Firstborn(Time Odyssey 3) - By Arthur C. Clarke Page 0,48

maybe Texan. Maybe he had been watching too many old movies.

Inside the dome, the seven of them stood in bright fluorescent light under sagging fabric walls. The derrick, even inert, was an impressive piece of gear, a scaffolding tower set on a massive base of Mars glass. Hanse ran through the mass and power: thirty tonnes, five hundred kilowatts. The coiled drill string was four kilometers long, more than enough to reach the base of the ice cap. A grimy plant stood by to pump a fluid into the borehole, to keep it from collapsing as the ice flowed under its own sheer weight: the drilling teams used liquid carbon dioxide, condensed by this plant from the Martian air.

Hanse began to boast about the technical challenges the drillers had faced: the need for new lubricants, the way moving mechanical parts tended to stick together in the low pressure. Thermal control is the key. We have to take it slow; you dont want too much heat building up down there. For one thing, if the

water ice melts, you get water mixing with liquid carbon dioxidepow, the product is carbonic acid, and then you are in trouble. The Aurora crew brought along a toy rig you could load on a trailer, that could only dig down maybe a hundred meters. This baby is the first authentic drilling rig on Mars

Yuri cut hI'm off. Enough of the guided tour.

Myra walked to the drill platform. This borehole has no fluid in it. In fact youve sleeved it.

Yuri nodded. This was the first hole we dug, down to it. We knew there was something down there, actually, under the ice, from radar studies. When we reached it we came back out, and put in a request to Lowell for a mass budget to provide us with a sleeve sufficient to keep the borehole open permanently. Then we pumped out the drill fluid

Hanse said, And we sent down another bore in parallel. At first we dropped down cameras and other sensors. But then He bent and lifted a hatch. It exposed a hole in the ground maybe two meters across; a platform rested just below its lip, with a small control handle mounted on a stand.

It was obvious what this was. An elevator, Bisesa breathed.

Yuri nodded. Okay. Moment of truth. You and me, Bisesa. Alexei. Ellie. Myra. Hanse, you stand by up here. And you, Grendel. Yuri went and stood on the platform, and looked back, waiting. Bisesa, is that acceptable? I guess this is your show now.

Her breath caught. You want me to ride that thing? Two kilometers down into the ice to this Pit of yours?

Myra held her hand; despite the servos she could barely feel her daughters grasp. You dont have to do this, Mum. They havent even told you what theyve found down there.

Believe me, Alexei said fervently. Its best you see for yourself. Lets get it done, Bisesa said. She strode forward, trying not to betray her fear.

They stood together, facing inward. The round metal platform felt crowded with the five of them aboard, in their spacesuits.

The disk jolted into motion, whirring downward into the ice tunnel, supported by tracks embedded in the walls. Bisesa looked up. It was if she was descending into a deep, brightly lit well. She felt a profound dread of falling, of being trapped.

The suit murmured, I can detect rapid breathing, an elevated pulse. I can compensate for any increase in atmospheric pressure

Hush, she whispered. The descent was mercifully short. Yuri said, Brace now The elevator platform jolted to a halt.

There was a metal door, a hatch set in the ice behind Yuri. He turned and hauled it open. It led to a short tunnel, lit brightly by fluorescent tubes. Bisesa glimpsed a flash of silver at the end of the passage.

Yuri stood back. I think you should go first, Bisesa.

She felt her heart thump.

She took a breath and stepped forward. The tunnel floor was rough-cut, not flat, treacherous. She concentrated on walking, not looking ahead, ignoring the silvery glints in the corner of her vision.

She stepped out of the tunnel into a broader chamber, cut crudely into the ice. A quick glance up showed the narrow borehole that had been drilled to get to this point. Then she looked straight ahead, to see what the Spacers had found here, buried under the ice of the Martian north pole.

She saw her own reflection looking back at her. It was the archetypal Firstborn artifact. It was an