The Long Mars

‘Hmm.’ ‘Look, we don’t know anything about how the Armstrong got here, who these guys are.’ ‘OK, you old spoilsport. We’ll take precautions. But I think you’re being over-cautious. Hey, Nathan.’

‘Captain?’

‘Do we have any Fourth-of-July fireworks on this tub?’

The XO gri

‘Break them out.’

‘My name is David.’

Maggie led her party in from the set-down site, past the wreck of the Armstrong and towards the little habitation. The man who greeted them was young, no more than twenty-five, twenty-six. Good-looking, confident, with an accent she couldn’t quite place, he walked boldly up to her and shook her hand. With him were four others, three women, one man, all about the same age. All very impressive, was Maggie’s first take, even if the clothes they wore were pretty ragged.

And none of them had been crew of the Armstrong.

Maggie introduced her own team, drawn from both Armstrong II and Cernan: Mac, Snowy, Nathan, Wu Yue-Sai, others. The strangers stared at the beagle, but did not seem alarmed.

Cutler was beaming from ear to ear, like he’d found Santa Claus. He introduced David’s companions. ‘Let me see if I remember.’ He pointed. ‘Rosalind, Michael, A

David patted him on the back. ‘Well remembered, sir!’ They broke away into a huddle of friendly chatter.

Maggie murmured to Mac, ‘You’re right. That’s not like Ed Cutler. Is he blushing to be praised by that boy?’

Mac said, ‘These characters are somewhat – what’s the word? Charismatic. That’s my first impression. My mother once took me to Houston, when they were still flying astronauts on the shuttle. Place full of functionaries, office workers. But when an astronaut walked through the room, every head turned . . .’

Maggie was aware of a soft friction at her leg. It was Shi-mi, rubbing her face on Maggie’s trouser, hiding behind her legs.

Maggie knelt down and whispered, ‘I thought you didn’t come out when Snowy’s around. Or Mac, in fact.’

‘The dog smells me. I know he smells me . . . But this is important. Danger, Maggie Kauffman. Danger!’

‘What, from these shipwrecked characters? What kind of danger?’

‘I’m not sure. Not yet. Listen, Captain. Post a guard. Set up your men around a perimeter so they can’t all be taken out at once. Have the airships monitor your movements. If I were you I’d send one ship over the horizon, or step it away . . . Take precautions. Whatever you think best.’

Maggie frowned. But she remembered Mac’s cautious appraisal. ‘OK. Against my better judgement.’ She summoned Nathan and gave orders to pass on to the crew, and McKibben’s marines.

‘Please, be our guests. We are so pleased you found us at last . . .’

David and his companions led the party of officers past the wreck, through the fields, towards the tepees. Maggie could see that the tepees were indeed built of materials scavenged from the Armstrong, aluminium struts, fabric from the broken envelope. As they walked, two of the women were talking quietly. Their speech was fast, fluid, as if speeded up, and Maggie couldn’t make out a word.

Gerry Hemingway slowed, his attention evidently snagged by what he saw in the fields. They didn’t look too impressive to Maggie, just scratches in the dirt, but there were potatoes and beets growing. However, what caught Gerry’s eye was a field in which some of the native life was growing, like a display of bonsais. Their colours were strange, their scent unfamiliar, exotic. And the tiny trees seemed to be wired up in a kind of net of fine cables, no doubt more salvage from the airship, that were fixed to their roots. The cables led to a bank of batteries, and glass jars of water that bubbled languidly. ‘You go on, Skip,’ he said. ‘Let me take a look at what they’re doing here.’

She nodded. ‘OK. But don’t be alone. Santorini, stay with him.’

‘Yes, Captain.’

The largest tepee was spacious enough for a dozen people to sit on blankets in the dirt. The day was warm, mild, still, and a heavy sheet that covered the door was thrown back. In a hearth in the middle of the floor a small fire burned. Maggie, Mac, Cutler, Nathan Boss, Wu Yue-Sai crowded in. Rachel had gone off with the rest of the crew, while Michael prepared some kind of hot drink on a frame over the fire.

David sat on a box, overlooking his guests, with Rosalind and A

Mac grunted at the layout. ‘Guy’s like a Saxon king with his thanes.’

‘Yes,’ Maggie said. ‘But he has the character for it, you have to admit.’

‘Hmm. And look how Wu is staring at him. Like she’d have his babies here and now . . .’

David said now, ‘As I said – we are so glad you came. You can see we are stranded here, just the five of us, the only survivors of the Armstrong. Of course we could all step away. But we aren’t even sure how far we are from home.’

Nathan Boss rattled off the number of the world for him. David thanked him, and to Maggie’s chagrin Nathan looked pleased to be favoured, just like Cutler.

David said, ‘But the number scarcely matters. Even if we could step so far we could not walk through the lethal worlds you have crossed already – worlds without oxygen, worlds whose whole biospheres are soaked in sulphuric acid. And we could not contact you. We had to wait for rescue.’ He gri

And what an honour that would be for her, Maggie thought helplessly. Like she’d found Elvis. The guy really did have an air of command.

She tried to snap out of it. ‘So tell us what happened.’

Mac grunted. ‘In fact, you can start by telling us how the hell you came to be aboard the Armstrong in the first place.’

David appraised the two of them. ‘You are skilful, Captain. You ask the soft questions, while allowing the Doctor to wield the baton.’

‘If only we were that smart,’ Maggie said ruefully. ‘And anyhow this isn’t an interrogation, David. Please just answer the questions.’

‘We are from a community you know as Happy Landings. You would be able to determine that much from the Armstrong’s log.’

Mac nodded. ‘I know of it. Somewhere around a million and a half steps from Datum, right? Kind of a peculiar place, Captain. Explains the accent, I suppose.’

David said smoothly, ‘The first Armstrong called there, on its own journey to the far stepwise West. We five were selected as passengers, guests, for the next leg of the journey. We were thrilled. Off to the far Long Earth, aboard a military twain! But things went badly wrong. The engines – the crew lost control . . .’

Maggie left it to Mac to question them closely about the details of the incident. David and the others were vague about places and times – what precisely the engineering problem was, where exactly in the greater Long Earth they were when the crew lost control, what their stepping rate was, how the crew tried to handle the situation.

After a time, while Mac continued the question-and-answer, Nathan Boss tugged Maggie’s sleeve. ‘Captain – does Mac have to interrogate them so hard? They survived a wreck. They’ve been stranded here, cut off from the rest of mankind, for years. In the middle of an alien ecosystem too. They’re damned impressive to have survived at all, let alone to be so – composed.’

‘They are, aren’t they?’

‘Of course they aren’t going to know the engineering details of the crash. The crew will have kept them isolated, as safe as possible, protected from the crisis . . .’

Yue-Sai was on Maggie’s other side. She seemed to have got over her first star-struck reaction. ‘But even so they seem very vague about it all, for individuals evidently so intelligent.’