Rainbow Mars Read Online Free PDF Page B

maintenance and send it right back.”
    â€œThe Pilgrims will be gone in a—oh, here it is again.” She watched the great sphere’s antigravity beamers turn toward the third probe—carrying the Pilgrims, now far beyond sight—to boost it into course for Mars. “I could get used to this.”
    The Collector would need fuel for takeoff. The fourth probe, the Tanker, would land near the peak of Mons Olympus and use its nuclear power plant to convert martian atmosphere and six tonnes of liquid hydrogen into ninety-six tonnes of methane and liquid oxygen. Martians weren’t likely to bother it there—
    â€œWhy not?”
    â€œLife on Mars— even Mars—probably evolved in water. Mons Olympus pokes right out of the atmosphere. Okay, Hanny, it’s on its way. Jump us.”
    *   *   *
    Earth and stars blurred like paint in water as the extension cage entered time. Gravity was outward, away from the sphere’s center, as they were pulled toward the present. Miya looked at him speculatively across the width of the extension cage.
    Svetz grinned. “No time.” He watched the inertial calendar for a few moments longer, then pushed the Interrupt. “We’ll have longer going home. Yes?”
    â€œYes, my hopeful swain.”
    Swain?
    The hurricane was gone. From fifteen hundred klicks’ altitude the Earth’s broad crescent was otherwise unchanged.
    Miya took the controls. The antenna pattern painted across the surface of the X-cage shimmered as it called across three hundred and fifty million klicks to machines that had been crawling across Mars for three long years.
    â€œThat’s done. Mars is about twenty minutes away at lightspeed. Forty minutes before we get a signal. Can you jump us?”
    â€œNo. We’ll have to wait.”
    â€œFine.”
    â€œWe’re nowhere near that accurate, Miya. We can’t place a cage within a year unless it’s matching locus with another cage.”
    Forty minutes later … all Svetz saw was the shimmer in the antennae, and Miya’s hands moving. Miya called the Center. She got Gorky.
    â€œChair, we have message bursts from all four probes.”
    â€œBring them home.”
    â€œThe probes are all waiting for new instructions.”
    â€œMiya, we’ll have to decide what to tell them first. Come home.”

8
    The Norse mythological world tree, Yggdrasil is an evergreen ash tree which overshadows the whole universe.
    â€”“The Ash Tree,” from Mattiol’s Commentaires, Lyons, 1579
    Â 
    The whole of the Bureau of History and nearly as many from Bureau of the Sky Domains were crowded into the viewing room. There weren’t enough seats. A crowd sat cross-legged ahead of the front row.
    The Orbiter view showed red Mars strung with threads of gray-green six to eight klicks in width. Spectra showed lines of chlorophyll and water. Gorky protested, “They’re too narrow. How could any optical telescope have seen that? Those old astronomers must have been going on nothing but intuition!”
    â€œThey got it right, though,” Miya said. “Shall we call the SecGen?”
    â€œNot yet.” Willy Gorky shifted to the refueling module, the Tanker. They watched the mountain’s vast crater come up ( flash! ) and past. The Tanker settled onto a wide ledge. The fission plant trundled out on an array of skeletal wheels, trailing cable, and stopped eighty meters away.
    Gorky studied the readings. “Full tanks. Now we know we can bring something home. Forsman, replay that flash.”
    Instruments on the Tanker module had looked into the crater during descent. A white flash washed out everything, and then the audience saw a skeletal structure of metal tubes and mirrors occupying part of the central crater. Spidery strutwork supported curved mirror surfaces hundreds of meters across.
    â€œSculpture? Artificial, anyway,” Miya said.