The Mammoth Book Of Science Fiction Read online

  He let the silence stretch. “I’m hiding nothing. It’s hard to readjust. Imagine being stuck in a tin can for three years with cretins like Jeffries and McCarthy.”

  “You’re too sensitive, Ed. You’re a geologist, not an astronaut. You should have stayed at the university.”

  He embraced her. “Shh,” he said, and fell silent.

  He dreamed that night. He was back on Mars. He could feel the regolith slide away beneath his boots. The sensation of inevitable descent and imminent impact turned his stomach as it had done all those months ago. He fell, tumbling, and landed in a sitting position. In the dream he opened his eyes – and awoke suddenly.

  He gasped aloud and reached out, grabbed the headboard. Then it came to him that he was no longer weightless, floating in his sleeping bag. He was on Earth. He was home. He reached out for Delia and held her.

  In the morning, while Delia was at school, Enright took a walk. The open space, after so long cramped in the Fortitude, held an irresistible allure. He found himself on the golf course, strolling along the margin of the second fairway in the shade of maple trees.

  He came to a bunker and stopped, staring at the clean, scooped perfection of the feature. He closed his eyes, and jumped. The sensation was pretty accurate. He had stepped out onto Mars again. He felt the granular regolith give beneath his boots.

  When he opened his eyes he saw a young girl, perhaps twelve years old and painfully pretty. She was standing on the lip of the bunker, staring down at him.

  She was clutching a pen and a scrap of paper.

  Beyond her, on the green, two men looked on.

  “Mr Enright, sir?” the kid asked. “Can I have your autograph?”

  He reached up, took the pen and paper, and scrawled his name.

  The girl stared at the autograph, as if the addition of his signature upon the paper had invested it with magical properties. One of the watching men smiled and waved a hand.

  Delia was still at school when he got back. The first thing he did on returning was to phone a scrap merchant to take away the swing in the back yard. Then he retired to his study and stared at the pile of unanswered correspondence on his desk.

  He leafed through the mail.

  One was from Joshua Connaught, in England. Enright had corresponded with the eccentric for a number of years before the mission. The man had said he was writing a book on the history of spaceflight, and wanted Enright’s opinion on certain matters.

  They had exchanged letters every couple of months, moving away from the original subject and discussing everything under the sun. Connaught had been married, once, and he too was childless.

  Enright set the envelope aside, unopened.

  He sat back in his armchair and closed his eyes.

  He was back on Mars again, falling . . .

  It had been a perfect touchdown.

  The first manned craft to land on another planet had done so at precisely 3.33 a.m., Houston time, 2 September, 2020.

  Enright recalled little of the actual landing, other than his fear. He had never been a good flyer – plane journeys had given him the shakes: he feared the take-off and landings, while the bit in between he could tolerate. The same was true of spaceflight. The take-off at Kennedy had been delayed by a day, and then put on hold for another five hours, and by the time the Fortitude did blast off from pad 39A, Enright had been reduced to a nervous wreck. Fortunately, his presence at this stage of the journey had been token. It was the others who did the work – just as when they came in to land, over eighteen months later, on the broad, rouge expanse of the Amazonis Planitia.

  Enright recalled gripping the arms of his seat to halt the shakes that had taken him, and staring through the view-screen at the rocky surface of Mars which was rushing up to meet them faster than seemed safe.

  Jeffries had seen him and laughed, nudging McCarthy to take a look. Fortunately, the air force man had been otherwise occupied. Only Spirek sympathized with a smile; Enright received the impression that she too was not enjoying the descent.

  The retros cut in, slamming the seat into Enright’s back and knocked the wind from him. The descent of the lander slowed appreciably. The boulder strewn terrain seemed to be floating up to meet them, now.

  Touchdown, when it came, was almost delicate.

  McCarthy and Jeffries were NASA men through and through, veterans of a dozen space station missions and the famous return to the moon in ’15. They were good astronauts, lousy travelling companions. They were career astronauts who were less interested in the pursuit of knowledge, of exploration for its own sake, than in the political end-results of what they were doing – both for themselves personally, and for the country. Enright envisaged McCarthy running for president in the not too distant future, Jeffries ending up as some big-wig in the Pentagon.

  They tended to look upon Enright, with his PhD in geology and a career at Miami university, as something of a make-weight on the trip.

  Spirek . . . Enright could not quite make her out. Like the others, she was a career astronaut, but she had none of the brash bravado and right-wing rhetoric of her male counterparts. She had been a pilot in the air force, and was along as team medic and multi-disciplinary scientist: her brief, to assess the planet for possible future colonization.

  McCarthy was slated to step out first, followed by Enright. Fancy that, he’d thought on being informed at the briefing, Iowa farm-boy made good, only the second human being ever to set foot on Mars . . .

  After the landing, Jeffries had made some quip about Enright still being shit scared and not up to taking a stroll. He’d even made to suit up ahead of Enright.

  “I’m fine,” Enright said.

  Spirek had backed him up. “Ed’s AOK for go, Jeffries. You don’t want Roberts finding out you pulled a stunt, huh?”

  Jeffries had muttered something under his breath. It had sounded like “Bitch,” to Enright.

  So he’d followed McCarthy out onto the sun-bright plain of the Amazonis Planitia, his pulse loud in his ears, his legs trembling as he climbed the ladder and stepped onto the surface of the alien world.

  There was a lot to do for the two hours he was out of the lander, and he had only the occasional opportunity to consider the enormity of the situation.

  He took rock samples, drilled through the regolith to the bedrock. He filmed what he was doing for the benefit of the geologists back at NASA who would take up the work when he returned.

  He recalled straightening up on one occasion and staring, amazed, at the western horizon. He wondered how he had failed to notice it before. The mountain stood behind the lander, an immense pyramidal shape that rose abruptly from the surrounding volcanic plain to a height, he judged, of a kilometre. He had to tilt his head back to take in its summit.

  Later, Spirek and Jeffries took their turn outside, while Enright began a preliminary analysis of the rock samples and McCarthy reported back to mission control.

  Day one went like a dream, everything AOK.

  The following day, as the sun rose through the cerise sky, Enright and Spirek took the Mars-mobile out for its test drive. They ranged a kilometre from the lander, keeping it in sight at all times.

  Spirek, driving, halted the vehicle at one point and stared into the sky. She touched Enright’s padded elbow, and he heard her voice in his ear-piece. “Look, Ed.” And she pointed.

  He followed her finger, and saw a tiny, shimmering star high in the heavens.

  “Earth,” she whispered, and, despite himself, Enright felt some strange emotion constrict his throat at the sight of the planet, so reduced.

  But for Spirek’s sighting of Earth at that moment, and her decision to halt, Enright might never have made the discovery that was to prove so fateful.

  Spirek was about to start up, when he glanced to his left and saw the depression in the regolith, ten metres from the Mars-mobile.

  “Hey! Stop, Sally!”

  “What is it?”

  He pointed. “Don’t kno
w. Looks like subsidence. I want to take a look.”

  Sal glanced at her chronometer. “You got ten minutes, okay?”

  He climbed from the mobile and strode towards the rectangular impression in the red dust. He paused at its edge, knelt and ran his hand through the fine regolith. The first human being, he told himself, ever to do so here at this precise location . . .

  He stood and took a step forward.

  And the ground gave way beneath his feet, and he was falling. “Oh, my God!”

  He landed in a sitting position in semi-darkness, battered and dazed but uninjured. He checked his life-support apparatus. His suit was okay, his air supply functioning.

  Only then did he look around him. He was in a vast chamber, a cavern that extended for as far as the eye could see.

  As the dust settled, he made out the objects ranged along the length of the chamber.

  “Oh, Christ,” he cried. “Spirek . . . Spirek!”

  He stood in the doorway of the conservatory and watched the workmen dismantle the swing and load it onto the back of the pick-up.

  He’d been home four days now, and he was falling back into the routine of things. Breakfast with Delia, then a round of golf, solo, on the mornings she worked. They met for lunch in town, and then spent the afternoons at home, Delia in the garden, Enright reading magazines and journals in the conservatory.

  He was due to start back at the university in a week, begin work on the samples he’d brought back from Mars. He was not relishing the prospect, and not just because it would mean spending time away from Delia: the business of geology, and what might be learned from the study of the Martian rocks, palled beside what he’d discovered on the red planet.

  Roberts had phoned him a couple of days ago. Already NASA was putting together plans for a follow-up mission. He recalled what McCarthy and Jeffries had said about their discovery, that it constituted a security risk. Enright had forced himself not to laugh out loud, at the time. And yet, amazingly, when he returned to Earth and heard the talk of the back-room boys up at Kennedy, that had been the tenor of their concern. Now Roberts confirmed it by telling him, off the record, that the government was bankrolling the next Mars mission. There would be a big military presence aboard. He wondered if McCarthy and Jeffries were happy now.

  The workmen finished loading the frame of the swing and drove off. Delia was kneeling in the border, weeding. He watched her for a while, then went into the house.

  He fetched the papers from the sitting room where he’d discovered them yesterday, slipped under the cushion of the settee.

  “Delia?”

  She turned, smiling.

  She saw the papers and her smile faltered. Her eyes became hard. “I was just looking them over. I wasn’t thinking of . . .”

  “We talked about this, Delia.”

  “What, five years ago, more? Things are different now. You’re back at university. I can quit work. Ed,” she said, something like a plea in her tone, “we’d be perfect. They’re looking for people like us.”

  He sat down on the grass, laid the brochure down between himself and his wife. The wind caught the cover, riffled pages. He saw a gallery of beseeching faces staring out at him, soft focus shots manufactured to pluck at the heart-strings of childless couples like themselves.

  He reached out and stopped the pages. He stared at the picture of a small blonde-haired girl. She reminded him of the kid who’d asked for his signature at the golf course the other day.

  And, despite himself, he felt a longing somewhere deep within him like an ache.

  “Why are you so against the idea, Ed?”

  They had planned to start a family in the early years. Then Delia discovered that she was unable to bear children. He had grown used to the idea that their marriage would be childless, though it was harder for Delia to accept. Over the years he had devoted himself to his wife, and when five years ago she had first mentioned the possibility of adoption, he had told her he loved her so much that he would be unable to share that love with a child. He was bullshitting, of course. The fact was that he did not want Delia’s love for him diluted by another.

  And now? Now, he felt the occasional craving to lavish love and affection on a child, and he could not explain his uneasiness at the prospect of acceding to his wife’s desires.

  He shook his head, wordlessly, and a long minute later he stood and returned to the house.

  The following day Delia sought him out in his study. He’d retreated there shortly after breakfast, and for the past hour had been staring at his replica sixteenth-century globe of the world. He considered crude, formless shapes that over the years had been redefined as countries and continents.

  Terra incognita . . .

  A sound interrupted his reverie. Delia paused by the door, one hand touching the jamb. She was carrying a newspaper.

  She entered the room and sat down on the very edge of the armchair beside the bookcase. He managed a smile.

  “You haven’t been yourself since you got back.”

  “I’m sorry. It must be the strain. I’m tired.”

  She nodded, let the silence develop. “Did you know, there were stories at the time? The Net was buzzing with rumours, speculation.”

  He smiled at that. “I should hope so. Humankind’s first landing on Mars . . .”

  “Besides that, Ed. When you fell, and the broadcast was suddenly cut.”

  “What we’re they saying? That we’d been captured by little green men?”

  “Not in so many words. But they were speculating . . . said you might have stumbled across some sign of life up there.” She stopped, then said, “Well?”

  “Well, what?”

  “What happened?”

  He sighed. “So you’d rather believe some crazy press report –?”

  She stopped him by holding out the morning paper. The headline of the Miami Tribune ran: LIFE ON MARS?

  He took the paper and read the report.

  Speculation was growing today surrounding man’s first landing on the red planet. Leaks from NASA suggest that astronauts McCarthy, Jeffries, Enright and Spirek discovered ancient ruins on their second exploratory tour of the red planet. Unconfirmed reports suggest that . . .

  Enright stopped reading and passed the paper back to his wife.

  “Unconfirmed reports, rumours. Typical press speculation.”

  “So nothing happened?”

  “What do you want me to say? I fell down a hole – but I didn’t find Wonderland down there.”

  Later, when she left without another word, he chastised himself for such a cheap parting shot.

  He hadn’t found Wonderland down there, but something far stranger instead.

  So the leaks had begun. Maybe he should tell Delia, before she found out from the paper.

  For the rest of the morning, he went through the pile of letters that had accumulated during his absence. He replied to a few and discarded others. Just as he was about to break for lunch, he came upon the letter from Connaught in England, with its distinctive King’s head stamp.

  He wondered what strange theory his eccentric pen-pal might have come up with this time.

  He opened the letter and unfolded a single sheet of high quality note paper. Usually there were dozens of pages in his tiny, meticulous handwriting.

  Enright read the letter, no more than three short paragraphs. Then he read it again, his mouth suddenly dry. He lay the sheet on his knee, as his hands were trembling.

  Dear Ed, he read,

  I have been following your exploits on the red planet with interest and concern. By now you will have returned, and I hope you will read this letter at the earliest opportunity. I was watching the broadcast from the Amazonis Planitia, which was suddenly terminated in strange circumstances . . . I wondered if humankind had at last found that life once existed on Mars. Ed, my friend, if you did indeed discover something beneath the sands of Mars, I think I can furnish an explanation.

  If you would care to v
isit me at the Manor at the earliest opportunity, I have a rather interesting story to tell.

  If you need further convincing that your trip might prove worthwhile, I can but write the words: Ulla, ulla . . .

  Your very good friend, Joshua Connaught.

  Enright read the letter perhaps a dozen times, before folding it away and staring at the far wall for long minutes.

  If the original discovery had struck him as an irresolvable enigma, then this only compounded the sense of mystery.

  He reached for the phone and made immediate plans to fly to England.

  Later, over lunch, he told Delia that NASA had recalled him. He’d be up at the Space Center for just under a week.

  “Is it about . . . about what happened on Mars?”

  How much to tell her? “Delia, when I get back . . . I think I’ll be able to tell you something, okay?”

  And the words Connaught had scrawled at the end of his letter came back to him.

  Ulla, ulla.

  He had fetched up on his butt at the bottom of the landslide and stared about him in wonder. The dust had settled, and bright sunlight penetrated the chamber for the first time in who knew how long?

  Through the dust and the glare he made out an array of towering shapes ranged along the walls of the chamber. He had fallen perhaps fifty feet, and the shapes – the machines – were almost that tall.

  “Oh, Christ,” he cried. “Spirek . . . Spirek!”

  In his ear he heard, “You okay, Ed? You hear me? Are you okay?”

  “Sal! You gotta see this.”

  “Ed, where are you?”

  He looked up. Sal was a tiny, silver-suited figure bobbing about on the lip of the drop, trying to see him.

  He waved. “Get yourself down here, Sal. You’ve gotta see this!”

  In his head-set he heard McCarthy shouting, “What’s going on out there, Enright? Spirek?”

  “You getting the pics, McCarthy?” Enright asked.

  “Is the camera working? The picture went haywire when you fell.”

  He checked the camera. It had ceased filming at some point during his descent. He activated it again and swept the head-mounted lens around the chamber. He could see now that a section of the ceiling had sunk over the years, and the pressure of his weight upon it had brought the slab crashing down, and tons of sand with it.