see the country of my birth. I had not gone home even in my years of wandering, for after my trial it had been subtly conveyed to me that Germany would not welcome me even as a tourist. I grinned wryly, remembering: a Berliner had held the coordinator’s chair of the Associated Nations the year of my Martian crusade or rebellion or whatever it was. The fact that I, the archtraitor, shared the same homeland had been the ruin of his political ambitions—had, in fact, set his own party back to a very secondary place in the elections. My homeland nursed old grudges for a long time; if I had gone home, there would have been an unfortunate “accident.”
The Doc chose the most commonly traveled tourist lane to the Moon but turned off into a side route a couple of hours later, as we neared our goal. I was dozing and missed it, but he followed the route around to the dark side, and very near the far terminator we decelerated with a bumb-bump that woke me. I shifted the seat scope to see the old Icarus, a black mass blotting out the stars, invisible except for its orbit lights. There was no mistaking the lumpy profile of an Icarus, with its control blister just forward of the center line, lending it a resemblance to a hunchbacked dolphin. We matched orbits; the cargo hold opened, and we berthed in the nearest of the twin cradles, broke seal when the doors were tight again, and climbed stiffly out.
The Doc was affability itself, now that a lot of the danger was over.
“Now, my young friend, we all have our several duties except for yourself, so permit me to escort you to your cabin and forgive me if I leave you there to your own devices. Have you dined?” I told him that I had not; I had not been aware of my emptiness until his remark reminded me. “Very well! You will find an autochef in your room and please make yourself at home. It will be some time before we break orbit—about an hour before Earthrise—so if you retire before then, please remember to strap yourself in your bunk. We will all have breakfast together in the morning, so until then…”
The cabin was smaller than was comfortable, but at least it had its own fresher cubicle, and the autochef produced a pretty good steak and surprised me with its Argentine coffee. I packed away my few effects in the wall cabinet, wondering what I was going to do for a change of clothes. But my host had anticipated this, and I found clean linen in my size and a couple of pairs of the zippered one-piece overalls spacemen call airsuit liners. I bathed, dined, and turned in, strapping the safety harness down, and turned off the lights. An hour before we edged around the Moon beyond the daylight terminator, I would be on my way to Mars.
It was hard for me to believe it was all coming true. I drifted into sleep, thinking about it, and my last coherent thought was a nagging twinge of guilt. For I knew that, despite what the Doctor thought, Ilionis was only a fairy tale. There was no lost Treasure City, and there was no lost treasure. This I knew beyond all doubt or question…I, who knew more of Mars and of its people than any other man of my world could ever know. This truth I could keep to myself for a while, but eventually it would come out, when we reached the site and found nothing there but eroded gullies full of gritty sand.
And when we got that far, I would be in very serious trouble.
3. Planetfall
There is no experience in life duller and more tedious than a space trip, particularly one of any real duration. By comparison, a strato flight from anywhere to anywhere is diverting, because at least you have clouds and a landscape below to look at; and an old-fashioned ocean voyage must have been heavenly, back in the days when they still used surface vessels.
But in space there simply is nothing at all to look at, which is why spacecraft are made without portholes or windows. Nothing lies beyond the hull fabric save dead black vacuum. There are lots of stars, but they all look alike and after your first glimpse of the “star-gemmed immensitudes” (as the poet calls them), you have seen everything there is. There is no variety in duplicating the experience.
The only parts of a space trip that afford the traveler anything at all in the way of scenic effects are departure and arrival. Generally, both are conducted in the vicinity of one moon or another, so you have the moonscape to look at and the more interesting planetscape beyond. But between the beginning and the end of your trip, there is nothing at all but dreary shipboard routine and absolute tedium. The drone and vibration of the drive itself are pleasurable in a way, but you only have them during acceleration and deceleration, and in between there is empty silence, punctuated by the whishing of the air ducts and the intermittent chime of the Meteor Proximity Alarm. God, you even begin to hunger for the minor excitement of the MPA after a while!
A Luna-Mars flight is tedium carried to the nth degree, especially when you make crossover in anything less luxurious than a Prometheus-class liner. The spacelines know how to cope with the boredom and provide everything from stereo views of Aristarchus at Earthrise, the Rings during a four-moon crossing, and other scenic spectaculars, to indoor sports, organized games, amateur theatricals, and a library of taped drama and variety shows.
Our four-man expedition, of course, had none of these diversions. We didn’t even talk much among ourselves, although the Doctor made a heroic try at maintaining Old World geniality during dinner and strove to win a reputation as a brilliant conversationalist. The girl, Ilsa, had nothing to say to me, and as for my friend Konstantin, he had nothing to say to anybody.
But all spacecraft keep a library by Mandate law, if only to prevent people from going crazy during a long crossover. The Antoine d’Eauville had one that was quite decent, considering its quite natural preponderance of scholarly journals and texts (it was, after all, a museum boat). I got the impression that the craft was named after either the museum’s founder or one of its more generous patrons, but no one ever enlightened me on the subject, so I never learned which.
I found enough to read to occupy most of my time, although outside of the voluminous scientific literature the general run of reading material was limited to turn-of-the-century European novelists and playwrights, with an unexpected sprinkling of midcentury writers from the South American states, mostly new to me. I had read no Borges at all since school and happening upon his inimitable genius was most enthralling. But the poets were almost entirely new discoveries. I had read, or looked into, a few of the Argentines—Ascasubi, Lugones, Almafuerte—but the others—such as a now-forgotten poet, once enormously popular, named Carriego—were all unknowns. Among them was Vazquez, the Nobel-prize winner, who became the most exciting of my new finds.
With nothing else to do in the endless monotony, I read virtually all day long. From time to time I would have to switch the machine off for no other reason than that it was overheating. Luckily, no one else aboard had my leisure, so I had the book tapes all to myself. The girl, I think, had a portable reader in her cabin; the Doctor was busy with a detailed redaction of the thought record; I don’t know what Bolgov did—perhaps just sprawled on his bunk all day, glaring at the ceiling and sweating greasily—and the ship, of course, navigated itself.
In this strange way we traversed the distance between Luna and Mars, hardly seeing or speaking to each other except at meals. And I passed the monotony of transit gaining a modest education in obsolete European novelists and obscure South American poets. And without the least trouble or contact with a Mandate scout.
* * * *
Mars became a big, mottled orange with spots of permafrost marking its poles. The Doctor expanded on his plans. It would have been begging for trouble, had he done the usual thing and moored the d’Eauville in a parking orbit and taken either the gig or the Lanzetti down. For surely the Earthside cops would have reconstructed what had happened and beamed an alert to their CA colleagues at Deimos Terminal. A quick scout would have spotted the d’Eauville without trouble and cut off the Doctor’s escape route by simply sitting him out.
So he planned on something a trifle more risky, and that was to set the spacecraft down on the surface. Now an Icarus is about as small and light a craft as can safely be used for a crossover, but it’s still cumbersome and tricky and fragile enough to make planetfall dangerous. The safety margin, however, got a boost from the fact that the gravity field of Mars is skimpy at best and the museum had already modified the d’Eauville’s design to take an outsized and high-powered drive engine for just such a purpose. Anyway, the Doctor was certain the computer could set her down on her tail in the flats west of the