Blue Sunrise, page 15
“Of course, one of the reasons for this expedition is the hope of finding some clues that would help explain some of the oddities of Martian geology. We have seen many things in satellite photos that are difficult to understand. For example, there are places on the surface that look as if water has burst from the ground. This is not terribly unusual, but the flow from these sources appear to be very large, and most mysteriously, there is no indication of where the water went. We can see where the outflow pushed huge amounts of rock and sand forward, but it simply fans out and disappears. On Earth, we would find evidence of an old riverbed that once led to an ocean.”
Ki actually chuckled softly. “Mars has always held a strange mystical relevance for mankind, and there are many puzzles here. Even the two moons are strange—very small and irregularly shaped.” He paused for just a moment as if contemplating this last fact.
“Another puzzling matter is the appearance of many of the craters on Mars. The ejecta of some craters suggests that the surface was in a liquid or semi-liquid state when the meteor struck. It is difficult to formulate a decent hypothesis as to why this might be so. By retrieving rock samples from several areas on Mars and studying outcroppings and various other things we hope to gain an insight…”
Ki kept up his dialogue, but Tom reached out his hand to stop Evelyn. He looked intently down the cave and then turned and looked back in the direction they had come. He repeated this several times before he broke in.
“Commander,” Tom said, “does it appear to be getting brighter in here?”
“Brighter?”
“Yes, brighter. Look at the walls of the cave. It seems to me there is more quartz on the walls at this location than where we started.
Tom stood in thought for a moment. “I have a suggestion, Commander. Roll back the video to the beginning, and set up a view side-by-side with where we are now. Let me know if I’m just dreaming.”
Ki hit a few keystrokes and then held down one key and watched as Tom’s video whirled backward in a blur to the beginning. He froze the picture and compared it to Evelyn’s view. He frowned at the pictures for a moment. There was a sprinkling of quartz in the walls at the beginning of the cave, revealed by glints of light from the crystals, and this was not unusual for a cave, but the section of the cave where Evelyn and Tom were standing was peppered with spots of light.
Ki cocked his head to the side and considered the situation. “There does seem to be a greater amount of quartz at your current location,” he said. “It might be just normal variation, but it is a bit strange. May I suggest that you continue down the cave, and we will see if this trend continues?”
Ki toggled the view back to real time, and the video began to bob and weave as Evelyn and Tom resumed their exploration.
“We’re rolling,” Tom said. “Maybe you could tell us a little bit about how quartz is formed.”
“Certainly,” Ki replied. “Quartz is actually a crystal of Silicon and Oxygen. It is formed when water evaporates and deposits the dissolved silicates . . .”
Tom turned his radio almost all the way down so that only Evelyn could hear him. “The entire planet of Earth drops off to sleep.”
Evelyn turned her radio down also and scolded him. “You are simply being mean. Commander Thon is really quite a good lecturer.”
“Yeah, but he tends to get over everyone’s head pretty fast.”
Tom changed the subject and pointed around him. “What do you think of this?”
“I don’t know. I’m not a geologist, but I find it strange that the amount of quartz is changing so quickly.” She looked around at the sparkling walls. “It seems also that the rate of change is increasing as we move downward. Have you noticed that the floor is becoming more and more littered with small stones? Quite a few of them are primarily quartz. There is something strange here, but I don’t know what it might be.”
Ki was still talking as they conversed. “. . . of course, quartz has a hexagonal structure, actually a twinned trigonal structure that gives it many interesting properties and makes it useful for the manufacture of piezoelectric devices.”
Tom reached for the dial on his radio. “I’ve got to rescue these poor people,” he said and twisted the dial up.
“Commander Thon.”
“Yes Tom,” replied Ki.
“Ms. Weiss has observed that we are seeing more rubble on the floor of the cave as we continue. As you can see, most of it is quartz. I noticed when we first entered this part of the cave that the floor was almost completely clean due to the steep slope. The slope has not changed, but there is more debris. I am going to pick up some of these rocks for samples, but I was wondering what your thoughts might be on the subject.”
There was a long pause. “It is difficult to speculate at this time,” said Ki. “I have noticed that the cave is getting larger as you progress. At the same time, the walls are becoming smoother, and I am a bit surprised at the lack of any major twists or turns.” He paused again. “It is almost as if something wore down the cave in a rapid but violent fashion. I would suspect steam or extremely rapid water-flow, but this cave was obviously an underground river. I cannot see how steam could have been generated in such high volume, and the fact that the cave is narrower in the upper parts than it is here rules out rapid water flow. If the cave was becoming more narrow, then the water velocity would be increasing in the direction you and Ms. Weiss are traveling, but the reverse is true.”
Evelyn picked up a few rocks and labeled a bag for them as Ki talked. They continued onward and were soon walking on a rough carpet of shining gravel and larger stones. Ki did not speak for some time, and Tom could almost hear the wheels turning in his commander’s head as the scene became more peculiar with the appearance of larger and larger rocks.
Finally Ki spoke. “This is most strange. Larger rocks are always dropped at the beginning of a flow of water, while smaller stones and sand are carried further. We saw this at the mouth of this cave. Some of the larger plates from the fracture cave had been carried just a few feet into the water cave, whereas the smaller ones were found several hundred feet further along. This is one of the mechanisms by which rocks become sorted by size. What we are seeing here would indicate that you are walking against the direction of water flow, upstream if you would. But the slope is steeply downward. I cannot imagine what would have made water flow uphill.”
Neither Tom nor Evelyn had an answer, and they walked on in silence for a time. Tom began to get the impression that the slope of the cave was leveling off, but then he noticed that the ceiling was closing in.
“Commander Thon, as you can see, the roof is getting closer. We are apparently now walking on a reasonably thick bed of rock that is getting thicker as we move forward. If this continues, we will find ourselves at a point where the cave is plugged by debris.”
“That would be most disappointing, Mr. Fielder. Let us hope that there remains sufficient clearance for you and Ms. Weiss to continue.”
Tom and Evelyn walked perhaps another half-mile before Evelyn spoke. “Look. Can you see it?”
Tom squinted into the glare of quartz but was unable to make out anything. “What? It looks like more of the same to me.”
“No. The floor rises sharply ahead of us. I cannot tell if there is an opening at the top.”
They quickened their pace. “Time for me to get a prescription faceplate,” Tom said.
They soon came to the base of a pile of large rocks that seemed to block the way. The roof of the cave was still some twenty feet above their head, and the steep angle of the rock pile made it impossible to see if it met the ceiling or allowed room for them to crawl through.
They stood for a moment surveying the situation before Tom spoke. “Let’s climb up and see what we’ve got.”
Side by side, Tom and Evelyn scrambled up to where the rocks met the ceiling. At the top was a small opening, just large enough for one of them to crawl through. Tom bent over so that his suit lights would shine into the passage.
He stood up and motioned to Evelyn. “Take a look,” he said.
Evelyn squatted in front of the small channel and moved her head back and forth for a moment. “It’s difficult to tell what I’m seeing. The passage does not appear to be very long, but I am not sure that I am seeing the end of it. This may just be the top of this pile of rocks. Perhaps it slopes down on the other side, and we can continue.”
Tom pulled out another relay antenna and laid it down next to the opening. “That would be nice. Do you have any experience with crawlways?”
“Oh yes,” Evelyn replied. “There were several caverns in France that could be accessed in no other way.”
Tom thought it over for a moment. Ki had been silent for some time. “Commander, can you read me?”
“Loud and clear Mr. Fielder. I have been watching closely. Ms. Weiss has experienced similar situations in the past and may be more able to recognize a dangerous circumstance. I believe she should go into the opening while you wait outside. If the passage is more than twenty or thirty feet long, we may have to reconsider our current objectives.”
“Aye, sir,” Tom replied and gestured to the opening. “Be very careful not to tear your suit.”
Evelyn dropped to her hands and knees and began to slowly and carefully move into the passage. “Yes, sir. At least this passage is not so small that we will need to drag ourselves through on our bellies. That would be very difficult.”
Tom dropped down to watch her progress through the crawlway and flipped the switch on the relay antenna.
“It is not so bad,” Evelyn said after she had gone about ten feet. “I can see the end of the passage just a few feet ahead. I will be through in just a moment. Unfortunately, I cannot see what is on the other side because my suit lights are all pointed down. I will let you know as soon as I can stand up and look around.”
Tom could still see her moving on all fours through the crawlway. “Just be careful,” he said.
“How do you say, ‘A piece of cake,’ eh? I am coming out now.”
There was a brief pause and then “Mon Dieu!” followed by a string of French much too fast for Tom to translate. Ki began to chatter into the radio. “What in the world! I have never seen anything like this!” he said.
“Will someone tell me what the hell is going on?” Tom screamed. “Evelyn, are you alright?”
“I am fine,” she said and lapsed into rapid French once more. “Come, come,” she said. “Excuse me, but I have no words.”
Ki continued to exclaim as Tom started into the passage. “My God! It’s a geode!” he gasped. “But this is on a scale I would not have believed possible.”
Tom pulled his way through the last of the crawlway and stood up. “Holy shit,” he said softly.
He was nearly blinded by the light from their suits. They stood on a ledge some twenty feet from the floor of a roughly spherical cavern the size of a large auditorium, but all other impressions were lost in the appearance of the walls. Every inch of the room—ceiling, walls and floor—was covered in quartz crystals of various sizes and colors. Although red predominated, there were streaks of blue and amber, and their suit lights bounced brilliant rainbows back and forth as they turned left and right. The chamber only suggested the shape of a ball, and there were soft dips and large undulating waves across the walls where the crystals had grown at different rates. At the very top of the room, some fifty feet above their heads, an especially large growth of crystals hung down like an impressionist chandelier. The chandelier held a deep rose color in its heart and shaded to mauve where it merged with the rest of the ceiling.
Tom was struck speechless and stood looking about with his mouth open. The far wall was nearly one hundred feet away, and at first, he could not find even the smallest spot that did not reflect sharp flashes of colored light.
Ki was still chattering away in his helmet about the formation of geodes on Earth and the slow precipitation of Oxides of Silicon. Tom was not paying the least bit of attention.
Evelyn had, had a little more time to absorb the features of the room and she interrupted the commander. “Commander Thon,” she said, pointing down and slightly to her right. “What could this be?”
Tom’s eyes followed her outstretched arm to the floor of the room, and he felt the hair on the back of his neck rise up as he tried to make sense of what he was seeing. In the middle of the floor was an oblong area nearly lost in the glare from the crystals. It too reflected light, but the color was a translucent grayish green, and the surface was smooth—unlike the jagged quartz of the walls and ceiling. But it was far from featureless. There were small domes and sharp spires with fluted sides, some of them three feet tall and more. One area had a series of small ridges resembling ocean waves, and there were twisted columns in strange shapes projecting upward at odd places—all leaning at slightly different angles.
There was complete silence over the radio for almost a full minute as no one dared to say what was on their minds.
Evelyn finally broke the silence. “It looks like a strange abstract sculpture.”
Tom’s mind seemed to have shut down momentarily, but Evelyn’s words jolted him. He could not accept that this was an Alien artifact. There had to be another explanation, and his mind whirled around the problem for another minute or so. Suddenly he nodded his head vigorously.
“Sublimation,” Tom said.
“Pardon?” from Evelyn.
Tom pointed to the where the shapes caught the multicolored reflection of their lights. “Sublimation,” he repeated. “This is what we came here to find. This is ice.”
“Of course!” said Ki. “This room was probably once filled with ice. Over time, the ice has sublimed as Tom described earlier, but it is an uneven process. Small air currents and pockets of dissolved gases and other things would have caused the ice to evaporate faster in some areas than in others. These things sculpted the surface, resulting in what we see now. Congratulations, Mr. Fielder and Ms. Weiss. You have collaborated in what may be one of the most important discoveries of this expedition.”
Tom was already pulling a piton from his belt, and he signaled for Evelyn to loosen the coil of rope from her shoulder. “I’m sure you’ll want a sample of the ice,” he said. “We’re going to rappel down this wall and get a closer look.”
Tom hammered the piton into a crack near his feet, clipped the rope into the eye, and placed another antenna on the ledge. Tom went first, and they were soon standing on the rough floor of the cavern. “We need to be especially careful with all of this jagged crystal,” he said.
The ice lay about thirty feet away, and they walked carefully across the floor till they stood at the edge of the wind-carved ice. Evelyn was gawking like a tourist. “It is like standing in the middle of a diamond,” she said.
Tom gestured to the ice. “This stuff is worth more than diamonds right now.” He looked up at the roof of the cavern and considered for a moment.
“Commander Thon,” he said, “it’s a long way through the cave and up the crack. It won’t be very efficient to carry blocks of ice that far. We may want to think about drilling in from the top. We’ll need to set up a heater to melt the ice and a small pump. If we heat trace the pipe back to the surface, we can just let the pump run continuously. All we’ll need at the surface is a hollowed out spot with a piece of plastic in the bottom. The water will freeze as soon as it hits the ground, and we can carry it back to the camp in chunks.”
“That seems reasonable, Mr. Fielder,” replied Ki, “but it sounds like it might require a good bit of power.”
“It will,” said Tom, “but we’ve got those big rolls of solar-cell sheets for emergency use if the fusion reactor fails. I’ll need to go through the calculations, but I think just one of those will be sufficient. After all, we don’t need to pump the melted ice very quickly.”
“We have many things to do before we begin harvesting this water,” said Ki, “but it sounds like a good plan. We will of course obtain several core samples from this site before any melting of the surface. One of the questions that needs to be answered is how deep the ice is, but there are no other exits from this room. I suspect you and Ms. Weiss have found a virtually inexhaustible vein of water.”
Tom grinned. “Does this mean we can have full showers tonight?”
Ki chuckled. “I believe the two of you have earned that right for all of us.”
“Life is good,” Tom said and stepped out onto the ice. His feet immediately went out from under him and he landed flat on his backside in the crystals at the edge of the ice. “Damn it!”
Evelyn leaned down to lend him her hand. “Are you alright?”
“I’m fine,” Tom said as he stood, but a red light bloomed in his helmet. “Crap, I’ve got an air leak.”
Evelyn was suddenly all business. “Turn around,” she said.
The tear was easy to find by the small plume of water vapor condensing and freezing as it left the hole in the butt of Tom’s suit. She pulled a small repair kit from a clip on her belt. “Bend over.”
Tom bent at the waist and tilted forward with his legs held straight till his gloves touched the ground. “How bad is it?” he asked.
“It is little more than a pinhole,” Evelyn replied and selected a round patch from her kit. She struggled for a moment to remove the backing with her gloved hands and then pressed the patch over the small hole. With the thumb of her right hand, she rubbed the patch firmly onto the surface of Tom’s suit. “You had best not be enjoying this,” she said.
“Let’s see. My life is hanging in the balance, and the whole world is looking at a picture of my can sticking up in the air. Not exactly my idea of a good time.”
Evelyn inspected the patch for evidence of more air leakage and stepped back. “That should do it.”
