Jacqui In Space Read online

  Chapter 3—A House

   

  The soil at the bottom of the slope was the consistency of talcum-powder, causing Enfield's back wheel to fishtail disconcertingly. Jacqui looked back at the pattern her knobbly off-road tyre left in the red silt. That was it! This fine dust looked like it had been deposited, not eroded by the power of the wind. Could it be alluvial?

  Parking Enfield again, the kick-stand supported by a convenient flat rock, Jacqui made her way back to the bottom of the gradient. There was a definite line of demarcation between the finer grains and the bigger crumbs of the track she was standing on, which looked like a driveway to a house. Gazing either side of her, she could imagine that this was once the way that a proud property owner approached his dwelling.

  Her imagination was running away with her. There couldn't have been an ancient race of Martians, even though science-fiction writers delighted in inhabiting the planet for centuries. This 'track' could just as easily be the bed of a dried-up stream though, and was the most exciting thing that Jacqui had found for days. Fumbling her digital camera from a pouch on her equipment-belt she took a few photographs.

  It still looked a bit like a drive to her though—she could just imagine pretty flowers planted either side—pansies and primulas. And it was the first decent bit of road she'd ever found. Perhaps she should take Enfield for a quick thrash along its length. How long was it since she'd had any fun?

  Too long. But having fun could kill you out here. A broken leg in Pakistan was one thing – a kind family took her in for several weeks, while she recovered. But here, a damaged limb could well mean death. An explorer's atrophied and desiccated corpse was discovered the year before, lying in a gully where she crashed her quad-bike. Both of her legs were broken by the impact, and it looked like she'd lain for days under the weight of her machine, before dying of thirst and hypothermia.

  All of the explorers carried signal-transceivers, so they could be located should they not return on time. But such devices were of little use when dust-storms blew for days. In a situation like that Jacqui would have to rely on the not fully-mapped GPS. She always noted the locations of caves on her travels, which might offer the better option of taking shelter. That was provided her oxygen, water and dried-food lasted. And could she survive the cold nights? She carried two supplementary oxygen tanks in one of Enfield's panniers, chemical activated heating-pads and a foil sleeping-bag, but would that be enough?

  Her companion explorers on this expedition were working several miles away. Marcie was mapping a bluff in the western quadrant of the sector and collecting soil-samples, while Joe was servicing a heavy-duty rover-gatherer closer towards the polar-ice-fields in the north.

  This vital vehicle was showing signs of having a defective wheel-bearing, as the tracking signal showed it to be crabbing sideways.

  Their return home was dependent on the efficiency of the rover-gatherer for it mined water beneath the surface. This would be used to create fuel by splitting the water into hydrogen and oxygen. The Life-Support Unit which sheltered the three explorers was just visible on the horizon, it's solar-panels glinting. The pink sky was streaked with ice-clouds today, and she wondered what colour the sunset would be, as it seemed to be darkening recently from a pale mauve towards an ominous purple.

  The World Space League initially sent its pioneer-mappers out in pairs, but this led to problems with arguments. It was found that a trio of travellers balanced one other out much better. It paid to take into account several key factors to try to ensure harmony among the crews, such as political and religious beliefs, as well as sexual orientation. Musical tastes were crucial too, as Jacqui found when she'd once been partnered with a Country & Western fan, whose yodelling almost drove her insane.

  Jacqui's companions were all left-wing libertarians with no strict religious faith, and liked the same music—which helped a lot, and they'd even indulged in some sing-alongs and air-guitar sessions. Sexually, Marcie was a lesbian, Joe a gay man, and as for heterosexual Jacqui it was so long that she'd been with a man that she wondered if she could remember how.

  Still, sex wasn't everything, at least not these days. Jacqui had been married once, and to a good man. She'd birthed two daughters, who were still in cryonic suspension. Her grandchildren, who all became naturalists and botanists were once vital members of the biodome community, though they too were now frozen. Their offspring, limited to one baby a couple, were carrying on their parents' good work, though Jacqui had never met them.

  None of her great-grandchildren were allowed to breed. The world being what it was now, few people were permitted to have children. Jacqui tried not to think about what once was, what was now and what would never be any more on Earth. There were enough warnings of ecological disaster in her 60 years of life. No one took the threats seriously enough.

  Jacqui didn't know how much time she had left to live. Experts differed in their opinions of the effect on life-span of being cryonically frozen and being put into hyper-sleep. Some said it reduced what would have been a person's normal longevity, while others reckoned that what was effectively long hibernation could extend life. She reckoned that she was already ahead of the game as her mother made it to being a centenarian.

  Jacqui just wanted to be useful, while she could. Existence was too Spartan now to be a burden, and that was the truth—after all, what had the Spartans done with those who became a drain on society—abandoned them on a mountain-side to die….

  The loneliness was hard to deal with, even though she'd been solitary for most of her journeying with Enfield on Earth. Her bike was still her most constant companion. Bought in India in 2000, Jacqui travelled the Indian sub-continent, Australia, North Africa and much of Europe on her faithful steed. She'd recorded places she visited in white paint on Enfield's side-panels, to which she added Mars, along with the solid red circle that was the logo of their expedition.

  She reckoned that she'd two more hours before she should ride back to the Life-Support Unit. The wind was virtually non-existent today, but she tossed some of the fine silt into the air as a precaution—dust-storms blew up quickly, and were her main fear. Best get on, while the air-temperature was still tolerable.

  Jacqui rode Enfield out onto the plain, the cameras recording the scree slope behind her. This planet was featureless for much of its area and reminiscent of her travels in the Gibson Desert and the Sahara. Any slopes, buttes, canals, even slight outcrops were essential to make maps that had relevance. As with any desert, the winds shifted dunes, covering some features and exposing others. Variety was preferable to monotony though, however confusing. Too much flatness dulled her brain, and she could feel herself shifting in and out of automatic pilot.

  This was unwise—she wasn't here to meditate, and being unaware of her progress could mean that she lost track of where she was headed. So concentrate, Jacqui! There must be something worthy of note. Such as that strange circle of really flat powdery dust. She braked gently to a halt, seeing something entirely new to her, at least on this planet.

  The circle looked to be perfectly round, marked by a border of small rocks. Two large standing-stones, three metres apart formed what looked like a portal at nine o'clock as she looked at the circle. The disc of fine grains was some 10 metres across. Jacqui remembered seeing prehistoric circles in Cornwall, Devon and The Hebrides, but there were more upright stones delineating them.

  Could those stones be quarried? They must weigh a couple of tonnes each. Were they deliberately placed there, or did millennia of erosion create them? Jacqui was trying to resist any excitement and to maintain a cool scientific detachment to what she was observing. Fiction was just that, and she'd enjoyed the classic sci-fi tales about the red planet, but was she the discoverer of proof of a real ancient alien civilisation?

  Shaking slightly, Jacqui made sure that Enfield was parked stably and extracted her camera. Walking cautiously around the smaller rocks, which definitely looked like they'd been arranged by han
d, she approached the standing-stones.

  No carved markings, symbols, runes or words marked their surface. What was she expecting? A sign saying 'Mon Repos'? The huge stones didn't display any marks of being worked with tools, but she wondered if such massive chunks of the land could shear in such a neat way – the edges of the stones were clean and not at all jagged.

  Rocks did become eroded into strange shapes, but they were usually round organic landmarks, not oblong sentinels. Had these stones been raised into their current position, or was the surrounding softer geology eroded? Jacqui scanned the ground at the base of the stones, but could tell little, as it was all the same uniform red-brown colour.

  Feeling a little superstitious about placing herself between these sarsens, Jacqui followed the perimeter of the stone circle in a crab-step. Crouching down on her knees, she scanned the surface for irregularities. It really was almost perfectly flat, with the exception of a wedge-shaped rock that looked like a house-brick split diagonally. This was lying adjacent to the smaller stones, and was coated with a dusting of red dust.

  The surface looked like sediment, as if it had once been the bottom of a pond, or perhaps a water-reservoir….Which again implied a civilisation capable of building and planning. So could the standing-stones be all that remained of walls?

  Perhaps she could get some decent shots of this feature. Jacqui glanced over at Enfield—the low sun-light glinting on her bike's chrome headlight and crash-bars always made her smile. Two dust-devils chased one another across the plain. She would have to be leaving soon. Jacqui looked anxiously around for more signs of wind, but the mini-twisters were temporary aberrations. This was a planet of the unexpected and inexplicable.

  She felt a little light-headed, so took several sips of water. Her helmet-visor looked smeared, blurring her vision. She'd give it a quick clean with a wet-wipe before the ride back. Give the glass a proper clean tonight in the Life Support Unit.

  Jacqui recorded several images of the portal. Still wary of these sentinels, she stepped into the circle away from them. She scooped a sample of the fine soil into a container. Crouching down she took a couple of shots of the flat surface holding the camera at ground-level. She walked over to the cheese-shaped rock and snapped its photo. Was it just lying there on the surface, or part of the underlying strata? She tapped it with her toe. It didn't move, but the ground around her began to vibrate! As the light surface-dust danced into the air, she felt and heard a deep rumble from beneath her.

  An earthquake—a marsquake? Jacqui had read of such events on Mars, but this one was highly localised—the ground outside the circle looked stable—it wasn't shaking at all. With a hop, step and jump Jacqui left the shuddering disc and made for solid ground.

  From a safe position Jacqui watched the disc rise up. It moved in a clockwise corkscrew fashion elevating six feet above her. The 'roof', if that is what it was, rested on stone supports similar to the portal. This had to be man-made. No, what was she saying? Of alien construction, by an ancient race of Martians—or even earlier explorers who came to Mars from another planet.

  The 'floor' of the structure was as smooth as the 'roof' had been, though it was a drop down of a metre. There was an oblong block of stone in the centre. This looked like half of one of the portal-stones, and would make a comfortable place to sit. Cautious as ever, Jacqui tossed a couple of stones onto the floor to see if that provoked further movement, but all stayed still.

  She felt very tired all of a sudden, and could do with a sit-down. Dropping to the ground, she shuffled her backside over the edge of the depression and stepped-down onto the floor. The stone bench was good to sit on—it was solid and didn't shift around like Enfield—she could slump, relax, she wasn't going anywhere—not any time soon, it was nice here.

  Jacqui looked up at the roof, which was once the floor, and saw it was concave and painted black with clever LED twinkling stars. Who made that? And on the floor alongside her seat was another of those wedge-shaped switches made of rock. She wouldn't touch that—it might bring the roof down on her, and she would be trapped in a giant stone oyster-shell. That would never do—wasn't she supposed to be somewhere special tonight?

  It didn't matter, she had all of the time in the universe. And anyway, she wanted to talk to her new companion. She hadn't noticed him before, but there was an old man with a long silver beard leaning against one of the pillars. He must be one of the ancients, a seer from a former race of Martians. Or he could be a hologram, a 3-D recording left to transmit a message, for he wasn't solidly there—flickering, fading-out then returning.

  Jacqui didn't feel afraid as the old man came across and sat next to her. Holograms couldn't move like that, she didn't think, and he was holding her hand too so he must be real—it was years since anyone touched her in such an affectionate way. He sensed this and wanted to know about the men she had loved. And what was she doing here, on his planet?

  All of her suppressed memories poured forth. This felt good in a purgative way, as if she were releasing pent-up emotions like so much water from a blister she'd just pricked. The man must be a mind-reader as well as a shape-shifter, for she didn't need to say much for him to understand her thoughts, and his face altered, mimicking those of her husband and lovers. She wished that she didn't feel so sick, as she was hit by waves of nausea—how long was it since she ate anything? She didn't want to think of the consequences of actually throwing-up inside her helmet.

  How ancient was this old Martian? He looked like a god-of-myth in his black robes and sandals, with a kind and weathered face beneath a long white beard. How could he be breathing? There was no breathable air on Mars—unless Martians were capable of sustaining life on carbon-dioxide. But that could mean that they synthesised it and released oxygen – that would give something for plants to use, along with water for life—had the plants then died out with the extinction of the Martians? No, that didn't make sense, she was thinking backwards, she wasn't on Earth anymore. And what was she really doing on Mars anyway? How could she tell this aged ambassador what would be happening to his planet, when she didn't know herself? Perhaps she should ask him some questions instead….

  Such as why was the ground so well-sieved here, all microscopic grains of red powder, devoid of even the smallest stones? Perhaps there was a proper floor beneath the floury layer. Didn't he do any dusting? Where was his vacuum-cleaner? She'd find the floor anyway….

  Jacqui leaned forward to push gloved fingers clumsily through the tilth, and over-balanced, pitching-forward onto her visor. She gripped the Martian's hand more tightly, but his fingers evaporated and she slid further, ploughing into the billowing silt as all went dark. Why did he let her go? Men always let her go….