Stony Flats was the new, hardly-more-inspired name for what had once been designated Marineris Central 2, one of the original bases from the first phase of manned landings and consolidation on Mars. Since then, the early huddle of domes and dugouts had grown to become a collection of transport depots, maintenance hangars and freight buildings clustered beside an airfield that had a rail link to the Cherbourg spaceport. This was where off-planet shipments through Cherbourg connected to the surface air, road, and rail network. Kieran called ahead and was directed along a ravine to one of several truck-size airlock doors built into the base of the escarpment on one side. Above the locks, the slope was cut into terraces of building frontages with windows looking toward the airfield, where long-winged, gooneybird-like soarers and thrust-assisted STOL/VTOL transports came and went, stirring up flustered clouds of pink Martian dust.
After negotiating the double-lock doors, Kieran drove into a brightly lit, concrete-walled cavern containing a number of ground vehicles with people working around them in the main floor space, a workshop area to one side, and a row of enclosed offices on the other. Large double doors opened through from the center of the wall at the rear. He identified the gray-headed figure of Walter Trevany, wearing dirt-stained olive coveralls, standing with a man and a woman, both younger, in front of a large, square-built truck suggesting a military version of a miniature mobile home or RV. Its side doors were open, and a litter of boxes and equipment lay around outside. Trevany watched the Kodiak draw to a halt and came over as Kieran got out to be greeted by the noise of riveting from the far side and the intermittent flashes of welding in a screened-off corner of the workshop area.
“Dr. Thane . . . ? Ah, yes. I remember your face now.”
“Hi.”
“You found us all right, then?”
“No problem. Your directions were fine.”
“Oh . . . You’re not alone.” There was uneasiness on Trevany’s face as he stooped to peer into the car.
“Stay,” Kieran told Guinness, who was watching him inquiringly, ready to get out. Guinness emitted a resigned snort, shook his head, and settled back down. Trevany looked relieved. “Not keen on dogs?” Kieran said.
“Oh, I don’t mind them. In fact, I’ve had a few. But in here . . .” Trevany swept an arm to indicate the surroundings. “Machines and things. People would get nervous.”
“I understand.” Kieran stood looking over the vehicle with interest. Trevany had described it over the phone as a mobile lab. There were a lot of electronics inside, a desk extending from one wall with chairs facing on either side, a work area with bench space, closets, tool and instrument racks.
“I’m only recently in from Earth,” Trevany said, following Kieran’s gaze. “Which is why I’ve been staying at the Oasis. I’m joining some colleagues who have been setting up a base camp out in the highlands at Tharsis, as I think I said. This lab will be leaving for there in the next few days.”
Kieran nodded. The region lay about nine hundred miles to the west of Lowell City, a little north of the equator. “What are you up to out there?” he asked curiously.
“Are you much into Martian geology?”
“Some.”
“Basically, we’re part of a revisionist school that’s challenging the orthodox thinking about Mars and its history. It all got bogged down in the same dogma that held everything up on Earth for a couple of centuries: the conviction of slow, uniform change—that everything can be explained by the same processes we see going on today, at the same rates, if you extrapolate them back far enough.”
“So I take it that you and others in the business don’t think so,” Kieran said.
Trevany shook his head. “Everywhere you look, the evidence is staring you in the face that the whole planet was torn up by violent upheaval in the recent past—tens of thousands of years, thousands maybe; not billions. It used to have oceans and a denser atmosphere. What happened to them? Even by the orthodox establishment’s own figures for meteorite infall, wind erosion, and dust transport, the water channels and most of the craters should have been erased long ago. They’re new, not even begun to be worn down in a lot of places. Even the place we’re in right now is part of a floodplain. And look at the systems of crustal cracks and fissures. Something jolted the whole planet, maybe wrenched it into a different orbit.”