So Hawkwood decided that what seemed like cave entrances would be worth inspecting. He hoped to find reservoirs of underground water. This was in the third month of 2064. However, when assembling his expedition, he found he could muster only one speleologist, a nervous young low-temperature physicist called Chad Chester. To Dreiser’s way of thinking, Kathi Skadmorr was much the more foolhardy of the two.
Two buggies containing six people as well as equipment and supplies made the difficult journey overland. Dreiser had insisted on being present. He could strike up no conversation with the Hobart woman, who had retreated into an all-embracing silence.
Kathi stared unspeaking at the Marscape. She had known not dissimilar landscapes back home, long ago. Her intuition was that the very antiquity of these empty vistas had rendered them sacred, as she told me later. She experienced a longing to jump out and paint religious symbols on the boulders they passed.
At last they gained the comparatively smooth floor of the great rift valley. Its high wall towered above them. Of the cliff on the far side they could see nothing; it was lost in distance.
They made slow progress against a strong wind and, when they came to the first three caves, found them blind. The fourth they were able to enter further. Kathi and Chester wore scuba gear. Chester had allowed Kathi to go ahead. Her headlamp showed that the passage was going to narrow rapidly. Suddenly, the floor beneath her caved in and she fell. She disappeared from sight of the others. They cried with alarm before advancing cautiously on the hole.
Kathi was sprawling 2 metres below. ‘I’m okay,’ she said. ‘It was a false floor. Things get more interesting here. Come on down, Chad.’
She stood up and went ahead without waiting for the others.
The rock in her path was tumbled and treacherous. She climbed down with the roof overhead narrowing, until she was moving within a chimney and in danger of snagging her suit. She called up to the rest of the expedition not to follow, else she would have been struck by falling rock.
At last she reached the end of the chimney. Slipping amid scree, she was able to stand again – to find herself in a large cave, which she described over the radio as the size of a cottage – ‘contemptible by the dimensions of caves in the Mulu Park area’.
The floor of the cave contained a small pool of ice.
The rest of the team cheered when they heard of this.
Skirting the ice, Kathi explored the cave and reached a narrow cleft at the far end. Squeezing through it, she entered a small dark hole. She was forced to crawl on hands and knees to cross it, where she found a kind of natural staircase, leading down. This she reported to Dreiser.
‘Take care, damn it,’ he said.
The staircase widened. She squeezed past a boulder and found herself in a larger cavern, in cross-section resembling a half-open clam. The roof was scalloped elaborately, as if by hand, the ancient product of swirling water. And the floor of this cavern held a pool of water, unfrozen. She lobbed a small rock into it. Ripples flowed to the sides in perfect circles.
Her heart was beating fast. She knew she was the first person ever to see extensive water in its free state on the Red Planet.
She waded into it. The ripples stirred by her entry caused light patterns to play on the roof above.
The water came up to her breasts and no further. She plunged and swam below the surface. Her light revealed a dark plug hole on the stony bed. She swam vertically down it, to find herself in a chimney with smooth sides. As it narrowed, she had to push against the sides rather than swim. The fit became tighter and tighter. She could not turn to go back. Her light failed.
The team were calling her on the radio. She did not reply. She could hear her own labouring breath. She squeezed forward with great effort, her arms stretched out in front of her.
The tube seemed to go on for ever as she moved, head down. She thought there was a dim light ahead, or else her sight was failing.