Firstborn(Time Odyssey 3) - By Arthur C. Clarke Page 0,45

came here. This wallpaper is an image of the most complete core weve yet been able to extract.

Myra nodded. An ice core from Mars.

Right. We drilled right down from here, from the top of the ice dome, and we got all the way down to two and a half klicks deepHanse Critchfield is going to enjoy showing off his rig. Of course it would have been three klicks if not for the sunstorm burning the top ice layers away. He shook his head. Damn shame.

Myra ran her finger along the record. And you can interpret this, the way they read ice cores from Earth?

Surely. The cap is built up layer by layer, year on year. And each year it captures a snapshot of the conditions at the timeclimate, dust, cosmic, whatever. Just as on Earth. Of course the detail is different here. In Greenland, say, you get an annual snowfall tens of centimeters thick. Here the residual water-ice layer is less than a seventh of a millimeter, annually.

Look here. He stood by the wall, where the long winding strip came to an end. This is the top of

the strip; the most recent layers are at the top, the last deposited, yes? This upper bit of the record was collected by the Aurora crew before the sunstorm. A few centimeters corresponds to decades in time. These fine brown stripes He marked them with his thumbnail. They correspond to global dust storms. And that band corresponds to the washout Mariner 9 found when it arrived in orbit in 1971, the whole planet swathed in dust...

On Mars, events occurring on different timescales were marked by different levels in the ice core. Ten centimeters down was to be found the trace of radiation washed over the planet by the Crab supernova a thousand years earlier. Every meter or so was a significant layer of micrometeorites, droplets of once-molten rock; every ten or a hundred thousand years Mars was hit by an object massive enough to spread debris even to the poles. And the big meter-scale striping corresponded to the most dramatic event in Marss current astronomical cycling, a nodding of its polar tilt that occurred every hundred thousand years.

Yuri said, You can even find traces of Earth in this Martian icemeteorites blasted off the home world, just as Mars meteorites find their way to the Earth. He grinned. Im still looking for traces of the dinosaur killer.

Myra studied him. You love your work, dont you? She sounded envious, Bisesa thought. She always had been drawn to people with missions, like Eugene Mangles.

I wouldnt be stuck in this ice coffin otherwise. But were not concentrating any more. After what we found under the ice, nobody cares about all this stuff. The ice cap, the cores. Its all just in the way.

Bisesa thought that over. Im sorry.

He laughed shortly. Its not your fault.

Myra asked, So what did you find?

Youre about to find out. If youre done, Im supposed to take you in to a council of war. He stood up.
PART 2 JOURNEYS 22: APPROACH
The Liberator sailed toward the Q-bomb, a spear of ice and fire. On the flight deck, Edna Fingal and John Metternes were in their pressure suits, helmets on, visors open.

Though it was still invisible to the naked eye, they were already seeing the Q-bomb through its tug of gravity, its knot of magnetic energy, and the mist of exotic particles it emitted as it cruised through the solar system.

Its just as Professor Carel predicted, John reported, scrolling through softscreen summaries. Exactly like the spectrum you get from the evaporation of a mini black hole. Clearly a cosmological artifact

There, Edna whispered. She pointed at the window.

The Q-bomb was a blister of distorted starlight, a droplet of water rolling down the face of the heavens. Edna felt chilled to the bone actually to see this thing.

Thats an Eye, John reported. A perfectly reflective sphere, a ball bearing a hundred meters across. All the classic signs: the distorted geometry, the anomalous Doppler shifts from the surface. The radiation spectrum isnt quite what was recorded of the Eyes found in the Trojans during the sunstorm, however.

So this thing isnt just an observer. I guess we knew that already.

Five kilometers out and closing, Libby said softly.

Edna glanced at John. She knew he had showered only an hour ago, but even so sweat stood out on his brow and pooled at his neck. Ready?

As Ill ever be, cobber.

Well follow the agreed strategy. Libby, you got that? Four passes. And