2.

In spite of the cultural mandate to give to Mars only the best of what Earth had to offer, Dr. Christopher Cooke was an angry Martian. Today’s irritation barely rose above the generalized fury that raged within him. He dug his boot heels into the rust, leaned on his tripod, and looked around. Wispy clouds were moving quickly and icily in the turquoise sky overhead. Being sent to collect magnetic fluctuation data in the field, a major inconvenience, was only a small blip on the extensive range of his angerscape. On Earth he had been an air-conditioned man, so he clasped his heavy coat tight around him with indignation and cursed his assignment. Even then the thin but metallic-tasting wind chilled him to the bone.

He was a tense man, quiet and seldom provoked to speak up, which is why he was the one plucked out to perform field duty when one of the usual field technicians called in sick. Still, he thought to himself, better here than there. He had put millions of kilometers between him and the feckless bureaucracy that had killed his wife on Earth, and although the distance didn’t mitigate his anger, it allowed him to function. There was no one here that deserved his rants, so he had the luxury of remaining quiet and doing his work—the extra work he had been saddled with today—within an even heavier invisible cloak of resentment.

He pivoted the tripod’s top mechanism smoothly along its circular track of ball bearings, aiming the magnetometer at the lodestone rock that was the magnetic center of the caldera of Arsia Mons. Around him circled a jagged rim, 9 kilometers higher than the already 11 kilometers of volcanic grandeur sloping upward above the surrounding terrain of the Tharsis Shield. Arsia Mons was the oldest of the shield’s three dead volcanos which sat in a row like a chord on a clef. To get to the lodestone, he had taken advantage of a wide entrance, a chasm of collapsed lava tube roof. It was a geological gift. Though the lodestone was the magnetic center, it wasn’t at the caldera center, but in the chasm that led through the crater wall.

Even though the innards of the ṺberCollider were shielded, the surges needed to run it were at the mercy of magnetic turbulence. The MagScape satellite above, while helpful, was not accurate enough to guarantee pin-point magnetic stability at the surface; it was only good for predicting massive amounts of molten core that determined the entire planet’s magnetic flux. But here on the ground Dr. Cooke was able to render a holographic plot of the lines of force. In the small box that sat atop the tripod, all of the mathematics used to determine the ṺberCollider’s window of safe operation whirred silently within qubits in the background, reducing the summated results into a mere pushing of a needle into the green on its dial.

“It’s on the green,” Dr. Cooke radioed in on the infraband.

“Good work, Cooke,” Dr. Kubacki radioed back.

Twenty-five years of education, Dr. Cooke scowled, and I can tell when the needle’s in the green. Anything worth doing is worth doing well.

He eyed the Martian artifacts that had helped colonization: the perfectly spherical, metallic half-centimeter dollops that seemed strewn around the lodestone he was recording. There seemed to be more of them in this area than what he was used to seeing, because what he was accustomed to seeing was only the rare one that had been extruded from a site of erosion. And then he became very still. The thin air made him conscious of his breathing. Forgotten for a moment, the cold now was very noticeable.

Mars had been successfully terraformed, but he still needed to be aware of everything, because that was what one had to do when noticing something unusual. This planet offered new ways to die or be injured, as horrible as they were novel, and it paid to pay attention. What he saw made him pay attention.

One of the dollops moved.

This was a dead world, and the only movement, besides the dust that rode the gales, was solely of human origin. Yet, he was sure of it—it had moved. Was it the magnetic attraction of the lodestone? He closed the dustcover over his magnetometer and walked slowly toward the small object. Towering over it, it sat there inert. He remained just as motionless, straining to see, wondering if he should write off the movement as imagination. He reached down to pick it up.

These small, round structures had jumpstarted the whole Martian colony, providing a ubiquitous supply of perfect ball bearings for all of the moving parts that made a colony run. The colony owed a great debt to the small round benefactors. They allowed the turbines to spin, they made the heavy machinery run, and they made transportation efficient. They were what made it possible for Dr. Cooke to rotate his magnetometer on the tripod. Rarely seen atop the surface, when the engineers dug, these shiny marbles seemed to just pour out of the excavations. He reached down to pick it up like so many engineers had done in the field. Before he touched it, he jumped, astonished, for it unrolled right in front of him, like a tiny sleeping bag.

“No one’s ever seen that before,” he murmured. He watched. It seemed completely inert.

And then it attacked him.

Snapping violently into a small ball again, it launched itself with enough force to enter his head. He reeled back, slapping his hands to the circular wound on his forehead. He fell.

After a moment he tried to regather his wits. He realized something altogether new had happened on Mars. And it was an attack by something that had been placed by the thousands in all of the machinery that made life possible on terraformed Mars.

Just a moment ago—or was it years ago? he wondered. Years ago—or was it just a moment ago?

He wondered whether he always had something Martian living in his head? Or is this brand new? His mind was frenzied. How do I get it out? Is there brain damage? Will this thing jump back out on its own? Will I have brain damage then? Do I have brain damage now? What if all of the ball bearings decide to snap like that? If I’m thinking all this stuff, does that mean I’m O.K.? If I’m not O.K., would I even know it?

He ran through a series of neurological exercises. His thumb could oppose each of his fingers. He could touch his nose with his eyes closed. He stood and had no imbalance. He counted backwards from 100.

And his head didn’t hurt.

He now knew his days as a data analyst for the ṺberCollider were over. He knew he had a new job. He would be studied and he supposed that was good. Although he felt fine right now, no one could rule out that something insidious wasn’t conspiring against him. Yes, let them study me. I want to know what’s coming, if anything.

But he wasn’t angry anymore. He was something, but it wasn’t angry.