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Rugged fictional Martian landscape, empty red desert across foreground. Midground holds sprawling futuristic city beneath gigantic transparent glass dome, architecture combining sweeping lines with fantasy-genre towers. Dome encloses city as one major structure, grounded on Martian surface rather than floating in sky. Exactly two small moons: one rocky and roughly spherical, other smaller, rocky, irregularly shaped. Vibrant colors, slightly surreal and abstract, intricate detail; fantastic alien planetary atmosphere. Digital illustration reminiscent of 1970s science-fiction book-cover art.
For three hours the canyon had fed them nothing but red stone, glare, and one more
turn. Dust caked their suit joints. Mercer had gone silent. Hale's muttering had worn
down into a steady thread of profanity. Rill kept thumbing the scanner as if she could
bully dead geology into becoming interesting.
Then the canyon opened and all four of them stopped at once.
The plain beyond was naked. Cracked hardpan. Red to the horizon. A sky with too
many moons in it.
And in the middle of all that emptiness sat a city.
White, whole, clean enough to make the eye distrust itself.
Terraces. Spires. Long bright spans. And over the whole impossible thing a shell so
clear Mercer missed it on the first look. Then the curve flashed with sky and he saw
the dome entire, huge and perfect, roofed over the city like somebody had taken a
piece of tomorrow and put it under glass.
Nobody said anything. They had crossed a year of black between suns to reach this
system and spent eleven days on the ground learning what kind of planet this was.
Wind. Dust. Stones. They had come through the canyon looking for an easier route
west.
Hale made a raw sound. “Tell me I am not seeing that.”
Rill looked from the scanner to the city. “You are seeing that.”
“Life?” Mercer said.
“Nothing moving. No obvious breach. No collapse.” Her voice sharpened. “If it's
dead, it's showing off.”
Venn whispered, “Pressure shell. Contained environment. Maybe power, maybe
atmosphere, maybe—”
“Maybe a door,” Hale said.
That did it.
Not wonder. Not caution. Hunger.
They all started talking at once, pointing, arguing about access ways, service locks,
whether a place built this beautifully would hide its entrance or dare you to walk up
to it. Mercer heard his own voice and almost laughed. A minute ago he had been
thinking about water discipline and boot seals and whether Hale was limping. Now
every tired part of him had one thought in it and the thought had teeth.
He raised the field glasses.
The city jumped close enough to hurt. Broad white avenues. Smaller domes inside
the greater one. Needle towers. Bridges thin as light. No drifted dust. No scars. No
ruins. It looked indecently ready, as if somebody ought to come hurrying out to
apologize for the delay.
“Mercer,” Rill said, tight now, “if there are people in there—”
“If there are people in there, they're sitting in the only place on this planet worth
stealing from God.”
He kept glassing the curve. Then he saw it: low on the eastern quadrant, a dark
interruption in the white sweep, too blunt for ornament, too deliberate to ignore.
He lowered the glasses and pointed.
Hale saw it and barked one hard delighted laugh. Venn had already started downhill,
boots skidding in the red dust.
“Easy,” Mercer snapped, moving after him. “Keep formation. Mark the route.” He
looked once more at the white city under its crystal shell. “And somebody pray that's
the front door.”
