The ColU said, “Don’t be afraid, Beth Eden Jones. If I must stay here, I will care for Mardina, as once I cared for you.”
Mardina protested, “I don’t need anybody—”
But Penny touched her hand to hush her.
“I’ll come back for you someday,” Beth said gently.
“Or I’ll come for you,” Mardina said on impulse. “Though I’ve no idea how.”
“Yes.” Beth forced a smile. “Let’s make that pledge. When we have both found whatever it is we’re looking for…”
Mardina shook her head. “So what happens now? How will you get this Hatch of yours open anyhow?”
Beth smiled now, stepped forward, and pointed at the emplacement. “The Hatch knows when we’re ready. They always do.”
Mardina looked down. That central expanse of floor, surrounded by the circular seam, was no longer pristine. It had changed. Now it contained two complex indentations, like small craters with five rays—two pits shaped to accept the pressing of a pair of human hands.
34
For the final pickup, Centurion Quintus Fabius brought the Malleus Jesu down to the ground of Mars itself.
Titus Valerius called from the testudo, “About time you joined the party, sir.”
“Shut up, legionary. You still alive, Gnaeus Junius?”
“Here, Centurion.”
“All right. Make sure the meatheads in that glorified chariot do as they’re ordered. We’re nearly out of time—we almost waited too long. In particular, we haven’t the time to wait for the yacht, with the Academician and her party at the bunker. So I want you two to go pick them up in the testudo.”
Titus glanced over his shoulder, at a vehicle already crowded with legionaries, and those few Brikanti from the installation who had been intelligent enough to surrender in time. “It’s kind of sweaty in here, Centurion. No place for an elderly lady. And I do know the layout of that bunker. There’s only one docking port, which is where the yacht will be—”
“Use your initiative, legionary. Get the thing out of the way.”
“Whichever way I see fit, sir?”
“Whichever way, Titus Valerius.”
As far as Titus was concerned there were no finer words in the vocabulary of a commanding officer. With a whoop, he gunned the testudo at top speed for the bunker. Behind him he heard groans, and the odd thump as some clown who hadn’t secured himself properly fell off his bench.
And, with Höd looming in the sky larger than the sun, larger than Luna, an overwhelming reminder of the urgency of the situation, they came to the bunker. The yacht was indeed still docked to the only port.
The testudo didn’t even slow down. Titus Valerius drove straight into the flaring single wing of the yacht.
The testudo slammed to a halt, throwing them all forward once more. Then Titus put the testudo in its lowest gear, and just started pushing. The wing crumpled, the hull buckled, but the yacht came away from its lock with the bunker with a screech of torn metal, and was then shoved away over the Martian ground.
The passengers of the testudo actually gave him a round of applause. “You’re a hero, Titus Valerius!”
“You’re also an idiot,” Gnaeus said, peering out of the port at the bunker. “But a lucky idiot. I think that port is still serviceable.”
“I never doubted it. Anyway, those ports are designed to yield under torsion; I was cheating. Now go get our passengers, optio.” With a crunch of gears, Titus reversed the testudo and roughly positioned its flank against the bunker’s port.
As the optio had predicted, the port was still working, just, and Gnaeus, with the help of a couple of crew, soon managed to achieve an airtight bridge to the bunker. Titus, impatiently nurturing the running engine, was surprised to see that not all the landed party came back— just Penny Kalinski, Cadet Mardina Eden Jones Guthfrithson, the rodent-like druidh Ari Guthfrithson, and the slave boy with the talking rucksack.
And at the last minute Penny Kalinski herself refused to follow.
Mardina wouldn’t leave her behind. She grasped the old lady’s hands, trying gently to pull her forward to the port. “You must come. There’s no need to die here.”
“But I would die soon anyhow, my dear. And you need a witness—you, all of your people—a witness to what is being done, today, in your system, to your worlds. For, after all, it is Earthshine, with whom I traveled through the jonbar hinge, who is responsible for all this. The least I can do is file a report. And I am a scientist, you know—a druidh in my culture. A trained observer. Go, child, go—my mind is made up. But leave me that farspeaker of yours.”
“Academician—”
“It will soon be over, child. What, an hour? No more.”
Titus Valerius was running out of time. “Scorpus, Orgilius, get that damn door closed. Right now.”
“Right, Titus.” The two burly legionaries made for the hatch.
Penny called, “Oh, and Mardina—tell that centurion of yours, make him instruct his trierarchus—tell him not to hang around. Don’t hover near Mars, waiting to see what happens. And don’t head back to Earth either. Tell him to flee—out of the system, with the greatest acceleration he can muster—tell him to flee as Lex McGregor once fled, with the kernel drive burning. He will understand—”
Scorpus pulled the girl back from the door, and Orgilius slammed the hatch closed.
“At last!” Titus Valerius rammed forward his control lever and the testudo surged away from the lock. There were more complaints and curses as people fell over each other in the sudden acceleration. Titus just laughed, swung around the nose of the testudo, and headed straight for the welcoming belly of the Malleus Jesu.
35
“Academician? Can you still hear me? This is Malleus Jesu—”
“I can hear you, dear Mardina. Oh, my. This couch is just too comfortable. I believe I dozed off! There’s one disadvantage of such an elderly observer.”
“Well, it’s been a long day for us all, Academician.”
“Please. Call me Penny.”
“Penny, then. There’s only half an hour to go.”
“Yes, dear. I guessed it must be about that. Now, let me see. Ceres—Höd—is almost directly over my head. The glass roof of Earthshine’s peculiar garden is nothing if not revealing, and I have a dramatic view of the sky…
“I should report what I see as objectively as I can, shouldn’t I? Ceres looks, I would say, three times as wide as the sun does from Earth. And it is growing in size, as if swelling, almost visibly. What a strange sight it is! I have seen a total solar eclipse on Earth, and that had something of the same strange, slow grandeur of movement in the sky. You can sense there are huge masses sliding to and fro in the firmament above. But I can’t see the scar left by the fall of the Celyn, no glowing new crater. The spin of the asteroid has kept it away from me, and I imagine there will not be time enough for a full rotation. How brave those young crew were! But, oh my, it grows ever larger. And yet there is no effect yet, nothing to feel here on the ground, even though there are only minutes left.”
“I understand little of this, Academician Penny. What will happen to Mars? And why would Earthshine do this?”