“My God,” Kidd said.
The bottom of the canyon was thick with trees. Enormous trees, a hundred or even a hundred and fifty feet tall, each honey-blonde trunk rose straight and smooth from the dark loamy floor to a single great tuft of foliage just below the canyon’s lip. Groups of Martians moved among them, tiny at the feet of these towering giants.
As they watched, one of the trees fell gently, slowly, to the canyon floor. The Martians leapt upon the fallen giant and began hacking it into tiny pieces with their axes.
“What in God’s name are they doing?” Kidd cried.
“The growing conditions at the bottom of this canyon must be nearly unique,” Sexton mused. “But, as we’ve seen, coal is plentiful here. Perhaps they are so accustomed to burning coal that they must cut their wood into coal-sized chunks.”
Kidd shook his head. “Prisoners of habit.”
While Kidd stared down into the canyon, Sexton paced excitedly. “I must determine how these trees survive in the midst of a desert!” he muttered. “This could be my life’s work!”
At that statement, Kidd’s eyes went wide, and his already-dry mouth grew drier still. These trees were the final piece in the puzzle of how to return to Earth, but if he returned without Sexton, he’d face the noose anew.
Furthermore, he realized, he’d grown rather fond of the silly goose.
“But Sexton,” Kidd said, placing an arm around the philosopher’s shoulders, “if you make of these trees your life’s work, who will help us to rebuild the ship? Surely there are improvements to be made in the design.”
“Surely …” Sexton said, his eyes unfocusing as he considered the question.
“And once we are airborne, we must find a new prevailing wind to bear us homeward. For this, we may require new theories of the motions of air.”
“A difficult problem indeed.” Sexton patted his pockets for his notebook.
“Consider, too, the problem of bringing the trees, whole, out from this canyon, transporting them to the ship, and raising them up as masts.”
Sexton’s head came up suddenly. “Masts?”
“Masts,” Kidd acknowledged.
“But that’s exactly what we need!” said Sexton, and laughed.
“Masts!”
“Masts!” Kidd cried, and he too burst out laughing.
The two men held hands and danced around and around, bouncing with glee high into the thin Martian air.
Mars Adventure floated fifty feet above the sand, straining against her mooring cables. Above her loomed eight vast balloons, each slightly larger than before—an enormous crazy patchwork of bright Martian colors. They had taken up nearly every yard of fabric in the city, purchased with many weeks of backbreaking labor, but both Martians and Englishmen seemed pleased with the exchange.
The new masts were astounding—straight and smooth and so very light that they’d taken only half the crew to hoist out of the canyon and fit into place. And this was not merely the lighter weight of everything on Mars … these trees, products of a tiny, dry, and alien planet, bore a wood lighter and stronger than any on Earth. They’d packed the hold with as many logs as they could cram in. “We’ll build a whole fleet of airships!” Sexton swore, “and come back for more! We’ll make our fortune with these logs!”
“Not I,” Kidd told him.
Sexton blinked in astonishment, then grinned. “Surely the famous Captain Kidd does not lack in avarice?”
Kidd returned Sexton’s grin. “Have no fears on that score. Upon my return, I expect the gratitude of a king! And with those proceeds, I intend to settle down in Scotland, my ancestral home, with all the Ferintosh I can drink.” He leaned over the taffrail, looking down upon a city full of Martians, all a-chitter with excitement to see the great ship fly. “Fare thee well, ye great crabs!” he cried, then turned to the bosun. “Cast off!”
The men leapt into action, and, a moment later, with a great soaring bound, Mars Adventure sprang away into the blue Martian sky.
S. M. STIRLING
Considered by many to be the natural heir to Harry Turtledove’s title of King of the Alternate History novel, fast-rising science fiction star S. M. Stirling is author of the Island in the Sea of Time series (Island in the Sea of Time, Against the Tide of Years, On the Ocean of Eternity), in which Nantucket is cast back to the year 1250. He’s also produced the New York Times bestselling Change series: a first trilogy (Dies the Fire, The Protector’s War, A Meeting at Corvallis), followed by The Sunrise Lands, The Scourge of God, The Sword of the Lady, The High King of Montival, The Tears of the Sun, and Lord of Mountains, and his most recent book, The Given Sacrifice. Another alternate history series, The Lords of Creation, has two volumes: The Sky People and In the Courts of the Crimson Kings, set in a universe in which Mars and Venus were terraformed by mysterious aliens in the remote past. Most recently, he started a new series, Shadow-spawn, which consists of A Taint in the Blood, The Council of Shadows, and Shadows of Falling Night. He has also written stand-alone novels such as Conquistador and The Peshawar Lancers, and collaborated with Raymond F. Feist, Jerry Pournelle, Holly Lisle, and Star Trek actor James Doohan, as well as contributing to the Babylon 5, T2, Brainship, War World, and Man-Kzin War series. His short fiction has been collected in Ice, Iron and Gold. Born in France and raised in Europe, Africa, and Canada, he now lives with his family in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
If something important is stolen from you, sometimes you have to go to extreme lengths to get it back, no matter how dangerous the quest—or how many corpses you have to pile up along the way …
Swords of Zar-tu-Kan
S. M. STIRLING
Orbit: 1.5237 AU Orbital period: 668.6 Martian solar days Rotation: 24 hrs. 34 min. Mass: 0.1075 x Earth Average density: 3.93 g/cc Surface gravity: 0.377 x Earth Diameter: 4,217 miles (equatorial; 53.3% x Earth) Surface: 75% land, 25% water (incl. pack ice) Atmospheric composition: Nitrogen 76.51% Oxygen 20.23% Carbon dioxide 0.11% Trace elements: Argon, Neon, Krypton. Atmospheric pressure: 10.7 psi average at northern sea level The third life-bearing world of the solar system, Mars is less Earth-like than Venus …
“WELCOME TO ZHO’DA,” SALLY YAMASHITA SAID.
“I’ve been on Mars over a month now!”
“Kennedy Base is on Mars, but it isn’t really on Zho’da,” she said.
The Demotic word meant something like The Real World.
She swept her mask over her face with a practiced gesture as she walked out of the street-level stage of the airship landing tower, against air as dry and acrid as the Taklamakan Desert and nearly as thin as Tibet’s.
A second later, Tom Beckworth followed suit. The living, quasi fabric writhed, then settled down, turning her face into a smooth black oval below the tilted brown eyes. You didn’t absolutely have to think about the fact that you were plastering a synthetic amoeboid parasite over your mouth and nose. His matched his medium ebony skin much more closely.
Sally always enjoyed getting back to Zar-tu-Kan, the main contact-city for the US-Commonwealth Alliance of explorers and scientists on Mars. It was honestly alien. While Kennedy Base was … sort of like a major airport that had somehow landed in Antarctica with everyone stuck in a second-rate hotel by bad weather. She was probably going to live out the rest of her life on Mars, and with antiagathics cheap at the source, that could be a long time.