This fact becomes more disturbing with the introduction of new evidence concerning these sole supports for the Davydov Theory:
b) Jorge Balder, professor of history at the University of Mars, Hellas, searched the Physical Records Annex in Alexandria in 2536, as part of his research on a related incident in early Martian history. His records show that he searched Cabinet 14A23546 (all six drawers) at that time, and he catalogued its contents. In his catalogue there is no mention of the file found in 2548 by Professor Hjalmar Nederland, on Oleg Davydov and the Mars Starship Association. The implication is that the file was placed in the cabinet at a later date.
c) The records of the New Houston excavation show that William Strickland and Xhosa Ti, working under Professor Nederland, did a seismic scan of precisely the area in which the abandoned field car was found, two weeks before it was discovered. Their scan showed no sign of such an object. During the intervening two weeks a storm kept all workers out of the area, and the car was found because of a landslide that could have easily been triggered by explosives.
The article went on to list exactly what was documented about Davydov and the rest, and to show where information about them and the MSA should have been located but wasn’t. After that were suggestions for further inquiry, including a physical examination and dating, if possible, of the abandoned field car, Emma Weil’s notebook, and the file from Alexandria. My conclusion was tentative, as was only proper at that point, but still it was a shocker: “…Thus we are inclined to believe that these artifacts, and the Davydov theory that depends upon them, have been manufactured, apparently by the same agents who are responsible for the construction of Icehenge, and that they constitute a ‘false explanation’ for the megalith, linking it to the Martian Civil War when it apparently was erected at least two centuries later.”
Yes, that would open their eyes all right! It threw the whole issue into question again. And Shards was one of the major journals, it was read system-wide. Nederland himself would read the article. Perhaps he was reading it at that very moment. Something in the notion was disturbing. I said to myself, The battle is on.
Quitting time at the restaurant. I went over to see Fist Matthews, one of the cooks. “Fist, can you lend me ten till payday?”
“Why do you want money, wild man? The way you eat here you ain’t hungry.”
“No, I need to pay off the post office before they’ll let me see my mail.”
“What’s a dishwasher like you doing with mail? Never mess with it myself. Keep your friends where you can see them, that’s what I say.”
“Yeah, I do. It’s my foes I want to hear from! Listen, I’ll pay you back payday, that’s the day after tomorrow.”
“You can’t wait till then? Oh all right, what’s your number…”
He went to the restaurant’s register and made the exchange. “Okay, you got it. Remember payday.”
“I will. Thanks, Fist.”
“Don’t mention it. Hey, me and the girls are going body-surfing when we get off — want to come along?”
“I’ve got to check my mail first, but then I’ll think about it.”
I threw a few more dishes on the washer belt — grabbed a piece of lobster tail the size of my finger, tossed it in my mouth, fuel for the fire, waste not want not — until my replacement arrived, looking sleepy.
The streets of Waystation were as empty as they ever get. In the green square of the park, up above me on the other side of the cylinder, a group was playing cricket. I hurried past one of my sidewalk sleeping spots, stepping over prone figures. As I neared the post office I skipped. I hadn’t been able to afford to see my mail for several days — it happened like that at the end of every month. Post office has mail freaks over a barrel, and they know it.
When I got there it was crowded, and I had to hunt for a console. More and more people were going to general delivery, it seemed, especially on Waystation where almost everyone was transient.
I sat down before one of the gray screens and began typing, paying off the post office and identifying myself, calling up my correspondence from the depths of the computer. I sat back to read.
Nothing! “Damn it!” I shouted, startling a young man in the booth next to me. Junk mail, nothing but junk. Why had no one written? “No one writes to Edmond,” I muttered, in the singsong I had given the phrase over the years. There was an issue of Archaeological Review, and a notice that my subscription to Marscience had run out, for which I thanked God, and an inquiry from a local politician, asking if this was my current mail number.
I blanked the screen and left. Keep your friends where you can see them. Well, it was good advice. There were more people in the streets, on the trams, going to work, getting off work. I didn’t know any of them. I knew almost all the locals on Waystation, and they were good people, but suddenly I missed my old friends from Titan. I wanted something… something I had thought the mail could give me; but that wasn’t quite right either.
I hated mornings like this. I decided to take up Fist’s invitation, and got on a tram going to the front of the town. At the last stop I got off and took the short elevator through the wall of the asteroid to the surface. Leaving the elevator I went to the big window overlooking Emerald Lake. We were somewhere near Uranus, so the lake was full. The changing room, however, was nearly empty. I went to the ticket window, and they took more of Fist’s ten. The suit attendant helping me looked sleepy, so I checked my helmet seam in the mirror. The black, aquatic creature — like a cross between a frog and a seal — stared back at me out of its facemask, and I smiled. In the reflection the humorless fish grin appeared. The slug-broad head, webbed and finned handscoops, long finny feet, torso fins, and the cyclopslike facemask transformed me (appropriately, I thought) into an alien monster. I walked slowly into the lock, lifting my knees high to swing my feet forward.
The outer lock door opened, I felt the tiny rush of air, and I was outside, on my own. It felt the same, but I breathed quicker for a time, as always; I’d not spent very much time in the open recently. A ramp extended out into the lake, and I waddled to the end of it.
Around the lake, flat blue-gray plains rose up to the close horizon of an ancient worn- down crater wall. It looked like the surface of any asteroid. Waystation’s existence — the hollowed interior, the buildings and people, the complicated spaceport, the huge propulsion station on the other end, the rock’s extraordinary speed — all could seem the work of an excited fancy, here by this lake of liquid methane, trapped in an old crater.
Below me the stars were reflected, green as — yes, emeralds — in the glassy surface of the methane. I could see the bottom, three or four meters below. A series of ripples washed by, making the green stars dance for a moment.
Out on the lake the wave machine was a black wall, hard to distinguish in the pale sunlight. Its sudden shift toward me (which looked like a visual mistake caused by blinking) marked the creation of another tall green swell. The swells could hardly be seen until they crossed the submerged crater wall near the center of the lake; then they rose up, pitched out and fell, breaking in both directions around the submerged crater, throwing sheets of methane like mercury drops into space, where they floated slowly down.
I dove in. Under the surface I was effectively weightless, and swimming took little effort. Over the sound of my breath was the steady krkrkrkrkrkrkrkrkrkrkrkrkr of waves breaking, and every ten or fifteen seconds I heard the emphatic ka-THUNKuh of the wave machine. Ahead of me the green of the methane became murky, because of the turbulence over the submerged crater. I stuck my head above the surface to see, and all sound except that of my breathing instantly ceased.