Mars

by Ben Bova

  “I’m looking forward to flying the soarplane,” said Pete Connors in his resonant caramel voice.

  “I desire very much to see the great Olympus Mons with my very own eyes,” said Ravavishnu Patel, the Indian geologist.

  “Mount Olympus, the largest volcano in the solar system,” agreed the Egyptian geophysicist, Abdul al-Naguib.

  “I want to prove that a permafrost ocean exists beneath the surface of the ground,” Ilona Malater said. “Theory predicts it does, but I want to find it for myself and map its extent.”

  “Life.”

  Joanna Brumado spoke the one word, and all other talk stopped. Everyone turned toward her. She looked embarrassed. Her heart-shaped face colored slightly.

  “Of course life,” said Monique Bonnet, sitting next to her. “Joanna is right. The most astounding thing we could find on this world would be life.”

  No, Jamie corrected silently. The most astounding thing we could find would be intelligent life. Or its remains.

  LIFE

  The Old Ones taught that miracles are not rare. The world is filled with them.

  Life is a miracle so commonplace that it can arise wherever there is water and sunlight. Even in the desert life abounds, as long as there is a little water and sunlight.

  Did life arise on the red world? Did Man Maker and the other gods of creation start their work there? If so, life may have begun there earlier than on the blue world, because the rocks of the red world’s crust cooled sooner than those of the larger, warmer blue world. In the shallow seas that dotted the red world’s surface, life could have taken shape and begun to reproduce itself. It would have been difficult, because the red world was always colder than the blue. Often the waters would have frozen and the living things in them would have died or gone into a long hibernation that was the next thing to death. Still, life is persistent.

  The Old Ones taught that this blue world of ours is not the first world in which The People have lived. Our songs of the beginning tell how First Man and First Woman struggled upward from one world to another, from a world of darkness and cold to a red world where Water Monster tried to drown them in a raging flood because Coyote had stolen his baby. Finally they climbed to the fourth world and came out into the golden sunlight here at the center of the universe, among the mountains that mark the four corners of existence.

  First Man and First Woman did not come alone. They brought the plants and animals and all good things with them. They were also accompanied by Coyote, the Trickster. Coyote, the force of chaos. Coyote, who always worked to ruin The People’s search for order, and harmony and beauty.

  THE PROCESS OF DECISION

  1

  Jamie was in Galveston when the long-awaited, long-feared final decision was unmade.

  Ever since he had joined the Mars Project, Houston had been as much of a home as he could claim. Although he had spent months on end in training sites all across the globe, nearly half a year in Antarctica, week after week in Florida, and even weeks aboard space stations orbiting the Earth, always he returned to Houston. And Edith.

  Edie Elgin was the co-anchor of the seven and eleven o’clock news at KHTV in Houston. She had interviewed Jamie when he had first arrived at the Johnson Space Center. A dinner invitation turned into a relationship that both of them knew was temporary, at best.

  “I’m not even thinking about marriage,” Edith often told him. “Not until I get to New York and a job with one of the networks. Maybe not even then.”

  “I don’t know where I’ll be a year from now,” Jamie said to her regularly. “If I don’t make the Mars team I’ll probably head back to California for a teaching job.”

  “No commitments,” she would say.

  “Couldn’t make any even if we wanted to,” he would reply.

  Yet whenever he returned to Houston he returned to her. And although she never spoke of how she spent the time while he was away, she seemed always glad to see Jamie. They made a strange couple: the dark, taciturn, stocky half-Navaho and the blonde, vivacious, ever-smiling TV anchorwoman. She was recognized wherever they went, of course. And although she was known as Edie to everyone who watched television, to Jamie she was always Edith.

  She claimed to be a natural blonde and one hundred percent Texan, a cheerleader in high school, a beauty pageant queen at Texas A&M, where she had studied electronic journalism. She could not spell very well, but she could smile with perfect teeth even while announcing a disastrous earthquake or an airliner crash. There was a crafty brain behind the pretty smile; she knew opportunity when it arrived and she was wise enough never to let down her guard in the company of anyone even remotely connected with the news industry. With Jamie, though, she could be serious and tell him about her plans for her career. He could relax with her and forget about training and Mars and the men who stood between him and the assignment he cherished.

  Jamie had just returned from three weeks aboard the Mir 5 space station, working with Father DiNardo on the rock samples returned from Mars by the unmanned ships that had been landed on the red planet.

  He had thought that DiNardo had been given the power to make the final decision as to who would back him up on the Mars mission. The Jesuit disabused him of that notion just before he had to board the shuttle that would return him to Florida.

  DiNardo had asked him to come to the geology lab before he boarded the shuttle. The priest was waiting for him there, looking solemn, hanging weightlessly a few inches above the metal grillwork of the laboratory floor, his face so puffed up from the fluid shift that happens in near-zero gravity that he looked more like an Indian than Jamie himself. DiNardo shaved his balding scalp completely, yet there was a dark stubble across his jutting chin.

  “The board of selection has made its decision,” DiNardo said softly, the faintest hint of Italian vowels at the end of each word. From the tone of the man’s voice Jamie knew the news was bad.

  The two of them were alone in the space station’s geology lab, hovering weightlessly in the apelike half-crouching position the human body normally assumes in microgravity. A carefully sealed glass-walled cabinet behind DiNardo held row upon row of reddish soil samples and small pink rocks from the surface of Mars. Jamie felt his stomach sinking.

  “I am afraid,” DiNardo went on gently, “that the choice has gone to Professor Hoffman.”

  Jamie heard himself ask, “And you concur?” His voice sounded harsh, tense, like a bowstring about to snap.

  “I will not oppose the decision.” DiNardo made a sad little smile. “Personally, I would rather have you travel with me. I think we would get along much better. But the selection board must consider politics and many other factors. For what it is worth, the decision was the most difficult choice they had to make.”

  “And it’s final.”

  “I am afraid that it is. Professor Hoffman will be the number-two geologist on the mission. He will remain in the spacecraft in orbit about Mars and I will go down to the surface.”

  Fuck the two of you, Jamie wanted to say. Instead he merely nodded, lips clamped together so hard that an hour later he could still feel the imprint of his teeth on them.

  From Cape Canaveral Jamie had flown immediately to Houston, and from there he and Edith had driven to Galveston in her new, sleek, dark-green Jaguar. In her form-hugging jeans, tightly cuffed silk blouse, and racing-style sunglasses she looked like a movie star, especially with her blonde hair blowing in the breeze.

  “It’s a Ford Jaguar,” she shouted over the rushing wind and the growl of traffic, trying to cheer his dark mood. “Got a Mercury six and transmission under the hood. Looks like a Jag, but I don’t need an English mechanic riding in the backseat all the time!”

  As they roared along Interstate 45 Jamie said barely a word. The Friday afternoon traffic was heavy, but Edith weaved through the trucks and the other weekenders as if the highway patrol would never even try to stop her. Jamie knew that this was the last weekend he and Edith would spend together. On M
onday he would start packing his things. He wanted to be away from Houston, away from the space center, away from everything connected with the Mars mission. As far away as possible.

  Where? Back to the university at Albuquerque? Back to teaching geology to students who would spend their lives searching for oil? Back to spending summers picking at ancient meteor craters while others were exploring Mars? Back to Berkeley and his parents?

  Their hotel room in Galveston was high up in one of the towers that overlooked the Gulf of Mexico.

  “It’s a beautiful view, isn’t it?” Edith said, reaching one arm around Jamie’s waist as they stood together by the sliding glass doors that opened onto a narrow patio. She nestled her head against his shoulder.

  “Until the next hurricane,” Jamie said.

  “Yeah. We cover the storm damage every year, and every year they build more of these high-rises.”

  Jamie turned back to the bed and began to pull the shaving kit from his dark-blue nylon travel bag.

  “Which side of the, closet do you want?” Edith asked.

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  “You’re really down, huh?”

  “Down for the count,” Jamie said, taking the kit to the bathroom and placing it on the shelf above the sink without bothering to open it up.

  She was at the doorway, more serious than he had ever known her to be.

  “We got a release from the Mars program office that they’ll announce the departure date Monday morning at a press conference in Geneva.”

  Jamie nodded. “And the crew list.”

  “You won’t be going.”

  “I won’t be going to Mars,” he said.

  Edith forced a shaky smile. “Well … you been saying all along that you didn’t think they’d pick you.”

  “Now I know for certain.”

  The smile faded. “Now we both know.”

  They’ll go to Mars without me and I’ll disappear into oblivion, he said to himself, unable to speak the words aloud. I’ll become just another university geologist, going nowhere, accomplishing nothing. He looked at his face in the mirror over the sink: anger smoldered in his dark eyes. All you need is some war paint, he said to the somber image.

  Edith knew him well enough to realize he had no more words for her. She turned and went back to the sliding patio doors, tugged one open. It stuck halfway along its track.

  “Damned rust,” she muttered, slipping through the narrow opening and out onto the patio. “Air’s pure salt out here.”

  Jamie crossed the carpeted room arid leaned against the reluctant door, then pushed with all his strength with both hands, suddenly furious. It screeched and popped off its track as it slid all the way back. Jamie snorted and glared at it hanging lopsided from its top rollers. Then he stepped through onto the patio. Going out of the air-conditioned room was like going from ice cream to hot soup. He felt perspiration instantly dampening his armpits.

  Edith ignored his explosion of brute force. “Looks pretty,” she said, gazing out at the tranquil Gulf. “Between hurricanes, that is.”

  Grasping the railing beside her with both hands, Jamie tried to force his mind away from the pain and anger. “Ever seen the Pacific?”

  “Just on tapes.”

  “The surf is incredible. This is a milk pond by comparison.”

  “You ever surf?”

  “Not really,” he said. “Never had the time for it.”

  “I like sailing. Got a friend with a Hobie Cat. They’re fun.”

  Jamie took a deep breath of salt air. “The first time I saw the ocean, I must have been four, five years old. My parents had just moved to Berkeley from New Mexico and I thought the Bay was all the water in the world. Then they took me to the beach and I saw the Pacific. Damned breakers scared the shit out of me.”

  “What’re y’all gonna do now?” Edith asked, forgetting her diction lessons.

  Jamie kept his eyes on the calm water, the ripples of waves riding across the pastel green-blue water to foam briefly against the sand beach. From this height he could barely hear the hiss of the gentle surf.

  “Look for a job, I guess.”

  “At the university or in private industry?”

  “What the hell could I do in private industry that a kid ten years younger can’t?” he snapped, then immediately regretted it. More calmly, “University. But not here. I don’t want to be this close to the Mars mission. Not now.”

  “Up in Austin …?”

  “Maybe. California might be better. More likely Albuquerque.” He turned to her. “I don’t know. It’s too soon.”

  “But you’re gonna be leaving.”

  “Yes. I think so.”

  He realized that she was trying to hide the pain that she felt. Pulling her to him, Jamie held her tightly. Edith did not cry, but he could feel the tension constricting her body. He wished she would cry. He wished he could himself.

  It was two in the morning when the phone call came.

  The buzz of the phone jangled Jamie awake instantly, but for several blurry moments he did not know where he was. The phone shrilled again, insistently. He realized Edith was beside him, stirring now, mumbling into her pillow.

  His eyes adjusting to the glow of the digital clock on the dresser, Jamie reached across her naked body and lifted the phone from its base.

  “Hello.”

  “James Waterman?”

  “Who wants to know?”

  “Come now, Jamie, this is Antony Reed, in Star City. Do you have any idea how long it’s taken me to track you down?”

  “Christ, it’s two in the morning here. What the hell do you want?”

  “DiNardo’s in hospital. A gall bladder attack. He’ll need surgery.”

  Jamie sat up rigidly in the bed.

  “What’s happening?” Edith asked, awake now.

  “Did you hear me?” Reed asked. It was the first time that Jamie had ever heard the Englishman sound excited.

  “Yes.”

  “There’s a godawful row going on upstairs. Brumado’s flying in from the States, from what I hear. He wants to meet with the selection board and Dr. Li.”

  “So Hoffman’s moved up to number one and I’ll be his backup?” Jamie asked, surprised at the tremor in his voice.

  “Can’t be certain of anything right now,” Reed answered. “The entire question is going to be reviewed this afternoon or Sunday.”

  “What is it?” Edith was excited now too. “Have they changed their minds?”

  “Whatever you do,” Reed was saying, “stay in close touch with Houston. You may have to fly out here on Monday. Or perhaps go straight up to the space station. We were supposed to start shipping up there tomorrow, but everything’s been put on hold temporarily.”

  “Okay,” Jamie said shakily. “Thanks for letting me know.”

  “Nothing to it, old boy. Most of us would much rather have you aboard than that prig Hoffman.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Good luck!” The line clicked dead.

  “What is it?” Edith asked, sitting up beside him.

  Jamie realized his hands were trembling. “Father DiNardo’s been taken sick. He’s going into surgery. It looks like I’ll be going on the mission after all.”

  “Hot spit!” Edith dove out of the bed and began rummaging in her shoulder bag resting on the chair next to the curtained window. Jamie watched her slim naked figure as she bent over the bag, muttering to herself.

  “Hah! Got it!”

  She bounced back into the bed with a palm-sized tape recorder in her hand.

  “What the hell?” Jamie wondered.

  “This is an on-the-scene interview with geologist James Fox Waterman, who has just been informed that he has been selected to be on the team that flies to the planet Mars two months from how.”

  He laughed, but apparently Edith was completely serious.

  “Dr. Waterman, how do you feel about being selected to be part of the first human expedition to the planet Mars?
”

  Jamie blurted, “Horny. Very horny.”

  He took the tape recorder from her hand and placed it on the night table beside her. The tape ran out long before they finished making love.

  2

  As the cab pulled up to the curb in front of his parents’ home Jamie realized for the first time how undistinguished the house was. Genteel poverty was the facade for university professors, even those who had inherited old money.

  He had hitched a ride in the backseat of a T-18 jet with one of the NASA astronauts who was dashing home to the Bay area for a quick weekend. Now, as he paid the cab driver and got out onto the sidewalk, he felt almost as if he had stepped onto a movie set. Middle-class Americana. A quiet suburban street. Unpretentious little bungalows. Kids on bicycles. Lawn sprinklers cranking back and forth.

  He went up the walk, nylon travel bag in one hand, feeling a little unreal. How would Norman Rockwell paint this scene? Hello, Mom, just dropped in for a few hours to tell you that I’m off to Mars.

  Before he could reach the front door his mother was there waiting for him, a smile on her lips and the beginnings of tears in her eyes.

  Lucille Monroe Waterman was a small woman, pert and beautiful, who had been born to the considerable wealth of an old New England family that dated itself back to the Mayflower. The first time her family had allowed her to venture west of the Hudson River was the summer she had spent on a dude ranch in the mountains of northern New Mexico. There she had met Jerome Waterman, a young Navaho fiercely intent on becoming a teacher of history. “Real history,” Jerry Waterman told her. “The actual facts about the Native Americans and what the European invaders did to them.”

  They fell hopelessly, passionately in love with each other. So much so that Lucille, who had not given much thought to a career, entered the academic life too. So much so that they were married despite her parents’ obvious misgivings.

  Jerry Waterman wrote his history of the Native Americans and it was eventually adopted as the definitive text by universities all across the nation. Success, marriage, the comfort of a dependable income, the insulated life of academia—all these mellowed him to the point where Lucille’s family could almost accept him as their daughter’s husband. And Jerry Waterman found that he wanted to be accepted. It was important to Lucille. It became important to him.