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technicians on the project. Rachel suddenly remembered that
he was a bit of a Mars buff, and wondered whether he could
clear up one problem.
‘What the hell’s it doing here?’ she asked. All of the
simularities she had seen had shown the Sphinx as an
impressive structure that lay beneath the pink Martian sky. So
why was it sitting in the antechamber of a deserted temple?
Lebrun shrugged. ‘It was moved during the Thousand Day
War, Professor. For reasons that aren’t very clear, the Greenies
devoted a sizeable force to defend the transport, and it was
brought here. It was all recorded by the satellite network in
orbit around Mars. Nobody knows why, though.’
‘So where’s here, exactly?’ Mars was a big place, thought
Rachel. And far too near Earth – and the invaders – for her
liking.
‘Vastitas Borealis, Professor. The Martian North Pole.’ He
pointed towards the grand table in the centre of the chamber.
‘And, unless I’m mistaken, that is the Eight-Point Table. The
meeting place for the entire military high command on Mars.’
Felice had come over by this time, and Rachel considered
her deputy. The last few hours had shown Rachel that the
woman was far more than the arrogant upstart that she had
first appeared to be; she was a fine scientist with a cool head,
and Rachel couldn’t think of anybody else who she would
rather have had backing her up.
‘What do you think, Dr Delacroix? Any suggestions?’
Felice frowned. ‘There has to be a reason for us being here,
rather than on Ultima, so what is it? Unless...’ She slapped her
forehead. ‘Christen me an idiot! Of course, there must be a
subspace attractor near by!’ She reached into her jump-suit
pocket and pulled out a micro-tablette which she then aimed
around the cavern, allowing its sensor grid to soak up the
ambient radiation.
Rachel did the same, and examined the readings. And
swallowed. The sensors were indicating something that she
would never have expected on Mars; in fact, she would never
have expected it anywhere in the solar system. ‘According to
this, there’s a subspace attractor near by that goes off the dial.
Of course it would interfere with our stunnel, draw it off
course. That’s exactly what we were seeing when the stunnel
bent back from the Ultima relay. But why would the Martians
build a subspace attractor?’ She looked down at her
microtablette. ‘Is it some sort of a weapon?’
‘There’s a problem there, Professor,’ forwarded Lebrun.
‘The Greenies never developed subspace technology; that’s
why we won the war. After those bastards dropped that
asteroid on Paris, they thought that they had a couple of days
until we retaliated because they were expecting the
counterattack to come in a fleet of spaceships. Instead, we
arrived via Transit beam within hours and...’ His face
crumpled as the memories surged back, and Rachel felt
another part of her soul shrivel and die as she thought about
the personal repercussions of the Earth-Mars conflict.
Michael’s death tried to revisit her mind, but she repelled it.
She was getting good at doing that.
Chris sidled up to them. ‘So there’s technology here that
the Martians couldn’t possibly have developed?’ A brief but
noticeable expression of fear crossed his face. ‘It might be the
invaders.’
Rachel weighed up the options. They definitely couldn’t
stay where they were; despite the acceptable temperature and
the thin but breathable air – Rachel remembered reading a
paper on the terraforming programme which had followed
Man’s conquest of the planet in the middle of the twenty-first
century – they would very soon die of thirst, or eventually
starvation, when the meagre supplies which they had brought
with them from Charon ran out. But the presence of
unexpected subspace technology suggested that there might be
others near by, and that could mean food and water.
Or something.
As she saw it, there were four alternatives: the subspace
attractor was a natural phenomenon; such things were known
– Rachel had read of such a thing on the sixth moon of
Clavidence, the result of a high concentration of rare and
peculiar minerals. Or the attractor was the responsibility of the
Martians, humans, or the invaders. The fifth possibility – that
another race was involved – was instantly dismissed. Things
were complicated enough without involving another set of
aliens. For a second, she thought about their options. And then
she decided.
‘We do a recce,’ she announced.
‘All of us?’ asked Lebrun.
She shook her head. ‘I’m going, and I’d appreciate Chris
and Felice tagging along.’ She looked at them both, and
smiled inside; both were nodding, and she felt strangely proud
of them. They were her team; it was that simple.
Addressing the crowd of colonists and scientists, she
assumed her most authoritative tone.
‘It looks like there might be some sort of complex not too
far away, and I’m going to take a look. Adjudicator Cwej and
Dr Delacroix will accompany me. If we can verify that it’s
safe, we’ll come back and get you.’ She began to turn towards
the direction which Felice’s micro-tablette had indicated,
before remembering one last thing.
‘Give us twenty-four hours.’ She stabbed a finger at
Mitchell, a young, auburn-haired Welsh woman sitting cross-
legged against the wall. ‘Ceri-Anne – you’re in charge now. If
we’re not back by then, use the emergency transceiver and try
to contact the Bureau on Oberon.’ She caught Chris’s look of
surprise – did he really think that the head of the Charon
colony wouldn’t know about the support which the
Adjudicators were providing from that godforsaken moon of
Uranus? – and smiled. ‘Any questions?’
The group of survivors nodded and grunted, but nobody
seemed to have any objections. ‘Right then. Chris: grab a
survival pack and four plasma rifles. Felice: bring that
microtablette. We’re going hunting.’
Rachel just hoped that they were armed for bear; something
told her that humans were the last race that they were going to
find guarding the mysterious Martian subspace attractor.
Vincente Esteban carefully eased himself out of his sleeping
bag, stood up, and looked around the Martian dwelling.
Antony McGuire was fast asleep on the low hard bed,
twitching with bad dreams in the dim twilight of Ikk-ett-
Saleth, and Esteban stared at him with pity. Esteban knew of
the death of McGuire’s family, and felt for him. But he didn’t
share his hatred of Martians; he couldn’t. There was no proof
that the Martians had been behind the terrorist attacks, only
ideograms carved into the wall of the Montreal monorail
terminus. The assumption that they were responsible was
nothing more than a leap of false reasoning by a planet still
living in fear. The Martians simply didn’t behave like that –
terrorism was an insult to their racial honour, he thought, as he
put on his environment jacket.
Sleep had completely eluded the scientist; the knowledge
that he was in the fabled City of the Sad Ones was too
overwhelming for him to relax, despite his exhaustion. He
smiled; Juanita had always said that he lived, ate and breathed
research.
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