Both of them began to notice little things around them, such as the descending layers of footprints in the sand that showed someone had been coming out into the old dome on a regular basis, no matter what the official reports said. Or that it was warmer inside the tunnel than it had been in the air lock, or that tiny beads of moisture were running along the plastic roof above them—often collecting in a central area to form actual drops.
Ducking the occasional drip, Martel began to unpack some of the equipment she had brought with her, while the ambassador merely looked out through the walls of the tunnel at the barren landscape beyond.
The scene outside was one of ancient, undisturbed desert drift. One boulder in particular, much larger than all the other rocks around it, caught Hawkes's eye. It was coarsely granular, banded in at least two directions. From what he could tell from a distance, it appeared to be a breccia fragment. He thought it might have been the central remains from a meteoroid impact, considering the ring of smaller, similar fragments that seemed to surround it.
While his aide moved on ahead around the curve in the tunnel leading into the dome, Hawkes maintained a slower pace, still fascinated by the view. He had seen all of the great deserts of the Earth, had spent considerable time in the Mojave Desert and the adjoining Death Valley region. But neither of them had struck him as did Mars. Sliding his hands into the side pockets of his old leather vest, he moved at his own pace, unable to break away from his view of the outside world.
It was true, he told himself; the deserts he had known all had their own striking colors and irregular formations, but they could not compare. Even the worst parts of Death Valley had some small traces of life here and there, even if only the remains of long-dead weeds—there were still clues that life was possible. Mars, however, held no such traces. Nowhere in sight, from zero to the horizon, was there the slightest glimmer of anything except sand and rock and lifeless soil.
Nowhere.
Hawkes continued on toward the dome. His pace began to pick up, his strides growing longer and quicker. Beyond him—beyond the relatively thin plastic wall holding in his atmosphere—the Martian landscape lay dully. Unmoving—uninspired—only the wind stirring up ancient layers of dust and desiccated soil. The single thing still of interest to him was the quirky way the browns and yellows outside blended to give the view its strange, orangish tint—what for centuries had granted Mars the distinction of being known as "the red planet."
It was only a mild diversion, however, and quickly forgotten when Martel suddenly called out to him. "Ambassador, there's something here I'm pretty sure you'll want to see."
The tone in his aide's voice caught his ear. Anxious for anything that might break the monotony of the Martian surface, Hawkes hurried his pace. Coming into the domed area, he found what he was looking for.
"Good Lord . . ."
"Maybe," answered the woman, taking soil readings in the center of the dome. "But something tells me he might have had some help here."
The ambassador crossed the sandy, broken floor of the dome, staring at its central point. Martel stood off to the side taking soil readings, but Hawkes barely noticed her. His attention was riveted by the flourishing wealth of life she was studying.
"I don't believe it," he muttered, trying to convince himself that the tangle of plants before him was not just a product of his imagination. A thousand questions flooded his mind: Who had done it? Why hadn't he been told? Why hadn't anyone been told? This was the kind of thing that could have eased a lot of the tension that was tearing the colony apart. Why was it being kept a secret— and who was doing the keeping?
Hawkes studied the mass of intergrown stalks and vines. The dome was roughly a thousand meters across. He estimated that the living circle in its center was somewhere between one hundred and a hundred fifty meters in diameter. Ivy and other creepers had been coaxed up old stanchions. Broad-leafed varieties littered the dome floor around them, surrounded and intergrown with numerous trailers such as aurea and traveling sailor.
"Someone found a use for Sam Waters's leftover fibers," Martel murmured.
"He had started telling us about the problem they had in the old days with disposing of the excess sponge/mush fibers. Someone's been dumping loads of it here, and mixing it with the right chemicals to negate its overly acidic qualities. The Martian soil seems to have something to do with that as well."
"They must have worked the area, smuggling excess water out here on their own until they got enough of a hothouse effect going to get their own little atmosphere recycling." Pointing toward the ceiling, she said, "Look."
Hawkes stared up, seeing the hundreds of thousands of hanging droplets waiting to grow fat enough for gravity to release them. But before he could comment, a loud "whooshing" sound swept through the air, followed by a violent ripple that shook its way across the dome. Thousands of drops broke free from the ceiling at one time, raining down on the ambassador and his aide.
Rubbing the water from his eyes, Hawkes looked up again. What had happened? he wondered. What was wrong?
It took him only another moment to realize what had happened, and fear made his heart skip a beat. Turning back toward the tunnel, he screamed,
"Run!!"
Even as he charged for the tunnel's entrance himself, he could see the compression door to the chamber beyond sealing shut. Without looking up again, he knew the ceiling was slowly beginning to lower . . . knew that the dome was collapsing.
22
"KEEP RUNNING!!"
Hawkes's boots tore gouges in the Martian soil as he raced back toward the tunnel entrance. He was no more than a few
