by Ben Bova
Smiling inwardly, Ilona returned her attention to the whirling centrifuge and the work she was trying to finish. With the tedious, time-consuming care of the most conservative of chemists, she had spent the past several days tenderly baking the water out of half a dozen of the corings drilled out of the Martian ground. Only half a dozen, to start. The other core samples she left strictly alone, safe inside their protective boxes, as a control on her experiment.
The permafrost yielded its water easily enough. With Monique Bonnet’s help, Ilona had tested the water, analyzed it with every instrument the laboratory had. It was water, all right: H2O, heavily laced with carbon dioxide and minerals such as iron and silicon.
Jamie’s changing, Ilona thought as she watched the arms of the bench-top centrifuge spin blurringly. We all are. Mars is changing us. Even Tony is different now; he tries to maintain his air of English imperturbability, but I can see that something deep inside him has changed. He’s not the same man he was aboard the spacecraft. Something is eating away at him.
Is it Joanna? she wondered. Does Tony really care that much about bedding our Brazilian princess?
As if she sensed Ilona’s thoughts, Joanna looked up from the work she was bent over, right into Ilona’s eyes. For an instant Ilona felt flushed, caught red-handed. But just then the centrifuge finished its run and began to slow down, its thin shrill whine sighing to a fainter note, its arms slowly drooping as if exhausted from the work it had been doing.
Joanna slipped off her stool and came down the length of the lab bench to stand beside Ilona.
“Do you need any help?” she asked.
Watching the centrifuge slowly spinning down to a complete stop, Ilona answered, “Monique was supposed to be here by now.”
“She’s off tending to-her plants. Some of them are beginning to sprout already.”
“Yes. I know.” The centrifuge stopped altogether. “If everything goes well, I’ll be able to give her Martian water for her precious sprouts.”
Joanna watched as Ilona detached a vial from the centrifuge and held it up to the overhead lights. The vial was divided into two sections; its top was clear liquid, the bottom section much murkier.
“You see? The water is clear now. I’ve separated out the dissolved minerals.”
“It looks bubbly,” Joanna said.
“Carbon dioxide, absorbed from the atmosphere. If all the permafrost could be melted, we’d not only cover half of Mars with water, we’d outgas enough CO2 to make the atmosphere as thick as Earth’s, almost.”
Ilona decanted the clear water into a plastic beaker.
“Aren’t you going to analyze it?” Joanna asked.
“The mass spectrometer is off-line again.”
“I thought Abell …”
“Paul said he fixed it, but I don’t trust the calibration since he’s had his hands on it. I’ve got to go over it myself, and I haven’t had the time for it.”
Joanna said, “The geology lab has a mass spectrometer.”
With a sudden smile, Ilona answered, “Good thought.”
The men were still arguing, almost shouting, when the two women came around the partition and stepped into the geology lab. The argument snapped off into silence.
“We need to use your spectrometer for a few minutes,” Ilona said. “Do you mind?”
Naguib said, “No. Of course not. Is that local groundwater you have there?”
“Yes.”
“Unprotected?” Patel asked. “With no cover atop it?”
“It’s only water, Rava. It can’t hurt you.”
Joanna added, “We have run it through every test we know; there are no organisms in it. It is completely sterile.”
“Not now,” said Patel. “You have exposed it to our air, to our microbes.”
Ilona shrugged grandly, as if the Hindu’s observation meant nothing whatsoever to her, and stepped over to the mass spectrometer sitting on the lab bench between an assortment of small stones and the thick sheaf of an operations manual. On the other side of the manual was a desktop computer, its screen blank.
“I’ve got to make a call up to Dr. Li,” Jamie said, getting up from the stool on which he had been sitting.
“Don’t go,” Ilona said. “This will only take a moment or two.”
Jamie hesitated, glancing at the other two men, then at Joanna.
“Please stay,” said Joanna.
He stood uncertainly for a moment, then gestured Joanna to the stool.
Ilona’s test of the water took longer than a moment or two. Monique Bonnet showed up, apologizing for spending so much time with her garden. “The legumes are beginning to unfurl leaves,” she announced. No one but she seemed to care.
Tony Reed sauntered past the lab, saw the group, and asked, “What’s going on? A cabal?”
Ilona looked up from the computer screen that now displayed the spectrometer’s output.
“Come in, Tony. Come in. The medical officer should be here for this experiment.”
“Experiment?” Reed asked, stepping inside the lab area. “What experiment?”
“We are about to sample the local wine,” Monique said.
Reed saw the beaker of water sitting on the bench and immediately understood. “Nothing injurious in it, is there?”
Ilona replied, “As far as the mass spectrometer is concerned, it’s nothing but water with some carbon dioxide dissolved in it and a barely detectable trace of a few minerals.”
Reed went over and studied the display screen. “I’ve seen worse in London’s water supply. Much worse.”
“I can begin to use native water on the garden plants, then?” Monique asked.
“After the ultimate test,” said Ilona. And she raised the beaker to her lips.
Utter silence as she sipped. She looked thoughtful for a moment, ran the tip of her tongue over her lips, then handed the beaker to Tony.
“See what you think,” she said.
Reed took the beaker and made a show of holding it up to the light and then sniffing it, as if it were a fine wine.
“No bouquet at all,” he said.
No one even smiled.
Reed sipped, gave the beaker back to Ilona, then said, “It tastes rather like seltzer, actually.”
Monique took an eager taste. “Mon dieu, it is like Perrier!”
They broke into laughter. All except Jamie, Ilona noticed, who looked as tense as a caged panther.
“Martian seltzer,” Reed said. “We can bottle it and sell it! What a sensation back on Earth!”
“At a million dollars an ounce,” Naguib said, laughing as he took his sip, then passed the beaker as if it were communion wine.
“Perhaps we could finance the next expedition in this way,” said Patel, after His taste.
The cup came to Jamie. He put it to his lips, handed it back to Ilona with a curt nod, and said, “I’ve got to get to the comm console. Excuse me.”
At last some semblance of order had returned to the orbiting spacecraft, thought Li Chengdu. The scientific staff was back to its normal routine, the astronauts and cosmonauts had finished the thorough check of all the ships’ systems demanded by mission control back in Kaliningrad. A purging ritual, Li thought. The death of Dr. Konoye was exorcised by checking each and every component of the two spacecraft, all their systems, supplies, and equipment. Konoye did not die of an equipment failure, but the controllers in Kaliningrad and Houston insisted on the meaningless checkout.
Now we are twelve, Li said to himself, instead of thirteen. That should assuage the superstitious among us. Which included himself. He realized that he had been vaguely uneasy whenever he had remembered that there had been thirteen men and women assigned to the Mars 2 spacecraft.
Everything is back to normal now. The Russians and Americans have set up their equipment on Deimos to test their plan for baking water out of its rock. The explorations on the planetary surface are proceeding smoothly. The research teams here aboard the spacecraft have recovered
from the shock of Konoye’s death and settled back down to their work.
He sighed deeply. And James Waterman is back to causing trouble.
Li leaned back in his chair and fixed his gaze on the restful silk painting of misty mountains and graceful, slim, blossoming trees. Waterman wants to return to the Valles Marineris to investigate what he claims is a cliff dwelling. Patently absurd. They have not found even a trace of life and Waterman thinks there was once an intelligent civilization down there. Ridiculous.
On the other hand, it would help the politicians to forget about Konoye’s death if we found something spectacular. The remains of an extinct civilization! That would be stunning.
Li frowned to himself. On the other hand, he thought, suppose I allow Waterman to lead a few scientists back to that site and they find nothing at all. The politicians would be furious. Suppose I allow them to go back there and one of them is injured. Or killed.
He sat bolt upright in the relaxing chair. No. That must not happen. Waterman must not be allowed to ruin this mission.
The intercom on his desk buzzed, its yellow message light blinking. Li reached out a long lean arm and touched its activating button.
“Dr. Li,” said the voice of the astronaut on duty in the command module, “we are receiving a transmission for you from Dr. Brumado.”
Li told the man to pipe it through to him.
Alberto Brumado’s friendly, slightly harried face appeared on the desktop display screen. Li stepped over to the desk and peered down at the image. Then he realized that Brumado was talking about James Waterman and the Vice-President of the United States.
Li could feel the weight of responsibility lifting off his shoulders. He pulled his chair over and sat in it before the display screen, smiling like a Cheshire cat.
The lighting in the dome had been turned down to its low nighttime level. There were no voices to be heard, no tapes playing, only the faithful hum of electrical equipment and the faint keening of the wind outside the darkened dome.
Jamie paced along the dome’s perimeter, his heavy slipper-socks noiseless against the thick plastic flooring, his eyes adjusted to the gloom, his mind churning the same argument over and over again.
You know it’s a natural rock formation; it can’t be buildings. Why are you so goddammed stubborn?
But it might be artificial. It just might be. What the hell do we really know about this world? How much would a Martian scientist learn about Earth if he landed in the Sahara Desert and looked around for a couple of weeks?
The chances of those rocks being actual dwellings are a zillion to one. Why are you alienating everybody? What are you trying to prove?
What are they afraid of? For Christ’s sake, we’re here to explore the planet, to find out what’s really here. You can’t do that by sticking to a schedule they wrote back in Kalinin-grad.
“Jamie? Is that you?”
He looked around, realized he was next to the wardroom. Sitting there in the shadows was the tiny form of Joanna Brumado. The only light in the area came from the softly glowing guide strips along the floor and the steady red eye of the always-working coffee machine.
He padded to the table where she sat, her hands wrapped around a big steaming coffee mug.
“What are you doing up at this hour?” Jamie asked, sitting next to her.
“I could not sleep.”
“So you’re having a cup of coffee?”
“The Brazilian tranquilizer,” she said. He could hear the smile in her soft voice even though her face was deep in shadow. “I need the warmth. It always feels cold in here to me. Especially at night.”
Jamie wore a dark blue sweatshirt bearing the discreet rocket emblem of the British Interplanetary Society and softly faded jeans instead of the project-issued coveralls. In the dim light he saw that Joanna was in a bulky turtleneck sweater and corduroy slacks.
“Why can’t you sleep?” he asked.
“I could ask you the same.”
He wanted to laugh, but there was no laughter in him. “I asked you first. Besides, you know why I’m pacing the floor.”
“You are waiting for an answer from Dr. Li.”
He nodded, realized she probably could not see the gesture, and muttered, “Uh-huh.”
“Are you so certain that what you saw really was a village?”
“Hell no! That’s the whole point. I’m not certain at all. That’s why we should go back and see it close up. Touch it. Smell it. Taste it, even. All the fancy instruments and equipment we use are just tools for giving us sensory information. Before we can decide just what that pile of rocks really is we need more information.”
She took a sip of her coffee.
“But you haven’t told me what’s keeping you awake,” Jamie said softly.
“Oh … many things. Loneliness, for one. I lie in my bunk and listen to the wind outside and remember that we are nearly two hundred million kilometers from home.”
“Does that frighten you?”
“No, it just makes me feel—alone. It’s strange. During the day we are busy and the dome feels crowded sometimes. But at night …”
“I know,” Jamie said. “There’s either too many people leaning over your shoulder or you’re entirely alone. It’s a weird feeling.”
“You feel it too?”
He scowled in the darkness. “Joanna, I am alone. I’m the outcast here.”
“No, that is not so.”
“That’s the way it looks to me. It’s not just this business of the cliff dwelling. I’m a substitute, a last-minute replacement. None of the others really accepts me as part of the team.”
He was surprised at himself for telling her so. For a long moment Joanna said nothing. In the shadowy lighting he could not even make out the expression on her face.
“I had thought,” Jamie heard himself say, speaking very low, almost whispering, “that you wanted me on the mission because of what happened at McMurdo. Now I realize that you didn’t want me here as much as you wanted to get rid of Hoffman.”
“Jamie …”
“It’s okay,” he said quickly. “I can understand how you felt. I know that Hoffman bothered you.”
She grabbed at the cuff of his sweatshirt and shook it slightly, like a schoolteacher trying to get the attention of a heedless student.
“Jamie, there were five other geologists that I could have recommended. They all had excellent qualifications. I asked my father to get you.”
“Because I helped you at McMurdo.”
“Because of you, yourself. Because you are a talented, stubborn, sensitive, lonely man. Because you were kind to me instead of resentful. Because when I ran away from you, you let me run without pursuing me.”
Suddenly Jamie felt confused. “I let you run …”
“What happened between us at McMurdo should have worked against you, if I had any sense. We are not supposed to form attachments, relationships. You know that! But still I recommended you, despite the danger.”
“You feel danger?”
Joanna said, “You are an extremely attractive man, James Waterman. Perhaps when this mission is over and we are safely back on Earth we can begin to behave toward each other as ordinary men and women do. For now, we must put aside such feelings.”
Jamie finally understood that her memory of McMurdo was his fumbling attempt to kiss her the evening after their first trek on the glacier. It meant a lot to her, he realized. And I thought it made her angry. She’s taking it for granted that I’m in love with her.
Am I? He thought of Edith, smiling blonde and Texas beautiful and millions of miles away. Christ, I’ve had her tape sitting in my cubicle for two days now and I haven’t even answered her. Joanna is completely different. Beautiful in a deeper way. Serious. Very serious.
Then he wondered, Does she know about Ilona? What would she think if she did?
Her hand was still clutching the cuff of his sweatshirt. Jamie covert! it with his other hand.
“I
guess you’re right, Joanna. You were right at McMurdo and you’re right how. We’re a long way from home. Maybe someday we’ll be able to face each other as normal people do and find out for ourselves what we really can mean to each other. But for now …” He ran out of words, finished with half a shrug that she probably could not see in the darkness.
“For now,” Joanna finished for him, her voice so low he could barely hear her, “we can be friends. It will be good to have a friend, Jamie. Good for both of us.”
“Yeah. Sure.”
“It is the only way. We cannot form attachments now. Not here, not in this … fishbowl.”
He nodded, not caring if she could see it or not.
Joanna asked, “Have you thought about what you will do when we return home?”
He almost blurted, This is my home. Here on Mars. Instead he replied softly, “Not really. Have you?”
She made a sighing sound. “My father has already been asked by the National Geographic Society to write an article about this expedition for their magazine. I suppose I will do most of the writing for him. I have been his ghostwriter for many years.”
“That shouldn’t take long.”
“Then lectures, I suppose. The two of us. All around the world. And a book, of course.”
“I guess I’ll pick a university and spend the next few years analyzing the samples we bring back. And the data we’re amassing.”
“That could be a lifetime career.”
“Maybe.”
She fell silent.
“What about the next expedition?” Jamie asked. “Isn’t your father going to push for a follow-on mission?”
“He is already. As I understand it, though, the politicians want to see what the results of this mission are before they commit themselves to another.”
Jamie leaned toward her, sudden urgency burning in his blood. “Joanna, don’t you see that it’s important to go back to the canyon and check out those ruins? If we can go back with evidence that there was once a civilization on Mars, an intelligent species who built cliff dwellings … holy Christ, nobody could stop a second expedition. And a third, a tenth, a hundredth!”
