by Ben Bova
“He must have been pretty damned scared,” Jamie said.
“He is not dependable. Not in an emergency. I will not allow you to go out alone with him.”
Jamie shrugged. “Then you’ll have to come with us, Alex. If there’s really a vein of uranium down in that ravine—any radioactives at all—it’s crucially important to us.”
The Russian made a curt nod. “I will come. Naguib can stay inside and man the radio.”
“Okay. Now try to calm down. Patel may have panicked, but being sore isn’t going to help.”
“Yes. I know. But I would still like to wring his neck.”
Jamie tried to laugh. He patted Mironov on the shoulder and said, “Carrying a grudge can be just as damaging as giving in to panic. Try to see things in perspective, Alex.”
The Russian grunted.
Jamie got out of the chair and headed back to the table where Naguib and Patel were still chatting.
“Okay,” Jamie said. “Tomorrow morning we go back to the ravine—Rava, Alex, and me.”
“What about me?” Naguib asked as Jamie slid behind the opposite side of the narrow table.
“You stay inside and recuperate. You can analyze the samples we took today.”
“And who put you in charge?” Patel snapped. “Who elected you the captain of this team?”
Jamie blinked with surprise. “It just seems like the logical way to proceed. Abdul’s going to feel pretty stiff and sore tomorrow, I’m sure. That leaves you and me, Rava. And Alex.”
Patel’s nostrils flared. “Yes. Of course. You and me and our cosmonaut supervisor. And then the next day we return to the dome,” he said angrily. “And that will be the end of our three days here.”
Jamie leaned back on the bench, staring at Patel across the littered dining table, surprised at himself for expecting appreciation from his fellow geologist. Or even courtesy.
SOL 34: MORNING
Jamie awoke from the dream. For long moments he lay as still as death on his cot, gazing up at the plastic curve of the dome just starting to brighten with the new morning. At first he thought he was back in the rover, but then he recalled that they had returned from the excursion to Pavonis Mons a week ago. His sleep had been troubled by a strange, unsettling dream. It had not frightened him, exactly, but it had been disturbing.
He pulled himself up to a sitting position. Imagine dreaming you’re back in school. With a shake of his head he reminded himself that he was safe from that. He was on Mars. And this was the day they would start out for the canyon.
The first pink light of dawn began to fill the dome as Jamie scrubbed and shaved, then grabbed a quick breakfast of hot oatmeal, steaming coffee, and the inevitable vitamin supplement capsule—alone in the wardroom until the others began drifting in to begin the day.
He said a few brief good mornings as he made his way toward the storage lockers where the hard suits were kept. The dome felt different now. No longer the same place it had been when they had first landed. It was more than the mere fact that a dozen men and women had been living and working here for thirty-four days. Nearly five weeks ago the dome had been strange, scary, a new and untried womb of plastic and cold metal. Now it was home, safe and warm, the smell of coffee wafting even out to the lockers. Nearly five weeks of working and planning, arguing and joking, eating and sleeping, had given the dome a distinct human aura. The floor-was scuffed from their boot treads. Jamie could feel the emotions that drenched the very air. It’s not the sterile dome full of equipment it once was. Not anymore. Our spirit fills this place now, he thought.
And today we leave this behind to go out to the canyon. No wonder I had an anxiety dream.
He passed the little greenhouse area where Monique Bonnet knelt beside the plant beds, nurturing them like a loving mother beneath the brightly glowing lamps. Even with the morning sun streaming in through the dome’s curved wall they kept the full-spectrum lights on all during the daylight hours. The transparent plastic of the dome stopped most of the infrared in the sunlight and all of the ultraviolet.
“How’s the farm?” Jamie asked.
Monique looked up from the big trays, rubbing a red smudge from her cheek. “Quite well. See?” She gestured to the little green shoots poking out of the pink sandy ground. “Before we return to Earth I will be able to make you la salade verte.”
“Still feeding them Perrier?”
“Of course. What else?”
Jamie smiled and Monique smiled back. She had taken over the management of the little garden, giving the plants Martian water and motherly care. Ilona and Joanna had left it mostly to her, despite the duties spelled out in the mission plan. Mars must agree with her, Jamie thought. Monique’s figure looks trimmer than it did when we first landed.
Does she really look better or am I just horny? Jamie asked himself. He did not feel especially driven. Tony must be lacing our food with sex suppressants, despite what he says. Probably a good thing, he tried to convince himself.
Looking at the wide trays filled with reddish dirt and green shoots, Jamie realized: We could live on Mars indefinitely, if we had to. If we had brought enough seeds, we could have started a regular farm, using Martian water and pulling in oxygen and nitrogen from the air. We could grow enough food to survive in this dome, turn it into a real base. A permanent home.
The next mission. That’s what we’ll have to do. Bring enough seeds to start a self-sufficient farm. Use the local resources. We can do that. We know it now.
Attitudes among the explorers had changed over their five weeks on Mars. Jamie was still the outsider, the loner, but now it was because he was the tacitly acknowledged leader of the group. He was no longer the afterthought, the last-minute replacement. Most of the work being done by the eleven others was aimed now at making a success of the coming traverse to Tithonium Chasma.
Patel was still surly, angry that his excursion to Pavonis Mons had been cut short. He kept himself busy analyzing the samples they had taken during their brief foray. The dating they got from the uranium-lead samples did not agree with that derived from the potassium-argon measurements. Patel and Naguib were spending all their free time trying to find out why. Vosnesensky, at first dour and morose about the considerable change in schedule, had gradually warmed up to the idea. Over the past two weeks he had become almost jovial. There was a fun-loving man underneath all that responsibility, Jamie realized.
Toshima worked closely with Jamie, squeezing every bit of information they could out of the data that the geology-meteorology beacons were amassing about the canyon region. Connors, Mironov, and Abell took turns flying the RPVs through the canyon, mapping it down to a few centimeters’ resolution.
Joanna and Ilona spent their time preparing for the biology experiments they would carry out in the canyon, below those mists, down on the valley floor where there was warmth and the hope of finding life. The two of them would ride the rover vehicle with Jamie and Connors, Monique would remain here at the base. Jamie wondered about having Joanna and Ilona together in the rover. Close quarters. They were friendly enough now, but what kind of problems might arise with both of them cooped up for ten days in the rover?
Jamie had spoken to Ilona about her bitterness toward the Russians. She had responded with a raised eyebrow and a haughty little smile.
“I’m serious, Ilona,” he had said. “You’ve got to stop needling Mikhail. And Alex, too. It’s got to stop.”
“Is that an order, Captain?” Her eyes smoldered at Jamie.
“I wish I could make it an order,” he replied. “I wish I had the power to change your behavior.”
“You don’t. No one does.” Ilona took a small breath, almost a sigh. “Not even I have that power.”
And then there was Tony. Something about the English physician worried Jamie; As the weeks had gone by Tony seemed to become—what? How to describe it? Sullen. Withdrawn. Maybe I’m just imagining it, Jamie thought. Tony looked the same: dapper, handsome, elegant even in project-
issued coveralls. But he’s not acting quite the same as when we first landed. He’s quieter, he doesn’t talk as much, and when he does the old zing has gone out of him. Something’s wrong. Tony’s become distant. Cold. Almost hostile.
Has Ilona been riding him again about his not going outside? Then he shook his head. Maybe it’s me. Maybe I’m just imagining it. I’m so busy preparing everything for this traverse I just haven’t had much time to spend with Tony. Or maybe he doesn’t feel well.
“Do you need help?”
Jamie looked up to see Vosnesensky standing before him, a relaxed smile on his face. Mikhail shaved every morning, yet his dark beard was never completely erased.
“Thanks. I think I can manage.”
Jamie had put on the tubed thermal undergarment when he had dressed in his own cubicle. Now he was worming his legs into the bottom half of his hard suit.
“Why are you going outside?” Vosnesensky asked, beginning to peel off his own coveralls. They had faded considerably from their original coral red.
“I haven’t been out in more than a week,” Jamie said. “All this planning for the traverse has turned me into an apparatchik.”
“That is the price you must pay for leadership.” Vosnesensky was grinning; he obviously meant it as a joke. Down to his briefs, he reached into his locker for his thermal undergarment.
“Well,” Jamie half grunted as he tugged on his boots, “this leader is going to take his free hour this morning to just walk around the dome to admire the scenery. And think.”
The old morose look came back into Vosnesensky’s eyes. “You know that you are not allowed to go outside by yourself.”
“Just a walk around the dome, Mikhail.”
“It is not allowed.”
“I need some time by myself.”
“I am still the commander here,” the Russian said, fastening the front of his thermal undergarment. He looked like a fireplug wrapped in overcooked spaghetti.
Still sitting on the bench, Jamie smiled up at him. “Yes, I know you’re in charge, Mikhail. And you’re right, the mission regulations say no one is allowed outside by themselves. Would you be kind enough to come out with me?”
The Russian grinned broadly. “Me? The group commander! You expect a man as busy as I am to drop everything merely to take a walk with you?”
“I would appreciate it if you did.”
Leaning his butt against the locker to pull on the stiff metal leggings of his pressure suit, Vosnesensky bantered, “The group commander is much too important a person to go strolling out in the desert on the whim of one of his underlings. Much too important.”
Jamie got to his feet and stepped to the rack where the torso of his sky-blue suit hung empty and slack-armed, like a headless, legless display of armor.
“However,” Vosnesensky said, raising a stubby finger in the air, “as one friend to another, I will be happy to go outside with you.”
Jamie wriggled into the torso, popped his head up through the neck ring, and grinned back at the Russian. “As one friend to another, thanks.”
“But only for the one hour,” Vosnesensky said, more seriously. “We all have a busy morning ahead of us.”
“Right.”
In a few minutes more they were fully sealed into their suits. They checked each other’s backpacks, called in to Mironov, who was at the monitoring console for the morning, and entered the airlock.
It was not until they stepped out onto the dusty red ground and Jamie looked up at the pink sky of Mars once again that he remembered that the color of his suit was not the color of the sky here; the nearest blue sky was more than a hundred fifty million kilometers from where he stood.
With Vosnesensky following a few paces behind, Jamie walked slowly around the dome’s curving flank, out to the side where he could not see the landing vehicles and the litter of equipment and instruments surrounding them. This was his favorite vista, empty desert as far as the disturbingly close horizon, a wrinkled red line of cliffs out in the distance.
He blinked his eyes once and the view he saw was New Mexico, with scraggly thorn bushes and patches of scrub grass scattered across the sand and rocks. Another blink and it was Mars again, barren and cold.
Were you alive once? Jamie asked the world on which he stood. Will we find the spirits of your dead in the canyon? Are we the first to cross the gulf between us, or did your ancestors reach our world eons ago? Am I returning home?
The softly keening wind gave Jamie no answer. The spirits of Mars, if there were any, kept their secrets to themselves.
Jamie gave a heartfelt sigh. All right, then. I’ll have to go out and find you. I’ll have to see for myself what the truth is.
Finally he turned and smiled at the fire-engine red suit of Vosnesensky, even though he knew the Russian could not see his face through the tinted visor.
“All right, Mikhail. Let’s go back inside.”
“That is all you want?”
“You were right. There’s a lot to do. We’d better go to work now.”
Jamie could sense the Russian trying to shrug inside his hard suit. As they plodded back toward the airlock Jamie tried to remember the details of his dream. Something about school, something that bothered him. He put it down to anxiety and forgot about it.
Tony Reed had dreamed, too.
The English physician had gone straight from his sleeping cubicle to his infirmary, padding along the hard plastic flooring in a pair of woolen socks and nothing else except a frayed terrycloth robe of royal blue with the seal of his father’s club sewn on its left breast.
Reed could not recall his dream, merely the fact that he had awakened in a cold sweat, thankful that the visions that had haunted his sleep had winked out like the picture on a television tube the instant his eyes had snapped open. He carefully shut the accordion-fold door of the infirmary and began preparing his morning pick-me-up.
“I love coffee, I love tea,” he sang tunelessly to himself in a subvocalized whisper. “But I love you best of all.”
The perfect morning drink. Enough amphetamine to start the day brightly, but not so much that it’s harmful. Or noticeable. A touch of this and a touch of that. Just the thing to start another day on Mars. Blasted Mars. Dangerous Mars. Dull, bleak, dead Mars.
Reed held the small plastic beaker up to the light, made certain that the liquid in it was exactly at the level it should be, then quaffed it down with relish.
There! Now, by the time I finish my morning ablutions my hands will be steady enough for shaving.
He was the last to enter the wardroom that morning. No one remained there except Monique and Ilona.
“All the bees out being busy, I see,” Reed said brightly as he headed for the freezer.
“I must go too,” Ilona said, dabbing her lips as she got up from the table.
She took her tray to the recycling slot while Reed slid his into the microwave oven.
“Will you miss me?” he asked Ilona, low enough so that Monique could not hear.
Ilona looked almost surprised. “I will see you every day, when we make our medical report.”
“That’s not quite the same as being together, is it?”
She gave him a haughty smile. “We haven’t been together like that since we landed here.”
“Yes. A pity, too.”
“Do you miss me?”
“Certainly.”
“But I thought it was Joanna you were interested in.”
Reed looked into her tawny eyes. “Ah, that was merely a pastime. A game.”
“A game that you lost.”
“The game isn’t over yet,” Reed said, miffed.
Ilona laughed. “If you can get her to bed with you after she comes back from being with our red man for ten solid days …”
Reed cut in, “And what will you be doing for the next ten days? And nights?”
She drew herself up to her full height, almost equal to Reed’s. “I intend to be a good scientist and to beha
ve myself properly. A field trip is no place for game playing, Tony.”
“No. I suppose not.”
“Definitely not.”
She walked away, leaving the wardroom, leaving Reed standing there as the microwave beeped that his breakfast was ready and Monique tried to make it clear that she had not been eavesdropping.
They’re both leaving me, Reed said to himself as he took his tray to the table. Ilona and Joanna. And the Navaho. They’re all leaving me behind.
Monique smiled at him in her dimpling motherly way, then excused herself and left. Reed sat alone, picking listlessly at his food, feeling as abandoned and lonely as the time he had been left in the hospital to have his tonsils removed.
SOL 34: AFTERNOON
Pete Connors frowned at the rover’s control panel as he said into the pin microphone of his headset, “The blamed fans still won’t power up to one hundred percent.”
Vosnesensky’s face was on the display screen in the center of the panel. “How high will they go?”
“Eighty, eighty-two.”
Sitting beside the astronaut, Jamie tried to keep the worried impatience tingling inside him from showing to the others. We can’t put off the departure because the air circulation fans won’t run up to max. That’s no reason to delay the traverse.
Vosnesensky’s eyes went down to the checklist in front of him. “Eighty percent is within tolerable limits,” he said doubtfully.
“I don’t think it’s gonna cause any problems, Mike,” said Connors. “The fans have always been kind of cranky.”
“You can increase the oxygen ratio if necessary,” Vosnesensky said.
“Right. Let’s go with it. We’re ready to roll.”
Connors looked deadly serious, determined. Jamie thought that the man had lost weight since they had arrived on Mars. His face looks thinner, almost haggard. I guess we all do.
Ilona was standing behind Jamie’s chair, her hands on the seat back. Joanna stood behind Connors, expectant tension drawing her lips into a tight line.
