Champion of Mars by Guy Haley Read Free Book Online Page A

Maguire.”
    “And I was about to say what a great man you are, so I was!” said Maguire, undaunted. There was another click. He laughed drily. The sound of it reminded Holland of long nights in the Beer Steer back in Houston. “Whoops. I can’t get this mental switching system right, can I? Ah, well, can’t charm them all, eh?” he said, then with less jollity: “I swear he has no sense of humour.”
    They dusted each other off with soft brushes. The station airlock slid open. Inside, they vacuum-cleaned each other and took their helmets off. Maguire untwisted his gauntlets and helped Holland with his suit.
    “Thanks,” Holland said. “I’m struggling a little with this.”
    “Ah, you’ll be used to it in no time at all, I promise.”
    They stowed their suits. The inner lock opened onto an office, dimly lit, cramped with machines and racks of shelves, although it was not a small space. Bare rock and patches of foamcrete formed the far wall. A couple of lance-cut doors led through the stone, another off to the left went through a metal and carbon partition.
    The Scandinavian stood, tablet in hand, its display lighting his overalls. The light in there was blue, smoothing his skin, and it was impossible to tell how old Jensen was. But wasn’t that the way these days? thought Holland. Pretty much everyone who could afford them took anti-gerontics, especially up here; they were efficient at mopping up the effects of the free radicals one received just by being on Mars.
    “I am Dr Frode Jensen. I am station safety officer and the head of the engineering department.”
    “We all wear two or more hats around here,” said Maguire. “He’s the gatekeeper to the underworld, a real Cerberus. You want to watch him.”
    Jensen gave Maguire an unamused look. Holland thought Maguire might be right about his sense of humour. “Welcome to Deep Two, Dr Holland.”
    “I’ve been meaning to ask, where’s Deep One?” Holland said.
    Jensen and Maguire looked at each other. Maguire clasped his elbows. He grinned sheepishly. “Deep Two, because Deep One... Well, that was here originally, but caught fire. We got methane seepage, through faulting in the rock. Bad mix, that and oxygen. A wee bit volatile, shall we say. They don’t put that on the file.”
    Jensen regarded Maguire sternly. “This is why I am a pedant.” He thrust his tablet into Maguire’s hands.
    “A good job you are too, my friend,” said Maguire.
    “Now, if we may, I must take you through the safety protocols,” said Jensen. And he did, at great length. There were no more than Holland had feared, standard for a hazardous environment, but Jensen wished to impress them upon him. That and his rigorous system of equipment assignment, sample cataloguing and so forth.
    “Bless them, but Marsform save their bigger bucks for the terraforming operation,” said Maguire, by way of an excuse for Jensen insisting each hammer was correctly signed out. “We do important work here, but we’re a sideshow to the main event.”
    “If I may,” said Holland diplomatically – the Swede practically winced whenever Maguire opened his mouth, he’d rather not elicit the same reaction – “is there not an automated system for all this?”
    “Yes,” said Jensen. “All equipment has a dotchip with an individual gridsig, but we still require manual scanning of all boxcodes on removal. There are few AI here to keep tabs on us, hardly any near-I even,” said Jensen. “And although our computer systems have not yet failed, if they did, we would be forced to rely entirely on ourselves, and with limited supplies.”
    “Better to be prepared, as the scouts used to say,” misquoted Maguire. “All this has been designed with the input of human and AI head shrinkers, supposed to give us an edge.”
    “It makes sense. If we’re inured to doing everything ourselves, it won’t be a shock relying on ourselves,” said Holland, who was not above trying to ingratiate himself