So what did it mean? If a close affinity with constructions back on Earth were confirmed, had some lost alien race visited both worlds in the distant past, either from elsewhere in the Solar System or from some other system entirely, and left their enigmatic signatures at enormous expense of effort for purposes yet to be divined? Could they, as some believed, have been the progenitors or creators of the human race? Alternatively, might they have been some advanced but forgotten race of Earth itself, perished in a calamity of interplanetary proportions that had erased virtually all traces of their existence? Or even from Mars, wiped out along with its continents and its oceans? The research that would grow from these beginnings would continue possibly for lifetimes. How much of the planet might eventually be involved in what might eventually be turned up was for anyone to guess. But already, Kieran could see that in terms of additions and revisions to human knowledge, the return over the years was going to be incalculable.
“How about that, Rudi?” Katrina asked with a hint of piquancy. “Does it remind you of any pillow lavas that you’ve seen?” She winked at Kieran through her visor.
“Hm . . .” Rudi answered. He shuffled awkwardly in his suit. “It appears we have a lot of work ahead of us. Priceless work, I might add. If my guess is right, this will overturn the conventional school completely.”
“Then let’s bear that in mind when we set to it,” Hamil said to them all. “And think about science. Leave all the petty rivalries and jealousies back where they belong, eh? That was what people came out here to get away from.”
7
The flymobile stood in the shed that Solomon Leppo and his buddy, Casey Phibb, rented as a garage and workshop in the tangle of commercial and industrial premises lying along Gorky Avenue toward the terminal domes at Wuhan. It had previously belonged to the son of a wealthy agricultural grower who operated one of the roofed-crater farms. The son hadn’t been able to decide whether he wanted a racing machine or a party wagon for his friends. As a consequence, after commissioning a series of unusual and expensive modifications, he had ended up with a curious combination of both that featured a six-seat basic layout with fan-ram hybrid supercompressors, stressed double bubble mainframe, stall-sensing geometry modifiers, and twist-wing aerodynamics. Then he had crashed it, expensively and spectacularly, and as a result of his being either scared off from further sporting ambitions by the experience, or prevailed upon to settle for a lifestyle more agreeable to friends, relatives, and insurance companies, the wreck found its way to the rear yard of Alazahad Machine.
There, it posed Mahom with something of a problem: too heavy and commodious to interest serious racing enthusiasts, yet unconventional enough to dissuade the practical buyers—was its incongruous mix of specifications worth the investment of refurbishing in the hope of an unlikely sale? Mahom had just about written it off for parts, when Solomon Leppo announced that it would be ideal for a project he had been conceiving and offered to take it off Mahom’s hands in return for a weekend’s overtime. Shrugging, mystified, but never surprised by anything that the human animal might do or desire, Mahom had agreed, happy to cross the liability off his books.
“Not a flymo, Casey. A protection machine! Your flying bodyguard. Five years from now, nobody who really is somebody will be going anywhere in anything else, anymore than they’d leave home without their muscle escort.” Leppo spoke while he put tools back in the rack above the bench, brushed chaff and drillings from the past three hours’ work into a pan, and emptied it into the trash bin underneath. “Ya gotta think new things—innovation. That’s the way to break into where the big money is. Create a demand—a new market. It’s no use busting your ass for the crumbs left over from what everyone else has already cleaned out.”
Casey worked as an engine and flight systems technician in the transportation depot at Stony Flats. He surveyed the modified flymobile from an oily steel stool, where he sat munching a microwaved roast-beef sandwich held in a paper napkin by a casually wiped oily hand. They had christened it the Guardian Angel. Painted blue and white with silver sidelines, it was to be their demonstration model. Adding space-grade lightweight armor cladding around the cabin and at critical points had been fairly straightforward, as was duplicating the flight and security electronics in a hidden compartment—deactivating the locator call-back was always the first precaution when stealing or hijacking vehicles. The center-mounted, forward-firing automatic cannon would be trickier, involving another deal with Mahom and some advice, but fortunately he was the kind who tended to let the world be and didn’t ask questions. The current project was a pair of rear-mounted tubes for passive infrared and electronic, or laser/radar designated infantry-class homing missiles. Leppo also had plans for target-acquisition and incoming-tracking radar, along with a sophisticated countermeasures package, but they would need parts he was still trying to locate among Mahom’s various sources. In the meantime, they had something that was at least flying again.