Leaving the IBM package was one thing, but the slide was inexcusable. Geoff Smith squeezed his eyes shut tight. If only he could turn back the clock! All it would have taken was a glance and a five-second diversion, and everything would have been alright.
Now, his best possible fate was winning a prize. And then having to endure the endless interviews that came after it.
And now, flying over the rugged Martian terrain, it looked like they might actually have a chance. Chatter from the Can: the felon’s Kite setup wasn’t going smoothly, his lead had evaporated, and every second left him farther behind. The extreme sports geeks had never really been in the running. They’d been slow at everything.
He’d hoped that he could make another slide as Laci and Wende built the Kite, but his water was lost and they didn’t let him have the time. And truth was, he didn’t really feel like it. He was in a haze, as if losing the slide had taken all the fight out of him.
Of course, he could scope the dust all he wanted when they were back on the Can, but that would be surface dust. What if the dust had to be from a few feet down? Or what if the dust had to be from near the water flows that they had seen from MGS, so many years ago? What if he’d never had a chance at all, and they knew that, and they didn’t care? His thoughts whirled like a cyclone, all destructive energy and dark currents.
Wende looked back at him from the pilot’s sling and smiled at him. Geoff tried to smile back, but his lips felt frozen in place. After a moment, Wende turned away and gestured at Laci. Laci looked back at him and frowned.
Laci was probably thinking how much faster they would be running if he accidentally fell off. He looked up nervously at his tether, but it was solid and unfrayed.
His head swam for a moment, and he shook it. His vision blurred and doubled as if his head was a giant bell that had just been struck. He gripped his perch tighter and held still. After a moment, it passed. The landscape streamed by beneath him, soothing and hypnotic.
But it wasn’t dead! He knew there was life here.
The landscape had changed again from dunefield to dark rocks, rectilinear and almost artificial in appearance. It reminded him of ancient Mayan ruins. Or was it Egypt? Or Stonehenge?
Details swam and ran and resolved themselves again. The rectilinear lines became sharper and more regular. Now he could see individual stones, etched into fantastic designs by the passage of time.
Etched? By what? He shook his head again, and details leaped out: fantastic whorls and patterns, ancient art of the highest order. It wasn’t etched by weather. It was etched by intelligence!
Were those patterns he saw in the sand as well? Did they cover ancient squares where people once gathered? For a blinding instant, he could see the entire city as it had stood towering over the rough Martian surface…
“Stop!” he cried. His voice sounded strangely high and strangled.
“What?” Wendy said. “Why?”
“It’s them!” Geoff said. “Intelligence! The city below us… there’s a city below us!”
The two looked down, scanning back and forth with puzzled looks.
“Geoff?” Wende said. “What are you talking about?”
“The city! Look at the stones! They’re square! Look at the language on them!”
“Geoff, that isn’t funny.”
A crackle. The voice of Frank Sellers from the Can. “What do you see?”
“A city,” Geoff said. “The remains of a city. Stones! Writing! Decoration!”
“Land,” Frank said.
“No way!” Laci said.
“The Roddenberry clause says you have to investigate any overt evidence of life,” Frank said. “Sorry.”
“But there’s nothing below us!” Wende said. “Just a rockfield.”
“Land. You have to. Contract breach if you don’t.”
“Shit!” Laci said. Wende grumbled, but they began to fall from the sky.
“Turn around,” Geoff said. “The best part is behind us.”
Wende wheeled around and he saw it all, the geometric perfection, the ancient city and all its splendor.
“I still don’t see it,” Wende said. “Frank, can you review our last imagery?”
“Yep,” Frank said. “Continue landing. It’ll take me a few minutes.”
Wende picked a relatively clear section of sand and for a moment they were all acting as landing gear, running over the sand.
Geoff ’s legs felt heavy and weak, and he buckled under the weight of the Kite. Down this close, he could see nothing. Rocks were just rocks. Sand was just sand. There was no great city.
“Geoff? You alright?” That was Wende. Pretty Wende. Nice of her to think about him.
Frank’s voice crackled back on. “False alarm,” he said. “I don’t see anything other than some regular volcanic cracking. That’s probably what fooled you, Geoff.”
“I’m no fool!” he shouted. He had seen it! He had!
Silence for a time. Finally: “What does Geoff look like? Is he blue?”
“No,” Wende said. “But he looks funny. Patchy, splotchy. Oh, shit. Does he have a bug?”
“More likely an oxy malfunction. He may be cranked up too high. Funny, that usually doesn’t cause hallucinations, but…”
“I saw it!” Geoff cried.
Wende was shrugging out of her harness.
“No,” Laci said. “Wende, get back in your harness. We need to fly!”
“It’ll only take a minute,” Frank said.
“It won’t kill him.”
“Yes it will. Eventually.”
“Then we take the chance.”
Wende had stopped shrugging out of her harness, under Laci’s hard glare. Frank said nothing. Geoff watched them for a moment, thinking,
Then Wende’s face bent over him. “I’m not like the other monster,” she said. “Let’s get him fixed up.”
“Good girls,” Frank said. “Here, open his panel and look for…”
He said it would only take a minute, but it took over ten. When they were all back on board and soaring into the sky, even the Rothman team had passed them.
NASA came back. This time with two grinning executives and their own camera crew. Following them were fifty thousand people who jammed the Burbank streets in cars and on bikes and on foot, holding banners saying “Free Enterprise!” and “New frontiers, not new Oversight!” and of course, “NASA SUCKS!”
Jere and Evan couldn’t help grinning.
Within a day, the video of the NASA/Oversight shakedown had been posted on a thousand message boards and ten thousand blogs. The raw video almost brought the AV IM network to its knees in the US, Japan, France, Russia, and even parts of China. A thousand pundits spouted off about “The New Stalin,” “The New Face of Censorship,” the fact that the Constitution had long been paved over, the free-enterprise foundation of the country, and the “Taking of the New Frontier.”
The New Frontier had struck the core audience like a well-spoken diatribe supporting socialized health care at a meeting of Reformed Republicans. Survivalists polished their weapons and streamed out of the Sierras and Appalachians and half-forgotten Nebraska missile silos to demonstrate. TrekCon 18 turned into a huge caravan that
