6
A major construction and mining concern called Zorken Consolidated, which had hollowed asteroids, dug tunnels, bridged chasms, and made domed cities out of craters across the central parts of the Solar System, had conducted a pilot survey and made test borings for a possible new space complex in the Tharsis region. The engineers and crew had then pulled out pending a decision on whether to take the project further. While the data were being evaluated, Hamil and Juanita had arrived with a small archeological and geological field team and set up camp to investigate the workings that Zorken’s survey team had left.
The Troy camp consisted of two trailers accommodating the scientists and a five-man work force, a three-compartment inflatable-frame cabin affording a messroom and work space, and a couple of shacks left by the Zorken workers. One of the latter was pressurized; the other was not, but provided a convenient shelter for power generators and an air recirculation plant. Now, in addition, there was the Juggernaut. The structures and vehicles were clustered at one end of a clear area amid boulders and rubble on an irregular shelf a hundred or so yards wide, halfway down the broken side of a mesa formation upon which the space complex would stand—like Cherbourg, at Lowell. The mesa side overlooked a crumpled valley floor rising to orange bluffs on the far side, which one day, perhaps, would hold a new metropolis. A road bulldozed out of the shallower lower slopes reached the shelf via four steeply-angled segments connected by reversing strips—the side was too steep to construct hairpins. From the ends of the shelf, narrower trails explored the shattered mesa sides, while in the center, a slanting cut carrying an open-cage elevator, again left by Zorken Consolidated, gave access to the mesa top. Above the far end of the shelf from the camp, an improbable rock formation the size of a small house, actually wider at the top than its base, propped by several lesser rocks wedged beneath, balanced on the very edge of the precipice. Dubbed the “Citadel,” it was, according to Hamil, another example of the work of one-time water, not an effect of wind erosion as the conventional explanation maintained.
Looking round and diminutive even in a Martian surface suit, Hamil led the way with Jean Graas, one of the geologists from the original group, along a trail that led on from where the left end of the shelf petered out among rockfalls and vertical blocks separated from the main face. Rising and falling around mounds of debris, skirting drops into gulleys forty or fifty feet below, it must have been treacherous initially, but had since been widened and cut for regular use, with rope handrails installed at the worst spots. Kieran and Katrina followed next, Trevany and Rudi behind them, and Dennis Curry, also from the original team, bringing up the rear. Dennis and Jean had met through their shared professional interests, and Kieran could see them ending up as a husband-wife team one day. Juanita and Harry had remained at camp to finish some chores. They already knew the layout and would see the newer finds later.
Hamil waved an arm to indicate the mass of the plateau looming above them. His voice came through the speaker in Kieran’s helmet. “The overburden above the site is over five hundred feet deep. Below the first couple of feet of surface, the layerings and grain alignments are characteristic of cementing by finer binding particles under the action of fluids, not wind deposition.” So they were looking at the aftermath of immense flooding, Kieran thought to himself, translating into everyday language. And comparatively recent at that, if the archeological finds were below.
“Where are the oceans that did it, eh?” Trevany said, puffing audibly on the circuit despite the low Martian gravity.
“Exactly, Walter.”
“How long will it be before the establishment back on Earth accepts it?” Jean Graas’s voice asked.
Rudi chimed in, sounding derisive. “What makes you think they ever will? They’ve got enough evidence staring them in the face of the same thing happening there, but they refuse to see it. Why should this be any different?”
“What evidence do you mean?” Kieran asked curiously.