Regan's Planet

TEN

The spaceport had a raw, unfinished look to it. It was six years old, and that had been time enough only to put in the launching pads and the temporary administration buildings. The frills would come later, the landscaping and the murals and the sculpture.

Here, in the summer of 1991, commercial space travel was a long way from being a booming enterprise. The Nevada Spaceport, from which Regan and Nola were departing, was the busiest in the world, but only six Moon flights and two Mars flights departed every month. The air of tranquility and leisure that stamped the spaceport atmosphere already marked it as not of this world. It was too peaceful here to be Earth.

Important as he was, Regan had to check in even as mere mortals did-to be weighed, to be examined, to be checked through. His luggage was searched for bombs, and searched most meticulously.

‘Really,“ Nola said, ”I don’t see why we should have to put up with-“

‘I do,“ Regan snapped. ”I see every reason. Lives are in danger. They can’t take chances.“

‘Would a Factor have a bomb in his luggage?“

‘He might have more reason to than other people,“ Regan replied. ”When a big man decides to end it all, he ought to end it in a big way.“

Nola snorted. They passed on, through the check-in rooms.

The ship waited, alone in the middle of a bare field, upright like a gleaming fish performing a weird balancing act on its tail. The gantry’s tentacles enfolded it. Regan smiled. The ship represented power, and he appreciated power. There were colossal reserves of power held ready in those blast tubes. A commercial ship made the trip to Mars in less than a week, which called for steady, wasteful acceleration of a kind that would have bewildered the space pioneers of Regan’s boyhood. Military ships took longer, because their passengers’ time was generally cheap and fuel wasn’t.

Technicians bustled around, checking the ship through its final hours of countdown as the passengers boarded. Regan and Nola had a first class cabin-hardly luxurious, but the best that was available.

Strapped in, waiting for the crush of acceleration, Regan wondered idly if the ship would make it safely. Probably. In commercial space travel’s brief history there had been only two ships lost, and that was a remarkable record by any score. Rocketing to Mars was, statistically, safer than taking an ordinary jet from New York to London. But still…

Regan smiled. He hoped all went well with the voyage. It would be a pity if he missed the opening of the Fair.

‘Will there be a brass band waiting?“ Nola asked.

‘You might call him that,“ Regan said.

‘Him?“

‘Dick Avery. He’s our man in Marsport. He’s supposed to meet us.“

They were waiting in Quarantine. The ship had landed, and sand-crawlers were clustered outside the main lock, waiting for the passengers to disembark. Medics were making their way through ship, beginning with the crew, moving on to the first class passengers next.

It was half an hour before the Regans were free to leave. The sand-crawler carried them across the spaceport and into the waiting dome of Marsport.

No brass band awaited them. Only a chunky, florid-faced man absurdly rigged out in purple tights and a pale green tunic. He was vast, enormously broad across the withers, and his bushy red beard gave him a comically piratical look. A massive hand enfolded Regan’s.

‘Good trip, Factor?“

‘Not bad at all. Dick, meet my wife, Nola. Nola, Dick Avery, Global’s representative on Mars.“

Avery and Nola exchanged remote glances. The big man clapped an arm around the Factor’s shoulders in a jovial, comradely way that no Global employee would have dared to attempt on Earth, and boomed, “Well, Factor, want to drop down to the office for a look around?” “I’d rather go to our hotel first,” Regan said thinly. “I’ll be along to inspect the office in time. This is a vacation for me, supposedly.“

‘Sure thing! Well, I’ll drive you to your quarters. I guess you’ll want to take a tour, like all the tourists, eh? This is your first trip up in quite a while.“

‘I haven’t been here since ’85.“

‘Lots of things different now.“

‘I imagine,“ Regan said. ”Such as the Martians themselves. I’d like to ride out and visit them in a day or so.“

‘I’ll talk to the anthropologists. They’ll arrange it.“

‘You do that,“ Regan said.

Nola was silent as Avery drove them through the streets of Marsport toward the transient hotel. Regan glanced at her. She was staring through the bubble top of Avery’s little car at the ramshackle tin buildings, the unpaved streets, the raw shabbiness of it all.

‘Disappointed?“ he asked.

‘A little.“

‘What did you expect? Paris?“

‘It’s all so ugly, Claude!“

‘It’s new. Jesus, Nola, it’s only sixteen years since the first manned ship landed here at all. They’ve come a long way in a short while.“

‘I suppose,“ Nola said with a restless sigh.

‘Remember, it was your idea to come here.“

She nodded and turned toward the window again. It was ugly, Regan had to admit. But it was the ugliness of energetic growth, the ugliness of a leggy colt, the ugliness of a skeleton that someday would be the core of something majestic. It was just a boom-town, now. A soaring dome covered a few square miles of red desert, and beneath that dome was layer after layer of brand new city-extending downward into the planet’s flesh, because it was cheaper to build that way than to extend the size of the dome.

The colony was under United Nations’ administration, but it had been developed by private capital-in contrast to the Moon base, which was U.N. all the way. A consortium of American and European firms had financed the project in 1979, with no one stockholder permitted to buy more than a one percent interest. That had been a direct slap at Global Factors, which, then under Bruce Regan’s still vigorous direction, had angled for a major share in the development of Mars.

Marsport was not alone on Mars. Five hundred miles away, in the Aurorae Sinus just north of the equator, was the Russian dome-languishing, now, from what Regan had heard. The Russkies had reached Mars first, early in ‘75, and their dome was the oldest on Mars. But the general economic problems of the Soviet bloc had hampered its expansion, and the Russian dome was unimportant, currently manned only by a skeleton crew of Czech technicians and a few geologists.

A third dome was rising now-three years old, and already of major importance. China, Brazil, and Nigeria were building it as a joint project, state-owned and state-run. A few U.N. men were on hand as window-dressing, as required by international law, but they had little say in the operation of the colony. In a few years it would be bigger than Marsport, Regan knew, and it was not a pleasant thing to contemplate.

What passed for a hotel in Marsport was not terribly pleasant to contemplate either-even the Presidential Suite, which Regan was lucky enough to have been able to reserve. It was six levels down, for one thing. There were no windows. The ceiling was eight and a half feet high, which would not have greatly disturbed the average apartment-dwelling Earthman, but which distressed Nola, mansion-accustomed, no end. The “suite” consisted of just two rooms.

‘It wasn’t like this on the Moon,“ Nola kept saying. ”It was much more comfortable there.“

‘The Moon base can afford luxury,“ Regan told her tightly. ”It’s a quarter of a million miles from Earth and chock full of exotic fuel sources. With the profit the U.N. makes out of the Lunar mines every year they could afford to build a Taj Mahal for visitors,“

‘The Taj Mahal was a tomb, darling.“

‘You know what I mean! Well, there’s no money to spare for frills up here, Nola. This is a pioneer world.“

Nola yawned. “I suppose. When do we visit the Old Martians, Claude?”

‘In a day or two. Why?“

‘I’m curious about them. And it’ll be an excuse to get out of this filthy town.“ She stared at the dull metallic ceiling, a yard above her head. ”I feel like a mole, crammed away down here! If this is the Presidential Suite, what’s an ordinary room like?“

‘Like a cell in a beehive, Nola.“

Regan didn’t mind her carping. It was to be expected from her, and he was determined not to let it interfere with his visit. She was adaptable enough to get used to it in a day or two, he figured. If she didn’t-well, too bad. It was his vacation.

He had a busy time of it. The Marsport Board of Governors tendered him an official banquet that night; he munched on tough chlorella steaks, drank algae wine, listened to speeches in praise of Global Factors, took some ribbing about the World’s Fair, and handed back some ribbing of his own about the local hotel accommodations. In the morning, Dick Avery took them on a tour of Marsport, Nola silent, visibly bored with the whole thing. “And this is our food-processing plant,” Avery would say. “That’s the atmosphere-generator building, over there. And this-”

‘The brothel?“ Nola suggested acidly.

‘No, Ma’am. That’s over on Washington Street. This is the public library, here. Ten thousand books on scanner disks so far, and growing all the time.“

‘How nice,“ Nola said. ”I’d like to borrow War and Peace for bedtime reading, if it’s available.“

‘That a history book?“ Avery asked.

‘A novel,“ Nola said. ”By a Russian. A dead Russian.“

‘That’s the best kind,“ Avery said, and they drove on.

Regan drank it all in. There was a sense of growth here, of bursting, shackle-breaking growth, that fascinated him. Simply to compare what had been done in the six years between his visits thrilled him. Let Nola toss her sarcasms around; let her feel jaded and cramped. She could never understand what was happening here. Here was a world that had been dead, and now was coming to life. Hydroponic gardens were turning the brick-red deserts green. Vast hydrolysis plants poured out synthetic rivers of real water. New colonists arrived, a hundred a month, and every day saw new tunnels built far below, new homes constructed. The hospitals were crowded, not with the sick but with the newly born.

A coppery taste of feverish excitement was in Regan’s mouth. He had caught the Mars fever, this time. To build, to plan, to expand-no need to fight the Board of Directors, there were no reactionaries here-to lay the groundwork for a stunning new outpost of humanity…

The colony directors arranged courtesy tours of the other two domes for him. A jet helicopter carried him through the thin air, high above a barren red plain dotted here and there by the clumps of lichenoid vegetation. They called at the Russian dome first. It was a depressing place, half-populated, echoing. Touring it, Regan felt a certain morbid satisfaction at its failure. Sad-eyed, lean-faced Czechs gloomily showed off their power plant and their hydroponics works. A plump Rumanian leaned close to Regan and whispered in bad French, “You know? You could buy this place for ten kopecks! Just ask, and they would sell it. And glad of it!”

Regan spent half a day there, and the copter took him onward. “You’ll see a different story at the next dome,” Dick Avery warned him.

‘I imagine I will,“ Regan said.

‘Those poor Russkies! What a flop!“

Avery sounded gleeful. But Regan found it impossible to rejoice in what he had just seen. The decline of Soviet economic strength was simply the handwriting on the wall for his own country. An overextended, overdeveloped nation, shackled by debt, thrown into turmoil by a sudden awareness of adversity, could collapse fast. Ten bad harvests in a row had done the Russians in. Their international and interplanetary commitments had become millstones round their necks once bellies went empty. The trend was running the same way in the United States-a national debt in the trillions, farm shortages where once there had been unmanageable surpluses, persistent unemployment-none of them pleasant things to regard. They could all be overcome, Regan thought. But would they be?

No. Not so long as fat-cat prosperity replaced aggressive dynamism. Some spark had winked out, in the United States. He wondered if a simple thing like a World’s Fair could light that spark again. A rallying point, a symbol, a gleam in the sky-would it work?

The copter spiralled down. A bronze sand-crawler of Congolese make was waiting to take the visitors into New Dome.

It was small, smaller than Marsport and just as scruffy. But it was growing fast. The hum of construction work approached an uncomfortable level. Black and yellow and brown men sweated in the artificial warmth. Everything was flimsy, everything done on the cheap, for these new nations were financing their dome on shoestrings and matchsticks. But no matter. The dome was growing, and one of these decades the colony would be self-sufficient, and the investment would pay off.

‘They work hard here,“ Avery murmured. ”Whenever our boys start slacking off, we ship them over here for a visit It scares them enough to go on double shifts.“

‘How are the relationships between the two colonies?“ Regan asked.

‘Friendly enough,“ Avery said. ”They’re willing to let us have our little chunk of Mars, because they know they’re going to take over all the rest. And we feel the same way.“ ”Any attempt at coordination?“

‘Some. We’re trying to arrange things so we don’t duplicate each other’s research and production. Let them grow tomatoes, we’ll grow cabbage, that sort of thing. But it’s hard to arrive at any agreements. They’re such touchy bastards. Terribly proud of being here at all, you know, and so they take a pretty lofty attitude toward us.“

‘They’ve got a right to be proud,“ Regan said. ”Look where they started from fifty years ago, and look where they are now. And where they’ll be fifty years from now.“

‘I suppose you’re right,“ Avery said, and for once a look of distress crossed his jowly, beaming face.

A Nigerian named Jason Mbondze showed the Regans around. He was a six-footer, black as space itself, with daz-zlingly white teeth gleaming in his purplish face. He wore tribal robes, and carried himself with military stiffness. His attitude toward the Factor was a mixture of arrogance and deference; he seemed fearfully pleased with himself and with the achievement here, but yet he was well aware that millions of dollars in Global Factors loans had helped to build this dome. He seemed to be saying silently, We needed you and you helped us, and we are grateful. But we will soon pay our debt to you, and then good riddance to you!

‘Here is our water plant,“ Mbondze declared. ”Capacity is five million gallons a day, but next month we double that. Would you like a bath?“

Regan forced himself not to laugh. “Not just now, thanks.”

‘You and your lady may bathe at our expense. It will be our pleasure.“

‘We’re deeply honored,“ Regan said. ”I appreciate the sacrifice.“

‘No sacrifice at all,“ the Nigerian said, a trifle sharply. ”We have plenty of water. Plenty! It is no sacrifice!“

They got past that sticky moment, and went on. Nola was quiet, as if sensing her sarcasms might be unwanted here. The tour reached its climax atop a three-story building that looked out beyond the dome wall to the desert.

‘Our atmosphere-generating plant will be there,“ Mbondze said sweepingly. ”Five years, we build it. You know our dream? Real air on Mars! No domes! We have the plans drawn. Generators every hundred miles. Create a carbon dioxide belt around the planet-greenhouse effect, raise the temperature. Plant forests everywhere. It will take seventy-five years. The cost, one hundred billion dollars. We cannot finance it alone, but Marsport will help. We are talking to them about it. No more domes on Mars! A self-sustaining atmosphere in seventy-five years!“ Mbondze’s eyes glittered. ”It will be paradise here!“

Regan nodded. Unaccountably, his legs began to tremble. No domes? A hundred billion dollars? Call it a hundred fifty, before they finished. It wasn’t much, really, considering what it cost to build these domes, to tunnel downward into the ground for new accommodations. How much was the World’s Fair costing, anyway? Maybe forty billion, figuring in everybody’s expenses. For a sideshow. And to breathe fresh air under the open skies on Mars… “Yes,” Regan said. “It will be wonderful here.”

By nightfall they were back in Marsport-nightfall being simply the disappearance of the absurdly tiny sun. Regan used up a few thousand dollars phoning Earth, checking on the Fair, on the doings of Global. All was well. Bolivia and Belgium had paid advance rent on their pavilions. Reservations were being booked now for flights to the Fair Satellite. Global Factors stock was up to 116. The inventory of unsold World’s Fair bonds had been reduced by $35,000,000 more.

Regan slept badly that night. He was overstimulated, overexcited by the things he had seen, the plans that had been put forth to him. Lying awake, he clenched his fists, pressed them together until the knuckles popped. There was so much to do here, he thought! So much. And they were doing it, too. A bespectacled, bland-faced anthropologist named Curtis called for them in the morning, after their austere breakfast in the hotel dining room. He was young and earnest-looking, and, as he promptly explained, he was only a part-time anthropologist. “I’m studying the Old Martians twenty hours a week, but I’m also a fork-lift operator.” He laughed, self-consciously. “Anthropology is more or less of a luxury up here. But somebody’s got to study the Old Martians while they’re still around.”

‘Is it far to their village?“ Nola asked.

‘We can be there in an hour,“ Curtis said.

The crawler moved at anything but a crawl-eighty miles an hour over the hard-packed sand. There were no roads in the desert, but none were needed. The fierce wind and tumbling sand had worn every hill flat over thousands of years, in this part of Mars. A few rocks studded the desert, sturdy boulders of incredibly brilliant colors, blues and reds and greens, that had somehow resisted the constant weathering process. Larger bluffs rose here and there. Splotches of Vegetation, grayish-green, stained the red landscape.

‘The Martians were practically in our back yard,“ Curtis said. ”Less than a hundred miles from Marsport, but how were we to know? We had found plenty of their ruins, but the Carbon fourteen datings told us they hadn’t been occupied for ten thousand years or more. And then one day a prospector walked into a cave and there they were!“

‘Are there many of them?“ Regan asked.

‘Oh, maybe a hundred in this cave. There are some other caves, of course. We guess there’s an Old Martian population of maybe ten thousand all told. Most of them keep well out of sight.“

‘I don’t blame them,“ Regan said. ”How do they take to you people coming up here and colonizing their planet?“

‘They don’t seem to mind that. It isn’t really theirs any more, you see. There are so few of them left that they think of themselves as a dead race, and so we’re welcome to the place, if we’ll only be kind enough to leave them alone. Best as we can figure, there was a total Martian population of a couple of million, ten or twenty thousand years ago. It was never what you’d call crowded up here. But then the birth rate went into a tailspin, and as best as we can figure it they’ve never recovered from that. At their present rate of decline they’ll probably be gone in another few hundred years.“

‘Can’t something be done to make them increase instead of decrease?“ Regan asked.

Curtis looked amused. “We can’t breed them, Factor. They aren’t cattle. They’re people.”

‘Do they speak English?“ Nola wanted to know.

‘A few of them do,“ Curtis said. ”They aren’t terribly interested in learning, most of them.“

‘Can you speak their language?“

‘In a way. They aren’t terribly interested in teaching us, either. I’d say that generally they aren’t terribly interested in us at all. They just sort of tolerate us, more or less. Mostly less.“

The country grew hillier. Gaping caverns were visible in the mica-flecked sandstone hills. The sand-crawler whirred to a halt.

‘We’re here,“ Curtis announced.