Rainbow Mars Read Online Free Page A

traces that might have been bacteria? Nothing else?”
    â€œNo, nothing,” Miya admitted. Her cheeks flamed. Her grip on Svetz’s hand felt like desperation. “But we haven’t searched the thousandth part of Mars!”
    Svetz said, “We’ve found some amazing surprises in the past. Miya? Did this all disappear just as we were going into the Industrial Age?”
    â€œThat’s right.”
    Svetz threw up his hands. “If only we had a time machine!”

5
    Single-minded as a spider, Lowell built his own observatory to map them and spun a whole theory from the web of lines that he created.
    â€”William K. Hartmann, Mars Underground, 1997
    Â 
    It should have been just that simple.
    â€œI want to see martian civilization at its height,” Willy Gorky told them. “No, futz, we could get pictures like that from a computer! Ra Chen, show me video of Martians holding a funeral, then I’ll send a team there to dig up the tomb in present time. If you’re right, Miya. If there’s a civilization. But if you could find anything alive … anything alien would get the SecGen off our backs for a long time. Svetz, a martian tool would do, or an animal. We’ve brought back soil samples from every large body in the solar system.”
    To the left of the armory door was a cluster of chairs and little tables, and a drink and dole yeast dispenser. Svetz sipped coffee and waited … but Ra Chen had developed the habit of letting Svetz deliver bad news.
    So be it. Svetz told Willy Gorky, “We can’t move an extension cage to Mars. The reach isn’t there. There’s no way to match velocities either.”
    Willy said, “We can use Rovers and Orbiters. Where can you put an extension cage? Anywhere on Earth?”
    Ra Chen said, “Northern Hemisphere and some of the Southern. Beyond that, the Earth’s mass—”
    â€œOrbit?”
    â€œHaven’t tried. We build the cages like spacecraft, though. It’s all Space Bureau hardware. They’ll stand up to vacuum.”
    â€œWhale fitted into the big X-cage, didn’t he? We can fit a module in there—”
    â€œBut not a launcher.”
    â€œ Yes, Miya. Ra Chen, didn’t I see antigravity beamers on the large X-cage?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œRange?”
    â€œHow heavy is your probe module?”
    â€œPilgrims mass one hundred fifty tonnes, rocket and all. Twenty-two meters long, twelve meters diameter. I can assemble them in three months if you want them.”
    â€œThat’s tiny compared to Whale.”
    Gorky nodded. “I’ll work out how many modules we want. We’ll push the small X-cage back to before the Lowell observations—”
    â€œWilly, will you settle for –550 AE? Seventeen hundred years ago, around five hundred years before Lowell.”
    â€œMiddle Ages. Why?”
    â€œIt’s when Svetz picked up Snake. Before the American continents got into the history books. Nobody local will bother us if we operate over the open Pacific. The time machine wouldn’t have to be reset. That saves us a week, and funding too, Willy. You build your Pilgrims right, they’ll just sit on Mars with their cameras running, right through the Lowell and Mariner periods.”
    â€œAll right. The large X-cage homes on the small one? Good. Once you’re in orbit you’re halfway to anywhere.”
    Organization was a skill Svetz had never tried to learn. It wasn’t enough that things happen. They must happen in the proper order. Rocket motors must appear before a hull could be closed. Fuel couldn’t just sit in a tank; compressors must be ready to produce it at the right time. Why was timing so difficult for the Institute for Temporal Research?
    Svetz sat in on endless discussions—
    â€œNow, here’s the tricky part,” Ra Chen told Willy Gorky. “We launch the first load, then pull the big cage