Free Hide and seek by Paul Preuss Page B

turned away from the vista point and started the curving walk to the center of town.
    Noctis Labyrinthus, the Labyrinth of Night, was a huge, chaotic patch of badlands–only a fraction of which was visible from any vista point–carved out millions of years ago by the catastrophic melting of subsurface permafrost. Before explorers had landed on the surface of Mars it wasn’t known whether the heat needed to form the Labyrinth had been generated by the impact of a giant meteorite, by a vast volcanic outburst, or by some other mechanism. Whatever had melted the ice, the resulting torrents had flowed northward and eastward in flash floods as great as any in the history of the solar system, into the rift valley of the Valles Marineris, where they had helped sculpt the fantastic cliffs and hanging valleys of the biggest canyon on any of the known worlds–four times deeper than North America’s Grand Canyon, longer than North America is wide.
    When the first explorers reached the Labyrinth, they confirmed that it had formed not as the result of an instantaneous event but over tens of thousands of years–instantaneous by geological standards, perhaps, but not in terms of human life. Mars was still geologically active; deep down, and occasionally at its surface, the planet’s volcanic fires still burned. Vulcanism was more common on Mars than 20th century planetologists had suspected. The first active volcano on Mars was sighted within a year of the establishment of a permanent observation base on Phobos.
    The Labyrinth’s volcanic heyday was over, and today it was stabler than other regions of the planet. The cliffs were still rich in water ice, which here and there lay exposed in layers. The site included some of Mars’s most spectacular scenery and was only five degrees south of its equator, which made shuttle landings and takeoffs convenient and fuel conservative. Even the temperature was balmy–for Mars. Throughout its short history Labyrinth City had grown simultaneously as a scientific and administrative base and as a tourist attraction.
A fifteen-minute walk brought Sparta through the municipal tubes to the grandiose lobby of the Mars Interplanetary Hotel.
    Sparta’s only luggage was the carefully packed duffle bag that rested lightly on her shoulder. Her instinct was to resist the bellgirl who reached for it as she approached the desk, but the social awareness in which she’d been trained, although she’d never felt it a part of her nature, reminded her that the Mars Interplanetary wasn’t exactly a youth hostel. She surrendered the duffle without resistance.
    She had not been at the desk half a minute when a man approached; disguising her wariness, she turned calmly toward him as he came too close, pushing into her personal space. His blond hair was cut very short and he had skin of the peculiar burnt-orange color that comes from addiction to a tanning machine. His transparent eyebrows were lifted in a smile over his watery blue eyes, and all his yellow teeth were exposed. Sparta noted the wide gap between his upper incisors. He needed work.
He leaned even closer. “You are Inspector Troy?”
     
She nodded. Sparta needed no heightened perception to smell the rademas heavy on his breath. It was a common addictive stimulant.
    “Please allow me to introduce myself. I am Wolfgang Prott, the manager of our Mars Interplanetary Hotel here.” Prott was a tall man, wearing a shiny suit of some silklike fabric–not real, which would have been worth a fortune–a suit that was expensive enough to border on the flashy. “Please call me Wolfy, everyone does, and it would be odd if you did not.” He held out his right hand.
His W’s were V’s, and as she took his moist hand she asked, mocking his thick Swiss-German accent, “Did you say Volfy? Or Wolfy? ”
    “Volfy or Volfy, it’s all the same to me,” he replied, resolutely cheerful. Sparta wondered why she’d been rude. She was not habitually sarcastic, not