Rachel DycekIce, the color of spilled platinum on ochre dust, extended from the breached pipeline. Water jets had boiled into the thin atmosphere and frozen into steaming, lumpy stalactites and weird white pinnacles protruding from the pipe. Before long, the solid lake would erase itself again, frothing into the Martian sky.
As she brought Percival toward the pumping station, Rachel stared in horror and tried to assess the area of spilled ice. “Thousands of liters,” she said to herself, “many thousands.”
She thought again with dismay of all the misplaced spare parts, the lost equipment, the annoying long-distance UN mutterings of her own mismanagement and “thieving dvas.” Had they begun engaging in sabotage as well—perhaps to protest her departure as commissioner?
No, she decided. Dva s
