
                 A Martian Ricorso
                 a short story by Greg Bear 
                 Note: only available until the end of July
                 2000 

                 Martian night. The cold and the dark and the stars
                 are so intense they make music, like a faint tinkle of
                 ice xylophones. Maybe it's my air tank hose scraping;
                 maybe it's my imagination. Maybe it's real. 

                 Standing on the edge of Swift Plateau, I'm afraid to
                 move or breathe deeply, as I whisper into the helmet
                 recorder, lest I disturb something holy: God's sharp
                 scrutiny of Edom Crater. I've gone outside, away
                 from the lander and my crewmates, to order my
                 thoughts about what has happened. 

                 The Martians came just twelve hours ago, like a tide
                 of five-foot-high laboratory rats running and leaping
                 on their hind legs. To us, it seemed as if they were
                 storming the lander, intent on knocking it over. But it
                 seems now we were merely in their way. 

                 We didn't just sit here and let them swamp us. We
                 didn't hurt or kill any of them--Cobb beat at them
                 with a roll of foil and I used the parasol of the
                 damaged directenna to shoo them off. First contact,
                 and we must have looked like clowns in an old silent
                 comedy. The glider wings came perilously close to
                 being severely damaged. We foiled and doped what
                 few tears had been made before nightfall. They
                 should suffice, if the polymer sylar adhesive is as
                 good as advertised. 

                 But our luck this expedition held true to form. The
                 stretching frame's pliers broke during the repairs. We
                 can't afford another swarm, even if they're just
                 curious. 

                 Cobb and Link have had bitter arguments about
                 self-defense. I've managed to stay out of them so far,
                 but my sympathies at the moment lie with Cobb. Still,
                 my instinctual desire to stay alive won't stop me from
                 feeling horribly guilty if we do have to kill a few
                 Martians. 

                 We've had quite a series of revelation the last few
                 days. Schiaparelli was right. And Percival Lowell,
                 the eccentric genius of my own home state. He was
                 not as errant an observer as we've all thought this
                 past century. 

                 I have an hour before I have to return to the lander
                 and join my mates in sleep. I can last here in the cold
                 that long. Loneliness may weigh on me sooner,
                 however. I don't know why I came out here; perhaps
                 just to clear my head, we've all been in such a
                 constrained, tightly controlled, oh-so-disguised
                 panic. I need to know what I think of the whole
                 situation, without benefit of comrades. 

                 The plateau wall and the floor of Edom are so
                 barren. With the exception, all around me, of the
                 prints of thousands of feet... Empty and lifeless. 

                 Tomorrow morning we'll brace the crumpled
                 starboard sled pads and rig an emergency automatic
                 release for the RATO units on the glider. Her wings
                 are already partially spread for a fabric inspection --
                 accomplished just before the Winter Troops
                 attacked--and we've finished transferring fuel from
                 the lander to the orbit booster. When the glider gets
                 us up above the third jet stream, by careful tacking
                 we hope to be in just the right position to launch our
                 little capsule up and out. A few minutes burn and we
                 can dock with the orbiter if Willy is willing to pick
                 us up. 

                 If we don't make it, these records will be all there is
                 to explain, on some future date, why we never made
                 it back. I'll feed the helmet memory into the lander
                 telterm, stacked with flight telemetry and other data
                 in computer-annotated garble, and instruct the
                 computer to store it all on hard-copy glass disks. 

                 The dust storm that sand-scrubbed our directenna and
                 forced me to this expedient subsided two days ago.
                 We have not reported our most recent discovery to
                 mission control; we are still organizing our thoughts.
                 After all, it's a momentous occasion. We don't want
                 to make any slips and upset the folks back on Earth. 

                 Here's the situation on communications. We can no
                 longer communicate directly with Earth. We are left
                 with the capsule radio, which Willy can pick up and
                 boost for re-broadcast whenever the conditions are
                 good enough. At the moment, conditions are terrible.
                 The solar storm that dogged our Icarus heels on the
                 way out, forcing us deep inside Willy's capacious
                 hull, is still active. The effect on the Martian
                 atmosphere has been most surprising. 

                 There's a communicator on the glider body as well,
                 but that's strictly short-range and good for little more
                 than telemetry. So we have very garbled
                 transmissions going out, reasonably clear coming
                 back, and about twenty minutes of complete blackout
                 when Willy is out of line of sight, behind or below
                 Mars. 

                 We may be able to hit Willy with the surveyor's
                 laser, adapted for signal transmission. For the
                 moment we're going to save that for the truly
                 important communications, like time of launch and
                 approximate altitude, calculated from the fuel we
                 have left after the transfer piping exploded.... was it
                 three days ago? When the night got colder than the
                 engineers thought possible and exceeded the specs
                 on the insulation. 

                 I'm going back in now. It's too much out here. Too
                 dark. No moons visible. 



                 Now at the telterm keyboard. Down to meaningful
                 monologue. 

                 Mission Commander Linker, First Pilot Cobb, and
                 myself, Mission Specialist Mercer, have finished
                 ninety percent of the local survey work and
                 compared it with Willy's detailed mapping. What
                 we've found is fascinating. 

                 At one time there were lines on Mars, stripes like
                 canals. Until a century ago, any good telescope on
                 Earth, on a good night, could have revealed them for
                 a sharp-eyed observer. As the decades went by, it
                 was not the increased skill of astronomers and the
                 quality of instruments that erased these lines, but the
                 end of the final century of the Anno Fecundis. Is my
                 Latin proper? I have no dictionary to consult. 

                 With the end of the Fertile Year, a thousand centuries
                 long, came the first bleak sandy winds and the
                 lowering of the Martian jet streams. They picked up
                 sand and scoured. 

                 The structures must have been like fairy palaces
                 before they were swept down. I once saw a
                 marketplace full of empty vinegar jugs in the
                 Philippines, made from melted Coca Cola bottles.
                 They used glass so thin you could break them with a
                 thumbnail tap in the right place--but they easily held
                 twenty or thirty gallons of liquid. These colonies
                 must have looked like grape-clusters of thousands of
                 thin glass vinegar bottles, dark as emeralds, mounted
                 on spider-web stilts and fed with water pumped
                 through veins as big as Roman aqueducts. We
                 surveyed one field and found the fragments buried in
                 red sand across a strip thirty miles wide. From a
                 mile or so up, the edge of the structure can still be
                 seen, if you know where to look. 

                 Neither of the two previous expeditions found them. 

                 They're ours. 

                 Linker believes these ribbons once stretched clear
                 around the planet. Before the sand storm, Willy's
                 infrared mapping proved him correct. We could
                 trace belts of ruins in almost all the places Lowell
                 had mapped--even the civic centers some of his
                 followers said he saw. Aqueducts laced the planet
                 like the ribs on a basketball, meeting at ocean-sized
                 black pools covered with glassy membranes. The
                 pools were filled by a thin purple liquid, a kind of
                 resin, warming in the sun, undergoing photosynthesis.
                 The resin was pumped at high pressure through tissue
                 and glass tubes, nourishing the plantlike colonies
                 inhabiting the bottles. They probably lacked any sort
                 of intelligence. But their architectural feats put all of
                 ours to shame, nonetheless. 

                 Sandstorms and the rapidly drying weather of the last
                 century are still bringing down the delicate
                 structures. Ninety-five percent or more have fallen
                 already, and the rest are too rickety to safely
                 investigate. They are still magnificent. Standing on
                 the edge of a plain of broken bottles and shattered
                 pylons stretching to the horizon, we can't help but
                 feel very young and very small. 

                 A week ago, we discovered they've left spores
                 buried deep in the red-orange sand, tougher than
                 coconuts and about the size of medicine balls. 

                 Six days ago, we learned that Mars provides
                 children for all his seasons. Digging for ice lenses
                 that Willy had located, we came across a cache of
                 leathery eggshells in a cavern shored up with a
                 translucent organic cement. We didn't have time to
                 investigate thoroughly. We managed to take a few
                 samples of the cement--scrupulously avoiding
                 disturbing the eggs--and vacated before our tanks ran
                 out. While cutting out the samples, we noticed that
                 the walls had been patterned with hexagonal
                 carvings, whether as a structural aid or decoration
                 we couldn't tell. 

                 Yesterday, that is, about twenty-six hours ago, we
                 saw what we believe must be the hatchlings: the
                 Winter Troops, five or six of them, walking along the
                 edge of the plateau, not much more than white specks
                 from where we sat in the lander. 

                 We took the sand sled five kilometers from the
                 landing to investigate the cache again, and to see
                 what Willy's mapping revealed as the last standing
                 fragments of an aqueduct bridge in our vicinity. We
                 didn't locate our original cache. Collapsed caverns
                 filled with leathery egg skins pocked the landscape.
                 More than sandstorms had been at the ruins. The
                 bridges rested on the seeds of their own destruction--
                 packs of kangaroo-rat Winter Troops crawled over
                 the structure like ants on a carcass, breaking off bits,
                 eating or just cavorting like sand fleas. 

                 Linker named them. He snapped pictures
                 enthusiastically. As a trained exobiologist, he was in
                 a heat of excitement and speculation. His current
                 theory is that the Winter Troops are on a binge of
                 destruction, programmed into their genes and
                 irrevocable. We retreated on the sled, unsure
                 whether we might be swamped as well. 

                 Linker babbled--pardon me, expounded--all the way
                 back to the lander. "It's like Giambattista Vico
                 resurrected from the historian's boneyard!" We
                 barely listened; Linker was way over our heads.
                 "Out with the old, in with the new! Vico's historical
                 ricorso exemplified." 

                 Cobb and I were much less enthusiastic.
                 "Indiscriminate buggers," he grumbled. "How long
                 before they find us?" 

                 I had no immediate reaction. As in every situation in
                 my life, I decided to sit on my emotions and wait
                 things out. 

                 Cobb was prescient. Unluckily for us, our lander and
                 glider rise above the ground like a stray shard of an
                 aqueduct-bridge. At that stage of their young lives,
                 the Winter Troops couldn't help but swarm over
                 everything. An hour ago, I braved the hash and our
                 own confusion and sent out descriptions of our find.
                 So far, we've received no reply to our requests for
                 First Contact instructions. The likelihood was so
                 small nobody planned for it. The message was
                 probably garbled. 

                 But enough pessimism. Where does this leave us, so
                 far, in our speculations? 

                 Gentlemen, we sit on the cusp between cycles. We
                 witness the end of the green and russet Mars of
                 Earth's youth, ribbed with fairy bridges and
                 restrained seas, and come upon a grimmer, more
                 practical world, buttoning down for the long winter. 

                 We haven't studied the white Martians in any detail,
                 so there's no way of knowing whether or not they're
                 intelligent. They may be the new masters of Mars.
                 How do we meet them--passively, as Linker seems
                 to think we should, or as Cobb believes: defending
                 ourselves against creatures who may or may not
                 belong to our fraternal order of Thinkers? 

                 What can we expect if we don't defend ourselves? 

                 Let your theologians and exobiologists speculate on
                 that. Are we to be the first to commit the sin of an
                 interplanetary Cain? Or are the Martians? 

                 It will take us nine or ten hours tomorrow to brace
                 the lander pads. Our glider sits with sylar wings
                 half-flexed, crinkling and snapping in the rising
                 wind, silver against the low sienna hills of the Swift
                 Plateau. 

                 Sunlight strikes the top of the plateau. Pink sky to the
                 East; fairy bridges, fairy landscape! Pink and
                 dreamlike. Ice-crystal clouds obscure a faded curtain
                 of aurora. The sky overhead is black as obsidian.
                 Between the pink sunrise and the obsidian is a band
                 of hematite, a dark rainbow like carnival glass,
                 possibly caused by crystalline powder from the
                 aqueduct bridges elevated into the jetstreams. From
                 our vantage on the plateau, we can see dust devils
                 crossing Edom's eastern rim and the tortured mounds
                 and chasms of the Moab-Marduk range, rising like
                 the pillars of some ancient temple. Boaz and Jachin,
                 perhaps. 

                 Since writing the above, I've napped for an hour or
                 so. Willy relayed a new chart. He's found
                 construction near the western rim of Edom
                 Crater--recent construction, not there a few days ago
                 when the area was last surveyed. Hexagonal
                 formations--walls and what could be roads. From his
                 altitude, they must rival the Great Wall of China.
                 How could such monumental works be erected in
                 just days? Were they missed on the previous passes?
                 Not likely. 

                 So there we have it. The colonies that erected the
                 aqueduct-bridges were not the only architects on
                 Mars. The Winter Troops are demonstrating their
                 skills. But are they intelligent, or just following some
                 instinctual imperative? Or both? 

                 Both men are sleeping again now. They've been
                 working hard, as have I, and their sleep is sound.
                 The telterm clicking doesn't wake them. I can't sleep
                 much--no more than a hour at a stretch before I
                 awake in a sweat. My body is running on
                 supercharge and I'm not ready to resort to
                 tranquilizers. So here I sit, endlessly observing.
                 Linker is the largest of us. Though I worked with him
                 for three years before this mission, and we have
                 spent over eight months in close quarters, I hardly
                 know the man. He's not a quiet man, and he's always
                 willing to express his opinions, but he still surprises
                 me. He has a way of raising his eyebrows when he
                 listens, opening his dark eyes wide and wrinkling his
                 forehead, that reminds me of a dog cocking its ears.
                 But it would have to be a devilishly bright dog.
                 Perhaps I haven't plumbed Linker's depths because
                 I'd go in over my head if I tried. He's certainly more
                 dedicated than either Cobb or I. He's been in the
                 USN for twenty-one years, fifteen of them in space,
                 specializing in planetary geology and half a dozen
                 other disciplines. 

                 Cobb, on the other hand, can be read like a book. He
                 tends toward bulk, more in appearance than mass; he
                 weighs only a little more than I do. He's shorter and
                 works with a frown; it seems to take twice his
                 normal concentration to finish some tasks. I do him
                 no injustice by saying that; he gets the work done,
                 and well, but it costs him more than it would Linker.
                 The extra effort sometimes takes the edge off his
                 nonessential reasoning. He's not light on his mental
                 feet, particularly in a situation like this. Doggedness
                 and quick reflexes brought him to his prominence in
                 the Mars lander program; I respect him none the less
                 for that, but.... He tends to the technical, loving
                 machines more than men, I've often thought, and from
                 my more liberal arts background, I've resented that. 

                 Linker and I once had him close to tears on the
                 outward voyage. We conversed on five or six
                 subjects at once, switching topics every three or four
                 minutes. It was a cruel game and neither of us are
                 proud of it, but I for one can peg part of the blame on
                 the mission designers. Three is too small a
                 community for a three year mission in space. Hell.
                 Space has been billed as making children out of us
                 all, eh? A two-edged sword. 

                 I have (as certain passages above might indicate)
                 been thinking about the Bible lately. My old
                 childhood background has been stimulated by the
                 danger and moral dilemmas--hair of the dog that bit
                 me. The maps of Mars, with their Biblical names,
                 have contributed to my thoughts. We're not far from
                 Eden as gliders go. We sit in fabled Moab, above the
                 Moab-Marduk range, Marduk being one of the chief
                 "baals" in the Old Testament. Edom Crater--Edom
                 means red, an appropriate name for a Martian crater.
                 I have red hair. Call me Esau! 

                 Mesogaea--Middle Earth. Other hair, other dogs. 



                 Back on the recorder again. Time weighs heavily on
                 me. I've retreated to the equipment bay to weather a
                 bit of grumpiness between Linker and Cobb.
                 Actually, it was an out and out argument. Linker, still
                 the pacifist, expressed his horror of committing
                 murder against another species. His scruples are
                 oddly selective--he fought in Eritrea in the nineties.
                 Neither has been restrained by rank; this could lead
                 to really ugly confrontations, unless danger
                 straightens us all out and makes brothers of us. 

                 Three comrades, good and true, tolerant of different
                 opinions. 

                 Oh, God, here they come again! I'm looking out the
                 equipment bay port, looking East. They must number
                 five or six thousand, lining a distant hill like Indians.
                 That many attacking.... Cobb can have his way, and it
                 won't matter, we'll still have had the course. If they
                 rip a section of wing sylar larger than we can stretch
                 by hand, we're stuck. 



                 That was close. Cobb fired bursts of the surveyor's
                 laser over their heads. Enough dust had been raised
                 by their movement and by the wind to make a fine
                 display. They moved back slowly and then vanished
                 behind the hill. The laser is powerful enough to burn
                 them should the necessity arise. 

                 Linker has as much as said he'd rather die than
                 extend the sin of Cain. I'm less worried about that sin
                 than I am about lifting off. We have yet to brace the
                 sled pad. Linker's out below the starboard hatch
                 now, rigging the sling that will keep one section of
                 the glider body level when the RATOs fire. 

                 More dust to the East now. Night is coming slowly.
                 After the sun sets, it'll be too cold to work outside
                 for long. If the Winter Troops are water-based, how
                 do they survive the night? Anti-freeze in their blood,
                 like Arctic fish? Can they keep up their activity in
                 temperatures between fifty and one hundred below?
                 Or will we be out of danger until sunrise, with the
                 Martians warm in their blankets, and we in our
                 trundle-bed, nightmaring? 



                 I've helped Linker rig the sling. We've all worked on
                 the sled pad. Cobb has mounted the laser on a
                 television tripod--clever warrior. Linker advised
                 him to beware the fraying power cable. Cobb looked
                 at him with a sad sort of resentment and went about
                 his work. Other than the few bickerings and
                 personality games of the trip out, we managed to
                 keep respect for one another until the last few days.
                 Now we're slipping. At one time, I had the fantasy
                 we'd all finish the mission lifetime friends, visiting
                 each other years after, comparing pictures of our
                 grandchildren and complaining about the quality of
                 young officers after our retirement. What a dream. 

                 Steam rises from the hoarfrost accumulated during
                 the night. It vanishes like a tramp after dinner. 

                 Should we wish to send a message to Willy now, we
                 shall have to unship the laser and remount it. The
                 hash has increased and Willy says his pickup is
                 deteriorating. 

                 More ice falls during the night. Linker kept track of
                 them. My insomnia has communicated itself to
                 him--ideal for standing long watches. Ice falls are
                 more frequent here than on Earth--the leavings of
                 comets and the asteroids come through this thin
                 atmosphere more easily. A small chunk came to
                 within a sixty meters of our site, leaving an
                 impressive crater. 



                 Another break. Willy has relayed a message from
                 Control. They managed to pick up and reconstruct
                 our request for instructions on first contact. They
                 must have thought we were joking. Here's part of the
                 transmission: 

                 "We think you're not content with finding giant
                 vegetables on Mars. Dr. Wender advised on
                 Martians...(hash)...some clear indications of their
                 ability to fire large cylindrical bodies into space.
                 Beware tripod machines. Second opinion from
                 Frank: Not all green Martians are Tharks. He wants
                 sample from Dejah Thoris--can you arrange for
                 egg?" 

                 I put on a pressure suit and went for a walk after the
                 disappointment of the transmission. Linker suited up
                 after me and followed for a while. I armed myself
                 with a piece of aluminum from the salvaged pad. He
                 carried nothing. 

                 Swift Plateau is about four hundred kilometers
                 across. At its northern perimeter, an aqueduct had
                 once hoisted itself a kilometer or so and vaulted
                 across the flats, covering fifteen kilometers of upland
                 before dropping over the south rim into the
                 Moab-Marduk Range. Our landing site is a kilometer
                 from the closest stretch of fragments. Linker
                 followed me to the edge of the field of green and
                 blue grass, keeping quiet, looking behind
                 apprehensively as if he expected something to pop up
                 between us and the lander. 

                 I had a notebook in my satchel and paused to sketch
                 some of the piers the Winter Troops hadn't yet
                 brought down. None of them were over four meters
                 tall. 

                 "I'm afraid of them," Linker said over the suit radio. I
                 stopped my sketching to look at him. 

                 "So?" I inquired with a touch of irritation. "We're all
                 afraid of them." 

                 "I'm not afraid because they'll hurt me. It's because of
                 what they might bring out in me, if I give them half a
                 chance. I don't want to hate them." 

                 "Not even Cobb hates them," I said. 

                 "Oh, yes he does," Linker said, nodding his head
                 within the bulky helmet. "But he's afraid for his life. I
                 fear for my self-respect." 

                 I shook my helmet to show I didn't understand. 

                 "Because I can't understand them. They're irrational.
                 They don't seem to see us. They run around us,
                 fulfilling some mission.... they don't care whether we
                 live or die. Yet I have to respect them--they're alien.
                 The first intelligent creatures we've ever met." 

                 "If they're intelligent," I reminded him. 

                 "Come on, Mercer, they must be. They build." 

                 "So did these," I said, waving a gloved hand at the
                 field of shattered green bottles. 

                 "I'm trying to make myself clear," he said,
                 exasperated. "When I was in Eritrea, I didn't
                 understand the nationalists. Or the communists. Both
                 sides were willing to kill their own people or allow
                 them to starve if it won some small objective. It was
                 sick. I even hated the ones we were supporting." 

                 "The Martians aren't Africans," I said. "We can't
                 expect to understand their motives." 

                 "Comes back double, then, don't you see? I want to
                 understand, to know why--" 

                 He suddenly switched his radio off, raised his hands
                 in frustration and turned to walk back to the lander. 

                 Our automatic interrupts clicked on and Cobb spoke
                 to us. "That's it, friends. We're blanketed by hash. I
                 can't get through to Willy. We'll have to punch
                 through with the laser." 

                 "I'm on my way back," Linker said. "I'll help you set
                 it up." 

                 In a few minutes, I was alone on the field of ruins. I
                 sat on a weather-pocked boulder and took out my
                 sketchbook again. I mapped the directions from
                 which we had been approached and attacked and
                 compared them with the site of the eggs we had
                 found. What I was looking for, with such ridiculously
                 slim evidence, was a clear pattern of migration--say,
                 from the hatcheries in a line with the sunrise. Nothing
                 came of it. 

                 Disgusted at my desperation, I was lost in a fog of
                 something approaching misery when I glanced up...
                 And jumped to my feet so fast I leaped a good three
                 feet into the air, twisting my ankle as I came down.
                 Two white Martians stared at me with their wide,
                 blank gray eyes, eyelashes as long and expressive as
                 a camel's. The fingers on their hands--each had three
                 arms, but only two legs--shivered like
                 mouse-whiskers, not nervous but seeking
                 information. We had been too involved fending them
                 off before to take note of their features. Now, at a
                 loss what to do, I had all the time in the world. 

                 Three long webbed toes, leathery and dead-looking
                 like sticks, met an odd two-jointed ankle which even
                 now I can't reproduce on paper. Their thighs were
                 knotted with muscles and covered with red and white
                 stippled fur. They could hop or run like frightened
                 deer--that much I knew from experience. Their hips
                 were thickly furred. They defied my few semesters
                 of training in biology by having trilateral symmetry
                 between hips and neck, and bilateral below the hips.
                 Three arms met at ingenious triangular shoulders,
                 rising to short necks and mouselike faces. Their ears
                 were mounted atop their heads and could fan out like
                 unfolded directennas, or hide away if rough activity
                 threatened them. 

                 The Martians were fast when they wanted to be, and
                 I had no idea what else they could eat besides the
                 ruins, so I made no false moves. 

                 One whickered like a horse, its voice reedy and
                 distant in the thin atmosphere. The noise must have
                 been impressively loud to reach my small, helmeted
                 ears. It looked behind itself, twisting its head
                 one-eighty to look as its behind-arm scratched a tuft
                 of hair on its right shoulder. The back fur rippled
                 appreciatively. Parrot-like, the head returned to
                 calmly stare at me. 

                 After half an hour, I sat down again on the boulder. I
                 could still see the lander and the linear glint of the
                 glider wings, but there was no sign of Cobb or
                 Linker. Nobody was searching for me. 

                 My suit was getting cold. Slowly, I checked my
                 battery pack gauge and saw it was showing a low
                 charge. Cautiously, in distinct stages, I stood and
                 brushed my pressure suit. The Martian to my right
                 jerked, fingers trembling, and I held my pose,
                 apprehensive. With a swift motion, it pulled a green,
                 fibrous piece of aqueduct-bridge girder from its stiff
                 rump fur with its behind-arm and held it out to me.
                 The piece was about thirty centimeters long, chewed
                 all around. I straightened, extended one hand and
                 accepted the gift. 

                 Without further ado, the Martians twisted around and
                 leaped across the plateau, running and leaping
                 simultaneously. 

                 Clutching my gift, I returned to the lander. My feet
                 and fingers were numb when I arrived. 

                 The tripod lay on the ground, legs spraddled. The
                 laser was nowhere to be seen. I had a moment's
                 panic, thinking the lander had been attacked--but
                 since I had kept it in sight, that didn't seem likely. I
                 climbed into the lander's primary lock. 

                 Inside, Linker clutched the laser in both hands, one
                 finger resting lightly, nervously, on the unsheathed
                 and delicate scandium-garnet rod. Cobb sat on the
                 opposite side of the cabin, barely two meters from
                 Linker, fuming. 

                 "What in hell is going on?" I asked, puffing on my
                 fingers and stamping my feet. 

                 "Listen, Thoreau," Cobb said bitterly, "while you
                 were out communing with nature, Mr. Gandhi here
                 decided to make sure we can't harm any of the sweet
                 little creatures." 

                 I turned to Linker, focusing on his uncertain finger
                 and the garnet. "What are you doing?" 

                 "I'm not sure, Dan," he answered calmly, face blank.
                 "I have a firm conviction, that's all I know. I have to
                 be firm. Otherwise I'll be just like you and Cobb." 

                 "I have a conviction, too," Cobb said. "I'm convinced
                 you're nuts." 

                 "You're seriously thinking about breaking that
                 garnet?" I asked. 

                 "Damned serious." 

                 "We can fight them off with other things if we have
                 to," I reasoned. "The assay charges, the core sample
                 gun--" 

                 "Don't give Cobb any more ideas," Linker said. 

                 "But we can't talk to Willy if you break that garnet." 

                 "Cobb saw two of the Winter Troops. He was going
                 to take a pot-shot at them with this." Linker lifted the
                 laser, face still blank. 

                 I blinked for a few seconds, feeling myself flush with
                 anger. "Jesus. Cobb, is that true?" 

                 "I was sighting on them, in case there were more--" 

                 "Were you going to shoot?" 

                 "It was convenient. They might have been a
                 vanguard." 

                 "That's not very rational," I observed. 

                 "I'm not sure I'm being rational, either," Linker said,
                 fully aware how fragmented we were now, the
                 sadness we all felt coming to the surface. His eyes
                 were doglike, searching my face for understanding,
                 or at least a way to understand himself. 

                 "I'll do anything necessary to make sure we all
                 survive," Cobb said. "If that means killing a few
                 Martians, then I'll do it. If it means overruling the
                 mission commander, then I'll do that, too." 

                 "He refused to put the laser down, even when I gave
                 him a direct order. That's mutiny." 

                 "This isn't getting us anywhere," Cobb said. 

                 "I won't vouch for your sanity," I said to Linker. "Not
                 if you break that garnet. And I won't vouch for
                 Cobb's, either. Taking pot-shots at possibly
                 intelligent aliens." I remembered the stick. Damn it,
                 they were intelligent! They had to be, advancing on a
                 stranger and giving him a gift.... "I don't know what
                 sort of speculative first-contact training we should
                 have had, but in spirit if not in letter, Linker has to be
                 closer to the ideal than you." 

                 "We should be testing the brace on the pad and
                 leveling the field in front of the glider. When we get
                 out of here, we can argue philosophy all the way
                 home. And to get home, we need the laser." 

                 Linker nodded. "We'll just agree not to use it for
                 anything but communication." 

                 I looked at Cobb, finally making my decision, and
                 wondering whether I was crazy, too. "I think Linker's
                 right." 

                 "OK," Cobb said softly. "But there's going to be a
                 hell of a row after we debrief." 

                 "That's an understatement," I said. 

                 This record, even if it survives, will probably be
                 kept in the administration files for fifty or sixty
                 years--or longer--to "protect the feelings of the
                 families." But who can gainsay the judgment of the
                 folks who put us here? Not I, humble Thoreau on
                 Mars, as Cobb described me. 

                 I did not reveal the gift to my crewmates until the
                 laser had been remounted in the lander. I simply lay
                 it on the table, wrapped in an airtight transparent
                 sylar specimen bag, while we rested and sipped hot
                 chocolate. Linker was the first to pick it up, glancing
                 at me, puzzled. 

                 "We have enough of these, don't we?" he asked. 

                 "It's been chewed on," I pointed out, reaching to run
                 my finger along the stick's surface. I told them about
                 the two Martians. Cobb looked decidedly
                 uncomfortable then. 

                 "Did they chew on it in your presence?" Linker
                 asked. 

                 "No." 

                 "Maybe they were offering food," Cobb said. "A
                 peace offering?" His expression was sad, as if all the
                 energy and anger had been drained and nothing much
                 was left but regret. 

                 "It's more than food," Linker said. "It's like
                 stick-writing.... Ogham. The Irish and Britons used
                 something similar centuries ago. Notches on the side
                 of a stone or stick--a kind of alphabet. But this is
                 much more complex. Here--there's an oval--" 

                 "Unless it's a tooth-mark," I said. 

                 "Whether it's a tooth-mark or not, it isn't random.
                 There are five long marks beside it, and one mark
                 about half the length of the others. That's about equal
                 to one Deimotic month--five and a half days." My
                 respect for Linker increased. He raised his
                 eyebrows, looking for confirmation, and started to
                 hand the stick to me, then stopped and swung it
                 around to Cobb. Mission commander, re-integrating
                 a disgruntled crewmember. A mist of tears came to
                 my eyes. 

                 "I don't think they've reached a high level of
                 technology yet," Linker said. 

                 Cobb looked up from the gift and grinned.
                 "Technology?" 

                 "They built the walls and structures Willy saw. I
                 don't think any of us can argue that they're not intent
                 on changing their environment. Unless we make
                 asses out of ourselves and say their work is no more
                 significant than a beaver dam, it's obvious they're
                 advancing rapidly. They might use notched sticks for
                 relaying information." 

                 "So what's this?" I asked, pointing to the gift. 

                 "Maybe it's a subpoena," Linker said. 



                 While I've been recording the above, Cobb has
                 gone outside to see how long it will take to clear the
                 glider path. The field was chosen to be free of
                 boulders--but anything bigger than a fist could skew
                 us around dangerously. The sleds have been
                 deployed. I've finished tamping the braces on the
                 pad. 

                 The glider and capsule check out. In an hour we'll
                 lase a message to Willy and give our estimate on
                 launch and rendezvous. 

                 Willy tells us that most of Mesogaea and Memnonia
                 are covered with walls. Meridiani Sinus, according
                 to his telescope observations, has been criss-crossed
                 with roads or trails. The white Martians are using the
                 sand-filled black old resin reservoirs for some
                 purpose unknown. 

                 Edom Crater is as densely packed as a city. All this
                 in less than two days. There must be millions of
                 hatchlings at work. 

                 I'll break again and supervise the glider power-up. 



                 Linker and Cobb are dead. 

                 Jesus, that hurts to write. 

                 We had just tested the RATO automatic timers when
                 a horde of Winter Troops marched across the
                 plateau, about ninety deep and a good four
                 kilometers abreast. I'm certain they weren't out to get
                 us. It was one of those migrational sweeps, a
                 screwball mass survey of geography, and
                 incidentally a leveling of all the aqueduct-bridges
                 from the last cycle. 

                 They gave us our chance. We didn't reply. 

                 Linker had finished clearing the path. They caught
                 him a half-kilometer from the lander. I think they just
                 trampled him to death. They were moving much
                 faster than a man can run. I imagine his face,
                 eyebrows rising in query, maybe he even tried to
                 smile or greet them, lifting a hand.... 

                 I can't get that out of my head. I have to concentrate. 

                 Cobb knew exactly what to do. I think he didn't
                 mount the laser solidly, leaving a few brackets loose
                 enough so he could unship it and bring it down, ready
                 for hand use at a minute's notice. He took it outside
                 the ship with just helmet and oxygen on--it's about
                 five or six degrees outside, daylight--and fired on the
                 Winter Troops just before they reached the glider.
                 There are dead and dying or blinded Martians all
                 along the edge of the path. 

                 They paid their casualties no heed. They did not
                 bother with us, just pushed around and through,
                 touching nothing, staying away from the area he was
                 sweeping--the edge of the path. 

                 They can climb like monkeys. They dropped over the
                 rim of the plateau. 

                 They didn't touch Cobb. The frayed cord on the laser
                 killed him when he stepped on it coming back in. 

                 Where was I? Inside the glider, monitoring the
                 power-up. I couldn't hear a thing. It was all over by
                 the time I got outside. 

                 The laser is gone, but we've already sent our data to
                 Willy. I have the return message. That's all I need for
                 the moment. The glider and capsule are powered and
                 ready. 

                 I'll launch it by myself. I can do that. 

                 When Willy's position is right. The timer is going.
                 Everything will be automatic. 

                 I'll make it to orbit. 

                 Two hours. Less. I can't bring them in. I could, but
                 what use? There are no facilities for dead astronauts
                 aboard the orbiter. What hurts is I'll have a better
                 margin with them gone, more fuel. I did not want it
                 that way, I never thought of that, I swear to God. 

                 The glider wings are crackling in the wind. The wind
                 is coming at a perfect angle, thin but fast, about two
                 hundred kilometers an hour. Enough to feel if I were
                 outside. 

                 I trust in an awful lot now that Linker and Cobb are
                 gone. Maybe it'll be over soon and I can stop this
                 writing and stop feeling this pain. 



                 Waiting. Just the right instant for launch. Timers,
                 everything on auto. I sit helpless and wait. My last
                 instructions: three buttons and an instruction to the
                 remotes to expand the wings to take-off width and
                 increase tension. Like a square-rigger. They check
                 okay, flat now, waiting for the best gust and RATO
                 fire. Then they'll drop into the proper configuration,
                 dragonfly wings, for high atmosphere. 

                 I spent some time learning Martian anatomy as I
                 cleared the path of the few Cobb had let through.
                 There are still a couple out there. I don't think I'll hit
                 them. 

                 I killed one. It was in the Martian equivalent of pain.
                 Pain/Cain. I hit it over the head with a rock pick. It
                 died just like we do. 

                 Linker died innocent. 

                 I think I'm going to be sick. 

                 Here it comes. RATOs on. 



                 I'm in the first jet-stream. Second wing mode--fore
                 and aft foils have been jettisoned. I'm riding directly
                 into the black wind. I can see stars, can see Mars red
                 and brown and gray below. 

                 Third wing mode. All wings jettisoned. Falling, my
                 stomach says. Main engines on capsule are firing and
                 I'm through the glider framework. I can see the glare
                 and feel the punch and the wings are far down to
                 port, twirling like a child's toy. 

                 In low, uncertain orbit. 

                 Willy's coming. 



                 Last orbit before going home. Willy looked awfully
                 good. I climbed inside of him through the transfer
                 tunnel and requested a long drink of miserable
                 orbiter water. "Hey, Willy Ley," I said, "you're the
                 most beautiful thing I've ever seen." Of course, all he
                 did was take care of me. No accusations. 

                 He's the only friend I have now. 

                 I spoke to mission control. That was not easy. An
                 hour ago. I'm sitting by the telescope, having pushed
                 Willy's sensors out of the way, doing my own
                 surveying and surmising. 

                 So far, the Winter Troops--I assume they're
                 responsible--have zoned and partially built up Mare
                 Tyrennhum, Hesperia, and Mare Cimmerium.
                 They've done something I can't decipher or really
                 describe in Aethiopis. By now I'm sure they've got to
                 the old expedition landers in Syrtis Major and
                 Minor. I don't know what they'll do with them.
                 Maybe add them to the road-building material. 

                 Maybe understand them. 

                 I have no idea what they're like, no idea at all. I
                 can't. We can't. They move too fast, grow along
                 instinctive lines, perhaps. Instinct for culture and
                 technology. They may not be intelligent in the way
                 we define intelligence, not as individuals, anyway.
                 But they do move. 

                 Perhaps they're just resurrecting what their ancestors
                 left them fifty, a hundred thousand years ago, before
                 the long, warm, wet Spring of Mars drove them
                 underground and brought up the sprouts of
                 aqueduct-bridges. 

                 At any rate, I've been in orbit for a week and a half.
                 They've gone from cradle to sky in that time. 

                 I've seen their balloons. 

                 And I've seen the distant fires of their rockets, icy
                 blue and sharp like hydroxy torches. They seem to be
                 testing. In a few days, they'll have it. 

                 Beware, Control. These brave lads will go far. 
