Dark Benediction

Bowing low at the consecration, the unhappy Peruvian thought of the prayer a rabbi had sung the week before: “Blessed be the Lord our God, King of the Universe, Who makest bread to spring forth out of the Earth.”

Earth chalice, Earth blood, Earth God, Earth worshippers—with plastic tubes in their chests and a great sickness in their hearts.

He went away saddened. There was no faith here, Faith needed familiar surroundings, the props of culture Here there were only swinging picks and rumbling machinery and sloshing concrete and the clatter of tools and the wheezing of troffies. Why? For five dollars an hour and keep?

Manue, raised in a back-country society that was almost a folk-culture, felt deep thirst for a goal. His father had been a stonemason, and he had laboured lovingly to help build the new cathedral, to build houses and mansions and commercial buildings, and his blood was mingled in their mortar. He had built for the love of his community and the love of the people and their customs, and their gods. He knew his own ends, and the ends of those around him. But what sense was there in this endless scratching at the face of Mars? Did they think they could make it into a second Earth, with pine forests and lakes and snow-capped mountains and small country villages? Man was not that strong. No, if he were labouring for any cause at all, it was to build a world so unearthlike that he could not love it.

The foundation was finished. There was very little more to be done until the drillers struck pay. Manue sat around the camp and worked at breathing. It was becoming a conscious effort now and if he stopped thinking about it for a few minutes, he found himself inspiring shallow, meaningless little sips of air that scarcely moved his diaphragm. He kept the aerator as low as possible, to make himself breathe great gasps that hurt his chest, but it made him dizzy, and he had to increase the oxygenation lest he faint.

Sam Donnell, the troffie mech-repairman, caught him about to slump dizzily from his perch atop a heap of rocks, pushed him erect, and turned his oxy back to normal. It was late afternoon, and the drillers were about to change shifts. Manue sat shaking his head for a moment, then gazed at Donnell gratefully.

That’s dangerous, kid,” the troffie wheezed. “Guys can go psycho doing that. Which you rather have: sick lungs or sick mind?”

Neither.”

“I know, but—”

I don’t want to talk about it.”

Donnell stared at him with a faint smile. Then he shrugged and sat down on the rock heap to watch the drilling.

Oughta be hitting the tritium ice in a couple of days,” he said pleasantly. “Then we’ll see a big blow.”

Manue moistened his lips nervously. The troffies always made him feel uneasy. He stared aside.

“Big blow?”

“Lotta pressure down there, they say. Something about the way Mars got formed. Dust cloud hypothesis.” Manue shook his head. “I don’t understand.”

“I don’t either. But I’ve heard them talk. Couple of billion years ago, Mars was supposed to be a moon of Jupiter. Picked up a lot of ice crystals over a rocky core. Then it broke loose and picked up a rocky crust—from another belt of the dust cloud. The pockets of tritium ice catch a few neutrons from uranium ore—down under. Some of the tritium goes into helium. Frees oxygen. Gases form pressure. Big blow.”

What are they going to do with the ice?”

The troffie shrugged. “The engineers might know.” Manue snorted and spat. “They know how to make money.”

“Heh! Sure, everybody’s gettin’ rich.”

The Peruvian stared at him speculatively for a moment. “Senor Donnell, I—”

“Sam’ll do.”

“I wonder if anybody knows why… well… why we’re really here.”

Donnell glanced up to grin, then waggled his head. He fell thoughtful for a moment, and leaned forward to write in the earth. When he finished, he read it aloud.

“A plough plus a horse plus land equals the necessities of life.” He glanced up at Manue. “Fifteen hundred A.D.”

The Peruvian frowned his bewilderment. Donnell rubbed out what he had written and wrote again.

“A factory plus steam turbines plus raw materials equals necessities plus luxuries. Nineteen hundred A.D.”

He rubbed it out and repeated the scribbling. “All those things plus nuclear power and computer controls equal a surplus of everything. Twenty-one hundred A.D.”

“So?”

“So, it’s either cut production or find an outlet. Mars is an outlet for surplus energies, manpower, money. Mars Project keeps money turning over, keeps everything turning over. Economist told me that. Said if the Project folded, surplus would pile up—big depression on Earth.”

The Peruvian shook his head and sighed. It didn’t sound right somehow. It sounded like an explanation somebody figured out after the whole thing started. It wasn’t the kind of goal he wanted.