by Ben Bova
Yeah, Luis thought. Might as well enjoy myself. I’m sure gonna pay for this later on.
Washington
Senator O’Hara held his breath. All he could hear from inside the darkness of the helmet was the faint chugging of his heart pump. It was beating fast, for some reason.
He didn’t want to seem cowardly in front of his entire staff, but the dark and the closeness of the visor over his face was stifling him, choking him. He wanted to cry out, to yank the damned helmet off and be done with it.
With the abruptness of an eyeblink he was suddenly looking out at a flat plain of rust red. Rocks and boulders were littered everywhere like toys scattered by an army of thoughtless children. The sky was a strange butterscotch color, not quite pink, not quite tan. A soft hushing sound filled his ears, like a distant whisper.
“That’s the wind,” said a disembodied voice. “It’s blowing a stiff ninety knots, according to our instruments, but the air here is so thin that I can’t feel it at all.”
I’m on Mars! the senator said to himself. It’s almost like actually being there in person.
Phoenix
It’s just like we expected it to be, Jerome Zacharias thought. We could have saved a lot of money by just sending automated probes.
“Over that horizon several hundred kilometers,” Valerii Mikoyan was saying in flat Midwestern American English, “lies the Tharsis bulge and the giant shield volcanoes, which we will explore by remote-controlled gliders and balloons later in this mission. And in this direction . . .”
Zack’s view shifted across the landscape quickly enough to make him feel a moment of giddiness.
“. . . just over that line of low hills, is the Valles Marineris. We are going to ride the rover there as soon as the vehicle is checked out.”
Why don’t I feel excited? Zack asked himself. I’m like a kid on Christmas morning, after all the presents have been unwrapped.
Houston
For a moment Debbie was startled when Doug solemnly picked up one of the VR helmets and put it on her, like a high priest crowning a new queen.
She was sitting in the springy little metal jump seat of the cross-country rover, her hands running along the control board, checking out all its systems. Solar panels okay. Transformers. Backup fuel cells. Sensors on and running. Communications gear in the green.
“Okay,” said the astronaut driving the buggy. “We are ready to roll.” It might as well have been her own voice, Debbie thought.
“Clear for canyon excursion,” came the mission controller’s voice in her earphones. The mission controller was up in the command spacecraft, hanging high above the Plain of Sinai in a synchronous orbit.
With transmission delays of ten to twenty minutes, mission control of the Mars expedition could not be on Earth; it had to be right there, on the scene.
“Go for sightseeing tour,” Debbie acknowledged. “The bus is leaving.”
Los Angeles
Luis watched the buggy depart the base area. But only for a moment. He had work to do. He was a geologist, he heard in his earphones, and his job was to take as wide a sampling of rocks as he could and pack them away in one of the return craft.
“First we photograph the field we’re going to work in.” Luis felt a square object in his left hand, then saw a digital camera. He held it up to the visor of his helmet, sighted, and clicked.
“What we’re going to be doing is to collect what’s called contingency samples,” the geologist was saying. “We want to get them aboard a return vehicle right away, the first few hours on the surface, so that if anything happens to force us to make an unscheduled departure, we’ll have a decent sampling of surface materials to take back with us.”
At first Luis had found it confusing to hear the guy’s voice in his head when it looked like he himself was walking around on Mars and picking up the rocks. He could feel them in his hands! Feel their heft, the grittiness of their surfaces. It was like the first time he had tried acid; he’d been inside his own head and outside, looking back at himself, both at the same time. That shook him up so much he had never dropped acid again.
But this was kind of different. Fun. He was the frigging geologist. He was there on Mars. He was doing something. Something worthwhile.
Washington
Collecting rocks, Senator O’Hara growled inwardly. We’ve spent a hundred billion dollars so some pointy-headed scientists can add to their rock collection. Oh, am I ever going to crucify them as soon as the committee reconvenes!
Phoenix
Zack felt as if he were jouncing and banging inside the surface rover as it trundled across the Martian landscape. He knew he was sitting in a comfortable rocking chair in his big library/bar/entertainment room. Yet he was looking out at Mars through the windshield of the rover. His hands were on its controls and he could feel every shudder and bounce of the six-wheeled vehicle.
But there’s nothing out there that we haven’t already seen with the unmanned landers, Zack told himself, with mounting despair. We’ve even brought back samples, under remote control. What are the humans on this expedition going to be able to accomplish that will be worth the cost of sending them?
Houston
Easy now, Debbie told herself. Don’t let yourself get carried away. You’re not on Mars. You’re sitting in your own living room.
Los Angeles
Luis could feel the weight of the rock. It was much lighter than a rock that size would be on Earth. And red, like rust. Holding it in his left hand, he chipped at it with the hammer in his right.
“Just want to check the interior,” he heard the geologist say, as if he were saying it himself.
The rock cracked in two. Luis saw a tracery of fine lines honeycombing the rock’s insides.
“Huh. Never saw anything like that before.” And the geologist/Luis carefully put both halves of the split rock into a container, sealed it, then marked with a pen its location in the photograph of the area he had taken when he had started collecting.
This is fun, Luis realized. I wish I could do it for real. Like, be a real astronaut or scientist. But reality was something very different. Jorge was reality. Yeah, Luis said to himself, I could be on Mars myself someday. If Jorge don’ kill me first.
Washington
Bored with the rock-sampling task, Senator O’Hara lifted the visor of his VR helmet.
“Get me out of this rig,” he told the two startled technicians. Turning to Kaiser, he said, “You can try it if you like. I’m going into my office for a drink.”
Phoenix
The ground was rising slightly as the rover rolled along. “Should be at the rim in less than a minute,” the driver said.
Zack felt his hand ease back on the throttle slightly. “Don’t want to fall over. It’s a long way down.”
Nothing ahead of them but the dull, rock-strewn ground and the butterscotch sky.
Houston
Debbie checked the time line on the dashboard computer screen and slowed the rover even more. “We ought to be just about . . . there!”
The rim of the grandest canyon in the solar system sliced across her field of view. Craning her neck slightly, she could see the cliffs tumbling away, down and down and down, toward the valley floor miles below.
Phoenix
Mist! The floor of the valley was wreathed in mists that wafted and undulated slowly, rising and falling as Zack watched.
It’s the wrong time of the year for mists to form, he knew. We’ve never seen this before.
As far as the eye could see, for dozens of miles, hundreds of miles, the mist billowed softly, gently along the floor of Valles Marineris. The canyon was so wide that he could not see the opposite wall; it was beyond the horizon. Nothing but gentle, whitish mist. Clouds of mystery. Clouds of excitement.
My gosh, Zack thought, do they extend the whole three-thousand-mile length of the valley?
Los Angeles
Luis roamed across the rust-colored sandy landscape, staring at more rocks than he ha
d ever seen in his whole life. Some the size of pebbles, a few bigger than a man. How’d they get there? Where’d they come from?
And what was over the horizon? The geologist said something about big volcanoes and mountains higher than anything on Earth. Luis thought it’d be great to see them, maybe climb them.
Houston
Debbie stared at the mists billowing along the valley floor. They seemed to be breathing, like something alive. They’ve got to be water vapor, she thought. Got to be! And where there’s water there could be life. Maybe. Maybe.
We’ve got to get down onto the valley floor. Got to!
Phoenix
Zack felt like a child, the first time his father had taken him up in a helicopter. The higher they went, the more there was to see. The more he saw, the more eager he was to see more.
Staring out at the mist-shrouded rift valley, he finally realized that this was the difference between human explorers and machines. What’s beyond the horizon? What’s beneath those mists? He wanted to know, to explore. He had to seek the answers.
He realized he was crying, tears of joy and wonder streaming down his cheeks. He was glad that none of the others could see it, inside the VR helmet, but he knew that neither embarrassment nor disapproval mattered in the slightest. What’s beyond the horizon? That was the eternal question and the only thing that really counted.
Los Angeles
Yeah, this is great, Luis thought. For these guys. For scientists and astronauts. It’s their life. But it’s not for me. When I leave here tonight it’s back to the ’hood and Jorge and all that crap.
Then a powerful surge of new emotion rose within him. Why can’t I go to Mars for real someday? Mr. Ricardo says I’m smart enough to get a scholarship to college.
Fuck Jorge. Let him do what he wants to me. I’ll fight him back. I’ll kick the shit outta him if that’s what I gotta do to get to Mars. He’ll have to kill me to keep me away from this.
Washington
Senator O’Hara was mixing his third martini when Kaiser came in, looking bleary-eyed.
“You been in the VR rig all this time?” O’Hara asked. He knew Kaiser did not drink, so he didn’t bother offering his aide anything.
“Mostly,” the pudgy little man said. O’Hara could see his aide’s bald head was gleaming with perspiration.
“Bad enough we have to waste a hundred billion on this damned nonsense. Is it going to tie up my entire staff for the rest of the day?”
“And then some,” Kaiser said, heading for the bar behind the senator’s desk.
O’Hara watched, dumbfounded, as his aide poured himself a stiff belt of whiskey.
He swallowed, coughed, then swallowed again. With tears in his eyes, he went to the leather sofa along the side wall of the office and sat down like a very tired man.
O’Hara stared at him.
Holding the heavy crystal glass in both hands, Kaiser said, “You’re going to have to change your stand on this Mars business.”
“What?”
“You’ve got to stop opposing it.”
“Are you crazy?”
“No, but you’d be crazy to try to stand against it now,” Kaiser said, more firmly than the senator had ever heard him speak before.
“You’re drunk.”
“Maybe I am. I’ve been on Mars, Teddy. I’ve stood on fuckin’ Mars!”
Kaiser had never used the senator’s first name before, let alone called him “Teddy.”
“You’d just better watch your tongue,” O’Hara growled.
“And you’d better watch your ass,” Kaiser snapped. “Do you have any idea of how many people are experiencing this Mars landing? Not just watching it, but experiencing it—as if they were there.”
O’Hara shrugged. “Twenty million, maybe.”
“I made a couple of phone calls before I came in here. Thirty-six million VR sets in the U.S., and that’s not counting laboratories and training simulators. There must be more than thirty million voters on Mars right now.”
“Bullcrap.”
“Yeah? By tomorrow there won’t be a VR rig left in the stores. Everybody’s going to want to be on Mars.”
O’Hara made a sour face.
“I’ll bet that half the voters in dear old Pennsylvania are on Mars right this instant. You try telling them it’s all a waste of money.”
“But it is!” the senator insisted. “The biggest waste of taxpayer funds since SDI.”
“It might be,” Kaiser said, somewhat more moderately. “You might be entirely right and everybody else totally wrong. But if you vote that way in the committee you’ll get your ass whipped in November.”
“You told me just the opposite no more’n ten days ago. The polls show—”
“The polls are going to swing around one hundred and eighty degrees. Guaranteed.”
O’Hara glared at his aide.
“Trust me on this, Teddy. I’ve never let you down before, have I? Vote for continued Mars exploration or go out and find honest work.”
Houston
With enormous reluctance, Debbie pulled the helmet off and removed the data gloves. Doug was still in his rig, totally absorbed. He might as well be on Mars for real, Debbie thought.
Shakily, she got up from the living room sofa and went to Douggie’s room. Her son was watching three-dimensional cartoons.
“Come with me, young man,” she said in her not-to-be-argued-with voice. The boy made a face, but turned off his 3D set and marched into the living room with his mother.
She helped him into the gloves and helmet.
“Aw, Ma,” he whined, “do I hafta?”
“Yes,” she whispered to her son. “In a few years, you would never forgive yourself if you didn’t.”
And she left her son and her husband on Mars and went back to her computer to erase her letter of resignation.
There’s a lot of work to be done, she told herself. The exploration of Mars is just beginning.
Notes
[1] Astronomers have been able, since about 1910, to estimate the distances of Cepheid variable stars by timing their pulsations. The length of this type of star’s pulsation is a true measure of its intrinsic brightness. Comparing the star’s actual brightness to its apparent brightness, as seen from. Earth, gives a good value for the star’s distance.
