Mars

by Ben Bova

  She pulled back again. “I think he is the best-qualified person, isn’t he? And everyone seemed to get along with him very well.”

  “But he’s an American,” Brumado muttered. “The politicians don’t want more Americans than Russians. Or vice versa.”

  “He’s an American Indian, Papa. It’s not really the same thing. And O’Hara will make the Australians happy.”

  “The politicians wanted Hoffman to help represent Europe.”

  “We already have a Greek, a Pole, and a German to represent Europe. As well as an Englishman. If Hoffman goes on the mission there will be trouble,” Joanna said firmly. “His psychological profile is awful! We have tried to work with him, Papa. He is simply unbearable!”

  “So you took a vote.”

  “Yes. We have decided. If Hoffman is chosen there are at least eleven of us who will resign from the program immediately.”

  Again Brumado fell silent. He did not know what to say, how to handle this situation.

  “Ask Antony Reed,” Joanna suggested. “He has had more training in psychology than any of the others selected for the mission. It was his idea to take the vote.”

  “Was it?”

  “Yes! I didn’t do all this by myself, Papa. Most of the others cannot stand Hoffman.”

  Brumado got up slowly and went to the desk. Picking up the telephone, he asked the man who answered to find Dr. Reed. The Englishman opened the office door before Brumado could return to the conference table. My god, he thought, they must all be sitting in the outer office. I wonder if Hoffman is there too.

  Reed seemed faintly amused by it all.

  “None of us can get along with Hoffman,” he said, smiling slightly as he sat relaxed in a chair across the table from Brumado and his daughter. “Frankly, I think bringing him along to Mars would be a disaster. Always have.”

  “But he passed all the psychological tests.”

  Reed arched an eyebrow. “So would a properly motivated chimpanzee. But you wouldn’t want to live in the same cage with him, would you?”

  “You’ve all been filling out cross-evaluation reports for the past two years!” Brumado heard his own voice rising with more than a hint of anger in it. He forced it down. “I admit that the reports written about Professor Hoffman have not been glowing, but there has been no hint that he was so disliked.”

  “I can tell you about those evaluation reports,” Reed said, almost smirking. “No one ever expressed their true feelings in the reports. Not in writing. There is enormous psychological pressure to put a good face on everything. Every one of us realized straight from the outset that those reports would be a reflection on the person who wrote them as much as on the person they were writing about.”

  Brumado thought, We should have realized that from the beginning. These are very bright men and women, bright enough to see all the possibilities.

  Reed continued, “To borrow a phrase from Scotland Yard, we understood that anything we wrote in those evaluation forms might be taken down in evidence and used against us.”

  With a shake of his head, Brumado said, “I still can’t understand why you waited until this very last moment to bring your opposition out into the open.”

  “Two reasons, actually,” said Reed. “First, we all expected that DiNardo could keep Hoffman under control. Our good priest seemed to have a calming effect on the Austrian, rather like old Hindenburg had on Hitler.”

  Joanna barely suppressed a giggle.

  “Second, I suppose that none of us actually faced up to the awful possibility of spending nearly two years living cheek-by-jowl with Hoffman until this very weekend. With the final decisions made and DiNardo packing off to hospital — well, I suppose it suddenly dawned on us that Hoffman simply wouldn’t do.”

  “How do I tell this to Professor Hoffman?” Brumado asked softly.

  “Oh, I’d be willing to tackle that chore,” Reed said at once. “I’d be almost happy to do it.”

  Brumado shook his head sadly. “No. It is not your responsibility.”

  He dismissed Reed and asked Dr. Li to come back into the office.

  With Joanna still sitting beside him, Brumado said wearily, “I suppose there is no way around it. Professor Hoffman will have to be told.”

  Li seemed to have calmed down considerably. His mask of impassivity was in place once more.

  “It is my duty to inform him,” Li said.

  “If you like, I will explain it to him,” said Brumado.

  With a quick glance at Joanna, Li murmured, “As you wish.”

  Hoffman looked as tense as a stalking leopard when he entered the office. He stood a moment at the door, eyeing Li, Brumado, and Joanna with unconcealed suspicion. Short, round-shouldered, his round pie face pale with tension. He was wearing a powder-blue cardigan sweater buttoned neatly over a shirt and tie striped yellow and red. His slacks were dark blue, almost black.

  “Please,” called Brumado from the conference table, “come in and sit down.”

  Li was standing at the end of the table, as far from the door as possible. Joanna still sat next to her father, turned toward Hoffman so that Brumado could not see her face.

  As if stepping through a minefield Hoffman walked across the carpeted floor and pulled out the chair at the head of the table. He sat down.

  “We have run into a difficulty,” said Brumado, trying to smile disarmingly and not quite making it.

  “They are all against me. I know that.”

  Brumado felt his eyebrows rise. “We must think of the good of the mission. That is our paramount duty.”

  Hoffman’s face twisted. “I was chosen by the selection board. I demand that their choice be upheld!”

  “If we uphold that decision the mission will be wrecked. More than half your fellow scientists have refused to go, I am sorry to say.”

  “More than half!”

  Brumado nodded.

  “This is an affront to the entire nation of Austria!”

  “No,” said Dr. Li, from the other end of the table. “It is entirely a personal matter. There are no politics involved here. It is all personalities.”

  “Yes, I see.” Hoffman jabbed a finger toward Joanna. “She wants that American Indian by her side, so I am to be thrown off.”

  Brumado felt his jaw drop open.

  “What are you saying?” Joanna demanded.

  “I know very well how you and the Apache or Navaho or whatever he is … the two of you, at McMurdo …”

  “Nothing happened between us,” Joanna said. Turning to her father, “He’s lying. There was nothing …”

  Brumado raised his hand and she fell silent. To Hoffman he said, “I can see that there are stresses here and strained relationships that could cause a disaster for the mission to Mars.”

  Hoffman glared, his face reddening.

  “I know it is an enormous sacrifice, but I must ask you to resign from the mission,” Brumado said.

  “Never!” Hoffman snapped. “And if you try to force me out I will tell the world’s media that you have thrown me out in favor of your daughter’s lover!”

  Joanna looked stunned, stricken, speechless.

  One of Alberto Brumado’s traits was that the angrier he became, the more icy calm. Anger that would drive another man to tantrums or violence merely made him colder, keener, more deliberate.

  “Professor Hoffman,” he said, clasping his hands prayerfully on the tabletop, “if you ask me to choose between your claim and my daughter’s denial, do you think for an instant that I would believe you?”

  “They were lovers, I am certain of it.”

  “You have proven, merely in these few minutes, that it would be disastrous to include you on the Mars team.”

  “I will appeal to the board of selection! And to the media!”

  As patiently as a physician detailing the risks of surgery, Brumado said, “The board of selection cannot and will not override the wishes of the exploration team. And if you go to the media we w
ill be forced to reveal that most of the scientists on the team dislike you so much that they have refused to go on the mission if you are included.”

  Hoffman’s nostrils flared. His eyes glittered with rage.

  “Whatever happens, what do you think the effect on your reputation will be? How will your university react to such notoriety? Do you know what it’s like to have the media hounding you night and day?”

  The Austrian looked away from Brumado, glanced at Li, then turned his gaze toward the ceiling.

  “I urge you,” Brumado said, reasonably, placatingly, remorselessly, “to tender your resignation. For the good of your career. For the sake of your wife. For the sake of this mission. Please, please, do not allow pride or anger to ruin the human race’s first attempt to explore the planet Mars. I beg of you.”

  Li said, “We can see to it that your university gets first priority in analyzing the soil samples and rocks returned from the mission.”

  “Or, if you wish,” Brumado added, “we can help you to get an appointment at the university of your choice, and you can analyze the samples there.”

  “You are offering me a bribe,” Hoffman growled.

  “Yes,” said Brumado. “Quite frankly, I would offer anything I could to save this mission.”

  “It is in your hands,” Li said in a near whisper.

  Brumado saw that the shock on his daughter’s face had been replaced by something deeper than anger. Hatred, he realized. He put a calming hand on her shoulder and felt the tension that coiled within her.

  Hoffman muttered, “My wife never wanted me to go to Mars.”

  “You can have a very prestigious position;” Dr. Li coaxed. “Leader of the scientific analysis of the Mars samples.”

  “No announcements have been made about the final team choices,” Brumado reminded him. “There will be no embarrassment for you.”

  Suddenly tears sprang from Hoffman’s eyes. “What can I do? You are all against me. Even my wife!”

  His head drooped to the tabletop, cradled in his arms, and he began to sob uncontrollably. Brumado turned toward Li, feeling like a torturer, a murderer.

  “I will take care of him,” Li said softly. “Please go now, both of you. And send in Dr. Reed, if he is still outside. Otherwise, ask the secretary to summon a physician.”

  Brumado pushed his chair back and slowly rose to his feet. His daughter still showed nothing but contempt for the sobbing man huddled at the head of the table. The mission is saved, Brumado found himself thinking. That is the important thing. The mission will go on despite this poor, wretched man.

  5

  It was still dark when the phone woke Jamie. He struggled up from a dream of ancient men trying to build a tower on the windswept top of a bare grassless mesa. The bricks kept melting away in the hot sunshine, the tower never rose higher than his own reach.

  The phone buzzed insistently. Jamie finally opened his eyes, remembered that he was back in his own apartment again, alone, and groped for the telephone on the bedside table. The digital clock read 6:26 A.M. There was no hint of sunrise through the drawn blinds of the bedroom window.

  “Dr. Waterman?” a man’s voice asked crisply.

  “Right.”

  “This is an official message from Kaliningrad. I am Yegorov, personnel section.”

  “Yes?” Jamie was instantly wide-awake.

  “You are to report to the Johnson Space Center at eight hundred hours local time and receive your orders for immediate transportation to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. From there you will board the space shuttle for transport to the orbital assembly facility.”

  “You mean I’m going to Mars?” Jamie shouted into the phone.

  “Oh, yes. Did you not know? You have been selected as geologist on the first landing team. Good luck.”

  Jamie’s first impulse was to give an ear-splitting war whoop. But instead he merely said, “Thank you.”

  He hung up, suddenly feeling hollow inside, empty, as if he had finally pushed through a door that had been locked against him and found that it opened onto thin air.

  He got out of bed, showered, shaved, repacked his well-used travel bag, and drove out to the center. Sure enough, there was a team of grinning men and women at the travel office waiting for him.

  “A plane will be ready for you at the airstrip in about half an hour.”

  “What about my car?” Jamie suddenly realized he had made no plans about the car, the apartment, his furniture. Absurdly, he wondered what to do with his magazine and journal subscriptions.

  “We’ll take care of all the details. Just sign these forms.”

  Jamie scribbled his name without reading the forms. Fuck it, he thought. They can have the car and everything else. Won’t need it on Mars!

  They drove him to the airstrip, the whole roomful of clerks piled into one gray agency station wagon, pressing against Jamie, wanting to be as close as they could be to the man who was going to Mars. Jamie did not mind the closeness, he was thankful for the ride; he did not trust himself to drive. The excitement was getting to him. Mars. Geologist on the first landing team. Mars.

  Edith was standing at the entrance to the hangar, in jeans and a light sweater. Obviously not her working clothes. He suddenly felt ashamed for not phoning her.

  “How’d you know?” he asked, travel bag in one hand.

  She grinned up at him. “I have my sources. I work in news, y’know.”

  “I …” Jamie did not know what to say. The clerks who had driven him here, the airplane mechanics, there were too many people watching them.

  Edith’s grin turned rueful. “Well, we knew it wouldn’t last forever. It was fun, though.”

  “I think the world of you, Edith.”

  “Only this world, though. Now you got another one to think about.”

  “Yes.” He laughed, feeling shaky, unsure.

  She twined her arms around his neck and kissed him soundly. “Good luck, Jamie. Best luck in two worlds to you.”

  All he could think to say was, “I’ll be back.”

  She answered, “Sure you will.”

  SOL 3: MORNING

  “Today’s the big day, huh?”

  Despite the fact that he had been a jet fighter pilot and an astronaut with more than twenty shuttle missions on his record, Pete Connors reminded Jamie of a high school football player moments before the opening kickoff. His dark brown eyes, usually sorrowful, now showed an excitement that most men lose after their teen years, a barely suppressed sense of adventure.

  Connors, Jamie, and most of the others were suiting up for their first day of actual scientific work on Mars. Bright sunshine streamed through the clear double-walled plastic of the inflated dome’s lower section; the weather forecast was for a typical late-summer day: clear skies, light wind, high temperature climbing up into the sixties after an overnight low of minus one hundred twelve.

  “The big day,” Jamie agreed, tugging on the sky-blue outer pants of his hard suit.

  They dressed in layers. First the form-fitting underwear that was honeycombed with thin, flexible water tubes. The water carried away body heat and kept the wearer at a reasonable temperature inside the heavily insulated hard suit. Next came the fabric coveralls and then the hard suit itself, built to contain a normal terrestrial air pressure of roughly fourteen pounds per square inch inside even if there were nothing but pure vacuum on the other side of its metal and plastic shell.

  You leaned against a locker and laboriously tugged the hard-suit pants over your hips. The torso shell stood on a rack so you could duck under it and slide your arms through the sleeves while pushing your head through the bright metal ring of the neck seal. Once inside the suit it was virtually impossible to bend over to pull on the boots. The explorers always dressed in pairs and helped each other with the boots and the backpacks that held the air regenerator, batteries, heater, pumps, and fans of the life-support system.

  The first time Jamie had tried to don a hard suit, ba
ck oh Earth, it had taken more than an hour and seemed like a particularly sophisticated combination of torture and humiliation. The first time he had tried it in Martian gravity, as their spacecraft approached the red planet, things had gone much more easily. Now, however, he was getting accustomed to the light gravity of Mars, and putting on the suit was becoming a chore again.

  Eight of the team were preparing to go outside the dome, struggling into their suits like a short-handed football team getting into its padding and uniforms. Or like knights putting on their armor. Jamie wondered if King Arthur’s men grumbled and swore while they suited up for battle.

  Their dressing area was a line of racks and lockers where the suits were stored, with a pair of long plastic benches laid out in front of them. Built for Martian gravity, the benches looked to Jamie to be too thin to sit on safely, their slim legs too far apart.

  But Connors thumped down on one, suit and all, to let Jamie help him into his heavy cleated boots. The others were doing the same, Jamie saw. The benches sagged slightly under the weight, but only slightly.

  Boots zippered, Connors got up and stamped his feet on the plastic flooring.

  “Good,” he said, nodding from inside the suit. “Now let’s get yours on.”

  Jamie sat warily. He noticed Ilona Malater standing beside Joanna, both of them fully suited except for their helmets, talking together softly and earnestly, like school chums or sisters. Biochemist and microbiologist. Jamie thought that of all the scientists brought to Mars the two of them had the most to gain. Or lose. If they found any evidence for life at all they would become international celebrities. But if they failed to find any evidence of life the whole world, perhaps even the scientific community, would always wonder if they had overlooked something.

  Was that why the board picked all women for the life sciences? The third member of the bio team was Monique Bonnet, the French geochemist who had taken a cram course in paleontology, just in case they should discover fossils in the red sands or rocks.

  The tall Israeli leaned closer to Joanna and said something that made her smile, then cover her mouth with a hand to keep from laughing out loud. They’re looking at me, Jamie realized. All the others are already in their suits, waiting to go. I’m the laggard.