There's No Place Like Mars: Chapter 2

Outside, the loading bay was dominated by an immense plasteel door. On the other side of that door was the monolithic airlock where the loading trolleys waited to equalize pressure between the harsh Martian native atmosphere, and the comfortably humid interior of the dome. Chisolm slipped on his shades against the muted glare of the sun and the red-gray Martian sky. Phobos, the larger of Mars's two moons loomed just above the horizon.

Beyond the airlock, on a huge synthcrete pad, was the land-side station for one of the two space elevators on Mars. If you had binoculors, you could trace the cable that shot straight upward out of the Martian atmosphere to where it terminated in a tiny blinking light.

Off in the distance, Olympus Mons, the tallest mountain in the solar system squatted like a colossal toad. In the caldera at its peak, Chisolm knew, was a research station. It was the largest off-Earth science facility in the solar system. It was operated by Spartan University, whose campus was right here in Eden. The ivory tower in the center of the city was the university's central campus. Chisolm didn't know what sort of research went on up there. Theirs were the only shipments that he did not have access to, since the other space elevator on the planet went directly to Olympus Labs.

The loading bay inside the dome was busy with activity. Crates stacked everywhere, organized by category, were being loaded into trucks and trams which dispersed throughout the city, stocking distro-centers for the Martian people. Some of it would head out into the rural domes, the farms and small factory towns.

Bikram ushered him over to a small warehouse where they kept the dock equipment. They entered through a side door and into the warehouse where forklifts and hover pallets were stacked and and stowed along with various goods and commodities that had been skimmed and had yet to be fenced. Most notably, there was a stack of heavy plasteel crates—about eight in all. One of them was singled out from the rest and sat unlatched but closed.

“I wasn't here when these came in this morning. This is only about half of the shipment. The other half has already been delivered. Jessie was the first person to realize how suspiciously large a private shipment it is. The other morons out there just let them through. But she stopped these eight crates from being delivered.”

Wordlessly, Chisolm approached the crate and opened the lid, gazed inside, and said, “Holy shit.”

“There's sixteen of those in each crate and seventeen crates in the manifest.”

“Who else knows about this?”

“Just me and you and Jessie. Some of the other men know something's strange about these crates, but they don't know what's in 'em.”

“Keep it that way. Hide these crates and find out who the other half of the shipment was delivered to,” said Chisolm. “I'm going to deal with this one personally.”

“Where are you going?” said Bikram as Horton Chisolm began walking purposefully out the door.

“To talk to Voronoi,” said Chisolm, and then he was out the door, furious and worried.