Two minutes later Jim sat back from the disemboweled phone. 'I can trip it now,' he said to Gary.