Mars

by Ben Bova

  Joanna did not reply.

  “There’s nothing to be afraid of,” he repeated. “No matter what we find—or fail to find.”

  She turned away, got up from the half-folded bunk, and hurried toward the lavatory. Jamie realized she was crying. He felt sorry for her. And puzzled.

  As he lay on his back in the darkened rover, listening to the soft wind of Mars just outside the metal skin, Jamie wondered why Joanna was so worried about what they would find in the canyon.

  She’s a biologist, he told himself. If she finds life on Mars her name will go into the history books. But if she doesn’t she’ll always wonder if she missed it. The whole world will wonder if there’s really life here but she just didn’t make the right tests or didn’t go to the right place.

  I’ve made her come here to the canyon. Maybe we should have tried to reach the edge of the polar cap. Plenty of water vapor there, that’s for sure. But we landed too damned far from the cap. That’ll have to wait for a follow-on mission.

  Connors was snoring, six inches away on his bunk. Above him by only a few more inches was Joanna’s bunk. He could sense that she was awake, tense and worried and frightened.

  Frightened.

  Jamie closed his eyes in the darkness and remembered the first time he had met Joanna Brumado. She had been frightened then, too.

  All the trainees had been required to pass an ocean survival test. “There’s a small but finite chance that your return to the Earth will end in an emergency landing at sea,” said the grizzled old chief petty officer they had borrowed from a U.S. Navy aquanaut team. Although their return flight was planned to terminate at the space station in low Earth orbit, if something went wrong the command module of their spacecraft could be detached and enter the Earth’s atmosphere to splash down in the ocean, much as the old Apollo spacecraft had done.

  “You could be in a raft for several hours or even several days,” the chief had said cheerily. “My job is to get you prepared for that contingency.”

  So they spent three days in an open raft several miles off the coast of the main island of Hawaii. Eight men and women, including the leather-skinned chief. Joanna had been one of them.

  Jamie recalled how she spent the whole time sick and scared, her face white, her fists clenched so hard that her fingernails cut into her palms.

  He had felt seasick too for the first few hours, bobbing incessantly on the dark, towering swells. In the trough of the waves they could see nothing but deep blue water and the pale sky. When they rose to a crest, the horizon slanted and weaved nauseatingly.

  They each wore personal life preservers, puffy inflated vests that were too hot in the sun but not warm at night. The chief would not let them roll up their, coverall sleeves or pants. They also had to wear floppy-brimmed hats. “Sunstroke,” the chief said knowingly. No one argued.

  “Be a helluva thing to go all the way to Mars and then drown coming home,” said one of the trainees, a grinning tanned blond from California with the build of a weight lifter.

  “Right now,” said one of the other women, “I wouldn’t mind drowning. It would be a relief.”

  The chief made each one of them slide over the raft’s round gunnel and into the water for an hour at a time. “You won’t sink, not with your flotation gear inflated. Only thing you gotta worry about is sharks.”

  Jamie spent his entire hour in the water worrying about sharks while the chief explained how to watch the water for their telltale dorsal fins. “’Course, if one comes up from deep we won’t see him until it’s prob’ly too late. Not much you can do about that.”

  The water seemed warm at first, but as the minutes plodded by Jamie felt the heat leaching out of his body. I’m raising the temperature of the Pacific Ocean, he told himself. I hope the sharks appreciate it.

  Joanna’s hour came near sunset. She seemed rigid with terror, but she managed to swing her legs stiffly up on the water-slicked gunnel and slide almost noiselessly into the sea. She hung in the water almost like a corpse, legs unmoving, arms stretched out tensely, her eyes staring, her lips pressed into a tight bloodless line.

  She drifted away from the raft time and again without making the slightest effort to swim back toward it. The chief yelled and bellowed at her, but each time he ended by hauling on the umbilical line to bring her closer.

  As Jamie lay on his bunk in the darkened rover, the Martian wind calling to him, he saw Joanna once again alone in the cold black sea, terrified, enduring the chiefs exasperated hollering and the embarrassed attention of the other trainees until finally the chief pulled her back aboard the raft. Shivering, Joanna wrapped a blanket around herself and crept to a corner of the raft. There she huddled into a fetal position without speaking a word to anyone.

  Why would she endure such fear? Jamie asked himself. Why has she pushed herself to get through all the rigors of training and come here to Mars?

  Then he remembered their foray onto the glacier at McMurdo and he finally realized what Joanna was truly afraid of.

  She’s scared of her father! She’s afraid of disappointing him. She’s more frightened of failing Brumado than she is of sharks or freezing or dying a hundred million miles from home. It’s not her own failure she’s afraid of. She’s afraid of disappointing him.

  He really does own her soul. He fills her entire life. What will she do when we get back to Earth? Especially if we don’t have any evidence of life to show her old man?

  He turned over and fell into a troubled sleep. He dreamed of Navaho hogans dotting the barren desert of Mars and of splendidly feathered gods descending from the heavens on pillars of fire. The most magnificent of all the gods looked exactly like Alberto Brumado, and he glared at Jamie with the angry glittering eyes of an eagle.

  EARTH

  WASHINGTON: Harvey Todd was short enough to have been compared with Alexander Hamilton. Like Hamilton, he had never held an elective office in his life. He had a boyishly pleasant face, modishly styled sandy hair, and a reputation for being dynamic and ruthless. Not yet thirty-five years old, he had been involved in government since his college days, when he had made himself one of the tireless young men in the New Jersey campaign that had elevated a shrill schoolteacher into a congresswoman.

  Now that congresswoman was Vice-President of the United States and Harvey Todd was her aide for science and technology. He was already spending most of his time preparing for next year’s primaries.

  He seemed at ease sitting across the small table from Alberto Brumado. The luncheon crowd at the Jefferson Hotel was quiet, subdued, as if each table full of people had its own secrets to whisper, huddling in the deep plush banquettes so that it was almost impossible to see who was sitting with whom.

  Brumado sipped from his tulip-shaped glass of Portuguese vinho verde. He barely noticed its taste, so intent was he on what Todd was saying.

  “I brought a copy of the speech.” The Vice-President’s aide pulled a tiny computer disk from his inside jacket pocket and placed it on the damask tablecloth. “I think you’ll be pleased with it.”

  “She accepts the necessity of further missions to Mars?” Brumado asked, hunching forward slightly.

  “Unequivocally.”

  “Wonderful.” Brumado reached his hand toward the disk.

  Todd covered it with his own hand. “Has the Indian written his statement supporting the Vice-President?”

  “Not yet. He’s been quite busy.”

  Sliding the disk back toward himself, “Well, when you can show me his written statement I can show you her speech.”

  “I see.”

  “I’ve scheduled it for the NASA anniversary, as you suggested. Your Indian doesn’t have much time to get his statement to us.”

  “He will. As soon as he comes back from this traverse to Tithonium Chasma.”

  “Where?”

  “The Grand Canyon of Mars.”

  “Oh, right, of course. The scientific jargon always throws me for a loop.”

  Bruma
do made an understanding smile.

  Todd’s boyish face held the searching, probing eyes of an opportunist. “You realize, of course, that if there’s some calamity between now and the date of the speech, all bets are off. I can’t have her backing a dead horse.”

  “I understand,” Brumado replied slowly, “that no politician wants to be identified with a failure.”

  “On the other hand, if the mission should be a terrific success … if they find something alive up there, that would guarantee support all up and down the line.”

  “They are searching for life right now.”

  “It’d be a good idea if they found something. Even just a hint, let them send back word that they found something that makes it look like life existed there once. That might be even better than finding real live Martians.”

  “They will find what they find,” said Brumado.

  Todd grinned at him. “That’s right. They’re scientists, aren’t they? They never slant their reports, do they?”

  Brumado did not like the implication, nor the sly expression on the young man’s face.

  Leaning closer to the Brazilian and lowering his voice, Todd went on, “You know, if they do find something spectacular, like an ancient city or something, your Indian could write his own ticket.”

  “The Vice-President’s support for further missions is what he wants.”

  With an impatient gesture Todd said, “I don’t mean that. I mean he could work with me. He could even run for office.”

  “I’m sure that is the furthest thing from his mind.”

  Todd leaned back in his chair again and turned his gaze toward the ceiling. “You know, the Vice-President isn’t going to get the party’s nomination automatically. She’s going to face some stiff opposition from Masterson and his coalition.”

  “I am not very familiar with American politics,” Brumado murmured.

  The young man said almost dreamily, “You tell your Indian that if he finds something really good up there he can write his own ticket when he gets back. He could hold the balance of power at the national convention, you know that?”

  Brumado was not certain that he was hearing correctly. “Are you saying that you would abandon the Vice-President if it seemed expedient?”

  “Oh no, of course not!” Todd smiled like a cobra. “But after all, the most important thing is for the party to nominate the man—I mean, the candidate—who can win the election in November. Isn’t it?”

  Brumado was not staying at the Jefferson Hotel. That was far too expensive for him. During these weeks in Washington he lived in the Georgetown home of a friend who was away in South Africa on State Department business. The house was a pleasant old red-brick Colonial, beautifully furnished and staffed by a cook and butler.

  Edith Elgin lived there, too. Almost.

  As soon as Edith had shown up in Washington Brumado’s internal warning system began sounding alarms.

  “Dr. Waterman replied to your message, did he not?” he had asked Edith.

  She had tracked him down at a congressional committee hearing and walked with him out of the Capitol and along Maryland Avenue toward the NASA headquarters building. The trees were still green and in full leaf, the sunshine warm, the sky bright blue. Yet the breeze had a tang in it, the first snap of autumn’s coming chill.

  “Oh yes, he surely did. It was a kind of impersonal message, though.” She laughed lightly. “More like a scientific report than a message from a friend.”

  Brumado looked at her closely as they walked along. “You were more than friends, I take it.”

  She returned his steady gaze. “Yes, we were. But we both knew it would end when he left for Mars.”

  “I see.”

  They strolled along slowly. To passersby they looked almost like father and daughter, although pedestrians in the Capitol Hill area were accustomed to seeing older men With good-looking young women. Brumado wore a conservative gray pinstriped double-breasted suit, Edith a midthigh dark skirt, off-white blouse, and cardinal red blazer.

  “I was wondering,” Edith said, “if I might interview you—about some of the things Jamie told me.”

  “For your network?” Brumado asked.

  “It would help me to nail down a permanent job.”

  They stopped at a corner traffic light. Brumado had seen Jamie’s message to her. There were no private transmissions from Mars; project officials screened everything.

  “You want to make a big story out of Waterman’s desire to change the mission plan and make a traverse out to the Grand Canyon,” he said.

  She admitted it easily. “I can use Jamie’s tape by itself if I have to. But I’d rather have you and maybe some of the project administrators telling your side of the story.”

  The light changed. Brumado gripped Edith’s arm as they hurried across the street. He was thinking furiously. This woman could destroy everything. She could set the Vice-President back on the warpath.

  “I have a proposition for you,” he said when they had safely reached the other side of the intersection.

  “A proposition?” Edith smiled at him.

  “I propose a deal,” Brumado said. “You can stay with me and get all the information about the expedition that you want—if you promise not to release anything until the team is safely back on Earth.”

  Edith frowned with puzzlement. “I’m not sure I understand …”

  “You can become the unofficial biographer of the Mars mission. Go where I go. No doors will be closed to you. You will see everything and meet everyone.”

  “But I can’t put any of it on the air until the mission’s finished. Is that it?”

  “That’s it.”

  Brumado realized he was still holding her arm. He did not let go.

  Thinking about Howard Francis back in New York, Edith said slowly, “I don’t know if the network will go for a deal like that.”

  Smiling his warmest, Brumado coaxed, “They have dozens of reporters covering the mission. But they are all on the outside looking in. If you agree to work with me, you will be on the inside—no other reporter has been allowed such a privilege.”

  “But I wouldn’t be able to file any reports …”

  “Not until the mission is completed. Then you will be able to tell the entire story, from the inside. You will have information and interviews that no other reporter could possibly obtain.”

  She looked thoughtful. “I’ll ask New York about it.”

  New York had leaped at the deal, of course. Howard Francis immediately saw visions of news specials that none of the other networks could duplicate. “And if we have to,” he had told Edith, “we can always screw them and go on the air with something really big before the other correspondents even know what’s happening!”

  So for weeks now Brumado had practically lived with Edith Elgin, introducing her wherever they went as the project’s unofficial biographer. The other networks complained; the print media howled. But Edith stayed with Brumado. They traveled together, ate together, spent every day together.

  Except for his lunch with Harvey Todd. The Vice-President’s aide had insisted that it be completely private.

  Riding alone in the taxi back to Georgetown, Brumado wondered how long he could keep Edith silent. The deal between them had been simple enough when he had first proposed it. But now the situation was getting more complicated. One of the complications was the Vice-President. Another was Harvey Todd and his ambition to back the winning candidate, despite his ostensible loyalties. The most pressing complication was Edith herself. She was young, quite lovely, very desirable. Yet Brumado could not reach a decision about her. Would she go to bed with him or reject him? If he attempted to make love to her would that bind her to him more closely or drive her away?

  He smiled to himself as the taxi threaded narrow, traffic-clogged Wisconsin Avenue. Perhaps if I do not try to seduce her she will go away. Perhaps she expects me to make love to her.

  He shook his head. No. She is more i
ntelligent than that. And more dangerous.

  The taxi pulled up in front of the red-brick Georgetown house. Edith had a room at the nearby Four Seasons Hotel and a sumptuous expense account. She actually paid for most of their meals and all of her own travel.

  Brumado chuckled to himself as he climbed the steps and fished in his pockets for the house key. Why not sleep with her? Everyone already thinks that I am. I might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb.

  SOL 36: MORNING

  It was scary going down the slope.

  “Easy does it,” Connors muttered, his hands tightly gripping the rover’s steering wheel, his booted feet playing the accelerator and brake as deftly as a concert pianist working the pedals of his instrument. A comm set was clamped over his head, one earphone with a pin mike crooked before the astronaut’s lips on a slim curved arm.

  Jamie felt as if he were driving too, sitting tensely in the right-hand seat, staring out at the steep incline of the landslide. It looked as if they were pointed almost straight down.

  “Like landing the old space shuttle,” Connors joked. “Drop a ninety-nine-ton brick from hypersonic to a soft touchdown in ten minutes. Nothing to it.”

  His insides pitching and reeling with every lurch of the rover, Jamie glanced back over his shoulder at the two women. They were strapped into the jumpseats that folded out from the bulkhead just behind the cockpit. Joanna was pale and sweating visibly. Ilona looked equally tense, but managed a tight smile.

  All four were in shirtsleeves, wearing their regulation tan coveralls, although Ilona had wrapped a colorful scarf around her waist. There was no need for the hard suits until they were safely on the canyon floor and ready to venture outside the rover.

  Jamie felt rivulets trickling down his ribs and beads of perspiration dotting his forehead and upper lip. His insides felt jumpy, twitchy.

  The middle module of the rover had been reconfigured for this traverse. Instead of being merely a housing for instruments and equipment, it now was set up as a miniature laboratory where the three scientists could examine the rocks and soil samples they were to gather and make preliminary analyses. They could step from the forward module to the makeshift lab through the airlock. The logistics module was filled with methane fuel for the electronic generator and fuel cells, plus their other consumables: emergency oxygen, extra water, and food.