Read Rainbow Mars for Free Online Page B

path. It followed the canal to a crossing canal, rotated, and found a freestanding arched bridge, fantastically long and slender. It rolled onto the bridge and into a city. Family groups stopped to watch it pass. Men, women and children, they seemed of an unknown human race, with scarlet skins and narrow lips and noses. In martian cold they dressed in little more than weapon belts and jewels. Armed nudists, looking very mammalian.
    Miya whispered into a recorder. “Look for antifreeze in their blood.”
    Two women pushed a carriage like the cart for a dole beer keg. “Freeze that,” Willy Gorky snapped. “Zoom.”
    It was rounded, the reddish-brown of martian sand, about a liter in size: an egg nested in fluffy cloth.
    The Secretary-General spoke, and all other sound chopped off. “Well, Willy, you d-did it. Aliens. Alien civilization. What next? How big is your Collector d-device? Can you bring me an ambassador?”
    â€œUltimately I can bring a whole family, Mr. Secretary”—Gorky’s eyes flicked to Ra Chen and saw his nod—“and house them in the Vivarium, but it might take years.”
    â€œEgg of a Martian, then. Something soon, ” Waldemar Eleven said, and Svetz thought: In time for the coronation.
    Gorky said, “I don’t know how to keep an egg alive. Easier with an adult Martian, I think. Mr. Secretary, I’d rather get some seeds from that tree.”
    They had seen only one object that might be called a tree. The SecGen didn’t ask which. “Why?”
    It was a strange conversation, Svetz thought. One did not speak to the Secretary-General without invitation. Gorky daren’t even volunteer information, and that meant that the SecGen himself had to ask all the right questions. A rare skill.
    â€œI want a look up,” Willy said. “Mr. Secretary, I think that tree is an orbital tower, a Beanstalk. If it is, we’ll take the whole solar system for no more than the budget we were getting from Waldemar the Tenth. Square klicks of orbital powersats. Asteroid mines. We’ll set colonies on Mars and Europa and floating in the atmospheres of Jupiter and Saturn and Venus. We’d need to plant one of these on Earth. We’d need seeds—”
    â€œCan you even f-find it again? It looked thin as a d-dream,” the SecGen said. “Willy, I’ve been trying to find the mmm, outlines of Syrtis Major and I can’t. The canals and vegetation change everything.”
    â€œMeasure from Mons Olympus, Mr. Secretary. The tree’s at twenty-seven degrees two minutes longitude, zero latitude,” said Willy Gorky.
    â€œCan your Collector device climb a tree?”
    â€œNo. Maybe we’ll find seeds near the base.”
    â€œWhat’s this going to cost me?” asked the SecGen.
    â€œAt least two more probes. Use of the time machine three times, maybe more. Maybe a manned expedition. Ra Chen?”
    They talked money.
    Svetz tuned it out. “Miya, we’ve found cities on Mars, and all they’re talking about is that tree!”
    â€œIt might be, it just might be a Beanstalk. How else could it stand up at all?”
    â€œDon’t understand the question.”
    She started to answer, but the SecGen was departing. In their mania for order, his guards were turning all into chaos.

10
    Jesse’s rod (stem). The animating and energizing force or light of Jesse; a genealogical tree; a phallus. Sometimes represented by a vine, thus equating with the beanstalk, Jacob’s ladder, or Lugh’s chain.
    â€” Dictionary of Mythology, Folklore and Symbols, by Gertrude Jobes
    Â 
    A man in Space Bureau uniform lectured the Institute people. “Geosynchronous orbit is 35,700 klicks above the Earth. Whatever you set in orbit at that height will circle the Earth in exactly a day. It’s a privileged position, because the Earth circles itself in exactly a day…”
    Svetz got lost. So he