The Sun is quiet today -- as it should be, anyway, near the middle
of the cycle. Just a few small spots and some minor areas of disturbance
around them. The solar weather is set calm for months to come. That's one
thing the others won't have to worry about on their way home.
I think that was the worst moment, watching Olympus lift off Phobos and
head back to Earth. Even though we'd known for weeks that nothing could
be done, that was the final closing of the door. It was night and we could
see everything perfectly. Phobos had come leaping up out of the west a few
hours earlier and was doing its mad backward rush across the sky, growing
from a tiny crescent to a half-moon; before it reached the zenith, it would
disappear as it plunged into the shadow of Mars and became eclipsed.
We'd been listening to the countdown of course, trying to go about our normal
work. It wasn't easy, accepting at last the fact that fifteen of us had
come to Mars and only ten would return. Even then, I suppose there were
millions back on Earth who still could not understand; they must have found
it impossible to believe that Olympus couldn't descend a mere 500 miles
to pick us up. The Space Administration had been bombarded with crazy rescue
schemes; heaven knows we'd though of enough ourselves. But when the permafrost
under landing pad three finally have way and Pegasus toppled, that was that.
It still seems a miracle that the ship didn't blow up when the propellant
tank ruptured.
I'm wandering again. Back to Phobos and the countdown. On the telescope
monitor, we could clearly see the fissured plateau where Olympus had touched
down after we'd separated and begun our own descent. Though our friends
would never land on Mars, at least they'd had a little world of their own
to explore; even for a satellite as small as Phobos, it worked out at 30
square miles per man. A lot of territory to search for strange minerals
and debris from space -- or to carve your name so that future ages would
know that you were the first of all men to come this way.
The ship was clearly visible as a stubby, bright cylinder against the dull
gray rocks; from time to time, some flat surface would catch the light of
the swiftly moving Sun and would flash with mirror brilliance. But about
five minutes before lift-off, the picture became suddenly pink, then crimson
-- then vanished completely as Phobos rushed into eclipse.
The countdown was still at ten seconds, I think we all forgot our own predicament;
we were up there aboard Olympus, willing the thrust to build up smoothly
and lift the ship out of the tiny gravitational field of Phobos -- and then
away from Mars for the long fall Earthward. We heard Commander Richmond
say "Ignition," there was a brief burst of interference and the
patch of light began to move in the field of the telescope.
That was all. There was no blazing column of fire, because, of course, there's
really no ignition when a nuclear rocket lights up. "Lights up,"
indeed! That's another hangover from the old chemical technology. But a
hot hydrogen blast is completely invisible; it seems a pity that we'll never
again see anything so spectacular as a Saturn or Korolev blast-off.
Just before the end of the burn, Olympus left the shadow of Mars and burst
out into sunlight again, reappearing almost instantly as a brilliant, swiftly
moving star. The blaze of light must have startled them aboard the ship,
because we heard someone call out: "Cover that window!" Then,
a few seconds later, Richmond announced: "Engine cutoff." Whatever
happened, Olympus was now irrevocably headed back to Earth.
A voice I didn't recognize -- though it must have been the commander's --
said: "Goodbye, Pegasus," and the radio transmission switched
off. There was, of course, no point in saying "Good lick." That
had all been settled weeks ago.
I've just played this back. Talking of luck, there's been one compensation,
though not for us. With a crew of only ten, Olympus has been able to dump
a third of her expendables and lighten herself by several tons. So now she'll
get home a month ahead of schedule.
Plenty of things could have gone wrong in that month; we may yet have saved
the expedition. Of course, we'll never know -- but it's a nice thought.
I've been playing a lot of music, full blast -- now that there's no
else to be disturbed. Even if there were any Martians, I dont suppose this
ghost of an atmosphere could carry the sound more than a few yards.
We have a fine collection, but I have to choose carefully. Nothing downbeat
and nothing that demands too much concentration. Above all, nothing with
human voices. So I restrict myself to the lighter orchestral classics: the
"New World Symphony" and Grieg's piano concerto fill the bill
perfectly. At the moment, I'm listening to Rachmaninoff's "Rhapsody
on a Theme by Paganini," but now I must switch off and get down to
work.
There are only five minutes to go; all the equipment is in perfect condition.
The telescope is tracking the Sun, the video recorder is standing by, the
precision timer is running.
These observations will be as accurate as I can make them. I owe it to my
lost comrades, whom I'll soon be joining. They gave me their oxygen, so
that I can still be alive at this moment. I hope you remember that, 100
or 1000 years from now, whenever you crank these figures into the computers.
Only two minutes to go; getting down to business. For the record, year 1984,
month May, day 11, coming up to four hours, 30 minutes, Ephemeris time...now.
Half a minute to contact; switching recorder and timer to high speed. Just
rechecked position angle, to make sure I'm looking at the right spot on
the Sun's limb. Using power of 500 -- image perfectly steady even at this
low elevation.
Four thirty-two. Any moment, now...
There it is ..there it is! I can hardly believe it! A tiny black dent in
the edge of the Sun, growing, growing, growing...
Hello, Earth. Look up at me -- the brightest star in your sky, straight
over head at midnight.
Recorder back to slow.
Four thirty-five. It's as if a thumb were pushing into the Sun's edge, deeper
and deeper -- fascinating to watch.
Four forty-one. Exactly halfway. The Earth's a perfect black semicircle.
-- a clean bite out of the Sun. As if some disease were eating it away.
Four forty-five plus 30 seconds. Recorder on high speed again.
The line of contact with the Sun's edge is shrinking fast. Now it's a barely
visible black thread. In a few seconds, the whole Earth will be superimposed
on the Sun.
Now I can see the effects of the atmosphere. There's a thin halo of light
surrounding that black hole in the Sun. Strange to think that I'm seeing
the glow of all the sunsets -- and all the sunrises -- that are taking place
round the whole Earth at this very moment.
Ingress complete -- four hours, 50 minutes, five seconds. The whole world
has moved onto the face of the Sun. A perfectly circular black disk silhouetted
against that inferno, 90,000,000 miles below. It looks bigger than I expected;
one could easily mistake it for a fair-sized sunspot.
Nothing more to see now for six hours, when the Moon appears, trailing Earth
by half the Sun's width. I'll beam the recorded data back to Lunacom, then
try to get some sleep.
My very last sleep. Wonder if I'll need drugs. It seems a pity to waste
these last few hours, but I want to conserve my strength -- and my oxygen.
I think it was Dr. Johnson who said that nothing settles a man's mind so
wonderfully as the knowledge that he'll be hanged in the morning. How the
hell did he know?
Ten hours, 30 minutes, Ephemeris time. Dr. Johnson was right. I had
only one pill and don't remember any dreams.
The condemned man also ate a hearty breakfast. Cut that out.
Back at telescope. Now the Earth's halfway across the disk, passing well
north of center. In ten minutes, I should see the Moon.
I've just switched to the highest power of the telescope -- 2000. The images
is slightly fuzzy but still fairly good, atmospheric halo very distinct.
I'm hoping to see the cities on the dark side of Earth.
No luck. Probably too many clouds. A pity; it's theoretically possible,
but we never succeeded. I wish...Never mind.
Ten hours, 40 minutes. Recorder on slow speed. Hope I'm looking at
the right spot.
Fifteen seconds to go. Recorder fast.
Damn -- missed it. Doesn't matter 00 the recorder will have caught the exact
moment. There's a little black notch already in the side of the Sun. First
contact must have been about ten hours, 41 minutes, 20 seconds, E.T.
What a long way it is between Earth and Moon -- there's half the width of
the Sun between them. You wouldn't think the two bodies had anything to
do with each other. Makes you realize just how big the Sun really is.
Ten hours, 44 minutes. The Moon's exactly halfway over the edge. A very
small, very clear-cut semicircular bite out of the edge of the Sun.
Ten hours, 47 minutes, five seconds. Internal contact. The Moon's clear
of the edge, entirely inside the Sun. Don't suppose I can see anything on
the night side, but I'll increase the power.
That's funny.
Well, well. Someone must be trying to talk to me. There's a tiny light pulsing
away there on the darkened face of the Moon. Probably the laser at Imbrium
Base.
Sorry, everyone, I've said all my goodbyes and don't want to go though that
again. Nothing can be important now.
Still, it's almost hypnotic -- that flickering point of light, coming out
of the face of the Sun itself. Hard to believe that 3even after it's traveled
all this distance, the beam is only 100 miles wide. Lunacom's going to all
this trouble to aim it exactly at me and I suppose I should feel guilty
at ignoring it. But I don't. I've nearly finished my work and the things
of Earth are no longer any concern of mine.
Ten hours, 50 minutes. Recorder off. That's it -- until the end of Earth
transit, two hours from now.
I've had a snack and am taking my last look at the view from the observation
bubble. The Sun's still high, so there's not much contrast, but the light
brings out all the colors vividly -- the countless varieties of red and
pink and crimson, so startling against the deep blue of the sky. How different
from the Moon -- though that, too, has its own beauty.
It's strange how surprising the obvious can be. Every knew that Mars was
red. But didn't really expect the red of rust -- the red of blood. Like
the Painted Desert of Arizona; after a while, the eye longs for green.
To the north, there is one welcome change of color; the cap of carbon-dioxide
snow on Mt. Burroughs is 25,000 feet above Mean Datum; when I was a boy,
there weren't supposed to be any mountains on Mars.
The nearest sand dune is a quarter of a mile away and it, too, has patches
of frost on its shaded slope. During the last storm, we thought it moved
a few feet, but we couldn't be sure. Certainly, the dunes are moving, like
those on Earth. One day, I supposed, this base will be covered -- only to
reappear again in 1000 years. Or 10,000.
That strange group of rocks -- the Elephant, the Capitol, the Bishop --
still holds its secrets and teases me with the memory of our first big disappointment.
We could have sworn that they were sedimentary; how eagerly we rushed out
to look for fossils! Even now, we don't know what formed that outcropping;
the geology of Mars is still a mass of contradictions and enigmas.
We have passed on enough problems to the future and those who come after
us will find many more. But there's one mystery we never reported to Earth
nor even entered in the log. The first night after we landed, we took turns
keeping watch. Brennan was on duty and woke me up soon after midnight. I
was annoyed -- it was ahead of time -- and then he told me that he'd seen
a light moving around the bas of the Capitol. We watched for at least an
hour, until it was my turn to take over. But we saw nothing; whatever that
light was, it never reappeared.
Now Brennan was as levelheaded and unimaginative as the come; if he said
he saw a light, then he saw one. Maybe it was some kind of electric discharge
or the reflection of Phobos on a piece of sand-polished rock. Anyway, we
decided not to mention it to Lunacom unless we saw it again.
Since I've been alone, I've often awaked in the night and looked out toward
the rocks. In the feeble illumination of Phobos and Deimos, they remind
me of the skyline of a darkened city. And it has always remained darkened.
No lights have ever appeared for me.
Twelve hours, 49 minutes, Ephemeris time. The last act's about to
begin. Earth has nearly reached the edge of the Sun. You could easily mistake
it for a small spot, going over the limb.
Thirteen hours, eight.
Goodbye, beautiful Earth.
Going, going, going, goodbye, good---
I'm OK again now. The timings have all been sent home on the beam.
In five minutes, they'll join the accumulated wisdom of mankind. And Lunacom
will know that I stuck to my post.
But I'm not sending this. I'm going to leave it here for the next expedition
-- whenever that may be. It could be ten or twenty years before anyone comes
here again; no point in going back to an old site when there's a whole world
waiting to be explored.
So this capsule will stay here, as Scott's diary remained in his tent, until
the next visitors find it. But they won't find me.
Strange how hard it is to get away from Scott. I think he gave me the idea.
For his body will not lie frozen forever in the Antarctic, isolated from
the great cycle of life and death. Long ago, that lonely tent began its
march to the sea. Within a few years, it was buried by the falling snow
and had become part of the glacier that crawls eternally away from the pole.
In a few brief centuries, the sailor will have returned to the sea. He will
merge once more into the pattern of living things -- the plankton, the seals,
the penguins, the whales, all the multitudinous fauna of the Antarctic Ocean.
There are no oceans here on Mars, nor have there been for at least five
billion years. But there is life of some kind, down there in the badlands
of Chaos II, that we never had time to explore. Those moving patches on
the orbital photographs. The evidence that whole areas of Mars have been
swept clear of craters by forces other than erosion. The long-chain, optically
active carbon molecules picked up by the atmospheric samplers.
And, of course, the mystery of Viking Six. Even now, no one has been able
to make any sense of those last instrument readings before something large
and heavy crushed the probe in the still, cold, depths of the Martian night.
And don't talk to me about primitive life forms in a place like this! Anything
that's survived here will be so sophisticated that we may look as clumsy
as dinosaurs.
There's still enough propellant in the ship's tanks to drive the Marscar
clear around the planet. I have three hours of daylight left -- plenty of
time to get down into the valleys and well out into Chaos. After sunset,
I'll still be able to make good speed with the head lamps. It will be romantic,
driving at night under the moons of Mars.
One thing I must fix before I leave. I don't like the way Sam's lying out
there. He was always so poised, so graceful. It doesn't seem right that
he should look so awkward now. I must do something about it.
I wonder if I< could have covered 300 feet without a suit, walking slowly,
steadily -- the way he did to the very end.
I must try not to look at his face.
That's it. Everything shipshape and ready to go.
The therapy has worked. I feel perfectly at ease -- even contented, now
that I know exactly what I'm going to do. The old nightmares have lost their
power.
It is true: We all die alone. It makes no difference at the end, being 50,000,000
miles from home.
I'm going to enjoy the drive through that lovely painted landscape. I'll
be thinking of all those who dreamed about Mars -- Well and Lowell and Burroughs
and Weinbaum and Bradbury. They all guessed wrong -- but the reality is
just as strange, just as beautiful as they imagined.
I don't know what's waiting for me out there and I'll probably never see
it. But on this starving world, it must be desperate for carbon, phosphorus,
oxygen, calcium. It can use me.
And when my oxygen alarm gives its final ping, somewhere down there in that
haunted wilderness, I'm going to finish in style. As soon as I have difficulty
in breathing, I'll get off the Marscar and start walking -- with a playback
unit plugged into my helmet and going full blast.
For sheer, triumphant power and glory, there's nothing in the whole of music
to match the "Toccata" and "Fugue in D Minor." I won't
have time to hear all of it; that doesn't matter.
Johann Sebastian, here I come.
---------------------------------------------
Note: All the astronomical events described in this story will take place
at the time and dates stated.
