Kieran stared out from the bench seat to the right of the Juggernaut’s driver’s station at the chutes of red-brown sand and scree funneling down between crumbling buttresses of scarp to the right, and then spreading out like river deltas to invade the edge of the plain that they were following. From the correct angle, with nothing familiar to set the scale, the formation would have looked just like a child’s sandcastle yielding to the first brushes of the incoming tide, or the side of a storm gully in southern California. So were these the scars and deposits of water action, too—immense, surging, scouring bodies of water in the process of being torn or boiled off the planet? Mars had possessed oceans once, and a different atmosphere, Walter said. Theories and arguments abounded as to where they had gone and why, but the truth was that nobody knew. If conditions had once been so very different, what else might have been very different?
Harry Quong was sprawled in the c-com station behind the two front seats, staring at an infinity somewhere ahead and lost in thoughts of his own. It was Rudi Magelsberg’s turn to take a spell at driving. Kieran had guessed initially that he was of German origin somewhere along the line, but Rudi said it was Austrian—not that things like that meant very much in the fluctuating patchwork of Martian society. All the same, he looked the Nordic part, with short-cropped blond hair, almost white, a lofty brow, lean, high-boned features, and a pointy chin and mouth. Right now, he was wearing white shorts that revealed tanned legs generously endowed with blond hair, a bright red shirt, a floppy bush hat, and gold-rimmed sunglasses. Kieran could see why his drive for getting things done and obsession with doing them right could make him a valuable asset on a scientific expedition. But at the same time, the “right” way in Rudi’s vocabulary tended to mean his way. Kieran had seen from times spent in spacecraft how inability to yield on the small things could prove the detonator in a confined community. So far, however, apart from his initial coolness toward Kieran’s credentials, there had been nothing to suggest a future problem in the bud. Kieran could only hope things stayed that way. He had weathered worse if they didn’t.
“So, is this your first time on Mars, Mr. Thane?” Rudi asked, keeping his eyes ahead as the Juggernaut lurched and swayed over sand and rubble. The thought flitted through Kieran’s mind that maybe he should have his answers printed as a handout for every new person he met.
“No.” (So what brings you here this time?) “I’m visiting an old friend. But also thinking it’s maybe time to get myself a place here, too.” (Any particular area in mind?) “Probably somewhere in Lowell center.”
“It looks quite acceptable from what I have seen. But I don’t pretend to have seen that much. Did you know that Lowell has become famous in the last several days—at least within a certain specialized scientific circle? Or maybe I should say, notorious.”
“Has it?” Kieran feigned surprise. “Why? What’s happened?”
“Apparently, one of the sunsider research operations thought they’d solved the teleportation problem that’s been talked about for years. They actually put a human through the process—one of the scientists. At first everybody thought it had worked. He was supposedly acting normally and everything. Then, suddenly, half his memories disappeared, and he went crazy. I never thought it could work, anyway.”
“I wouldn’t walk into a thing like that, even if they said it did,” Harry Quong drawled from behind.
“How did you hear about it?” Kieran asked Rudi curiously.
“I have a brother who’s a financial exec with one of the big trans-system carriers. He says there’s panic in all their boardrooms right now. Me? I’ll stay with archeology.”
“Interesting,” Kieran commented.
The smell of cooking had begun wafting through the open bulkhead door from the galley, at the forward end of the center compartment immediately behind the cab. “Ah, suddenly I’m hungry,” Rudi declared. “Do you need to eat now, Harry? Or can you take over while I go back and get something?”