Scarborough studied the deep V-shaped notch near the valley intersection with rapt fascination. Like the photos and descriptions in those boyhood references, his satellite readouts had offered detailed information about the area’s geographic features. He had come here prepared. But the sheer immensity of the cleft overwhelmed his senses. And stirred his imagination. He again envisioned gargantuan creatures dining on solid rock as they thundered through the ancient pass. What he knew of glacial migrations was momentarily forgotten. Science was Bradley’s and Payton’s game. His was to see their expedition through the valleys and return them to Cold Corners safe and sound, ideally with the salvaged Martian rover in their possession. He could allow himself a brief flight of fancy. And right now it was easy to believe that the notch in the side of the pass had been left by a prehistoric monster of indescribable scale. Not the same trudging forager that might have munched away at the slope behind him like a fat hippopotamus snacking on reeds and brush. This would have been something more akin to a tyrannosaur. A lunging beast of prey that took vicious bites out of the earth’s hide, gulping them down whole, its fangs leaving permanent gouges wherever they sank in.
It looks like a wound, Scarborough thought. A wound that never healed shut.
Bradley had strode up alongside him and was peering through her binoculars, but a glance in her direction revealed she hadn’t been focused on the notch. Instead she was scanning the ground. As Scarborough guessed he should have been doing.
“I don’t get it,” she said.
“Get what?”
She looked at him.
“The rover’s tracks,” she said, and handed over the binocs. “Check them out for yourself.”
Scarborough readily obliged, his gaze following the parallel bands of Scout’s wheel marks. They coursed across the open sand in a fairly straight line for what he estimated was a hundred yards, and then swung away toward the notch. That didn’t surprise him. Rather, it seemed to confirm that the probe had been operational when it reached the area, since one of its selective tasks was to explore, image, and collect geologic samples from the notch’s interior. Why had Bradley sounded so puzzled then?
It took a minute before he understood.
Just when the tracks got to the flat apron of the notch, they evaporated. And insofar as Scarborough could judge from his vantage, did not resume at any point beyond.
“Crap,” he said. “Seems we’re about to lose the trail.”
“Yes,” she said. “What do you make of it?”
Scarborough was thoughtful. “I don’t know. Could be it was scrubbed clean by wind.”
Bradley’s silence betrayed her skepticism. Scarborough couldn’t blame her. His explanation had been pretty feeble. There was a significant distance between the spot where Scout’s wheel marks stopped and the entrance to the notch, and the gusts in this section of the pass were blowing a trifle less vigorously than in the last stretch his party had covered. It seemed improbable that the trail wouldn’t continue further on. At the very least it should have left some partial remains. But from where he stood, the rover might as well have been swallowed up by the sand.
Scarborough’s view through the glasses clouded from his breath, and he rubbed the steam off before it could freeze. Then he wiped his snow goggles. Not that he needed to bother. He knew what he had seen. Or hadn’t seen, to put it more aptly. Neither the wheel marks nor the rover would materialize at his command. That magic trick exceeded a Coke-bottle genie’s abilities.
“What’s happening?” Payton demanded from over his shoulder. “Why are we standing here?”
Scarborough turned to him. The guy was like a perverse talking doll with about four lines of nastiness recorded on its voice chip. Still, he was owed a straight answer. Scarborough would have preferred one that was simultaneously optimistic, but didn’t know how to pair his goals. He chose between them, braced for Payton’s reaction.
“Scout’s trail wipes out short of the notch,” he said. “From what we can see, it doesn’t pick up again.”
Payton looked at him.
“Short of the notch,” Payton repeated. Absorbing the implications of Scarborough’s words at once. “Which would be approximately where the rover lost contact with base.”
Scarborough nodded.
“I don’t understand,” Payton said. “If that’s as far as Scout traveled, that is where it still ought to be.”
Scarborough might have agreed that was the logical conclusion. Except the probe wasn’t there. And though a slew of possibilities had occurred to him, none convincingly accounted for its MIA status.
“We’ll keep going. See what’s what,” he said. “I wish I had a better plan.”
Payton thrust a hand at him, palm up. “Pass me the binoculars,” he said with derision. “I want to take a look. With my own eyes.”
Scarborough was tempted to suggest that Payton might also want to use his own field glasses, which were hanging in their case over the front of his parka. Instead he handed them to him.
“No problem,” Scarborough said. “Give ’em back to Shevaun when you’re done.”
Bradley nodded to Scarborough in a way he interpreted as sympathetic. It made him feel appreciated. And glad he’d curbed his irritation.
They waited as Payton studied the trail. A minute or two later he let the glasses sink to his chest.
“This isn’t possible, it—” He suddenly interrupted himself. “Wait. Do either of you hear that noise?”
Scarborough did. It was a kind of high metallic buzz that seemed to drill through the blanketing rush of the wind from an unresolved distance. He glanced at Bradley. The inquisitive tilt of her head revealed she was listening carefully to the sound, trying to pinpoint its source. While the reverberant acoustics of their surroundings made that hard, Scarborough thought it was issuing from the direction of the notch.
Payton evidently thought the same. He brought the glasses back up, aimed them at the yawning, jagged scar in the wall of the pass.
“What the hell is this?” he said. His voice was shaky. An instant later, his hands were too. “Scarborough, do your job. Will you do your goddamned job and answer me?”
Scarborough stared at the notch. At first nothing caught his attention. Then an object darted out onto the sand. From a distance it seemed a mere speck. But it was coming on at an incredible speed, growing larger in his vision with a quickness that matched.
Payton continued to stand beside him with his gloved hands trembling around the binoculars. Scarborough did not want to lose a beat getting his own set of glasses out of their case. The buzzing had grown louder and louder, filling his ears as it surged between the stone walls on either side of him. To his unaided eyes, the thing from inside the notch appeared to be a dark cloud of ground smoke churning around a solid and even darker core. At its present rate of acceleration it would be upon them in less than a minute. And he didn’t have a clue what it might be.