"You have your orders," said Spartan. "Carry them out."
We climbed into the car through tiny locks. The interior was pressurized and full of air, so that we were able to take off our helmets. There were large windows on all sides from which we were able to look out on the red sandy plain.
Our ship had landed in the neck of desert between Solis Lacus Major and Solis Lacus Minor, which we now shortened to Major and Minor. We were on a ridge, possibly the highest point between the two oases, although we could not see Minor to our west, since it was over the horizon.
To the east, the ground sloped downward and on the horizon we could see the dark green of vegetation that marked the edge of Major. To the north was the first of the two canals connecting the double oasis. To the south there was only desert, stretching several hundred miles to the canal junction at Pnyx.
It was about three miles to the fallen spaceship. It had toppled in the soft sand, narrowly missing an outcropping of rock. Perhaps the base of the craft had struck the rock, causing the ship to fall over. I noticed the rocks were highly polished, without any sign of stratification. Probably they were igneous. Sandstorms must have given them that fine polish—there was no water around to erode them and the polar glaciers didn't come this far south.
A little ridge prevented us from looking down into the canal, and we drove over it for our first close glimpse of this Martian phenomenon.
We weren't quite prepared for the grandeur of the view. The canal was at least five miles wide, possibly three miles deep. The walls were sometimes sheer, dropping thousands of feet, leveling off, then dropping again to form a series of gigantic terraces. In other spots landslides had crumbled the walls and a slope had been formed, rather steep, but not too precipitous for a Mars-car to negotiate.
"Let's go down!" I said.
I wanted to see the bottom of this majestic ditch. It was awe-inspiring, like the Grand Canyon, which it resembled in color, except that the walls were unstratified. These rocks had never been formed at the bottom of the sea, but had been baked by the internal fires of the planet. The last sea had dried before the canals had been cut. Although they were red, the color shaded from a brilliant scarlet to a brownish green at the bottom. There was vegetation down there, and something else, as precious as anything we'd seen thus far—water!
There wasn't too much of it; merely a tiny stream flowing in the center of the canal, its path straight, like the canal itself. "I hope it's fit to drink," I told Axel. "But it's gotta be. This canal wasn't made by forces of nature. Nor could it have been built by hands, beaks or paws. Only tools could have done it. And tools are used only by intelligent life."