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The Eternal Feminine leads us upward.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
It was a warm rainy morning on Mars.
Katerina Savitskaya, the first and only woman on the Red Planet, stood barefoot in the open entrance of the habitation module and took a deep breath of the lightly lavender-scented air around her. A moist Martian breeze gently brushed her cheek like a lover’s kiss. She fingered the end of her long freshly shampooed auburn hair, watching raindrops splatter the dusty ochre ground outside and kick up miniature craters like a shower of micrometeorites.
Several meters above her head, the rain pinged softly against the flat metal roof of the planet’s lone human dwelling. The habitation module, shaped like a squat tin can nine meters in diameter, had been her home here for nearly three neomartian months. Though more spacious than the compact apartment in St. Petersburg where she’d grown up, the module was dwarfed by the vast desertlike plain surrounding her.
Katerina sighed, cheered by the stillness and solitude of the dawn. Mission Control had radioed a work schedule for today that included a trek northeast to the shore of the Boreal Ocean. She silently asked God if this was the day there would be a second close encounter with the enigmatic aliens who’d terraformed Mars.
Suddenly the shapely young cosmonaut sensed something large sneaking up behind her from inside the module. Before she could turn around, a pair of long hairy arms wrapped themselves tightly like tentacles around her waist. She shivered as hot wet lips with fetid breath nuzzled her throat—
“Happy birthday, Katerina!”
Martin Slayton, the first and only man on Mars, stepped back and grinned goofily at his fiancée. A maroon baseball cap with both NASA’s insignia and the pale intertwined letters “S” and “L” sewn on it covered his black crew-cut hair. He wore the crimson pullover shirt emblazoned on the front with “St. Louis Cardinals 2035 World Series Champions” she’d bought for him late last October, shortly before they’d rocketed away from Earth. Dingy white shorts and dirty black hiking boots completed his non-regulation spacesuit.
Katerina kissed his bristly cheek. Then she sniffed his mouth and wrinkled her nose. “Have you brushed yet?”
Her husband-to-be sheepishly ran his tongue over filmy teeth. “Sorry. I was so eager to be the first to congratulate you on your special day that I neglected my oral hygiene.”
“Well, you’re too late. Someone else already congratulated me.”
Martin blinked. “Don’t tell me they came and brought you a birthday cake.”
“Considering how unpredictable the aliens are, it wouldn’t have surprised me if they had. No, your rival for my affections is the dashing Harvey Schlocknagel.”
Martin struck a heroic pose. “Well, I could fight him for your love in a duel with flashing sabers, like vying suitors do in those romance novels you read. However, since he’s twenty-five million kilometers away at Mission Control, we’ll have to take a rain check. Besides, you know who’d win the fight. As I recall, he’s about a head shorter than me, twice my age, and lacks my manly physique and bronzed rippling muscles.”
He lowered his voice to a piratical bass as he reached for her. “So, my buxom wench, you may as well surrender now—”
Martin winced as Katerina’s stiff index finger poked him hard in the abdomen and stopped his advance. She laughed, “No ‘surrendering’ until our wedding night, after we return to Earth early next year. Besides, today really isn’t my birthday.”
“Well, the chronometer inside says its March 7. Unless you’re being technical with me about the International Date Line or something, we’re both now thirty-three years old.”
Katerina’s hazel eyes twinkled. “Remember, we’re on Mars. Even in its new orbit so close to Earth, a month here is about a week longer than one back home. I still have several more neomartian weeks to go before it’s my birthday.”
“No fair! You didn’t use those rules when I had my birthday last month!”
“Is it my fault you don’t consider yourself a Martian yet?”
Martin’s eyes wandered over his fiancée’s lovely face, curvaceous torso covered by a thin plaid shirt, and lightly tanned legs extending from rose-tinted shorts. “If Wells’ Martians had looked like you, they could’ve conquered every red-blooded Earthman without firing a single heat ray. You can experiment on my body any time—”
Katerina prodded him backward and giggled, “That’s enough, Martin! Our space agencies expect us to earn our pay by exploring, not acting like characters in a soap opera!”
“Okay, I’ll go clean up.”
As Martin retreated back through the openings in the module’s science laboratory and other compartments, his voice faded as he intoned, “Can a simple farm boy from Marshfield, Missouri win the love of an exotic Russian beauty? Find out tomorrow on ‘As the Red Planet Revolves’!”
A puff of wind caressed Katerina’s Mona Lisa lips as her eyes returned to the world outside the module. The rain had stopped. The Sun, almost as bright and large as it shone in the skies of Earth, melted through thinning clouds and suffused the rusty sands with a golden luster. She prayed that God would let her gaze in innocent wonder at many more mystical Martian dawns.
It was a prayer that wouldn’t be answered.
“Hurry up, Katerina! The pickup truck’s loaded!”
Katerina’s tennis shoes tapped with a ballerina’s delicacy on the short ramp that led from the habitation module, elevated a meter on multiple stubby landing legs, down to the paprika-colored ground. As she ran outside, the large heavy three-barred golden cross she wore—a traditional symbol of her devout Russian Orthodox faith—swung across her chest from a gold chain around her neck.
“Sorry, Martin. I had to finish my morning prayers.”
She hurried to where her crewmate stood by his “pickup truck.” The two-seater rover was a sophisticated descendent of those used on the last three Apollo missions a little over sixty years earlier. The vehicle’s skeletal open-frame-with-wheels appearance like a dune buggy’s was similar to its forebears.
But this rover used the latest regenerative fuel cells for power and lightweight modern alloys strong enough to endure the rocky Martian landscape. The electronics in its navigation and other onboard systems rivaled the processing power of the entire Mission Control Center in Houston during its original heyday in the 1960s. The vehicle’s glossy lime-green paint job was designed to stand out against the planet’s predominantly reddish-orange hues.
Martin said, “I tested the radio and packed our supplies.”
He grinned and pointed his companion toward the rover’s passenger seat. “Remember, it’s my turn to drive!”
Katerina sighed as she settled into her black cushioned seat on the right. She secured the safety harness and leaned her head tensely against the seat’s headrest. Although the rover’s technical specs said its maximum speed was fifty kilometers per hour, the way Martin drove made it seem faster. And “his turn” also meant he had the choice of music.
She silently prayed for patience. After all, Martin hadn’t grumbled too much when she’d been the driver on their last trip. Traveling southwest to the base of Olympus Mons, she’d played classical pieces with astronomical themes or nicknames. Holst’s panoramic paean to the IAU-approved Solar System. Mozart’s massive Symphony No. 41. The pianistic “moonlight” masterpieces of Beethoven and Debussy. Haydn’s “Sun” string quartets, his opera Il mondo della luna, and fleet-footed Symphony No. 43.
She knew the melodies played today would be in a very different style.
Martin plopped down into the seat on her left and fiddled with his baseball cap. After activating the rover he pulled back and twisted its vertical metal control bar. As they sped away toward the Boreal Ocean he poked at their portable music player.
A country music tune replete with twanging guitars and thumping bass erupted from the small-but-mighty speakers he’d duct-taped around the vehicle. Katerina squirmed as a female vocalist lugubriously enumerated the heartaches of rural American life.
Martin mercifully turned off the player after stopping the rover a kilometer from the habitation module to check what he’d dubbed “the north forty.” It was a rectangular field ninety meters by sixty meters, used to test whether terrestrial food crops could grow in the sandy mineral-rich soil of Mars. Shortly after they landed early in the northern hemisphere’s spring he’d used the rover like a tractor, pulling a long thin metal scraper blade attached to its back to level and clear the ground here. Then they’d carefully planted various vegetables and grains.
Despite Katerina’s disapproval Martin had placed a plastic pole and placard reading “Garden of Eden” at one end of the field. Earth’s media, who’d already dubbed them the Adam and Eve of a newly recreated Mars, loved it.
They’d harvested a crop of radishes last week. Though the red-and-white roots looked edible, the space medicine experts back home denied Martin’s request for a taste. Tests in the module’s science lab hadn’t shown any toxic chemicals in the radishes. But even the tiniest risk he might get sick was considered unacceptable.
Both had been chosen for this mission over older, more experienced space veterans on the assumption that their youth gave them a relative advantage in resisting illness or recuperating from injuries. The limited supply of medical equipment and medications in the module was adequate to treat minor maladies. But with the nearest Emergency Room millions of kilometers away, calling 911 for a serious ailment or accident wasn’t an option.
The biology experts’ fears that mice or other lab animals might escape into the Martian wilderness meant there were none in the module to use as taste testers. And so, despite Martin’s pleas with the physicians back home, the radishes remained uneaten.
Martin examined the delicate yellow blossoms on his green bean bushes. “Looks like we’ll have our first batch soon.”
Katerina stood at the perimeter of their garden, looking out over the stubby cornstalks and verdant wheat low against the ground. “It’s amazing how well everything’s growing.”
Her crewmate kicked a patch of powdery pumpkin-tinted soil with his boot and replied, “I wonder what the ground was like before the aliens started working on it. The hematite and other minerals on the surface aren’t good for growing crops, but the clay we found digging deeper with our shovels obviously is.”
Katerina sighed, “I suppose we’ll never really know what the planet was like before the aliens changed the ecosystem so radically. Even with too little atmosphere and too much radiation, the ‘old’ Mars was still worth going to. But I think this new one is better.”
Martin grinned. “Nice speech, but you’re preaching to the choir.”
The young Russian frowned. “I’ve never heard that expression.”
“It means I agree with you. But I’d feel better if the aliens told us why they changed Mars.”
As they settled back into the rover Katerina said, “When do you think the aliens will tell us?”
Martin shrugged. “The sooner the better. I appreciate what they’ve done to Mars, but I hate how sneaky they’ve been.”
Katerina smiled slyly. “You’re still mad about that trick they played on us with their artifact the day we landed.”
Her companion started the vehicle accelerating toward the northeast. “Yes, I am. The fact that metal slab was gone the next day, with nothing but a shallow one hundred-meter-square hole in the ground where it used to be, tells me it was a colossal red herring. And I hated the way that alien—or aliens, I’m still not sure which—snuck into the habitation module with us and acted more evasive than a politician at a news conference.
“Heck, I can’t even describe what the alien looked like! I heard it breathing and almost smelled it hovering over me, like it was a Kodiak bear stretched upright and ready to have us for supper. But all I saw was this vague shimmering shape—like something you’d see in a nightmare.”
Katerina nodded, grateful that Martin hadn’t turned the music player back on. “At least we had similar impressions about it.”
Her driver scowled. “It still irks me that all the alien did was make a deal that the two of us could stay on Mars if no other humans came here. Our ‘landlords’ spent ten years moving Mars closer to the Sun, giving it a breathable atmosphere, and increasing its gravity to nearly one g. So why couldn’t our visitor spare us a few more minutes to answer your questions about where they come from and what we have to do to ‘buy’ the planet from them?
“Instead all we got from ‘ALF’ before it disappeared was that oh-so-mysterious ‘All will be clear.’”
Katerina gasped as Martin angrily gunned the rover over rocks undisturbed for millennia, crushing them into a spray of gravel behind them. When he started running over the delicate lichen-like plants dotting the plain and turning them into shredded roadkill she shouted, “Martin, slow down! If you keep driving like this we’ll never find out about the aliens! You’ll just get us killed and show them how stupid we humans are!”
The rover slowed. “Sorry. I’m from Missouri. It’s called the ‘Show Me’ state because we natives aren’t impressed by fancy words and tricks. We want people—even extraterrestrial ones—to be honest and straightforward with us.”
Katerina replied softly, “I’m from Russia. There’s some truth to the stereotype that we’re a patient people, able to quietly endure many things—including the machinations of the powerful.”
The Sun peeked from behind a cloud and cast an aureate glow over them. It reflected off the deeper gold of the cross suspended from her neck. Katerina said, “Keep praying that perhaps today we’ll learn the answers to our questions. And if it doesn’t happen today—then tomorrow, pray for it again.”
Martin murmured, “I wish I had your faith.”
Katerina sighed. “I wish my faith were as strong as you think it is.”
“Look, Katerina! Surf’s up!”
The rover sat atop a low saffron sand dune. Katerina shaded her eyes, enthralled at their panoramic view of the Boreal Ocean. Martin’s grin made her even happier.
They’d said little during the last kilometers of their journey. It was rare for the darker side of their situation to surface like that. Though they had each other, they were still strangers in a strange land, far from home or help—their lives at the mercy of powerful aliens whose intentions were still unknown.
But those worries dissipated when they reached their destination. The shallow ocean before them paled compared to the roiling, majestic Pacific or Atlantic. But, until a decade ago when the aliens began their massive renovation of Mars, its waters had been imprisoned for billions of years in the planet’s north polar ice cap.
Now covering the vast lowlands of the north polar region, the Boreal Ocean rippled gently under the influence of a Sun only seven million kilometers farther than Earth’s average distance from it. The fourth planet’s two midget moons would never produce the powerful tides that the Moon created on Earth. But the presence of any liquid water and waves on Mars was miraculous.
Martin parked the rover near the shoreline. Carrying small packs of collection containers, they walked close to murmuring waves tinged red by rusty sediment from the ocean floor. After obtaining soil samples, they ventured to the ocean’s edge and collected milliliters of its water into capped plastic vials for later analysis.
Their task done, they returned to the rover and freshened up. Martin removed a large Mylar blanket from the back of the rover and laid it flat on the ground. He extracted two foil-wrapped trays from their thermal-controlled container and grinned, “Ready for lunch? I know you love reconstituted chicken and noodles, so I packed some especially for you.”
Katerina removed a bottle of water from the rover and sat on the blanket. “Martin, I told you this is the first week of the Great Lent. That’s why I fasted and only drank water for two days beginning on Monday. Besides, this is Friday and I wouldn’t eat meat today anyway.”
Martin grimaced. “Sorry, I forgot. Wait, does this mean you’re following Earth’s calendar again and today really is your birthday?”
Her fiancé’s smile looked forced. Katerina said, “I didn’t mean to offend you. I know you were trying to do something nice for me.”
Martin shrugged. “That’s okay. We’ll work out these culture clashes eventually.”
He put her tray back into the rover. After pausing pensively, he replaced his tray too and sat down beside Katerina. “If you aren’t a Martian anymore, maybe I should be one instead. After all, even if it doesn’t last a million years, we’re having a picnic on Mars. I can change my name to ‘Martin the Martian’—isn’t that lovely, hmm?”
He laughed. “Hey, I just realized my big brother and sister-in-law did me a favor by naming their firstborn ‘Timothy.’ Remember when we visited my hometown last September? After we gave that talk to his kindergarten class Tim said that ‘Uncle Martin’ was his favorite spaceman.”
Katerina sipped her water. “What you said is probably very clever, but I don’t seem to understand it.”
“Never mind. I guess I wasted too much of my youth reading science fiction and watching ancient movies and TV shows.”
Katerina shook her head. Though she was fluent in English and several other languages, her knowledge of Martin’s American “culture” had yawning gaps. She’d fallen victim before to her fiancé’s impish exploitation of that ignorance—especially during that visit they’d made to see his family late last summer. Sitting together on the couch in his parents’ living room, he’d turned on the television and shown her what he said were old black-and-white “home movies” about his mid-twentieth-century ancestors.
She was shocked at how her future husband’s relatives seemed more ignorant and uncouth than any Americans she’d ever met. Unlike the elderly woman on the television, her own sweet grandmother in Russia would never have made illegal vodka. And she didn’t understand how, if his family was so wealthy, Martin himself had grown up in this comfortable but modest farmhouse.
The expression on her face after her future father-in-law walked in and scolded his son for “pulling her leg” made Martin laugh uncontrollably. His father informed her that, while the family on the television was indeed supposed to have originally come from this part of the Ozarks, the Slaytons weren’t related to the Clampetts.
But after Martin shared his genuine family photos and movies with her, she’d forgiven him. Well, not at first—especially when he showed her the ones with him playing with the childhood friend and companion who, he said, she’d replaced as the one he loved most in the world. It was when Martin took her to a far corner of the family farm that she realized he really wasn’t joking this time. As they visited the small stone that marked where his erstwhile greatest friend lay buried for twenty years, she felt the heartfelt joy and tears in his memories.
And when they’d driven by the replica of the Hubble Space Telescope in Marshfield, Missouri’s town square—a monument to the great astronomer Edwin Hubble from the small town where he was born—she understood the man she loved even more. Before he explained how seeing that model so often as a boy had inspired and led him to the planet they now shared, she saw the dream in his face. It was the same look she’d seen in the mirror as a child after reading about her own country’s achievements in space.
Martin got up and grabbed the microphone attached to the transceiver inside the rover. “Breaker, breaker, Mission Control. We’re having fun at the beach and collected some souvenirs for you. We’ll be moving in the monster lane to our next stop after we cut the coax. By the way, is Dr. Stone on duty? I’d like to talk to him about some radishes. Over.”
The signal he’d transmitted to the transponder at the habitation module was relayed to an orbiter overhead and from there sent back to Houston. As they waited the several minutes it would take for his message to reach Earth and receive an answer, Martin laughed, “Don’t look at me like that. I don’t criticize you when you talk to your bosses at the Russian Space Agency.”
“That’s because we act more serious. And don’t pester Dr. Stone about the radishes. It’s his responsibility to keep us healthy, not please your tastebuds.”
“Well, as head of space medicine at NASA he’s also responsible for our mental health. He’ll come around eventually.”
“I don’t know. I respect him as a physician, but he’s always seemed rather cold.”
“Nah, he’s a Midwesterner like me, and I recognize his type. Hard and professional on the outside—soft and sentimental on the inside.”
As Katerina folded the blanket a voice squawked from the rover’s transceiver, “That’s a big ten-four. Dr. Stone will be here soon. I’ll tell him you want to ragchew about the radishes again. I’m on the side for you.”
Martin handled the microphone. “Copied, Harv. I’m pulling the plug at this end.”
He chuckled, “Harvey’s a good guy. We may be romantic rivals over you, but he and I speak the same language.
Katerina sighed. “I wish I spoke it too.”
As they drove parallel to the beach, Martin reached for the music player. Katerina quickly said, “Did you listen to the newsfeed from Mission Control before we left this morning?”
She smiled in relief as his fingers returned to the control bar. Martin said, “Yes. Nothing much new. More suicide bombers in Iran. Your country and China are rattling sabers along their border. Drug resistance to AIDS is up again. The famine in Africa is getting worse.”
He shrugged. “The usual stuff.”
The noonday Sun faded behind a cloud. Now Katerina regretted her ploy to keep the player off.
Martin continued, “I also heard the Chinese won’t postpone their own mission here any longer. Unless our governments convince them otherwise, they’re planning to send their people here at the next launch window.”
“But they mustn’t do that! The alien told us specifically that no one else should come here!”
“The alien told us that, and we relayed what it said back home. But Beijing thinks NASA and the RSA made up our message so they could keep Mars to themselves.”
Martin frowned. “Of course, it’s totally unreasonable for the Chinese to believe that. Everybody knows the American and Russian governments would never ever tell a fib.”
Katerina leaned away from him. She rarely saw this cynical side of her fiancé without it being softened by childish humor. She whispered, “Let’s pray the Chinese have more faith in us before something terrible happens.”
“Don’t count on it. And it’s not just the aliens who could do something terrible. Your country and China have been getting on each other’s nerves for years. If my government is too ham-handed, we could get back on China’s hate list too. I doubt anybody’s stupid enough to start World War III. But as tense as things are back home, it might take just a little spark to start something that could kill lots of people.”
Martin glanced at the golden cross around her neck. “You may have faith that things will work out okay, but most people and governments don’t.”
“Are you one of those people, Martin?”
“Once upon a time, when I was an altar boy, I wasn’t. Now—I don’t know. But I’d rather rely on what I can do rather than trust anybody else to do the right thing. Or hope that anyone more powerful than me will save the day.”
He grunted. “Another thing about these aliens bothers me. It’s wonderful that they’ve made Mars habitable for us and given the human race a chance for a fresh start. But why haven’t they offered to sell us high-tech items humanity could use right away? Like a cure for cancer, a cheap nonpolluting source of unlimited energy, or a warp engine?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps they think we’d misuse them.”
“Maybe. If we did get a hand-sized fusion reactor, some idiot or government would probably use it to terrorize and murder innocent people.”
Katerina brow furrowed. “Our own science and technology already help us lead healthier, more comfortable lives. Yet all those ideas and innovations, from fire to nuclear energy, can be perverted to cause pain and suffering. That’s not because science is bad, but because we humans can be selfish, misguided, or heartless in the way we use it. We could destroy ourselves with the technology we already have, much less what the aliens might give us.
“When enough of us learn to love God and each other, perhaps we’ll be ready to use any scientific miracles the aliens give us to make our world a better place. But for now, maybe its better if we’re not tempted to misuse their technology.”
Martin sneered, “More likely God would be used to justify killing people with that alien technology. The religion I was raised in once used Grand Inquisitors and burned heretics. There are still plenty of people willing to kill for Him or whatever secular cause they’ve substituted for religion.”
“Don’t blame God for that. Just as technology can be used well or misused, so can religion. When I was a little girl, my grandmother told me that my teacher at the state school was wrong when he said we humans are merely ‘hyperactive dirt with illusions of importance.’ She said we should let science tell us what Nature is and how to use it—but let religion and philosophy show us what Creation means and our place in it.”
Martin glanced darkly at her cross. “And you think you have all the right answers?”
Katerina’s eyes moistened at the schism growing between them. “Of course not. I think and hope my religious beliefs are true, but I can’t prove that to you or even myself. Perhaps—God forbid—my teacher was right and what I believe is just a collection of myths, superstition, and wishful thinking. But if my beliefs have made me a kinder, more loving person than I otherwise would have been, is merely being foolish or wrong such a terrible thing? If my belief in a caring, compassionate God inspires me to love you and help our fellow humans find our destiny in the stars, is my faith really in vain?”
The expression on her crewmate’s face held no humor. “Sorry, Katerina. This time the choir isn’t listening.”
The rover suddenly halted atop a gently sloping sand dune. Martin’s eyes focused past her into the distance. He said, “What’s that?”
Katerina turned her head away from the undulating ocean, following his gaze. “What are you looking at?”
“I thought I saw a flash of light—or something reflecting sunlight.”
Martin pulled a pair of high-powered image-stabilizing binoculars from the small box between their seats. He stood up, peered through the binoculars—and groaned.
“Oh, no!”
Katerina cried, “What is it?”
“Those jerks!”
“Who?”
“The aliens! They must be rolling on the ground laughing at us!”
Katerina snatched the binoculars from him and focused them on the distant speck of light.
Suddenly she smiled and said, “It’s a new artifact!”
“Yup.”
“That’s wonderful! Maybe the aliens are waiting for us there!”
“Maybe. But what’s that artifact shaped like?”
She raised the binoculars again. “It’s a giant pyramid.”
“Right. A pyramid.”
Katerina frowned. “What’s wrong with that? A pyramid is a structurally sound shape. I’ve visited the largest ones in Egypt. They’ve lasted for thousands of years.”
“You’re missing the point. After we tell Mission Control about it, they’ll have to tell the public. I can just see the high-fives those ‘aliens-gave-their-technology-to-primitive-humans’ wackos are going to give each other!”
“What are you talking about?”
Martin grunted. “My poor innocent Katerina, you have so much to learn about the silly pseudoscientific side of American culture!”
He slumped into his seat. “Could’ve been worse. They could’ve made it look like a giant human face.”
Martin took the microphone. “Houston, we’ve got a problem. And you’re not going to believe what it is.”
After several unsuccessful attempts to contact Mission Control, Martin disgustedly dropped the microphone and said, “I should’ve known. It’s just like it was with that first artifact. Déjà vu all over again.
“The aliens are probably intentionally blocking our transmissions to Earth and giving us the same choice we had then. We can return to the module and try contacting our bosses from there about what to do—or plunge ahead into whatever game E.T. is playing this time.”
Katerina nodded. “I think we should do what we did before—go there now and find out what they want. Doing that worked out well with their first artifact.”
“True—but just because you win one game of Russian roulette doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to play another.”
Martin snorted. “That artifact is go big the orbiters should’ve spotted it long ago. Either the aliens somehow shielded it from the orbiters’ cameras—or they built it this morning after we started on our trip. Either way, they’re rubbing our noses in how scientifically advanced they are over us. ”
He shrugged fatalistically. “If they’re that eager to attract our attention, let’s find out why.”
As they drove toward the alien pyramid, Katerina was impressed by how different it was from the largest one she’d seen at Giza. The Great Pyramid’s two million stone blocks were weathered and ancient, but the steel-gray structure before them looked like it had lanced up from the Martian soil that morning. While the one in Egypt had lost the smooth limestone casing stones framing its high irregular outer walls long ago, this monstrous pyramid’s four triangular walls were flat and shiny. The metal that formed its sides looked solid, with no seams or plates riveted together.
Driving alongside this towering alien artifact, their rover resembled the small green plastic car with miniature passengers she’d watched five-year-old Tim Slayton play with before Martin accidentally stepped on it. Young Tim’s tears disappeared when his uncle replaced that crushed plaything with a model of the Ares VII rocket, crewed by a pair of Lilliputian figures resembling Martin and her, that would soon send the two of them to Mars. Katerina wondered if the technological giants who’d erected this gargantuan artifact would bother to remedy any damage they caused to the tiny creatures they encountered.
Martin cruised slowly around the square base of the pyramid. “Looks about four hundred meters on each side.”
Katerina nodded. “The tour guide on my trip to Egypt said the Great Pyramid is about one hundred thirty meters tall. This one looks about twice that height.”
Martin rounded a corner of the artifact. “Reminds me of a Mayan pyramid without the terracing. See how its top looks flat, like the pyramid on a one dollar bill?”
He shivered. “Thank goodness there’s no freaky giant eye staring down at us from up there.”
Katerina shouted, “There’s the entrance!”
The rover stopped near a ground-level rectangular opening. It was the size of a conventional doorway and centered in one wall of the pyramid. Martin said, “I know that opening wasn’t there the last time we drove around this side. Unless it’s some kind of automatic door, the aliens must know we’re here.”
Above the opening, large purple letters from an alien alphabet writhed like snakes.
“I wonder what that says, Martin.”
“‘Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here.’”
Martin peered into the opening. “Looks dark in there. Unless the aliens put a light switch inside the doorway, we’d better bring flashlights.”
They got out and searched through their equipment and supplies. Katerina smiled, “I bet you wish we’d brought the high-voltage probe and multimeter to make sure this artifact isn’t electrified, like you thought about the first one we found.”
“That’s okay. You convinced me last time that if the aliens wanted to exterminate us, they could do it a lot easier than by making an enormous bug zapper or a comfy motel for us roaches to check into.”
Martin frowned at the pyramid. “At least I hope that’s not what they have in mind.”
Katerina said, “We’d better bring the medical bag, in case either of us gets hurt. I’ll put some sample containers in it too, since we might find something to collect. You take the video camera and we each get a flashlight.”
Martin turned his flashlight on and off. “Too bad this isn’t a lightsaber. And I’d rather be holding a phaser than a video camera.”
Katerina slung the strap of the large soft-sided crimson medical supply bag over her shoulder. “I don’t think toys like that would work against these particular aliens. They’re too powerful.”
“I know. Still, I’d feel less doomed if I had a plasma rifle or shotgun.”
“Don’t worry, Martin. You were angry the aliens haven’t answered our questions about them yet. Before the day’s over, perhaps they will.”
Martin snorted. “Let’s hope we like what we hear.”
He looked up at the towering structure and growled, “A pyramid on Mars. With our luck, we’ll find Sutekh waiting for us inside.”
“Who?”
Martin smiled mischievously. “That’s right.”
“What?”
Her fiancé adjusted his baseball cap. “No, What’s on second base. Who’s on first.”
“Why are you talking in riddles at a time like this?”
“Ever hear the expression, ‘Whistling as you walk by the graveyard’?”
Katerina frowned. “I think I understand. And that expression might be too appropriate. Ancient Egyptian pyramids were used as tombs.”
“And the Mayan ones were used as temples. Just call me ‘Missouri Slayton.’”
He walked toward the dark entrance. “Come on, Lara. We’ve got a tomb to raid.”
Katerina’s eyebrows arched as she followed him. She was pleasantly surprised that Martin had read Doctor Zhivago—and glad he’d finally made an allusion she understood.
There was no light switch inside the doorway. The flaring white beams from their flashlights’ LEDs illuminated barely a few meters of the metal floor ahead of them.
Martin waved his flashlight at the low ceiling and featureless walls surrounding them in the rectangular chamber. “Looks like it’s all the same dark-gray metal we saw on the outside.”
He stepped forward cautiously until a blank wall reflected light back at him. “This place is larger than a college classroom. But it looks empty, and I can’t find any other exit.”
Katerina stood close to the open entrance, where shadowed sunlight from outside still assisted her own flashlight’s survey of the room. She said, “These near walls look completely bare too. And there doesn’t seem to be anyone else here besides us.”
Martin’s flashlight beam swept rapidly around the room. He muttered, “Unless there’s something lurking in a dark corner or hanging from the ceiling ready to pounce on us—”
He spun around. The creature he’d sensed creeping up behind him blinked as his flashlight’s magnesium-white glare dazzled its hazel eyes—
Katerina winced and scrunched her eyelids down. “Martin, be careful!”
“Sorry! Are you all right?”
“I will be, when I can see again!”
Katerina blinked several more times, then said, “Are you sure there’s no exit along this far wall?”
“No, it’s a dead end.”
“That doesn’t make sense. Why would the aliens build only a single empty room in this huge pyramid?”
“I don’t know, maybe they—”
He whispered, “Did this room just get darker?”
“I can’t tell. My eyes haven’t recovered from your searchlight yet.”
Martin stared back at the entrance to the pyramid. He groaned, “Oh, no.”
“What’s wrong?”
The flashlight’s beam darted across the floor as he quickly retraced his steps back toward the outer wall of the pyramid. He stopped abruptly as white light swirled against blank unyielding metal.
With her vision nearly back to normal, Katerina peered through the Stygian darkness toward the sounds of his footsteps. Suddenly she realized what was wrong.
“Martin, what happened to the entrance?”
The clacking of his boots coming slowly toward her across the metal floor sounded like the patter of a giant cockroach. She heard him mumble “. . . but they don’t check out.”
Then she saw his face, ghastly pale in the darkness. “The entrance?” he said. “There is no entrance—or exit. No sign it was ever there. That metal wall looks like it’s been pinched shut as if it were wet clay.”
They stared at each other for several seconds before Katerina said, “There must be a way out of here somewhere.”
Martin grumbled, “If this were a World War II-era movie, all we’d have to do is find a secret sliding panel or hidden trapdoor. But I can’t picture the aliens taking notes while they watched old Republic serials on TV. And I don’t feel any draft to indicate there’s a ventilation system in here. The oxygen we’re using up with each breath may not be replaced.”
Katerina’s lips started to form a prayer for deliverance—then stopped. It wasn’t time for that yet—not until she and Martin had done everything they could.
She said, “Well, before we suffocate, let’s spend our last moments trying to find a way out. I’ll look along that wall, and you search the one over there. They may kill us, but at least we’ll show these aliens that humans don’t give up!”
Katerina played her flashlight slowly and methodically along the wall. The gleaming gray metal showed no sign of dust or any seam to indicate a disguised door. It didn’t even show any smears from her fingerprints as she periodically pressed parts of it the way Martin advised her to do. But there was no sign of any small panel she could push to make a hidden door spring open.
Her breaths were getting harder and faster. She shouted, “Any luck, Martin?”
From the far side of the blackened room a faint “No” echoed back at her.
In desperation she stamped her foot against the floor, seeing if any part of it would give way. But all that did was make her sole ache.
After muttering something in Russian that her grandmother would’ve chided her for saying, Katerina heard deep sonorous breathing behind her. She turned around angrily. “Martin, there’s nothing over here, look somewhere—”
The scintillating glowing lights a meter away from her twisted and writhed in a kaleidoscope of unearthly forms, as vague as the spots she’d seen when Martin’s flashlight temporarily blinded her. In the span of several heartbeats they shifted from a single unrecognizable intelligent shape to what seemed a pair of entities, then into three beings that in some mystical way beyond human understanding were still only one. Another instant and the number of supernatural creatures before her became legion, yet still somehow a unity as its numbers seemed to ebb and flow between one and infinity.
From somewhere within that hypnotic swirl a voice at once timeless and without gender formed in her mind like the tiny whisper of conscience.
Explain why you asked your deity to punish us.
She couldn’t tell whether she spoke or thought her reply. “You’ve put Martin and me in danger.”
No one has been injured. No harm has been done.
“If you don’t mean to hurt us, why did you trap us in here?”
This is not a trap. It is a path.
“What do you mean? There’s no way out!”
There is.
She shone her flashlight at the solid wall beside her. “Then tell me how I get through—”
Katerina gasped and nearly let the flashlight slip from her hand. There was now a rectangular opening in the previously solid wall large enough for her to enter comfortably. It opened into a corridor that slanted gently upward, its end unseen past the paltry range of her flashlight.
For an instant she forgot the alien presence close to her. “Martin, come here! We have a way out!”
He cannot help you.
A twist of panic and fear knotted her stomach. Katerina ran toward the other side of the room—then stopped. She raced back and forth, swinging her flashlight wildly.
A solid metal wall now cleaved the chamber in two from top to bottom—and she was the only human being on this side of it.
You have a path. He has a path.
Then she was alone except for the groans of her own breathing.
Katerina walked slowly through the pitch-black corridor, carefully tracking how far she’d traveled from the entrance chamber by making each stride about a meter long. Though the floor kept its same gradual upward slope, the corridor angled sharply to the right or left every several meters like a labyrinth. Its bare metal walls gave no more than a meter’s clearance above or on either side as her flashlight struggled to shine a path before her.
After about sixty meters of twisting turns, Katerina rounded another corner and stopped. Points of light like a swarm of ghostly fireflies flickered five meters ahead of her. As she cautiously crept forward, the lights resolved into tiny tongues of fire that reminded her of votive candles burning in a darkened cathedral.
Another step and she realized the flames did come from a compact set of stubby candles. They were stuck into the top of a brown cylindrical cake, as tall as a chef’s hat, that was sitting atop a round waist-high stone pillar. Creamy white icing capped the cake and drizzled down its sides. Edging closer, she squinted through the miniature flames and saw pink frosting streaked across its top to form Cyrillic letters. She gasped at the words they formed.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY KATERINA.
But it wasn’t just a birthday cake. Its shape and dark rich scent said it was a kulich. She could almost taste the candied fruit, rum, saffron, and almonds baked within this sugary sweet bread. Her mouth watered as she remembered those happy Easters of her childhood when her grandmother prepared the holiday feast. Her stomach, flat and empty from fasting, rumbled greedily and pined for this delicacy.
Katerina transferred the flashlight to her left hand and eased closer to the kulich. The first three fingers of her right hand reached forward to scoop out a chunk of its floury flesh and bring it to her lips—
She jerked her hand back, wiping the crumbs and icing from her fingernails onto the side of the medical supply bag she carried. Her stomach protested her decision, but she ignored its laments.
Explain why you do not eat this food. It will not harm you.
Katerina turned around, unsurprised by the scintillating entity’s reappearance. “It’s a tradition in my religion to fast at this time.”
There is no need to fast if you are hungry and food is available. It is not intelligent to blindly obey rules that inflict unnecessary pain.
Reflexively she clutched the cross hanging from the gold chain around her neck. “My obedience isn’t blind. Fasting helps me practice self-control. We humans can be tempted to indulge desires that could cause unnecessary suffering later for ourselves and others. Eating this food now wouldn’t directly injure me. But by not eating it I make it easier to resist temptation when it really could cause harm.”
That explains why you do not mate with your companion though you strongly desire him.
Katerina wondered if the aliens understood what a blush meant. “Yes, I want us to share our love in that way. But doing that now could put the new life we might create in danger. And if our unborn child or me died from a medical problem beyond our ability to deal with on this world, I know Martin would feel terrible pain too. As difficult as it’s been to abstain, it might be far worse if we didn’t.”
Delayed gratification. An interesting concept.
Katerina frowned. “I didn’t say those words, I only thought them!”
She gestured at the cake. “That tells me you must heard Martin’s joke this morning. You must be able to eavesdrop on us and read our minds!”
We can hear your words at any time. We can decipher the electrical impulses generated by your brain.
“If you can tell what we’re thinking, why are you even asking me these questions? Why are you playing these games with us?”
Your thoughts do not necessarily tell us what you are. They only tell us what you think you are. We must know what you are.
“Why?”
We have a gift for you. It is easy to manipulate matter. We will give you control over matter far beyond your current power.
“What do you mean?”
With this power there need be no harm if you indulge your desires. You can create food and eat without fear of sickness. You can mate without injury to offspring. You will no longer need self-control.
Katerina didn’t answer for a long time. “No. That sounds like too much power for any human being to have. It could be corrupted so easily, even with the best intentions.”
You are hungry. If you eat the food we offer, you will receive this power and may pass.
“What do you mean, ‘pass’? Is this some kind of test?”
There was no answer. The lights and voice were gone.
Katerina turned around and gazed at the delicious festive cake beckoning to her. She shook herself free of its hypnotic flickering lights and tried walking past it—
Suddenly the flames from the candles flared up in a curtain of fire that blocked her path. She stumbled backward from heat as searing as a dragon’s breath.
The prickling on her face gradually subsided. There was no mirror handy to show whether her eyebrows were singed. The wall of flames that held her back burned firm and steady. She suspected that a shout to the aliens that she’d eat their cake would make the fire disappear.
But she wasn’t going to find out. More than thinking it, she felt that accepting their gift of power was wrong. Even if the fire was consuming a limited supply of oxygen here in the pyramid, even if it meant she was trapped here forever, bowing to the aliens’ offer might be even worse.
Still—despite all the danger they’d seemed to place Martin and her in, the aliens had never actually hurt them. Or at least she hoped so, praying fervently for a moment that somewhere else in the pyramid her beloved was still safe. But if there was any chance of seeing him again, she had to pass through those flames without yielding to the aliens.
Then she remembered. We can decipher the electrical impulses generated by your brain. If they could do that and read her mind, maybe they could also stimulate her brain to make her see and feel things that weren’t there. They could be playing the role of Descartes’ evil genie—deceiving her senses for their own purposes.
But if she couldn’t trust her own senses, how could she tell if the flames were real or not?
Katerina fingered the cross hanging from her neck, meditating on that question. Then, as if by divine inspiration, an idea came to her. She set the medical bag on the floor and opened it. Extracting several wooden tongue depressors from their paper wrappings, she tied them tightly together end-to-end using a roll of cloth tape to form a wandlike extension. Then she unfastened the braided gold chain around her neck and pulled it through the eyelet that secured it to her heavy golden cross. Finally she used more tape to bind the shorter end of her cross to the tip of one of the tongue depressors.
Her impromptu testing device now resembled a child’s short toy sword. Katerina held it at the end opposite where her cross formed the sword’s point, hefting it carefully to make sure all the taped connections were secure. Extending her right arm, she positioned the device as far in front of her as possible and walked slowly toward the sheet of fire blocking her way. She winced as the fire tried to bake the flesh off her fingers while she held the far end of her cross in the flames. A nervous laugh escaped her lips as she imagined that Martin was here, telling her he’d get a marshmallow for the end of her stick.
After a minute Katerina retreated to the cooler end of the corridor and carefully examined the cross with her flashlight. The relic seemed unchanged—neither glowing from the heat it’d been exposed to nor melted. She knelt down and placed the flashlight on the floor so that its beam shone in front of her. Then she lowered the cross enough to keep it illuminated and cautiously brought her free hand closer and closer to its golden surface. Finally she grasped the cross itself with her fingertips.
“It must be a trick,” she whispered. “Gold is too good a conductor of heat for the cross not to have become hot no matter what temperature those flames are, even if they weren’t hot enough to make the tongue depressor burn.”
She disassembled her device, placed the tongue depressors back in the medical bag, then fastened her gold chain and cross around her neck. “If the cross had been hot, I would have to assume the flames are real. The fact it was cool implies the fire is really an illusion. Unless the aliens made me only think the cross wasn’t hot or that I even put it in the flames—”
Katerina sighed. Relying on her reason and senses alone might not be enough to outsmart the evil genie. Then, perhaps remembering how her device had resembled a sword, she thought of Joan of Arc. The teenage heroine said one of the voices that spoke to her was Katerina’s own namesake, St. Catherine of Alexandria. Whether madness or miracle, the young French peasant girl’s beliefs had led to the triumph of her cause, a flaming death as a heretic—and apotheosis as a saint.
Six centuries later, another young woman wondered if her faith could be as strong.
Katerina knelt another moment, her lips moving reverently. Then, standing erect with the strap of her medical bag slung over her shoulder and flashlight in hand—she ran through the flames.
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