“Look inside,” said Krane. So Stone bent and lifted the catches, opening the lid, which eased up on its own. Inside was soft kalebite packing used for delicate scientific instruments. He picked this off carefully. The contents looked unexpectedly sturdy. He reached in both hands and took it out.
“It looks like a big helmet. Like one those old Terran firefighters had.”
Krane said, “It’s a Gollowatt’n battle hat. They once fought the Kolvini through the Martian catacombs and never once saw the light of day.” Quickly, he described the helmet’s intuitive features. “Modified for your use. It’ll let you see in the dark for a start. Heat pictures. And there’s a sensor that tunes to your own eyes so you can use them as supersensitive binoculars. There are extrapowerful lights for when you need to do fine work, such as on the bomb itself. There’s a set of force-tools you can project and use. But it’s a lot more than that. There are a million neurolinks so the helmet works intuitively according to the wearer’s normal responses. We built a detector into it, too, if it survived the journey.”
“Force-tools?”
“They’re modified and mostly intuitive, tuned to your brain so you only have to visualize the problem, not the tool itself. Best make appropriate head movements.”
“OK.” Stone was dubious. “So what’s the magic word?”
“There is none. The helmet was made for a Gollowat’n medic, believe it or not. That’s why it was built with an empathy conceptor, so the medic could work on a wounded soldier or an injured civilian at the scene, usually in a battle situation. Empathy was a Gollowat’n middle name. The greatest doctors on seven worlds. They’re porcine, of course, but close enough to humans for the helmet to work pretty well. It should be compatible with your suit. The noman will make any adjustments you need.”
“It’s no more than a couple of planets at stake.” The helmet was light and felt unexpectedly organic. It shifted like flesh to his touch. It had a faint, pleasant smell, like brine. He lifted it over his head and brought it slowly down, fitting it like a hat. Then it seemed to flow over his skull and snuggle around his throat, his forehead. His suit suddenly buzzed recognition codes. Rounded blinkers fitted over his eyes, but he could see well. If anything, his eyes were sharper. For a moment, his cheekbones itched and he saw an uncomfortable series of cherry-colored flashes. Then a wash of dark red, almost like blood, gave way to enhanced clarity of vision.
The noman extended its arms, touching him gently here and there. His suit settled more comfortably on his body. He was surprised how healthy the thing made him feel. Maybe Gollowat’n medics had to be healthy in order to empathize with their patients. He had a sudden thought.
“This bomb? Is it sentient?”
“Not much,” said Krane.
“So what do I have to do to turn the timer off?”
“You have to open a series of locks. Numbered right to left in what they call G-script. We coded them to a particular melody in a particular time signature. It’s a tune, with each note representing a complex number. Do you know the old Earth tune ‘Dixie’? Just whistle it to yourself. That number should cancel out the existing sequence and effectively baffle the bomb’s key and register. The locks will snap off and it will probably simply go dead in your hand.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
“Well, it will still be live.”
“And ready to blow.”
“Yes. I’m assured there is very little chance of this going wrong, Mac Stone. Our people worked it out. Essentially, all you have to do is memorize that simple little tune. Oh, I wish I was in the land of cotton—”
“There is a problem.” Stone was almost embarrassed.
“What’s that?”
He flushed. “I’m tone-deaf,” he said.
4 Dancing in the Dark
“THEN TRY TO REMEMBER THE INTERVALS.” KRANE SEEMED bitterly amused, like a man who believes he’s thought of everything only to be told of one obvious unconsidered fact. “The helmet should help you. We’ve entered the code and the helmet should translate it automatically.”
Stone shrugged. “And if I succeed, I come back here and you give me the sapphires?”
“The whole bag. I promise.”
Stone didn’t have much choice now. He had to make a decision. Believe this strange Earthman or not? He laughed his long, low purr and tested the helmet’s responses. He pulled the casque down a little more firmly, settling the bond with his suit. Somehow he knew what to do next. He blinked to make the lights come on. Then he lay down on the side of the pit, fishing up his gun. The wanal made an unpleasant noise but went on eating.
Stone wiped slime off the barrel of his Banning and shoved it back in its holster. “What now?”
“The helmet’s programmed to help you find the bomb. If you leave this chamber, you’ll be at the top of a flight of stairs leading to a wide walkway. It runs beside the canal. All the Sheev waterways were made like that and their successors copied them.” There was a warm, Terran voice speaking to him now. Was this what Miguel Krane really sounded like? “There’s a numbering system still based on Sheev. The Sheev system used predominantly eleven. One, two, eleven, eleven, twenty-two, and so on.
“The Ia was rediscovered by the last Martians. They followed us. They built cities where they could shelter from the meteors. Air enough and water. They cultivated plants that grew well in the hydroponic fields. They built the atmosphere factories. They traded up and down that stretch of the canal. They sustained their particular civilization for another thousand years or more. When the meteor storms had passed, as you know, the whole planet had been pulverized. Almost all trace of Martian life was wiped out, except for things that lived belowground. They never really came back to the surface.”
Mac wondered what his own chances were. As he found the wide black steps that led downward, he thought of those ancient Martians who had built them back when the planet was still a world of gentle seas and green hills, of endless forests and big skies, before humans had evolved at all. And then came the Five Ages. The ages of the humanoid Martians. And then the meteors. The Martians would ultimately grow lonely as the remaining scraps of their culture were buried by the rusty Martian sands. They elected to find solitude below the surface and fade into death surrounded by the massive black stones of their eerie necropolis.
For all he was a loner, Stone found it hard to understand their mind-set. From the moment he burst out of his mother’s womb, he’d had to fight to remain alive and had relished every second he won for himself, grateful for whatever air he could drag into his gasping lungs, for every sight and sound that told him that he still lived. Mac Stone had a human brain and he was proud of his Martian heritage. He didn’t care whose lives he was saving or what reward he would receive. Mars was all he cared about. His battered flitboots echoed down wide steps of black pearl marble, as smooth and as stately and as beautiful in their subtle curvature as they had been on the day they were finished. He hardly noticed their grandeur. He thought of the big reflective tanks he had played among as a little boy and what so much water could do for the Low-Canal.
He breathed vanilla air, which reminded him of the shows he’d watched as a kid on the big public V-drome screens, sometimes as real as life, sometimes better, and he wondered if this was like that. Was this his life starting to replay at faster-than-real speed as his brain got ready to die? Was he already dead, remembering the high moments, the fine moments, of his wild life before he’d been sold? When he and Yily Chen would scamper like scorpions in and out of the blackness cast by the vast tanks and at night chase the flickering shadows cast by Phobos as she came sailing from the west, shreds of darkness skipping before her like familiars, spreading a trail of shades behind her … Oh, that raw intemperate beauty! Alive or dead, Mac swore he was never again going to leave Mars.