Exiles of Titan- The Martian Phase Read online

  ‘There’s nothing we didn’t detail in our reports, sir.’ He said. ‘Are we in trouble?’

  ‘Heavens no SSA Clarke – far from it. The thing is, the words “unknown agent” set a few alarms off – and the incident occurred at the same time as reports of a strange character on Mars. We think that’s too much of a coincidence.’

  That was totally unexpected. Deira had no idea the Bureau had a presence on Mars. Indeed, she could see no reason why it should have since Mars Base was a tightly-run, highly controlled community where the likelihood of significant criminality was negligible.

  ‘What’s the Bureau doing on Mars, sir?’ The words were out of her mouth before she could stop them and Adam glared at her. ‘Sorry, sir.’

  The Director didn’t seem at all put out.

  ‘Not a problem, SA MacMahon. In fact, that’s why you’re both here.’ He leaned back in his chair. ‘Perhaps you could tell me how you think an unknown individual came to be on Mars.’

  ‘It doesn’t make sense, sir. The only way on or off Mars is by ship, so everybody should be accounted for on a ship’s manifest. There shouldn’t be any unknowns.’

  ‘Yet all names on manifests have been accounted for and there’s still an unidentified person present. No obvious mode of entry.’

  He activated the comm on his desk. ‘Pat, would you be so kind as to bring us three coffees please?’ He glanced up. ‘Any preference as to black, white, sugar, and so on?’

  Deira felt she’d just fallen down a rabbit-hole. The whole idea of taking coffee with the DO was simply surreal. She waited for Adam to reply but nothing was forthcoming and she realised he was having even more trouble with this than she was. He’d always been deferential to the point of being obsequious. She spoke up for both of them.

  ‘We both take it black, sir, and no sugar. Thank you.’

  ‘Jolly good. Did you get that Pat? Okay. Now, where was I? Ah yes, unidentified person, no obvious mode of entry. Thoughts?’

  Now that the topic had turned away from coffee back to business again Adam was suddenly able to speak again.

  ‘Could some private individual or corporation have produced a Q-ship?’ He frowned and muttered an answer to his own question. ‘No, that wouldn’t work – they’d still have to pass through normal Mars Base entry protocols.’

  ‘Correct.’ The Director said ‘Even if someone had developed such a ship, and we have no evidence to support that, it still wouldn’t get them into Mars Base undetected.’

  The door opened and Cheatham’s secretary brought in the coffee, quickly passed the mugs around and slipped out again. Cheatham took a sip of his and shot a glance at Deira.

  ‘Do you have any thoughts on the matter, SA MacMahon?’

  Deira couldn’t see where this was going at all and tried to follow the logic. There seemed to be two hard facts – one, you couldn’t get to Mars without being on a passenger manifest and two, this interview had only come about because they’d mentioned an unknown agent in their reports. Put them together and… was it possible?

  ‘An agent could get in, sir,’ she ventured, ‘but there’d have to be a PHASE terminal on Mars.’

  ‘That’s impossible!’ Adam blurted out. ‘Beam power, diffusion, and attenuation wouldn’t allow it and…’ he trailed off when he saw the Director’s face. Deira could see she’d nailed it.

  ‘So there is some new PHASE technology,’ she said triumphantly.

  The Director nodded. ‘Very good Agent MacMahon. Yes, there is a new technique for photonic transmission over interplanetary distances. It was developed by Professor Chayka’s team.’

  Deira frowned. ‘But surely it’d be obvious if the terminal had been used?’

  ‘Theoretically, yes.’ The Director looked uncomfortable. ‘In practice – well, it’s confusing. The terminal’s fully operational but hasn’t been commissioned yet. There’s none of the usual evidence of use but the technician’s discovered a record of a small, and highly unusual, quantum fluctuation from a few days ago. We haven’t a clue what it means.’

  He paused to take a gulp of coffee. ‘Luckily, it doesn’t seem to be anything that would prejudice the human testing programme – which is where you two come in.’

  Adam went deathly white. ‘You want us to go to Mars by PHASE, sir?’

  His voice was low and controlled – an apparent absence of emotion. Deira knew differently because she recognised that voice. It was the one he used when he was trying to conceal how scared he was. His hands were balled tightly in his lap and he was staring blankly ahead again.

  The Director had been examining his virtual screen. Now he punched something into his desk console and drained the rest of his coffee.

  ‘Yes, SSA Clarke, that’s the plan. We need you on Mars quickly and the only ship capable of doing the trip in the timescale we require is the one currently on its way to Titan. That ship won’t be available for at least another four or five weeks and we can’t wait that long. If we use the new transmitter we not only get you where you need to be quickly but test the technology at the same time – very efficient.’

  Deira had passed through the panic phase and now felt numb. She was only just beginning to get used to PHASEing between sites in Europe and still wasn’t entirely comfortable with the process. Now she was going to be transmitted millions of miles through space as one of the first test subjects of a new technology. This had definitely not been on the agenda when she’d signed up. She looked across at Adam and saw he still had his scared-shitless-but-not-admitting-to-it face on. The Director didn’t appear to notice and continued.

  ‘I’ve just sent the mission brief to your personal consoles. You will track down the stranger and discover who he is, how he got to Mars and the reason for his presence there. If he’s an agent, we also need to know who he works for and whether or not he has any connection with your mystery agent from the warehouse.

  ‘This would usually be a mission for one agent, and I was planning to send you, SSI Clarke. However, it’s been suggested to me that SA MacMahon’s prior experience in IT and cryptology may be of benefit in this case so I’m sending you both. Do you have any questions?’

  Deira glanced over at Adam but could see he was still deep in thought.

  ‘Just a couple, sir,’ she said. ‘Do you think it’s possible the unknown agent on Mars is the same one who helped us in the warehouse? If so, it’d seem his motives are benign.’

  ‘We’re almost certain they’re two different individuals. At the very time you were receiving help in the warehouse from your unknown friend we had a report that our man on Mars was sitting in the Bar chatting to the barman.’

  ‘That’s very interesting. Do you have a picture of him?

  ‘Unfortunately not. The reports we’ve had have been vague at best and nobody’s thought to get a picture. I’m afraid you’ll have to start from scratch.’

  Okay. Thank you, sir.’ Deira was trying very hard to maintain an air of quiet confidence when she was actually in inner turmoil. ‘When would you like us to get started?’

  ‘The sooner the better.’ The Director smiled and rummaged in one of his desk drawers. ‘Have yourselves a decent night’s sleep tonight and report to the new transmission terminal in the CERN Bureau facility tomorrow. You’ll also need these.’ He passed across a couple of plastic badges. ‘New security passes – you’re now officially level 8. If you have any more questions your contact is Dr Swanson in the Science Directorate.’

  He got up and showed them to the door.

  ‘Good luck with your mission, agents. I’m very confident in the new transmission technology and, just think, you’ll be making history. I look forward immensely to reading your reports.’

  He gave one last smile and closed the door. Deira turned to Adam.

  ‘Have you got it into your brain what we’ve just signed up for? We’re going to PHASE all the way to Mars! Hell, until today I didn’t even know you could PHASE without a fibre-optic cable.’

&nb
sp; ‘We do it here sometimes,’ Adam said vaguely, looking decidedly unhappy, ‘and the Americans use it all the time because of the long distances they have to cover and the lack of suitable cables. I’ve no idea how it can be done over such large distances but I guess it must be okay if the Director says it is.’

  ‘Well I don’t know about you but I need a stiff drink,’ Deira said.

  ‘Sounds like a plan.’

  §

  The next morning, Deira met up with Adam for breakfast. She’d had a pretty crappy night, much of it awake or dreaming of Martian agents, and now all she could think of was the projected mega-PHASE. From the dark shadows under his eyes it was plain that Adam had had the same problem. Neither of them could manage anything to eat but had a swift coffee before taking a regular PHASE to the Bureau office at CERN. They wandered round for a while trying to navigate the colossal facility and finally, after a good deal of flashing their new security passes, managed to find the new interplanetary PHASE terminal.

  The interior didn’t look that different from a standard PHASE terminal, which was good news for Deira, whose adrenaline levels were already pretty high. There was a whole load of extra equipment that the local technician was calibrating, but that wasn’t her prime focus. The PHASE chamber itself was what she was interested in, and that looked identical to those she was already familiar with. It helped.

  ‘What’s bugging me is how they get the aim right,’ she said. ‘I know there’s plenty more to worry about but that kind of just goes round and round.’

  ‘I can help with that if you want,’ Adam said. ‘I had a little chat with Dr Swanson last night and got the lowdown on the tech we’re going to be using.’

  ‘Don’t know whether I really want to know or not.’ Deira thought for a moment. ‘Yeah, okay. How do they do it?’

  ‘Well, each of the new PHASE terminals emits a beacon at a specific frequency. Let’s take Mars as an example. The Mars terminal emits a pulse that the terminal on Earth picks up. Because the pulse travels at light speed, that only tells us where Mars was about four minutes ago. Knowing that, we then use something called the Solar Algorithm to determine where Mars will be in the time it takes us to transmit over there. That’s called the “destination locus”. Am I making sense so far?’

  Deira felt distinctly nauseated. ‘You mean they transmit us to where Mars will be in about four minutes’ time using knowledge of where it was, about four minutes ago? And you expect me to feel reassured by that?’

  Adam laughed. ‘Do you want the rest or shall we leave it at that?’

  ‘Definitely leave it at that! If the rest’s anywhere near as bad I really don’t want to know.’

  They wandered over to the luggage bay and deposited their bags in the hopper for regular quantum transmission then sat waiting for the technician to complete his fine-tuning. Once he was happy with the set-up he came over, smiling broadly.

  ‘Hi guys!’ The man was wound up as tight as a spring and his face was deeply flushed. ‘I’m Carl. I don’t know about you but I can’t believe we’re about to do the first ever human interplanetary PHASE. It’s historic! How are you both feeling?’

  The last thing on Deira’s mind was making history. She was so totally absorbed with the thought that she was about to be fired into interplanetary space that the techie almost got more than he was expecting from his innocent question. Thankfully, Adam took over before Deira could explode. He made all the right noises and smoothed the situation over quite nicely.

  ‘Which one of you is going first for PHASE One?’ Carl asked.

  ‘PHASE One?’ Adam raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Yeah – didn’t you know? We’re PHASEing you to the moon first – a nice short one-and-a-half second transmission to get warmed up. Once we’re sure you’re both okay, we’ll get you straight on to Mars.’

  ‘You make it sound like we might not be okay?’ Deira said, feeling her stomach lurch again.

  Carl laughed. ‘Sorry – I didn’t mean it that way. This new tech’s fantastic and all the animal tests went perfectly. The moon PHASE is just to satisfy the bureaucrats. You know what they’re like – risk assessments and all that.’

  Deira nodded uncertainly and looked at Adam, who seemed to be taking things very much in his stride. This was what Adam did. He might have been shit-scared last night but once he’d processed the data and internalised it he just got on with things. That’s what made him so good to have round.

  ‘That’s great, Carl,’ he said. ‘I think I’m first.’

  Deira wasn’t inclined to argue, being content to delay her own departure for as long as possible. She watched, fascinated, as Adam casually finished his coffee and made his way to the PHASE chamber. He seemed completely at ease – calmness personified – and then he spoiled the effect completely by turning and giving a sickly smile. Deira assumed it was meant to be encouragement, for which of them she wasn’t sure, but she wished he hadn’t bothered because it hadn’t been particularly helpful.

  The procedure itself was just like a regular PHASE except that Carl took more time checking and calibrating once again. Finally, he turned from his instruments to where Adam was lying in the cubicle.

  ‘Destination locus confirmed, Agent. Ready to transmit?’

  ‘Fire when ready,’ Adam said. The chamber powered up and entered its pre-transmission phase.

  ‘Tight Beam, Agent.’ Carl initiated transmit and the low hum changed to the usual high pitched whine. Deira had never seen inside a chamber while a transmission was occurring and she didn’t really want to – her imagination provided quite sufficient details. She kept telling herself she’d been through this many times. It would feel no different – just take longer. The thought didn’t help much.

  ‘Transmission complete,’ Carl called over to Deira. ‘Your colleague’s on the moon in one piece. When I get the go-ahead from my opposite number out there I’ll get you on your way. You can get into the chamber now, if you like, while it’s cycling.’

  Deira was nothing like ready to go but was functioning on automatic pilot. She entered the chamber and made herself as comfortable as possible on the couch. This was definitely not her idea of the perfect day.

  Carl’s voice came over the comm. ‘Everything’s on the green, Agent. Destination locus has been re-confirmed and I’m ready to transmit on your signal.’

  Deira knew she couldn’t delay this any longer. Adam had already completed his PHASE so the equipment obviously worked just fine. She needed to get a grip.

  ‘Fire when ready,’ she said.

  The chamber powered up, the neural inhibitor came on, and Deira knew no more. Her body disintegrated and all that was left was the information that made her the unique individual she was. This was encoded in the compressed photon beam and a few seconds later an intense white laser shot out of the terminal building.

  Deira MacMahon flew to the moon as a beam of light.

  Chapter 4

  Chayka sat alone with a mug of hot chocolate and gazed through the forward view-screen of the passenger lounge. His thoughts were far away, in the bleak, mind-numbing days and the black, marrow-freezing nights of his native Siberia. This late night contemplation had become a habit since he’d discovered that the inky blackness of space evoked memories of his childhood – memories he’d have preferred to have buried for good but which bubbled up from his subconscious in a never-ending stream. He thought of it as a form of therapy, a means of confronting the past and moving beyond it. In the main it was about being in control – and not being controlled by the traumas of the past.

  Round him all was silent except for the distant and ever-present thrum of the QUAVER drive. It was a good time to sit and reminisce, to confront inner demons and put his life in order – because order was essential.

  He reluctantly dragged himself away from his recollections and concentrated on the view-screen. Mars appeared as an orange-red disk that took up a good quarter of the field of view. The ship would reach the planet t
omorrow – no, later on today Chayka reminded himself, checking the time – and it would stop over for two nights before launching into the second part of the fourteen day journey.

  The facility on Mars was the oldest in the solar system with the single exception of Moon Base. It had begun life as a research station in the days when the journey time from Earth was several months and visits by ships were few. The resident scientists had been a hardy bunch by necessity, carefully selected to cope with the psychological rigours of an isolated dome existence. The competition for a posting was fierce because the payback was significant – an enhancement in professional reputation on return to Earth and a huge bonus payment. Chayka knew he would have relished the role. He was just twenty years too late.

  The stuttering start in space exploration had been changed almost overnight by the myriad applications that followed Chayka’s discoveries in sub-quantal physics. The QUAVER-powered Q-ships had made routine travel to the nearer planets a real possibility for the first time and Chayka had read accounts of those heady days when almost anything seemed possible. Everybody had wanted to witness the wonders of space for themselves and the demand was enough to stimulate the emergence of a new breed of space entrepreneurs. With money and enthusiasm, the original Mars Base had grown beyond all recognition and the facility now boasted, among other things, a mall of shops, two restaurants, and a very well-known bar.

  Then there was the Skydome. Fully five kilometres in diameter, it enclosed a virgin piece of Mars landscape, maintained at Martian gravity but provided with an Earth-normal atmosphere. The intention had been to assess experimental terraforming techniques within this enclosed space prior to general implementation, but time had moved on and the dome had rapidly assumed iconic status. It was hugely popular with both visitors and those on long-term contracts at the Base and all attempts at co-opting it for its original purpose had long since been abandoned.