Populus Ex Machina - Ed

"Yes, um, well," he started, then cleared his throat. "I think we may have crashed a bit farther from home than we thought. About 250 million years farther."
Ed took a peculiar joy in being so dramatic. Very rarely had he been in a position to deliver a news flash like this. He felt rather like the newscasters who covered the Hindenburg crash, JFK's shooting, the moon landing, and the discovery of actual life on Mars. He figured the shock of just where they were hadn't sunk in yet, and the bump he'd taken on his head during the crash may have had something to do with that. And that was a Lystrosaurus, a real live one. This was better than any dig he'd ever been on.
The man and woman in front of him were just staring at him. It was almost comical, their mouths hanging open as if they'd forgotten to close them, and the identical expressions on their faces. They could only be husband and wife. The only other people who could be so similar would be siblings, but they didn't look quite similar enough for that.
"My name's Ed," he held out his good arm to the man.
"Um, Jack," the man mumbled, his hand put out almost as a reflex.
"My name is Kara, Jack's wife." Ed felt another quick gush of pleasure, he'd guessed right, and she seemed to have shaken off his announcement better than Jack had. He shook her hand as well, and began to turn back to the wreck as more people began stumbling out of it.
"How do you know where, or when, we crashed?" Ed turned back around, Jack had stepped a bit closer and lowered his voice.
"Well, obviously, I don't know exactly where we are, nor do I know exactly when we are. But our little friend over there is almost definitely a Lystrosaurus. I'm guessing based on the reconstructions we had from their bones, but that's a pretty distinctive skull structure. Lystrosaurus were around at the end of the Permian, and were one of the few types of animal to survive the End-Permian extinction. Shortly thereafter, they had pretty much taken over the planet. So, the fact that we're seeing one means we're at the end of the Permian or the beginning of the Triassic, about 250 million years before we were born." Without even thinking, Ed had slipped into what he called his "lecture voice." As he finished that last sentence, however, his voice hitched a bit. He stared at the animal as it snuffled around in the underbrush. For it's own part, it was keeping one eye on the strange creatures it saw milling around, ready to bolt if it felt threatened.
Ed crashed to the ground, sitting just a few feet in front of the ripped open doorway to the shuttle, the pain in his arm helping to center him a bit. People could throw around numbers like a billion or a trillion, or even 250 million, but no one could really, honestly, understand what numbers that immense meant. Even Ed, who had spent his life working with numbers almost exactly that size, was only able to understand that he suddenly realized he was incredibly far from home, and would probably never see it again.
"Hey, are you ok?" Kara asked him, crouching down to his left. Jack came over and crouched down on his right.
"250 million. What does that even mean?" he mumbled. "We're not even far from home, home doesn't exist. It won't exist for millennia."
Jack glanced at Kara over Ed's head. He raised an eyebrow, she shook her head and cocked her head to the shuttle, he shrugged and stood up. As he walked toward the shuttle, she made herself comfortable, sitting next to Ed.
"So, how do you know so much about that guy over there? Are you some sort of archaeologist?" Ed glanced at her and smiled a wan little smile.
"No. Archaeologists dig up human remains, biological or technological. I'm a paleontologist, an exo-paleontologist. Or, at least I was hoping to be."
"I see, and what is an exopaleontologist?"
"Well, it would be a paleontologist on a planet other than Earth. I was hoping to find fossils on Mars."
"But they've already found evidence of life on Mars. They even found microbes alive in certain places." She could see it was working. He had something to focus on, someone to talk to, and he was calming down a bit.
"Bah, they've found microbes. I wanted to find real fossils. If life got started on Mars, and we know that it did, then it would have evolved just as life on Earth did. It would have had different pressures and environments, but one thing we know is that life is never content to remain in one form. It expands and adapts. There should be evidence of that process on Mars."
"What if there just wasn't an environment that anything bigger than a microbe could exist in?"
"We know Mars was warmer and wetter in the past. Assuming life was around then, and it makes much more sense for it to have emerged then, rather than after Mars was freeze-dried, then I can't think of any limiting factors on some sort of multi-cellular organism to evolve. And again, once we have a multi-cellular organism, it doesn't take too long before we have a lot of them, and eventually, one of them is going to try out hard parts. Bones, shells, protection of some sort. It's there, I know it is."
Ed turned around to look at the wreckage behind him. He could see Jack, talking to people just inside. There were three lumps laying over to the right, covered in cloth from somewhere. It didn't take a detective to recognize dead bodies. He'd noticed the one, a flight attendant, lying on the floor as he made his way out, but he hadn't seen the others.
"I suppose we should be grateful there's only three dead," Kara said. When Ed glanced at her, she was looking at Jack, though, rather than the bodies.
Ed looked back over to Jack in time to see him point over at the two of them. When he started walking over with two other men, one of them the pilot of the shuttle, Ed decided sitting sprawled in the dust wasn't quite the image he was going for. With Kara's help, and a little pain from his arm, he was on his feet by the time the three men reached them.
"Captain," Ed said, "I realize how difficult that landing must have been, and I commend you for being able to get us safely down at all." The pilot smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes.
"And I hope you choose us next time you need to make an off-world trip. So, what was it you were saying about being 250 million years in the past?"
"Well, you see that little guy over there?" Ed pointed to the Lystrosaurus. "If I'm right about what he is, then that's when we have to be. The lower Oxygen content, the plants we see, the arid temperature, despite the fact that the sun is still shy of the noon hour. These all seem to corroborate the idea. Obviously, I can't be completely sure based on an hour's experience in a single spot on the planet, but that must have been a pretty spectacular explosion."
"Well yeah," the pilot answered, "The engine went, and I could have sworn it looked like there was a hole or a rip in the sky, but we were shaking and getting spun all around, and I thought it might just be the effects of high G-forces. I do know that before we crashed, I could see we definitely weren't anywhere near where we were before the explosion. Until we have any reason to doubt your theory, Mr…"
"Slough. Dr. C. Edward Slough, spelled like 'rough' but rhymes with 'claw'."
"Dr. Slough. That will have to be what we work with. I take it as my responsibility to let everyone else know, but I don't want to start a panic. As you said, it's definitely getting warm, so I think we should all go back into the shuttle where there's shade. We have emergency rations that will feed us for a couple of days, but we'll need to find some food here. You've just become our resident expert, so anything we find, we're going to bring to you before we eat it. We'll also need to construct a more permanent place to live, at least until we can figure out what else to do."
They all followed the pilot back into the shuttle. There were people still strapped into their seats, looking blearily around, but most were up, talking to others or tending to the wounded. When the pilot entered, he was bombarded by questions and pleas from the multitude. Kara gestured to an empty seat in the last row, it was intact and far enough from everyone else to stay out of everyone's way. Ed sat, grateful for the comfortable seat compared to the hard dirt he'd been sitting in before. Kara and Jack sat down near him.
"I don't want that kind of responsibility," Ed said as soon as the pilot had made his way further up the aisle, out of ear shot. His eyes were wide, and he shook his head quickly from side to side. "I can't tell you what's poisonous and what's not. At best, I might be able to tell you what will or won't kill our Lystrosaurus friend out there, but our metabolism and genetic make-up is so different.." He shook his head again.
"Hey, hey. Calm down. The Captain isn't going to expect you to know everything. He's in just as much shock as the rest of us, only he doesn't have the luxury of showing it, not if he wants to keep everyone as calm and under control as possible. He just wants someone to help share the burden," Kara put her hand on his arm, staring into his eyes.
"So, what brought you to our ill-fated vessel in the first place? Shouldn't you be digging in the soil somewhere on Mars?" Kara asked. Jack looked at her quizzically, but didn't say anything. The look of relief in Ed's eyes was obvious. He even managed a wry smile.
"Well, since we have the time, and I'm not sure what more help I can be to you strong kids, I'll start my story from the beginning."

"I was standing in front of a class of undergrads, trying to get them interested in fossils, or at least keep them from falling asleep, when they discovered evidence of past life on Mars. I didn't find out until I got to my office between classes. Once I saw the announcement, I promptly cancelled the rest of my classes for the day, and flipped on the news. The discovery came on a Friday, and I didn't stop watching, reading, or talking about the discovery until I had to go back to work on Monday.
"In my higher level classes, I gave them the option of a self-paced individual project based on the results, the techniques used, where other likely places to look might be, things like that.
"Within a week of that discovery, they announced that they had found life was still present, buried deep in the soil near the poles, where water was available for at least part of the year. At that point, I asked the University to fund a trip for me and a handful of my graduate students to go to Mars and see if we could find anything indicating more complex life. I gave them the same reasoning I gave you, Kara. If it started, it must have grown, and the proof must be there. Since Mars is not tectonically active any more, the evidence isn't getting wiped out anywhere near as quickly as it does on Earth, and even on Earth we find evidence of extremely old life.
"It took months of convincing, months of papers detailing my theory, months of asking others in the field to back me up, and months of writing grant proposals, but by the time the semester was ending, we were given the funding for a 12 month expedition on Mars. I was convinced we'd find something in the caves at the bottom of the Valles Marineris trench, but the board thought it would make more sense to look where they'd already proven life could survive. We ended up with a compromise. Half the time, we could spend looking in Valles Marineris, the other half we would look in the Hyperboreus Labyrinths, in Planum Boreum, near the North Pole.
"My theory was that, as Mars became colder and drier, any living creatures that could, would have gone to places where there was as much atmosphere as possible, the low lying regions. These would be the last places that would be able to hold heat and would have liquid water. Caves in the area seemed to be the logical places to look.
"Another compromise came in the make-up of my team. They were all Grad students, but rather than all paleontologists, I was asked to bring a molecular biologist. They figured, and I completely agreed, that there should be some sort of guarantee that there would be a return on their investment. There was still a lot of science to be done on the life found on Mars, and having a biologist along might even help us notice something we would otherwise overlook.
"Once that was settled, I picked who would go. The molecular biologist I picked was named Laura Xiong. She was suggested by one of my colleagues, who told me she was the best he'd seen in a long time. The other three were all grad students of mine. Alex and Amir were both looking for a thesis topic and jumped at the chance to join the dig. The youngest was a kid named Chad. He was a first-year grad student, but I could tell he was going places. He liked to call himself a rockhound, and very quickly, he was known as Hound. The first time we all got together as a team, to plan out our excursion, go over likely dig sites and to get everyone comfortable with each other, I teasingly called him Pup. It stuck, at least within our group, and that's what we called him from then on. He didn't like it at first, he thought it was making fun of his age, but it kind of grew on him.
"I hadn't set out to pick two guys and two girls, but once I noticed it, I liked it. We were going to be working in cramped conditions for a long period of time, and I wanted to smooth over as many interpersonal issues as possible. I could tell we'd be fine. The kids seemed to gel immediately, teasing and joking, and they were all visibly excited to be going. I sat down individually with each of them over the next couple of weeks, making sure they were honestly getting along, and not one of them had anything bad to say about the others.
"Now, the geologists were the first scientists to begin working on Mars, the very first people to walk on Mars were geologists, and they had already started up a new branch of their science. They called themselves areologists, since geo means Earth. By the time we were going, there were areology departments in more than a few colleges and a semi-permanent outpost on Mars. The biologists had also recently become involved on Mars, with the discovery of life, and a few were beginning to specialize in exobiology. We were the first paleontologists to be going, though. We were carving out our very own branch of science. Built upon an established branch, true, but all science is built upon previous science. It was the most excited I had ever been, and I could only envy the younger members of the team. They were the ones who would truly build this science and differentiate it from the Earth-bound variety.
"Finally, the day of our launch came around. I couldn't sleep the night before, and despite their energy, I could tell there hadn't been much sleep for the others either. None of us had been off-planet before, so the whole trip was an experience for us. It's amazing how quickly we can get from Earth to Mars now. A trip that used to take months now takes a matter of hours or a couple of days, depending on where the two planets are in their respective orbits.
"Anyway, we made it to Mars, landed at Planitia, and stepped into another world, in every sense of the phrase. We had known that life on Mars was tough and dangerous, but we were unprepared for just how rustic it was. Planitia was the only real city on the planet, and I'm not sure it even deserves the term. I was reminded of the descriptions of the old American West. The only difference being the lack of horses, since nothing could drive cattle across the landscape of Mars without freezing and drying out. Sure, there was electricity, and computers were abundant, but the feeling of being on a frontier was unshakeable.
"We found the shuttle that was going to take us to Planum Boreum, packed our gear, and set off. By the time we had set up the inflatable dome that would serve as our base, stowed our personal effects in the three bedrooms, and set up the two labs, it was dark and we were starving. Amir turned out to be a very good cook, despite the processed foods we were forced to make do with. As I had figured, the two boys took one room, the two girls took the other, and I was allowed a room to myself. I wondered to myself how long that arrangement would last. Four young adults in close quarters for 12 months, there was bound to be some interest in sex, and considering how well it works to relieve stress and give comfort, I was all for it. The only regret I had was that I hadn't brought along someone to keep me company during the nights.
"Of course, being so far to the north during Mars' long summer, the nights weren't that long, and the days were filled with hard work, both physical and mental."

At this point, Ed glanced around him, and noticed he had drawn quite a crowd. Kara was still sitting next to him and Jack had swiveled the seat in front of him around, but there was another man sitting in the chair across from Kara, two more people in the next row up, and a few in the seats across the aisle.
A light breeze was blowing across his brow. When he glanced over to the wall, he noticed a thin vent running the length of the cabin.
"They got the RTG working," said Jack, when he saw where Ed was looking. "We have air conditioning and even air recyclers. The ship isn't airtight, but it should make breathing easier while we're inside."
"I heard we even have a water purifier working," one of the other listeners said.
"And with the rather low power consumption, we should have no shortage of power. The RTG is made to work for 50 years at normal usage. The crash may have affected it a bit, but we're using a lot less power than normal, too." Ed hadn't even noticed the pilot standing near the back of the crowd, but the good news brought relief to the faces of everyone in sight. The thought that they'd still be here in 50 years one no one wanted to entertain, but knowing they would have power, and at least some comfort if they were, was a silver lining.
"Well, as long as we've got power, I need to go use the facilities," Ed said, rising from his seat. "If it's not too much trouble, could someone find me something to nibble on and something to wash it down?"
"That's a great idea," Kara agreed, "let's all take a little break for lunch. We don't want to wear the professor out too quickly."
The crowd broke up a bit, ration packs were passed around, and when Ed came back to his seat, he was alone with Jack and Kara again.
"Can I ask you a personal question?" Kara asked him after she had finished her rather unsatisfying meal.
"Sure," replied Ed, "but I can't guarantee I'll answer it." He smiled, a bit of protein bar caught in his beard. Kara reached over and brushed it away, then changed seats so she was sitting next to Jack. She wrapped her hands around Jack's and leaned back a bit in her seat.
"You told us to call you Ed, but you told the Captain that your name was C. Edward Slough. Why do you go by your middle name?" Ed's laugh startled her, which just made him laugh even harder.
"Well, Kara. My parents saw fit to name me Cole. Apparently, it was the name of one of my mother's uncles with whom she was very close. I'm not sure if they knew what they were doing at the time, but my Dad started calling me Ed while I was still very young, and I've been Ed ever since."
"Wait, what's wrong with the name Cole?" Jack asked, looking from Kara to Ed in confusion. Then Kara started laughing, which just confused Jack even more.
"Cole Slough? Your parents named you 'cole slaw'?" Kara gasped out between laughs. "How could they do such a thing?"
Jack finally got the joke, and he started laughing, too. People all over the ship were looking their way, wondering what was making the three of them laugh so hard. Little by little, the crowd grew around them again, even more people settling down than there was before lunch. Kara and Jack both refused to tell anyone else what was so funny, they figured it was Ed's story to tell, but he quickly started telling his other story again.

"We made it two months before anything changed. Laura was having the time of her life. She had discovered 13 different species, naming one after each person on the team, then getting a bit more whimsical. The rest of us weren't having as much luck. We hadn't found any evidence of past multi-cellular life. Not so much as a shell or a bone. I kept telling them we still had Valles Marineris to go, and that we were only here at the insistence of the directors back on Earth, but it was hard to keep from getting discouraged.
"We were even doing some of the areologists' work for them. We never strayed far from base camp, it was way too easy to get lost among the canyons and caves of the aptly named Hyperboreus Labyrinths, but with the help of satellites, beacons we placed at every intersection, and cartography software, we were beginning to compile a rather good map of the area. We were noting any differences we found in the stone and any layers that were exposed.
"Alex and Amir were the first to pair off. Pup came back from one of his excursions, and noticed his room was closed off. The doors didn't have locks, but they had propped something against it to make sure they were undisturbed. Pup banged on the door, asking them to at least let him get his stuff, then stalked off to the dining area. Laura had heard the banging from her lab, and poked her head out into the common area in the center of the dome. I just shrugged my shoulders, and pointed toward the dining area. She saw Pup sitting at a table gloomily, and walked over by him.
"He turned away from her when she got near, arms crossed over his chest, but she sat down next to him and leaned in to talk. It didn't take too long before he was quite noticeably cheered-up. In short order, Laura stood up, pulled him along after her, a grin stretched clear across his face, and closed her own door behind them. I chuckled to myself, and wandered into the dinning area. I knew I'd have to fend for myself for dinner.
"The rest of our time at Planum Boreum was much the same. Alex moved her stuff in with Amir, and Pup moved his in with Laura. He also seemed to spend more time helping her in the biology lab, freeing Alex and Amir, who I began to call the A-Team, to help me out in the field, increasingly frustrated by the lack of fossils. After 5 months, I gave up on the area. Laura wasn't collecting any more samples, content to study the ones she had, and it was obvious that if life had progressed beyond the simple forms she was playing with, there was no evidence of it where we were. I called the shuttle back early, and we packed up and moved to Valles Marineris.
"I knew I would get an earful when we got back to Earth for changing the timing of the excursion, but I was prepared. And if we had good news from Valles Marineris, it would help to smooth things over quite a bit.
"There had been some disagreement before we left Earth over where we should look in the huge canyon. It's the largest canyon in the solar system, in fact. If we placed it on Earth, it would stretch across North America from Atlantic to Pacific. It's also 4 to 5 times deeper, in spots, than the Grand Canyon on Earth. We had more than enough territory to argue over. In the end, it was Pup who chose the best spot. He said the layered walls at Coprates Chasma would seem the best place to look for fossils, much like the Western parts of North America. Some of the layers seemed to be deposited by volcanic ash, some by landslides, and towards the top, blowing dust. Cataclysmic layers would be the best place to look, we reasoned, since more creatures would have been trapped and killed. On the floor, there were alluvial deposits, silt and sand laid down by flooding, as well as eolian, or wind-blown deposits.
"I had been arguing for the Chryse region, the far eastern end, where it opens up into a flood plain. I thought we might find fossils that were washed away during one of the many floods that seem to have driven through the canyon. The A-Team were arguing for the other end of the canyon, Noctis Labyrinthus, since they assumed it would have more caves and hidey-holes, more places where the last remaining complex creatures would have taken refuge. We all had good arguments, except for Laura, who was sure she'd find more than she could handle in our polar region. It seemed more than likely that we'd find even more microbial life no matter where we looked. She sided with Pup, but only, it seemed, to balance out the single voice coming from Amir and Alex. The dynamic that emerged on Earth was only strengthened when we got to Mars. It essentially came down to two votes to two votes to me. I could override any of them and just decide where to go, but I didn't want to pull rank like that unless I had to. If I'd have had the time or the manpower, I'd have set up stations all along the canyon floor. And if we found anything, I was hoping I'd be able to do just that. If we didn't find anything, however, it was unlikely they would allow another expedition, and any discoveries that were waiting for us would wait years or even decades longer. I couldn't let that happen, and Pup's arguments about the layered walls really were good. We had to rig up some sort of climbing harness capable of reaching the top of the wall, but that wasn't too difficult. An extremely long carbon nanotube rope, capable of bearing over a ton of weight was long and strong enough for our purposes. With the lighter gravity on Mars, we never even came close to testing it's strength.
"When the shuttle dropped us off at Coprates, it was obvious to all of us that we had made the right decision. Whole sections of the wall had fallen down in landslides, leaving their layers intact on the floor of the canyon, while also exposing new sections of the wall where they had fallen from. Pup was ecstatic, not only had we chosen his site, it was a potential gold mine. He was very little help getting our dome set up, always wandering away to start looking at some of the fallen wall sections. Finally, I just let him go and start work while the rest of us set up. Amir wasn't too happy about that, but Alex was able to calm him down a bit, and I promised to let him and Alex go and work the next day while Laura and Pup helped me catalog the layers and determine, if we could, what deposited them and when."

This time, when Ed looked around, he could see that everyone was listening to his story. The only people who weren't were either outside, but he hadn't noticed anyone head out, or the people who were unconscious. Seeing the three people laying across a whole row each sent a shiver through his body. The scene was far too familiar to him. Quickly he looked to the friendly faces of Kara and Jack.
"I remember someone saying something about the water filtration system working?" He smiled and rubbed his throat a bit. "I must be out of practice, I used to give lectures for 8 hours a day and not feel so much as a hitch in my throat."
Kara tried to get up, but there were too many people around, so she was forced to just crane her neck and try to see if anyone else was heading to the back of the cabin to get a glass of water for Ed. She saw a small woman at the edge of the crowd break away and glide into the little crew compartment where the food and emergency supplies were kept. Kara realized that woman looked to be the youngest person present. Not a single person under 20 years or so. That was probably a small blessing, considering their situation.
The young woman reemerged from the compartment, a rather large cup filled with water in her hand. It got passed through the crowd, almost like a holy relic being brought to the priest through a group of zealous believers. Finally, it was handed to Jack who handed it over to Ed. He took a little sip, made a show of tasting the water, then swallowed a large gulp. The cup was half empty when he set it on the little tray table to his right.
He glanced around at his rapt audience, "If there's anything you want me to explain, or if there's anything that's just plain boring, let me know. I'm not planning on having a pop quiz the first week or so." He got a few chuckles, Kara just smiled at him. The crowd was still coming to terms with their situation, his voice seeming to calm them a bit, giving them a chance to escape the present and all its worries and complications. He also noticed that the light from outside was slanting through the door way all the way across the cabin. He guessed it was getting near to 5 o'clock, depending on the time of year and their location on the planet. More ration packs had made their appearance, one was handed to him, and he set it aside by his water. His appetite wasn't what it used to be. When he turned back to the crowd, his head swam a bit, reminding him of the injuries he had taken himself. His left arm was a dull ache, wrapped in the coat he had carried on board. At least it was his left, he thought, since he used his right arm for just about everything.
"Does anyone know what the sleeping situation is going to be?" he asked, looking mainly at the Captain, who was sitting off to the side.
"Well," the Captain began, "the seats recline, we have pillows and blankets stowed. If anyone is too cramped, there's always the aisle or the crew compartment."
"Privacy seems to be at a premium then. I hope no one snores too loudly." Again, a small wave of chuckles ran through the crowd. Kara was impressed with Ed's ability to bring a crowd around, to hold their attention and keep it for hours. If she had had teachers like him, she probably would have continued in college for her Master's rather than settling for the Bachelor's she had.
"Let's see, where were we?" Ed asked no one in particular. "Ah, yes, cataloguing the layers."

"Our first job was to match the layers in the rocks and boulders strewn about to the layers in the canyon walls. Laura was even better at it than Pup or I. She could spot the differences in different hues of red and tan better than anyone I could have brought with us. She claimed that her attention to detail was what drew her to biology, and combined with her love of jigsaw puzzles, this was just up her alley.
"I could tell Pup was getting anxious, he couldn't concentrate, kept looking off to where Amir and Alex were working. I had to call him to task a number of times. Finally, mostly through Laura's attention to detail, we had pieced the larger rocks into a rough sort of time line, similar to matching up tree rings from different trees. By then, however, it was starting to get late, our oxygen tanks were beginning to run low, and my stomach had gone from growling in hunger to barking and biting. I switched my comm unit to the second frequency, the one Amir and Alex were on, and called them back to base. Amir started climbing down from their perch quickly enough, but he had to go back and pull Alex away.
"After we had each gone through the airlock into the clean room, taken off our suits, vacuumed as much dust as we could from them and ourselves, gone through the pressurized doorway, that kept a higher pressure in the main habitat than in the entry room to keep dust out, and sat around the dining table with our plates of protein and veggies, I finally got the chance to talk with the kids about the work that had been done.
"Alex was the most talkative, she had been digging in a layer she was sure was volcanic, and thought she hadn't found anything yet, based on the size of the layer, she was pretty sure it was a major event. She told Pup that he had been right about where to look, she was certain we'd find something before we left.
"Pup, who had been staring sullenly at his plate, making pictures in his food, perked up and gave Alex a big smile. Amir wasn't quite as garrulous, he thought we had bitten off more than we could chew, that the odds of us stumbling over a fossil with the limited time and range we had, were so microscopic that even Laura would have a hard time seeing them in her lab.
"His comments cast a pall over the room, and I felt the need to try and cheer them up a bit. I told them that we'd work here a couple days, then we would all take a walk over to a cave system I had noticed while we were landing. It was only about an hour's walk away, and caves, I told them, would be our best hope. The weathering and erosion would have been slighter, and animals may have survived longer inside them than out.
"Amir still argued that we should set out immediately, while Pup argued just as hard that we should give 'his' site a chance. We stayed for 4 days, and every day, Pup worked longer and harder than anyone else. He'd push himself to the limits of his body as well as his suit. Often, he came back with a suit almost completely emptied of oxygen, and he ate three times as much food as the rest of us each evening.
"Finally, it began to sink in, even to Pup, that we were not going to stumble across fossils the way we were looking. I had tried to fashion a correlation between hunting fossils here and with doing the same in the badlands in the Western United States. Despite the similarity in the appearance, the saturation of animal or plant life was just way too small…if there was any at all, to make it plausible to find it as we were.
"The next day, we set out for the cave. I had Pup carry the majority of our supplies in a bag on his back. Laura opted to stay back at the base. With the amount of single-celled specimens she had, she could have gone home and studied them for the rest of her life, and still never find out all there was to learn. Since she was back at the base, she became like our Mission Control. She had access to the satellite weather feeds. We had enough food, water, and air to last the night, if we had to, but nothing could really help us if we stumbled into a crater or crack.
"Alex and Amir were up ahead of us, excitedly pointing out features in the walls of the canyon, almost skipping in their desire to see what the next curve showed them. My mind was lost in the scene around us as well. Looking at the layers upon layers in the walls, I could feel the history, billions and billions of years of it. I became even more convinced that we would find evidence of life. In my head, I was picturing fields of fossils, just inside the cave we were heading toward when I heard a dull thump and Pup yelling into the mics, 'I quit!'
"I turned around and saw that he had fallen back about 100 meters. The bag he had been carrying was laying on the ground, and he was sitting on top of it, his arms crossed. I asked him what was wrong, and that opened him up to a whole tirade about how he was the one doing all the hard work. That Alex and Amir were always allowed to go running off and galavanting around like children. I thought it was he who was acting more like a child, but I knew it wouldn't be the most tactful thing to say at that point."

Ed had to reach up and wipe away an errant tear. He masked the movement as a sign of stiffness, stretching and forcing a yawn, but Kara could see what he had done. She couldn't understand why this would bring a tear to his eye, and decided that she was probably reading too much into the action. It may have been exactly as he made it seem. They had been sitting in the shuttle now for the better part of a day. And an extrremely unusual day, at that.
Kara asked the people around them to let them up so they could walk around a bit and get some blood flowing in their legs again. Ed looked at her gratefully, and Jack grimaced a bit as he stood up and bent his back as far back as it would go, letting loose a groan.
The three of them walked back to the big hole in the side of the shuttle and looked out at the landscape that was both extremely strange and yet oddly familiar. It was almost possible to convince yourself you were out on a camping expedition, not trapped so far in the past that your bones wouldn't even survive until your birth unless extremely precise conditions were met.
"It still doesn't seem real," Jack almost whispered. Ed smiled to hear the course of his thoughts matched by someone else's voice.
"It's as real as heartattack, unfortunately."
"And just as likely to be one of the things you worry about during the normal course of your life," Kara added.
"Yeah, with current medical advances, getting thrown back in time to before the existence of dinosaurs ranks right around heartattack and Bubonic plague," Jack said with a slight smile. "Well, current for us, not for our little Lystrosaurus friend." This sobered them up again.
"You bring up some good points," said a voice from behind them. All three of them whirled around and saw the pilot of their shuttle. "Would you three care to take a little walk with me, out in the sunshine? Or what's left of it."
They nodded their assent, and followed him out the gash. Away from their shuttle's air circulation, the difficulty breathing took hold again. Ed had to consciously tell his body to breathe deeply just to get enough oxygen to walk, and had to consciously avoid thinking about what the heightened carbon dioxide could do to them. The fact that no one had died from carbon dioxide poisoning yet was a good start, but it could build up in their bodies very quickly. Perhaps they should see about fashioning masks and air tanks…
He coughed and realized he hadn't been thinking about breathing deeply while his thoughts had wandered, and his body was crying for more sweet oxygen. Thankfully, the pilot stopped just a few yards from the shuttle, and leaned on a log that had been torn down during their crash.
"Right now, we have a large group of people who are in shock. They don't believe we're where you," the pilot nodded at Ed, "say we are."
"Hey!" Jack started, but the pilot raised his hand and shook his head.
"I believe him. I saw that hole in space, or time, or whatever it was. What I'm trying to say is, part of their mind is still expecting to see lights and hear sirens as the emergency vehicles come over the horizon. They're expecting to be rescued from this, admittedly strange, island. They'll have a great story, possibly even a local news interview and minor celebrity, and then they'll go back to their lives. Some may even be expecting to wake up. But once it sinks in, once it becomes clear that they're not waking up no matter how hard they pinch themselves, and no cavalry is riding over the hill, we're going to have some panicked people, and I'm going to need some help in reassuring them." Again, he nodded at Ed. "Your story is doing a lot to take people's minds off the current situation, and maybe we can institute a sort of story telling round table, a little escapism, and a way to let people remember their homes and families without descending into depression, but that just puts a bandage over a gushing wound."
"What do you mean?" Jack asked. "What more can we do?"
"That brings up the other point you made, heart attacks, and other medical conditions. What do we do with our meager medical supplies? I'm not sure if we even have a doctor among us. Do we initiate triage and let the people with severe injuries die to save our supplies for people with better chances of survival? Do we try to save everyone, use up our supplies, and hope we can figure out something else to use?
"Right now, I have some authority because of my status as the pilot, but that won't last long. People will wonder why they need to listen to me. Some may even consider the fact that I'm the one who crashed us as a reason not to. I can't blame them. I didn't sign up for this, and I'm pretty sure I wouldn't follow my lead either. You three, however, are winning their hearts and minds. You're calm, Ed, here, knows more about this time than anyone else, and a small group or council is probably the best thing to try and set up, and now is the time to start thinking about that."
Jack was shaking his head, "I don't know the first thing about being a leader." Kara placed her hand on his arm, but didn't say anything.
"I'm not so sure I want that kind of responsibility either," Ed said, remembering Pup. "I didn't do such a good job last time I was in charge." Another errant tear started forming, but Ed blinked it away.
"We need someone, or a group of people, to keep us together, to forestall a panic, and to come up with some way to organize us if we want to survive. I can make decisions on my own, but they won't be listened to for long, and unilateral decision making works best when there is a vast population of nameless, faceless people, not a handful of stranded people who look you in the eye and demand you help them."
"What about a lottery, or an election?" Jack suggested with hope in his eyes.
"I can tell you right now, an election would come down to you three, perhaps myself as well. And a lottery only fills a position, there's no reason to think the person or people picked will be capable or even willing to do anything."
Ed looked around at his friends and he saw resignation fighting with fear right on their faces. His own, he was sure, showed little, but without being able to see it, he couldn't be entirely certain.
"I think," he began, considering each word as he said it, "that our first order of business is to set up some sort of consensus leadership. We'll have to come up with rules or laws that will make some people unhappy. Rules and laws always do, so we need people that are trusted to be the ones to write those rules and enforce them, otherwise no one will listen and we'd be back in anarchy. In that respect, I agree with our good captain, here." This time Ed nodded at the pilot.
"Let's go back, and set up a nomination. Anyone can nominate anyone they choose, and if that nomination is seconded and thirded, that person is added to a list. Once we have all the nominees, we'll have a rough consensus vote. A show of hands for each person, and if they garner a super majority, 60% or so, they can be added to the council or whatever. The size will then be entirely up to the people, and the composition will be people who are trusted by most of the people."
Everyone nodded at Ed's suggestion, and the pilot shook his hand.
"It's going to be you guys, and I wish you luck." With that, he led them back to the shuttle.

When they entered the shuttle, Ed took a big breath, grateful for the sensation of getting enough oxygen. The pilot stood up at the front of the group and explained what they were going to do. A lot of people seemed disgusted with the prospect of worry about politics, but many others were nodding along and looking to see if they were comfortable nominating anyone.
When it all shook out, the pilot had been right in asserting that Ed, Jack and Kara would make it onto the council, but there were a couple more. The pilot, himself, was added by almost as large a show of hands as the first three, and rounding out the council was a short woman with graying black hair. She was a doctor, and had been instrumental in helping a number of people with cuts, bruises and broken bones sustained in the crash.
The five of them shook hands, got to know each other a bit, and then stood around with the blank expressions of those who are expected to lead but have absolutely no idea what to do next, each hoping that one of the others would take the lead.
Finally, Kara spoke up, "We should probably all meet tomorrow to discuss the things we want to do first. I, for one, would like to hear the rest of Ed's story, and get some sleep. That little walk out in the air tired me more than I thought it should have."
They all jumped at the suggestion, and just like that, Ed found himself back in his old, familiar seat with everyone's eyes on him. He sipped a little water, cleared his throat and began again.

"So, Pup was throwing a tantrum, or so I thought. It seemed to me, that since Laura had been spending more time with her bacteria than Pup, he had been getting moodier and moodier. For a time, I guess, he could throw himself into the work, which he had done for a few days, but this hike had given him time to think and stew, and he had finally just exploded.
"Thinking this, I decided to try and mollify him, rather than pull rank. I told him that I had him carrying evrything because I knew he could handle it and that he would then have more freedom to climb around in the caves. That I would have the A-Team working with me to try and see if the sequencing of the layers in this part of the canyon conformed to the layering in the other. Considering the small distances involved, it was likely the layers would match almost perfectly and the survey would be done in short order, but at least Pup picked up the sack and started trudging again.
"He still wasn't happy, and Alex began to complain about having to do busy work, but Amir grabed her arm and stared into her eyes through the two layers of plastic seperating them, and she quieted down as well.
"I was beginning to think we might actually have a peaceful day of work ahead of us, when Laura radioed.
"'There's a dust storm pulsating in Hellas Basin. It's been there for a couple days, but they just released a new forecast that anticipates this storm will shortly expand out of there, eventually covering the entire planet. This is gonna be one of the big'uns.'
"I asked her how quickly it was anticipated to reach us at Marineris, and she said the forecast wasn't that exact. It said anywhere from a day to a week, depending on when it left Hellas, how quickly it moved, and a variety of atmospheric conditions.
"I told Laura we were going to go back and ride out the storm in our home base. Knowing how long these things lasted, it was probable that we would end up having to abandon our search and get airlifted out. Unfortunately, the others knew it as well. Amir was unhappy at the situation, but knew we had still discovered some interesting things, and with Laura's work, the trip would still have yielded fantastic science. Pup and Alex didn't agree. They said we should at least spend some time in the caves. They argued that Laura would be able to let them know the minute the storm left Hellas, and the forecast would become much more exact at that point. Since we were only an hour from base, we'd have more than enough time to get back before it hit us.
"I admit, I was more than a little disappointed at an abrupt end to our trip, especially with nothing to show for it, as far as our main purpose was concerned. I looked at Amir, and even he seemed to be grabbing that small string of possibility. Against my better judgment, I agreed to stay and see what we could find in the caves.
"It immediately became apparent that the decision had been a bad one. For one thing, we found that the rock surrounding us blocked our comm transmissions if we were not in direct line of sight. That meant we were out of contact with Laura. Again, Alex and Pup argued that we had more than enough time, that the fastest a storm could get here was a day, and that a week was the more likely scenario. I should have listened to my instincts, but I was just as anxious to see what we would find.
"The first cave we went into very quickly petered out, the second could have gone for miles, but a cave-in blocked our way around the first bend. Third time seemed like the charm, we were quite a distance in, when the roof started slanting down. It looked like it was going to be another dead end, but it didn't quite reach the ground.
"Pup dropped to the ground and shined his light through the gap.
"'I can see that it widens back up. It's only about five feet thick, and I can't be sure, but it looks like there's something lying on the ground,' The excitement in his voice was contagious, and all three of them were trying to convince me to let Pup try and crawl through the gap. His air tank wouldn't fit on his back, so he was going to try and hold his breath all the way through, then have one of us push his air tank through after him.
"When I pointed out that he would then be trapped on the otherside, since there was no one over there to push his tank back through, Alex said she'd go with him. She could push both tanks through, then crawl through. Amir and I were both too large to fit, and he was obviously getting unhappy at the amount of agreement growing between Alex and Pup. He argued quite vehemently that it was too dangerous, that there were other caves they could explore.
This only served to put Alex and Pup on one side against him. Finally, I told Amir he should go back out to the mouth of the cave and contact Laura. If the dust storm was still stuck in Hellas, then I'd consider the stunt, if it had started expanding, we'd have to move on to the next cave. Amir accepted the compromise, but Pup just pulled Alex down and they both started shining their lights through the gap.
Amir and I kept up a steady stream of converstaion and noise, and when his voice started to become filled with static, I started following him, hoping to keep us all in communication. When I reached a point where the chatter between Alex and Pup was becoming difficult to hear in the static, I told Amir that this was as far as I could go. He said he could see some light coming in around one more bend, so he said he'd hurry out and back in.
"Less than two minutes later, he was running back in, yelling over the comm that the storm had started moving almost as soon as we were out of contact with Laura. It had exploded out of Hellas, faster than any storm anyone had ever seen. It was moving northeast at just over 260 miles an hour, which meant we had less than 24 hours before we would be completely engulfed.
"When I figured out what Amir was telling me, I tried to call Pup or Alex, and realized I couldn't hear them any more, even between bursts of static. Amir and I hurried back to the gap, and there was no one in sight. I could see scrapes in the dust in front of the gap, and with a sinking heart, I knew they hadn't waited for us to get back. Amir and I laid down and shined our lights under the gap, but we couldn't even see their feet. We still couldn't raise them on the com either. All of the frequencies we tried just blared static in our ears. At one point, I thought I heard something, but I couldn't find it again. It was probably just my imagination anyway.
"I told Amir to hurry out of the cave to call Laura and tell her to call the shuttle back, pack up the base as quickly as possible, and then come pick us up. I also had Amir place an emergency transponder in front of the cave entrance. While he was doing this, I was trying to call Alex or Pup, flipping through the frequencies as quickly as I could.
"While I was laying on the ground, looking through the gap and calling for them, I felt the ground below me shake, and a cloud of dust billowed out from the gap. I screamed until my voice was hoarse, tears streaming down my face. And that's how Amir found me. He helped me up, and I began to tell him what I had felt, when an oxygen tank was shoved out onto our side of the narrows. We both hurried to it and grabbed the hand that thrust out. When we pulled the person out, we still couldn't tell which of them it was, the dust was covering the helmet.
"No one else came out of the gap, however, and when I cycled through the frequencies, I finally heard Alex crying. We wiped the helmet clear of dust and all but carried her out of the cave. When we got out, we heard Laura calling, over and over, asking what was going on and telling us tha the shuttle would be there to pick us up within a half hour.
"It took that entire time to calm Alex down. The shuttle flshed over head, banked sharply, and landed just a few yards away from us. Dust kicked up by the landing made Alex flinch, but we hustled her inside, helped her get her helmet and suit off, then removed our own.
"Sitting in the passenger cabin as the shuttle sped over the land back to Planitia, we were able to coax out the beginning of her story, and the rest we heard in Planitia while the global dust storm screamed outside the city. Her crying subsided over the trip to Planitia, and while we waited there for our transport back to Earth, she seemed almost numb. Laura was just as bad, but she threw herself even harder into her work. I envied her the ability to do that. The rest of us had no such possibility. Amir was shaken up, but whether it was over the loss of Pup, or his own loss of Alex, I was never able to figure out.
"Alex began, 'Pup was sure he saw something in there. As soon as you turned the corner, he started taking off his oxygen tank. He probably had two lungfuls left in his suit once that was done, so I couldn't argue with him. He pushed himself under the rock, his helmet scraping on the top and the bottom. As soon as I saw him reach the other end, I pushed his tank all the way through. Once he was hooked back up to it, I could hear him breathing deeply, but it was full of static. I couldn't hear if he said anything, so all I could think to do was follow him through. I shoved my tank through, and I saw him pull it the rest of the way. I was holding my breath, but squeezing through that little gap was very claustrophobic. I almost panicked, which would have meant the end, but Pup was able to reach through and pull me, soothing me as soon as we could hear each other.
"'When we both stood up and hooked my oxygen back up, we turned around and shined our lights all around. The cave continued on as far as we could see, and Pup started moving away from the gap. About 10 meters away, he dropped to his knees and started digging the dust and sand away from some sort of lump in the ground. When I got close enough to see, my heart started racing. It looked just like a skull, a bit of jaw and  an occipital cavity.'
"When I heard this, I stared at her intently. Any way to salvage this trip was a straw to cling to. Some reason for Pup's death, but as she continued, it became clear they had just found a rock with a very interestong shape.
"'As Pup digged deeper,' she said, 'it lost its skull shape and became just another rock with lumps and holes. I told him we should go back, since what he had seen wasn't what he thought. But he just kept walking down the cave By this time, he probably didn't even care if I was following him or not. He wasn't talking, nor did he look at me. There was something kind of scary in his eyes. After a hundred yards or so, we reached another turn in the cave. At this point, it became obvious that the cave was formed by water. There was a fluid, almost rippled look to the sides, and it began to spiral down, like a drain. The cave system must be deep, because we couldn't see a bottom.
"'Again, I tried to convince him to go back, I even turned and started walking back alone, hoping he wouldn't be stupid enough to continue alone. But when I looked back, he was gone, sliding down the drain on his backside. I hurried back to the drain, but the connection was already beginning to degrade. The last thing I heard from him was, "Oh man! Ed's gotta see this!"'
"She broke down at this point. It took us a good half hour to get her to tell us what happened next. She told us the ground rumbled, just as I had felt, but it was violent enough to knock her to one knee, and dust started flying out of the drain. She screamed Pup's name, but never heard anything, and when the dust got too thick to see, she crawled back the way they had come, then felt along the wall to find the gap. She took off her oxygen tank, and flung it under the gap. The rest I already knew."

Ed's shoulders slumped. Kara put her arms around him, and Jack even tried to comfort him, a bit clumsily. There was varied reactions from the crowd around them, some people had tears, others were outright crying. Some seemed annoyed at the show of emotion for a kid none of them had known but Ed himself. Almost too quiet to hear, Ed continued his story.

"Any time a person dies while out on the surface of Mars, there's an inquiry. The youth of Pup just made the scrutiny that much more intense. I wanted to get a team out there, to blast that gap larger and see if maybe we could find his body and whatever it was he thought I needed to see. I'm still convinced it was a pile of bones or something that had been washed down the drain by whatever flood or river ran through there. I couldn't get anyone to fund it or even agree to let me go alone.
"The inquiry board grilled Alex, Amir and Laura for hours a piece, but that was nothing compared to what they put me through. Pup's parents even flew out, screaming for my head, my tenure at the university, or a lifetime in jail. Ultimately, the fault landed on me, both as the person in charge of the trip, but also because they said I should have forced everyone out of the caves as soon as it was apparent we were losing communications with Laura, especially knowing the dust storm was brewing. They sent the kids back home, but I stayed for another month, answering more questions and trying to get people to go out and dig in that cave, even if I couldn't be a part of it. The final decision was that it was an accident caused by negligence. I was barred from ever leading an expedition into the Martianwilds, and the university put me on a probation with an option to sever my employment at any time, regardless of tenure.
"The thing is, I think they were too lenient.
"Anyway, when it became apparent that no one was going to send out a team to search that cave, I finally booked passage back to Earth, and, well, here we are." Ed laughed with not a trace of humor in it.

He stopped talking and just stared at the floor. Eventually, the crowd broke up and everyone started getting ready for bed. Kara and Jack sat by Ed through all of it. Kara holding his hand and Jack with his hand on Ed's shoulder. After the shuttle quieted down and snores began filtering in from all sides, Ed shook himself out of his depression, and gave both of them a quick smile of thanks.
"Thank you, both, but I think we should all get some sleep now. We have a busy day ahead of us," Ed whispered. Jack and Kara simply nodded.

The next morning, Ed woke from a fitful sleep, full of dreams of Pup, falling rocks, and bones. He looked around, and saw Kara and Jack were already up near the front of the shuttle talking to the rest of the council. Ed wiped the sleep from his eyes, stretched the kinks out of his neck and back, and hurried over. He reached the little group just as a small woman did. She was very thin, almost emaciated, with a pinched face and stringy black hair hanging in her face. He could barely hear what she said, "I'd like to help you out, anything I can do: errands, filing, whatever you need."