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110 JohnVarley
making love by postcard." They had another long hysterical laugh over that.
"How bad is it at your place?" he finally asked.
"Not bad at all. Everything we need is humming. I can give you a bath—"
"A bath!" It sounded like the delights of heaven. "I wish you could smell me. No, I'm glad you can't."
"I wish I could. I'm going to run the tub full of hot, hot water, and then I'm going to undress you and
lower you into it, and I'm going to scrub all those things I've been staring at for a year and take my time
with it, and then—"
"Hey, we don't need stories anymore, do we? Now we can do it."
"We need them for another two days. More than ever now, because I can't reach the place that's begging
for attention. But you didn't let me finish. After I get in the tub with you and let you wash me, and before
we head hand in hand for my bedroom, I'm going to get Rock Rogers and Maryjane Peters and the
Black Widow and Mark Antony and Jo-jo and his wild mate and hold their heads under the water until
they
drown"
"No you don't. 7 claim the right to drown Rock Rogers."
In the Hall
of the Martian
It took perseverance, alertness, and a willingness to break the rules to watch the sunrise in Tharsis
Canyon. Matthew Crawford shivered in the dark, his suit heater turned to emergency setting, his eyes
trained toward the east. He knew he had to be watchful. Yesterday he had missed it entirely, snatched
away from it by a long, unavoidable yawn. His jaw muscles stretched, but he controlled this yawn and
kept his eyes firmly open.
And there it was. Like the lights in a theater after the show is over: just a quick brightening, a splash of
localized bluish-purple over the canyon rim, and he was surrounded by footlights. Day had come, the
truncated Martian day that would never touch the blackness over his head.
This day, like the nine before it, illuminated a Tharsis radically changed from what it had been over the
last sleepy ten thousand years. Wind erosion of rocks can create an infinity of shapes, but it never gets
around to carving out a straight line or a perfect arc. The human encampment below him broke up the
jagged lines of the rocks with regular angles and curves.
The camp was anything but orderly. No one would get the impression that any care had been taken in the
haphazard arrangement of dome, lander, crawlers, crawler tracks, and scattered equipment. It had
grown, as all human base camps seem to grow, without pattern. He was reminded of the footprints
around Tranquillity Base, though on a much larger scale.
Tharsis Base sat on a wide ledge about halfway up from
 112 John Varley
the uneven bottom of the Tharsis arm of the Great Rift Valley. The site had been chosen because it was a
smooth area, allowing easy access up a gentle slope to the flat plains of the Tharsis Plateau, while at the
same time only a kilometer from the valley floor. No one could agree which area was most worthy of
study: plains or canyon. So this site had been chosen as a compromise. What it meant was that the
exploring parties had to either climb up or go down, because there wasn't a damn thing worth seeing near
the camp. Even the exposed layering and its areological records could not be seen without a
half-kilometer crawler ride up to the point where Crawford had climbed to watch the sunrise.
He examined the dome as he walked back to camp. There was a figure hazily visible through the plastic.
At this distance he would have been unable to tell who it was if it weren't for the black face. He saw her
step up to the dome wall and wipe a clear circle to look through. She spotted his bright red suit and
pointed at him. She was suited except for her helmet, which contained her radio. He knew he was in
trouble. He saw her turn away and bend to the ground to pick up her helmet, so she could tell him what
she thought of people who disobeyed her orders, when the dome shuddered like a jellyfish.
An alarm started in his helmet, flat and strangely soothing coming from the tiny speaker. He stood there
for a moment as a perfect smoke ring of dust billowed up around the rim of the dome. Then he was
running.
He watched the disaster unfold before his eyes, silent except for the rhythmic beat of the alarm bell in his
ears. The dome was dancing and straining, trying to fly. The floor heaved up in the center, throwing the
black woman to her knees. In another second the interior was a whirling snowstorm. He skidded on the
sand and fell forward, got up in time to see the fiberglass ropes on the side nearest him snap free from the
steel spikes anchoring the dome to the rock.
The dome now looked like some fantastic Christmas ornament, filled with snowflakes and the flashing red
and blue lights of the emergency alarms. The top of the dome
In the Hall of the Martian Kings 113
heaved over away from him, and the floor raised itself high in the air, held down only by the unbroken
anchors on the side farthest from him. There was a gush of snow and dust; then the floor settled slowly
back to the ground. There was no motion now but the leisurely folding of the depressurized dome roof as
it settled over the structures inside.
The crawler skidded to a stop, nearly rolling over, beside the deflated dome. Two pressure-suited figures
got out. They started for the dome, hesitantly, in fits and starts. One grabbed the other's arm and pointed
to the lander. The two of them changed course and scrambled up the rope ladder hanging over the side.
Crawford was the only one to look up when the lock started cycling. The two people almost tumbled
over each other coming out of the lock. They wanted to
do
something, and quickly, but didn't know
what. In the end, they just stood there, silently twisting their hands and looking at the floor. One of them
took off her helmet. She was a large woman, in her thirties, with red hair shorn off close to the scalp.
"Matt, we got here as—" She stopped, realizing how obvious it was. "How's Lou?"
"Lou's not going to make it." He gestured to the bunk where a heavyset man lay breathing raggedly into a
clear plastic mask. He was on pure oxygen. There was blood seeping from his ears and nose.
"Brain damage?"
 Crawford nodded. He looked around at the other occupants of the room. There was the Surface
Mission Commander, Mary Lang, the black woman he had seen inside the dome just before the
blowout. She was sitting on the edge of Lou Prager's cot, her head cradled in her hands. In a way, she
was a more shocking sight than Lou. No one who knew her would have thought she could be brought to
this limp state of apathy. She had not moved for the last hour.
Sitting on the floor huddled in a blanket was Martin Ralston, the chemist. His shirt was bloody, and there
was
114 JohnVarley
dried blood all over his face and hands from the nosebleed he'd only recently gotten under control, but
his eyes were alert. He shivered, looking from Lang, his titular leader, to Crawford, the only one who
seemed calm enough to deal with anything. He was a follower, reliable but unimaginative.
Crawford looked back to the newest arrivals. They were Lucy Stone McKillian, the redheaded
ecologist, and Song Sue Lee, the exobiologist. They still stood numbly by the air lock, unable as yet to
come to grips with the fact of fifteen dead men and women beneath the dome outside.
"What do they say on the
Burroughs'?"
McKillian asked, tossing her helmet on the floor and squatting
tiredly against the wall. The lander was not the most comfortable place to hold a meeting; all the couches
were mounted horizontally since their purpose was cushioning the acceleration of landing and takeoff.
With the ship sitting on its tail, this made ninety percent of the space in the lander useless. They were all
gathered on the circular bulkhead at the rear of the life system, just forward of the fuel tank.
"We're waiting for a reply," Crawford said. "But I can sum up what they're going to say: not good. Unless
one of you two has some experience in Mars-lander handling that you've been concealing from us."
Neither of them bothered to answer that. The radio in the nose sputtered, then clanged for their attention.
Crawford looked over at Lang, who made no move to go answer it. He stood and swarmed up the
ladder to sit in the copilot's chair. He switched on the receiver.
"Commander Lang?"
"No, this is Crawford again. Commander Lang is ... indisposed. She's busy with Lou, trying to do
something."
"That's no use. The doctor says it's a miracle he's still breathing. If he wakes up at all, he won't be
anything like you knew him. The telemetry shows nothing like the normal brain wave. Now I've got to
talk to Commander Lang. Have her come up." The voice of Mission Commander Weinstein was
accustomed to command, and about as emotional as a weather report.
In the Hall of the Martian Kings 115
"Sir, I'll ask her, but I don't think she'll come. This is still her operation, you know." He didn't give
Weinstein time to reply to that. Weinstein had been trapped by his own seniority into commanding the
Edgar Rice Burroughs,
the orbital ship that got them to Mars and had been intended to get them back.
Command of the
Podkayne,
the disposable lander that would make the lion's share of the headlines, had
gone to Lang. There was little friendship between the two, especially when Weinstein fell to brooding
about the very real financial benefits Lang stood to reap by being the first woman on Mars, rather than
the lowly mission commander. He saw himself as another Michael Collins.
Crawford called down to Lang, who raised her head enough to mumble something.
 "What'dshesay?"
"She said take a message." McKillian had been crawling up the ladder as she said this. Now she reached
him and said in a lower voice, "Matt, she's pretty broken up. You'd better take over for now."
"Right, I know." He turned back to the radio, and McKillian listened over his shoulder as Weinstein
briefed them on the situation as he saw it. It pretty much jibed with Crawford's estimation, except at one
crucial point. He signed off and they joined the other survivors.
He looked around at the faces of the others and decided it wasn't the time to speak of rescue
possibilities. He didn't relish being a leader. He was hoping Lang would recover soon and take the
burden from him. In the meantime he had to get them started on something. He touched McKillian gently
on the shoulder and motioned her to the lock.
"Let's go get them buried," he said. She squeezed her eyes shut, forcing out tears, then nodded.
It wasn't a pretty job. Halfway through it, Song came down the ladder with the body of Lou Prager.
"Let's go over what we've learned. First, now that Lou's dead there's very little chance of ever lifting off.
That is, unless Mary thinks she can absorb everything she needs
L
116 John Varley
to know about piloting the
Podkayne
from those printouts Weinstein sent down. How about it, Mary?"
Mary Lang was lying sideways across the improvised cot that had recently held the
Podkayne
pilot, Lou
Prager. Her head was nodding listlessly against the aluminum hull plate behind her; her chin was on her
chest. Her eyes were half-open.
Song had given her a sedative from the dead doctor's supplies on the advice of the medic aboard the
E.R.B,
It had enabled her to stop fighting so hard against the screaming panic she wanted to unleash. It
hadn't improved her disposition. She had quit, she wasn't going to do anything for anybody.
When the blowout started, Lang had snapped on her helmet quickly. Then she had struggled against the
blizzard and the undulating dome bottom, heading for the roofless framework where the other members
of the expedition were sleeping. The blowout was over in ten seconds, and she then had the problem of
coping with the collapsing roof, which promptly buried her in folds of clear plastic. It was far too much
like one of those nightmares of running knee-deep in quicksand. She had to fight for every meter, but she
made it.
She made it in time to see her shipmates of the last six months gasping soundlessly and spouting blood
from all over their faces as they fought to get into their pressure suits. It was a hopeless task to choose
which two or three to save in the time she had. She might have done better but for the freakish nature of
her struggle to reach them; she was in shock and half believed it was only a nightmare. So she grabbed
the nearest, who happened to be Doctor Ralston. He had nearly finished donning his suit, so she slapped
his helmet on him and moved to the next one. It was Luther Nakamura, and he was not moving. Worse,
he was only half-suited. Pragmatically she should have left him and moved on to save the ones who still
had a chance. She knew it now, but didn't like it any better than she had liked it then.
While she was stuffing Nakamura into his suit, Crawford arrived. He had walked over the folds of plastic
until
 In the Hall of the Martian Kings 117
he reached the dormitory, then sliced through it with the laser he normally used to vaporize rock samples.
And he had had time to think about the problem of whom to save. He went straight to Lou Prager and
finished suiting him up. But it was already too late. He didn't know if it would have made any difference if
Mary Lang had tried to save him first.
Now she lay on the bunk, her feet sprawled carelessly in front of her. She slowly shook her head back
and forth.
"You sure?" Crawford prodded her, hoping to get a rise, a show of temper,
anything.
"I'm sure," she mumbled. "You people know how long they trained Lou to fly this thing? And he almost
cracked it up as it was. I... ah, nuts. It isn't possible."
"I refuse to accept that as a final answer," he said. "But in the meantime we should explore the
possibilities if what Mary says is true."
Ralston laughed. It wasn't a bitter laugh; he sounded genuinely amused. Crawford plowed on.
"Here's what we know for sure. The
E.R.B.
is useless to us. Oh, they'll help us out with plenty of advice,
maybe more than we want, but any rescue is out of the question."
"We know that," McKillian said. She was tired and sick from the sight of the faces of her dead friends.
"What's the use of all this talk?"
"Wait a moment," Song broke in. "Why can't they . . . I mean they have plenty of time, don't they? They
have to leave in six months, as I understand it, because of the orbital elements, but in that time—"
"Don't you know anything about spaceships?" McKillian shouted. Song went on, unperturbed.
"I do know enough to know the
Edgar
is not equipped for an atmosphere entry. My idea was, not to
bring down the whole ship, but only what's aboard the ship that we need. Which is a pilot. Might that be
possible?"
Crawford ran his hands through his hair, wondering what to say. That possibility had been discussed, and
was being studied. But it had to be classed as extremely remote.
"You're right," he said. "What we need is a pilot, and
118 JohnVarley
that pilot is Commander Weinstein. Which presents problems legally, if nothing else. He's the captain of a
ship and should not leave it. That's what kept him on the
Edgar
in the first place. But he did have a lot of
training on the lander simulator back when he was so sure he'd be picked for the ground team. You
know Winey, always the instinct to be the one-man show. So if he thought he could do it, he'd be down
here in a minute to bail us out and grab the publicity. I understand they're trying to work out a heat-shield
parachute system from one of the drop capsules that were supposed to ferry down supplies to us during
the stay here. But it's very risky. You don't modify an aerodynamic design lightly, not one that's supposed
to hit the atmosphere at ten-thousand-plus kilometers. So I think we can rule that out. They'll keep
working on it, but when it's done, Winey won't step into the damn thing. He wants to be a hero, but he
wants to live to enjoy it, too."
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