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"Maybe not, though," A.J. countered. "Maybe the word isn't crater. Maybe it's mine or quarry."



Skibow raised an eyebrow. "Good point. It could, I suppose, also mean colony, if they were settling the area."



Helen made a face. "I see your problem. You're in the same position we were when we had the single arm-plate from Bemmie, trying to reconstruct something incredibly complex from almost no information at all."



"Yes. We hope that we can examine at least some of these craters and determine what it is about them that made them worth labeling. The puzzling part is that they certainly aren't the most spectacular and interesting craters. So perhaps A.J.'s guess is right: these are craters that had something interesting in them from a practical standpoint."



"Tell you what," A.J. said. "I'll have a couple of the Faeries pop away from Phobos for a bit and do some focused imaging and scanning on any of those craters that are in range. Combine that with the pretty heavy-duty info we already have on Mars, and I might at least be able to tell you something interesting about the ones you have labeled on the Mars maps. Do your maps cover all of Mars?"



"Oh, not even close," Skibow replied. "Perhaps twenty percent of the surface, and thirteen labeled craters in that area."



"Bring it up and let's see the equivalence on the surface."



The diagrams from the alien maps showed on the screen, and then faded. A map of Mars appeared, with part of what would be the tropical and subtropical portion of the northern hemisphere highlighted.



"Okay, I see. Yeah, I think the Faeries can get some decent images and ground penatrating radar shots on that, if the returns can be sorted out. I was getting some returns from Mars initially, but that doesn't mean that all parts of Mars will be equally good for GPR. The geometry might screw me up, too. But we'll see."



"Aren't you supposed to keep the Faeries researching Phobos?" Helen reminded him.



"I'm supposed to find out as much as I can about Phobos, the alien base, and anything else I can about Bemmie. These maps and the craters indicated are definitely related to Bemmie and his people. So I figure that if, by doing a little detective work, I can resolve our debate about just what they found interesting about those craters, I'll be just doing my job."



"True enough," Helen said. "I doubt anyone's going to argue with you anyway, not when you're basically our only source of on-hand investigation for the next couple of months."



"There are advantages to being virtually indispensable." A.J. grinned.



"Which is why you shouldn't be scaring us by getting so close to being dispensed with."



A.J. managed to keep his grin, but it faltered a bit. He'd quietly admitted to Helen that his recent brush with death had scared him, much more than his first, because this one had taken slow days to close in on him. The fire and explosion had been a few moments of pain and panic and effort, and then he'd woken up with the worst behind him. This time his own body had been slowly and inexorably shutting down, cutting off his air and energy.



"Yeah. Well, that's over, anyway. And we've taken a lot of steps to keep anything like that from happening again." He suddenly blinked and looked surprised.



"What is it?"



"Just remembered something I'd completely forgotten about while I was sick. I have to go talk to Ken."



"A problem?"



"Probably nothing, but he should know anyway." Helen could tell that there was more to it, but obviously he preferred to keep the information to himself.



She didn't press him. Part of the reason she and A.J. got along as well as they did was that they gave each other a lot of room. One of the few things she'd found amusing about the tabloids' obsession with her and A.J. had been their constant predictions that the two of them were on the verge of a breakup. In point of fact, their relationship had been remarkably free of much in the way of quarreling—quite unlike the marriage Helen had gotten into for six miserable years when she'd been in her twenties. The one and only photograph the tabloids had ever published that seemed to show them yelling at each other—which they ran endlessly, of course— had actually been a shot of the two of them trying to sing.



Something which neither of them could do worth a damn, and had proven it that day to their mutual satisfaction. Helen would also allow that part of the reason the tabloids loved that photo was that it had been taken while they were vacationing in Florida and Helen's bikini had been . . . Well, a bikini.



A skimpy one, at that, even by bikini standards. Helen had only worn it because A.J. had bought it for her and insisted—and she had never worn it since.