Dr. Fianna Lightfoot breathed heavily in her helmet, staring up at the
final slope of Olympus Mons, Mars. Behind her their glider rested, and
Marcus Tate followed her with the flag. The mountain wasn't steep at all,
just huge, but such an achievement it would be to say they were the first
humans atop it! Fianna could even ignore the damn camera strapped to her
helmet.
Something glinted on the rusty slope ahead. A downed probe? Nothing had
showed on satellite. "Tate, see that?"
"See what?" But it was too far away to tell. A hike still lay ahead
before they reached the top of Mount Olympus.
#
Fianna's first month on Mars had ground her down. Nothing could make you
feel so inadequate as to be shipped in a steel can away from your entire
planet, with endless radio interviews and billions of people watching you
remotely. The time-lag on all communications between Earth and Mars
varied from a few seconds to forty minutes, so on the nine-month trip
she'd drifted farther and farther from the reality of NASA training and
saying goodbye to colleagues, and closer to the unreality of the red
planet.
She'd been reading old Greek and Roman books and even learning the
languages. NASA had picked introverts for the Mars missions starting with
the Athena One launch, because that personality type could sit in a box
playing video games for months and not go insane. Unusual hobbies were
mental exercise comparable to the treadmill-pounding everyone did for
their bones.
Athena Base, the first town on Mars, had thrilled her. She'd walked it in
VR, even dreamed about it, but the mass of glassite domes and tin cans on
legs seemed much different when she finally got to touch them with a
gloved hand. The place made her feel cramped in the warren of artificial
human spaces, and at the same time dwarfed by the vast emptiness of the
planet.
She'd toured Athena Base with Commander Simon Sands. The Texan ruler of
this little frontier town of one hundred called himself "mayor," and had
insisted on showing Fianna around while her crewmates recovered from the
bumpy landing. Sands handed her a deep-green rubbery bodysuit and walked
away, whistling, while she changed. Then came the outer suit, a dense
mesh that would protect her skin from the low pressure and cold of the
surface, and a surprisingly light bubble helmet and backpack. The whole
outfit was smaller and more comfortable than an Apollo-era moonsuit, but
Mars' one-third gravity made her sweat just walking in the thing. She
wanted to take it off and have a shower right away.
As Sands walked her around the rust-red and butternut-tan valley, Fianna
got the feeling that was exactly what Sands wanted her to do. The man
made everything he described sound sentimental, going on about how he'd
built some greenhouse with his own two hands or narrowly escaped an
airlock failure at the entrance to the half-buried domes and tunnels.
Fianna tried to avoid him and buried herself in the work; there was much
to be done. Her specialty was greenery, putting plants in pressurized-CO2
or breathable-air greenhouses to generate fresh air and food.
Marcus Tate the civil engineer was always apologizing for holding up her
work. Faking a Scots accent he said, "We canna spare more water, and
it'll take a month to build us a harvester plant."
"No water means no food but rations, and dependence on resupply missions
from Earth," she said.
"I know," he said, dropping the accent for a deep and natural tone. "But
everything's short. There was never enough money put into Athena, just
the initial fifty billion. We've got to have discoveries to show off."
"Discoveries like this?" Fianna said, rustling the leaf of a fast-growing
cabbage. It was scientifically fascinating but would look less than
thrilling on the cover of "Time."
"I don't know," Tate said. "Fossils, life, even if" -- he made the
newly-invented Martian hand signal for radio silence, No Damn Cameras --
"we have to fake them."
#
The gradual mountain slope still stretched ahead. Fianna almost wished
she and Tate hadn't been the lucky ones picked to plant the first flag,
or that they'd just flown the glider over the summit instead of walking
the last stretch. "Valet parking next time?"
"Heh," said Tate. He stopped walking. "I see it now, too. But it doesn't
look like a NASA probe, it looks... green?"
Fianna looked down at the green of her own suit and ahead at the unmoving
green shape, then ran ahead with Tate.
When it became clear what they were seeing, they stopped and stared.
Ahead lay something vast and green with grey cylinders circling it,
almost like... a temple.
A helmetless man sat by a fountain of impossibly liquid water, facing away.
"My God, Tate!"
"We must be crazy."
Fianna started to make the no-damn-cameras gesture, but her helmet
buzzed. "Dr. Lightfoot, you screwing with the camera feed again?" That
would be Avery the computer guru, remembering the little-green-men prank
she'd pulled when the tedium of greenhouse work got to her.
Fianna and Tate exchanged a look. "They see it too?"
The big stranger by the fountain rose. He wore a toga and beard. "Who are
you?"
Fianna breathed deeply, sure she'd gone mad but unable to deny what she
and the camera saw. "We're humans. From Earth. How?"
The man raised a grizzled eyebrow. "A woman! Come, why dress so
modestly?" He reached out and her Mars-suit vanished. Cold sliced her and
she dropped to her knees -- then felt warm air and soft clothing.
"Fianna!" said Tate, reaching down for her.
"I'm all right somehow."
"My name is Zeus," said the man. "It's good to see you folk haven't
forgotten us, but why have you come so far to see us?"
"To see -- you?" Fianna said, standing and feeling the amazing comfort of
a sleeveless, loose silk toga against the deadly Martian cold.
"Why, yes. You came to Mount Olympus, didn't you? We've all come here
from the other Olympus, once you humans crowded us out and stopped your
sacrifices. But now we'll have such fun!"
