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  “I thought you guys had power to burn from solar generated steam?”

  “Well, they do, but running that kind of power through a small device might melt it down. I don’t know if they’ve ever done it. What were you thinking the waldoes would be able to do for the teecees?”

  “You’re farming in tunnels on Mars. Dig some tunnels on TC3, put some farms where somebody really needs them.”

  Carter blinked, “Don’t forget we sent that big tunneler to Mars by rocket. We couldn’t do that to TC3.”

  Jenny frowned, “Send the tungsten for the tunneler there in small pieces. Use waldoes to weld them together. The ports that heat the tunneler are pretty small right?”

  Carter sat back in his chair and gazed at his daughter. She wasn’t as fun to talk to as she used to be, but if tunnels would really help the teecees? “That’s a pretty good idea. I don’t know whether the teecees do any farming but I’ll mention it to Team Teecee tomorrow.”

  Jenny said, “Maybe it’d be easier to just send them food?”

  “I don’t know if they can eat our food but I do know that there is a lot of concern about trying to keep any of our germs from getting there. Even if we tried to sterilize the food, there would be some concern that a few of our germs would get through and make the teecees sick.”

  Jenny considered that for a moment, then took another tack. “How’s the farming going on Mars?”

  “Pretty well, they’re growing a lot more food than they eat themselves. They aren’t growing a lot of variety though, so they ship a lot of their food back here and we send them food so they can have a more interesting diet. Like you predicted, one of the problems we’re having is that they’re kind of bored. They go out on lots of hikes to explore which, as you pointed out, subjects them to a fair amount of radiation. But they haven’t found a whole lot that’s very interesting. A couple of them have taken up prospecting. They hope they’ll find an interesting mineral or a source of something we don’t have much of here on earth and that they’re not getting out of the asteroids that ET Resources is mining.”

  ***

  Dr. Jenner didn’t have a great deal of difficulty finding the stump of the optic nerve in the depths of Warren Dawson’s orbit or eye socket. It had retracted back behind Dawson’s prosthetic eye and had a small bulb of neuroma on the end of it. Thankfully, it didn’t look atrophied. Once he had identified the nerve, it was relatively simple to snip off the neuroma and insert the stump of the nerve into the neurotrode Keller had provided. A quick stitch to hold it in place and another to cover it, then he reinserted Dawson’s prosthesis.

  As he finished up the operation, he mused to himself that the procedure seemed incredibly simple, especially considering the possibility that it might perform the miracle of restoring Dawson’s sight. The risks were pretty low too, other than for the possibility of infection around the implanted neurotrode. After all, Dawson was already blind. If the neurotrode didn’t work, he wouldn’t have lost anything.

  Jenner did wonder, though, how Dawson was going to react when they first fed signals to his optic nerve. Just because they fed a signal to an axon in the nerve, didn’t mean that Dawson would see something. Presumably the signal would cause a spark of light to be recognized by Dawson’s brain, but would it appear in the correct location? Dawson would have to tell them what color the spark was. Jenner shook his head, it seemed to him that learning to use the incoming information provided by the neurotrode might be far more difficult than anyone expected.

  ***

  Dex found himrself wakening as the lights brightened in the cave. Hie looked around and saw the two meteorites glowing with their white lights again. When they had begun to dim the night before hie had approached the one that hie had had for so long and asked it if the little fires inside of it which made the lights were burning out. The meteorite had replied that the lights were dimming because the sun had gone down and the meteorite thought that it would be better if it became dark in the cave also so that the dalins could sleep on their regular schedule.

  At one point the day before Dex had gone out to the entrance of the cave with several other dalins and they had retrieved some food from the storage areas out there.

  The closer they had gotten to the entrance of the cave the more dust they had found covering everything, including the supplies and their storage areas. The most disturbing thing was that it had been as dark as midnight despite the fact that they all knew it must still be the middle of the day.

  Dex turned to the meteorite, “Is the sun rising outside the cave?”

  In its flat voice the meteorite said, “The sun is rising, although if you were outside you wouldn’t be able to see it because there is too much dust in the air.”

  “How do you know it is rising then?”

  “We have a very accurate time telling device.”

  Dex pondered this a moment. The only time telling device hie had ever known was the movement of the sun in the sky. On the uncommon occasions when the sky was not cloudy you could also estimate the passage of time from the movement of the stars at night. “How does your time telling device work?”

  “It’s a machine.”

  The word the meteorite used, “machine,” was a word the dalins used for a number of devices they considered complex such as harnesses, snares or Dex’s new spears with a sharp head bound to a shaft. Dex pondered a machine, presumably much more complex than any hie had known, which could keep time. Deciding that the meteorites must be some kind of tool-using beings, no matter that they didn’t look alive, hie said, “Is the other meteorite your mate?”

  The meteorite made some kind of funny noise Dex didn’t understand, but then said, “No, I and the other meteorite are only very complex machines. These meteorite-machines are being controlled by beings who live very, very far from here. We, the beings controlling the meteorite-machines, consider ourselves to be your friends. We are very sad about what has happened to your world.”

  “What has happened to our world?”

  “The enormous meteorite crashing into your world. The tremendous damage it has done.”

  “But other than for the dust, it hasn’t hurt us here.”

  The meteorite didn’t say anything for a long while, then it said, “The dust is blocking the sunshine from reaching the plants. Without sunshine, the plants will become sick and die.”

  A cold sensation shot through Dex’s bowels as hie pictured the plants all dead. Of course the dalins didn’t eat many plants directly, but hie knew that many of the animals they hunted did eat plants. Without plants, hie supposed those animals would die and that would leave the dalins hungry. Then hie was relieved by another thought. “But surely, when it rains, the rain will clear the dust from the air.” It rained almost every day; hie wondered to himrself why yesterday’s rain hadn’t already cleared the air.

  After a moment, the meteorite said, “We hope so. But so much dust may change the weather. Hopefully it will rain even more, but it may rain less. And, there is so much dust that it may take many, many rains to clear the air.” After a pause the meteorite continued, “Also, some of the dust will be bitter and poisonous so that the rain that falls with that dust in it may kill the plants itself. It might even burn your skin.”

  Dex had become used to the meteorite offering solutions when it spoke. This disturbing trend of describing problems the dalins had never encountered before made himr feel uncomfortable. Hie thought to himrself that hie would not have believed such terrible things if the meteorite had not told himr so many helpful and true things in the past. “Can you help us?” Though the meteorite had been speaking very quietly, Dex suddenly noticed Syrdian was awake and staring at himr. Syrdian’s wings were slightly lifted showing hies alarm.

  The meteorite said, “We’re going to try. But even with as much help as we can possibly give, this is going to be very, very difficult for you and your fellow dalins.” After a pause which gave Dex time to consider what the meteorite had said, it continued,
“In a few more deks the other meteorite will deliver some devices for you to try putting over your air intakes. We hope the devices will clean much of the dust out of the air you breathe even if you go beyond the fog baskets. We also are making some ‘eye clothing’ which we hope will keep the dust out of your eyes.”

  Stunned by the very idea of devices for their air intakes and clothing for their eyes, Dex felt hies own wings rise slightly and hie turned to look at Syrdian…

  ***

  Marvin Castor didn’t like preschool. He’d hated it ever since Jimmy Simpson started picking on him about a month or so after Marvin had gotten into the preschool.

  It wasn’t so bad when they were in the classroom. In class Ms. Miller kept everyone organized and Marvin liked a lot of the little projects he and the other kids worked on. But out on the playground, like they were now, there were too many opportunities for Jimmy to be mean to him.

  Games of keep away, usually with a ball of some kind. Marvin was usually one of the boys the ball was kept away from. He wasn’t very good with balls, he knew it. It was pretty easy to keep the ball away from him. He thought he shouldn’t care, but it hurt anyway.

  Games of tag where Marvin spent much of the game as “it.” If he ever managed to tag someone, they turned and tagged him right back.

  Games of dodgeball. The kids weren’t supposed to play dodgeball, and it wasn’t really dodgeball by the rules he supposed. Jimmy would just organize the coordinated kids to kick or throw balls so that they hit Marvin or one of the other unpopular kids.

  The game didn’t really seem to matter, whatever it was, Marvin wouldn’t be very good at it. Jimmy would make fun of him and then somehow turn the game into something that attacked Marvin. Being nice to Jimmy hadn’t helped. It seemed to Marvin that Jimmy liked being mean more than he liked the things Marvin had done for him like giving Jimmy his slice of cake.

  At present Marvin was sitting at the edge of the playground just hoping that Jimmy would leave him alone today. Perhaps if he sat quietly Jimmy wouldn’t even notice him? It was boring though, so Marvin looked around, watching what the other kids were doing.

  Zage, the new kid, stood a few feet away staring into the distance and shifting his weight from one leg to the other. Marvin wondered if he had to go to the bathroom, but that wouldn’t explain why the kid was staring away into the distance. He tried to look the same direction as Zage, thinking that he could see what the kid was looking at. There certainly didn’t seem to be anything interesting where the kid was looking. “What are you looking at?” Marvin bit his lip as he realized he’d just violated his intent to sit quietly and not be noticed.

  Zage didn’t give him any trouble though. He said, “I have an HUD in a contact. I’m watching the news about the teecees.”

  The news?! Marvin knew of the news as something that adults downloaded off the net. He didn’t know any other kids that watched the news! He stared at Zage for a minute thinking that Zage was a really weird kid. He wondered why Jimmy didn’t pick on him. “What are teecees?”

  “They’re aliens. They live on a planet around the star Tau Ceti. You should look them up, they can fly and they live in caves like our ancestors used to!”

  “Caves?”

  To Marvin’s amazement Zage told him that people had lived in caves long ago. In the middle of Zage’s description of how cavemen lived, Jimmy appeared in the periphery of Marvin’s vision. Jimmy was running full tilt toward them and shepherding the small soccer ball. Then he kicked it as hard as he could. Wincing, Marvin tried to duck when he realized the ball was coming at his head. Even as he turned his head, Marvin knew it was going to hurt.

  Though his eyes were on their way closed, Marvin glimpsed Zage’s hand shooting out past his head. The ball didn’t hit him as he had expected and Marvin opened his eyes. To his astonishment Zage had the ball in his hands. Kids their age kicked balls and threw them. They only caught softly thrown balls that came right to them! But Zage had definitely caught that one. He lowered the ball to rest on his right hip where he held it lackadaisically against his side with his forearm. Zage hadn’t even interrupted his ongoing description of cavemen!

  Marvin’s eyes turned back in time to see Jimmy’s look of anticipation flash to one of anger. “Hey Fatty, don’t mess with our ball!” he shouted in an ugly tone as he ran up.

  Zage turned to look calmly at Jimmy. Marvin would have sworn that Zage was looking at him like Jimmy was something interesting, like a bug or a frog. “You almost hit my friend Marvin in the head with this ball,” he said.

  Friend?! Marvin thought, with a small twitch of joy. No one had ever called him a friend before!

  Jimmy, in a full fury now, said, “It would’ve served him right!” He lunged out toward Zage’s hip, “Gimme that ball!”

  Wide-eyed, Marvin saw Zage somehow pass the ball behind his back so that it appeared on his left hip just as Jimmy’s hand reached his right hip. Zage also stepped slightly to his left so that Jimmy plunged past him on the right. To Marvin it looked somewhat like a video he’d seen of a bullfighter, allowing the bull to slip by as he swept a cape around behind him.

  Jimmy stumbled, but didn’t fall. He turned back, diving toward Zage, arms outstretched to tackle him for a full on fight. Somehow, Zage reached out and put his palm on Jimmy’s forehead, stopping his charge and holding him at arm’s length. Sounding curious, Zage said, “Why would it have served Marvin right? Did he do something to you?”

  Goggle eyed, Marvin watched Zage restrain Jimmy. It seemed like Zage was reining Jimmy in more readily than most adults managed with kids their age. Jimmy flailed his arms furiously at Zage, slapping at Zage’s upper arms, but not seeming to really hurt him. After a moment he dropped his hands and stood, red-faced and breathing hard. “Give me the ball!”

  “What are you supposed to say?” Zage asked calmly.

  Marvin stepped back at the livid fury that passed over Jimmy’s face, but after a moment the boy gritted out, “Please!”

  He didn’t say it nicely. Marvin knew his mother would have made Marvin say please again until he said it pleasantly, but Zage simply held the ball out to Jimmy.

  Jimmy snatched the ball and ran back out on the playground. He kicked it towards Roger.

  Zage turned back to Marvin and said, “Can I have my AI feed yours some video of the teecees?”

  Marvin found it hard to believe Zage had simply returned to his conversation about the cave dwelling aliens after what had just happened. After a moment he simply nodded. A moment later, he said, “Thanks.”

  Zage nodded, “They don’t look much like Earth animals do they? All the TC3 animals have eight limbs. The teecees themselves have four wings, two legs, and two hands…

  ***

  Phil and Carol slowly dropped into the Valles Marineris. Upon their initial arrival on Mars they had been very excited just to be there. Bouncing around in lower gravity gave you kind of a Superman feel and learning their way around the tunnel system was interesting. There were miles and miles of tunnels already, and the melting tunneler was still making more.

  Many experiments were being done in order to determine the most efficient way to grow crops, however, the scientists doing the experiments could do most of the work themselves using waldoes and often preferred to do it that way. To be honest, Phil wasn’t terribly interested in farming, so he was just as happy to have them do their work remotely. Carol was pretty interested in the animals so Phil did spend time helping her care for them, but that wore thin fairly quickly as well.

  Right now with only eight people on Mars, it could get pretty boring and they all felt somewhat lonely for social interaction. However, the plan was to hold off on sending any more colonists until they were pretty sure that the group who was there wasn’t suffering any unexpected ill effects.

  On their days off, most of the “Martians” as they called themselves spent time out exploring, looking for evidence of ancient life, studying the geology, or prospecting for mineral
s. Phil had gotten over his initial expectation that he would find something exciting at every turn. Realizing that he would have to actively search for something more interesting than brown dirt and rocks, he had begun to study geology. He wanted to actually prospect with a view to finding something interesting .

  He had realized that the enormous rift valley that was the Valles Marineris represented an opportunity to study the crust of Mars. If there were interesting minerals or valuable ores to be found on Mars, he should have a great opportunity to find some of them by studying the walls of the tremendous cleft. On his last trip down into the Valles, he had found a substantial area of rock with pale lavender discolorations and some reddish areas that didn’t appear to be typical Mars red. He’d taken some samples and ported them back to earth. His contact there reported that they were cerite, a mineral containing the rare earths cerium and lanthanum.

  His mission today was to try to determine how extensive the cerite deposit was and whether other rare earth ores might be in the area as well. Rare earths were moderately valuable, so a large deposit might make it worthwhile to set up a mine staffed with waldoes. Despite the name they were relatively plentiful in earth’s crust but just weren’t found in high concentrations. The best “rare earth ores” on earth didn’t actually have very much of any particular element. Additionally, the different rare earth elements tended to be mixed in an ore and hard to separate.

  Phil landed on the ledge where he had initially found the cerite. As he looked at the wall of the canyon Carol came down beside him. She said, “Hey, there’s quite a bit of lavender and red.” She paused, “I suppose a lot of that red could just be typical Martian red though?”