“Here’s a news poster signed at the bottom by an Andrew Jones of the Washington- Lenin Alliance,” Hana said from her crouch over one of the boxes. She showed it to Petrini, who read it swiftly, eyebrows lifted.

I was shivering; from the cold, from my excitement, I couldn’t tell. I put the notebook in one of the boxes. “Let’s get all this back to camp,” I said. “I’m running low on oxygen.” I looked at the group of clay-smeared people around me, and I couldn’t help smiling. “There’s a lot of work here.”

Lava Channels

Plans for the city’s defense; tapes and xeroxes of communications with the Washington-Lenin Alliance in other cities, and in space; lists of people, casualties, weapons, supplies; partial accounts of the revolution in New Houston and the Nirgal Vallis, and around Mars; memos from the Johnson still stations; and maps, including one of the east or lower end of Valles Marineris.

McNeil organized and catalogued as the little boxes were emptied, and he handed each piece or bundle of paper to an eagerly waiting scientist. Almost everyone in the expedition was in the main commons, helping to figure out what we had. Two Xerox machines were working full time to copy everything, several computer consoles were in action, and a cassette player suddenly spoke in voices obscured by radio crackle. The excitement in the air was as palpable as the smell of the copiers. Satarwal was there too, grimly working to appear unconcerned. Few people met his eye, or addressed a comment to him.

As for me — I felt as if I were dreaming. Kalinin and McNeil clapped me on the shoulders, and Kalinin said, “This is it right here, Nederland. You’ve got your proof.”

Hana heard this and looked downcast. I didn’t understand this; but then, reflecting on it, I thought I did. I followed her to the coffee machine in the hall.

“He’s wrong, you know. We’ll need every bit of supporting physical evidence that we can find.” So that her taggarts would still mean something, you see.

And the way she smiled at me I knew I had guessed what troubled her. She had felt what I would have felt in her place; and I had figured it out and done something about it to help. I don’t know if I am less able than other people to understand my fellow humans, but I suspect it is so. It happened so seldom like this, to see someone’s face and know what they felt! Elation bloomed in me like a flower, and impulsively I shook Hana’s hand. Even the sight of Petrini and Satarwal conferring down the hall could do nothing to dampen my mood. I returned to the main commons and wandered, looking over shoulders and congratulating students right and left for their good work, causing a growing ripple of smiles and laughter. I shook hands with McNeil, who was still cataloguing. Behind him the Kleserts were leaning over a table, absorbed in one of the notebooks. “It’s like reading Scott’s journal,” Claudia said.

Satarwal came back into the room, and I approached him. “This material implies a cover-up by the Aimes Commission, you know,” I said in a friendly way. “Aimes and many of the witnesses are still in government service. Questions are going to have to be asked.” And the answers will make heads roll! I wanted to add. Satarwal gave me a cold look, and Petrini joined him.

Petrini, looking over at Satarwal to be sure he had it right, said, “We feel that even though the rioters here in New Houston obviously fancied themselves part of a larger thing, it is still a question whether any planet-wide revolution was planned. Especially given the great bulk of evidence to the contrary in the Aimes Report.”

But it only made me laugh, at the time. I was too happy for such nonsense to disturb me. “You people will try to explain away anything. But how much longer can you carry it off?”

So I ignored them and went back to it. Bill Strickland was repacking one of the boxes of Xeroxes under McNeil’s direction. He had a worried look on his face, and he said to me, “We should re-scan the whole south slope of Spear Canyon. There may be other things we missed.”

“You do that.” I saw by his elbow the little plastic notebook that had lain free on the floor of the car. Curiously I picked it up and tucked it under my arm; I had forgotten about it, and now I wanted to have a look at it. McNeil asked me where the boxes of duplicates should be sent; and that took a while. “Hiroko Nakayama and Anya Lebedyan will really enjoy these.” Then there were more questions concerning the car from Kalinin, and a quick meal, eaten on our feet; then Hana wanted me to look at one of the city maps found in the first box, which showed that the Leaky Tap tavern had been one of the neighborhood defense centers. With these and other matters a few hours passed, and it was not until everyone but McNeil and I had gone to bed that I got a chance to sit down with the notebook and look at it. “You’ve had this copied?” I asked McNeil.

“Several times.”

So I opened the dirty blue cover. The first page was blank; the second filled with careful, pointy handwriting.

The first indication I had of the mutiny came as we approached the inner limit of the first asteroid belt. Of course I didn’t know what it meant at the time; it was no more than a locked door.

I followed the crabbed lines of script rapidly. “Emma Weil,” I said, looking up at McNeil. “Have I heard that name before?”

“Hellas?” he said, without looking up. “I think she helped design the first city over the reservoir. I repaired the plumbing there once — it was good work for that time. I think she disappeared in the Unrest.”

“Well, I’ve found her again. It says here she was on a mining ship.”

“So how did she end up here?”

“I don’t know yet.”

McNeil came over to my table. “Where’s a duplicate of that?”

I laughed. “Did I hear that from McNeil?” I went back to reading. McNeil found a duplicate of the journal, and joined me.

So a Mars Starship Association had started their own private revolution, using the larger one on Mars to cover their theft of three miners, their construction of a starship…“That Soviet fleet,” I said in wonder, and McNeil was far enough along to nod his agreement. “Have you ever heard of this Mars Starship Association?”

McNeil shook his head. “I just heard of it two pages ago.”

He looked up. “This is really something!”

“I know.” And once I got to the point where Weil agreed to help the mutineers construct their jury-rigged starship, curiosity got the better of me, and I began skimming the pages to discover what happened next. Evading the police — readying the starship — departing for deep space — each incident set me reading faster, until Emma Weil returned to a Mars in the throes of revolution. At that point I slowed, and read with care. I cannot well describe my emotions as I made my way through the last part of her journal; each sentence seemed to answer some question I had, so that I was galvanized repeatedly by shocks of confirmation or surprise. It was as if her voice spoke to me in direct revelation, as if I had stumbled on the greatest samizdat account of them all. I was completely unprepared for the end of the account; on one page she was detailing their plans for the escape from the city, and the next page was blank. The notebook was only two-thirds full. I closed it slowly, thinking hard.

“Looks like they didn’t make it,” McNeil said. He had skimmed even faster than I. “Those burn marks — the car must have been hit.”

“True.” I stood to walk around. “But there weren’t any bodies in the car. Maybe the car was hit, and in their hurry they left all this.”

“Maybe.”

“Where’s that map of the chaotic terrain east of Marineris?”

“Second box, top. But it’s such a small scale map, it couldn’t have been used to lead them to anything. The marks may just be water stations.”