by Ben Bova
“Such a drop-off is normal,” Tolbukhin said. “The same thing happens to personnel on the moon’s surface and even aboard the space stations.”
Yang nodded curtly, but she said, “They have been on the surface for five weeks and some drop-off in performance is to be expected, yes. But please look at how steeply these curves go down.”
“Hm,” said Li.
“The big decline started only a few days ago. If their performance continues to degrade at this steep rate they will all be helpless by the end of this week!”
Tolbukhin’s snort told them what he thought of her fears. But Klein shifted in his seat uneasily.
For the first time Li felt troubled. “Might this be an artifact of the computer program? A coincidence, perhaps?”
Yang’s painted face took on a stubborn hardness. “That is not possible. I used the standard evaluation program. The personnel here in orbit do not show the same deterioration; nothing like it.”
“Hm,” Li said again.
“Something is definitely wrong.”
“More than the usual fatigue factors?” Klein asked.
“Much worse.”
“What do you think it could be?”
Yang shrugged her slight shoulders. “It might be psychological. Or it might be physical. Or a combination of both.”
Tolbukhin laughed at her. “You cover all the possibilities, and as a result you tell us nothing of value.”
Li cast a sharply disapproving glance at the cosmonaut. Then he asked Dr. Yang, “Have you checked the physiological profiles that Dr. Reed has been sending up?”
“Yes. That was the first thing I did. They all look normal enough The surface team is in good health.”
“And psychological reports?”
“They seem normal also, although it is easier to mask a problem there than with the physical examinations.”
“Have you spoken to Dr. Reed about this?”
“Not yet. The mission regulations clearly state that I am required to inform you of this problem before contacting anyone on the surface team.”
“Ah, yes. The regulations. Well, let us both speak with Dr. Reed. Immediately.”
Tolbukhin raised a skeptical eyebrow. Klein looked worried.
SOL 36: EVENING
“No, I have not seen any untoward deterioration of their physical condition,” Tony Reed said to Li’s image on his communications screen. He glanced at Vosnesensky, scowling at him. “Everyone here seems to be in reasonably good physical shape. Naguib’s recovered from his bumps and bruises rather nicely.”
Reed was sitting in the little cubicle of his infirmary. Off by the folding door, cut of range of the TV camera built into the comm set, Vosnesensky sat on the examination stool like a menacing policeman, his arms folded stubbornly across his thick chest.
“Then how do you account for this deterioration in performance?” asked Dr. Yang, from behind Li’s shoulder.
Reed made a bland smile for her. “I’ll have to look into it. First thing I’ll do is run a few snap physical checkups to make certain that there’re no bugs infecting us.”
“What is the team’s psychological condition?” Li asked, his long sallow face etched with lines of worry.
“No major problems. Everyone seems to be happy with their work. Even Patel has settled back to his work and stopped grumbling.”
Yang asked, “Why did Brumado accompany Waterman on the EVA instead of Malater, as the schedule called for?”
“Beats me,” Reed replied, resisting the urge to look over at Vosnesensky again. “I’ll have to ask them.”
Li looked out from the screen in silence for a long moment, staring into Reed’s eyes, the worry lines around his mouth and eyes slowly evolving into just the slightest hint of suspicion. Or so it seemed to Tony.
“This is very serious,” he said at last. “The reports you have been sending indicate that nothing is wrong physically or psychologically with the surface personnel, yet their performance is degrading at an alarming rate. You must find out what is happening. If you cannot, I will have to recall the entire team and cut the surface exploration short.”
“No need even to think about that!” Reed flared. “If there’s anything seriously wrong—which I doubt—I am perfectly capable of determining the cause of the problem and taking the necessary medical steps to alleviate it.”
Li nodded, still looking suspicious, and said, “Please keep Dr. Yang informed on a daily basis. More than once a day, if necessary.”
“Yes. Of course.”
“Anything else?” Li asked Dr. Yang, turning slightly to address her over his shoulder.
“I would like to go down to the surface,” she said abruptly. “To assist Dr. Reed.”
Vosnesensky shook his head violently.
“That’s not necessary,” Tony said. “If there’s a problem I can root it out. If I need assistance, rest assured I will ask you for it.”
Li glanced at Reed, then at Yang, then focused his eyes on Reed again. Even through the comm screen Tony could feel the suspicion simmering in those almond eyes.
“To transfer personnel from orbit to the ground is a major undertaking. We have only two landing/ascent vehicles remaining. I must reserve them for any major emergencies that may arise.”
“I assure you, it’s not necessary,” Reed said again.
“Conduct your examinations quickly,” said Li. “This is a matter of great urgency.”
“Yes, I understand.”
“Very well. And stay in touch with Dr. Yang.”
“I will. Surely.”
Finally placated, though obviously not satisfied, Li ended the discussion and signed off. Reed stared at the blank display screen for long moments, his own shadowy reflection gazing back at him worriedly.
“Very good,” Vosnesensky said. “You did well.”
“Yes,” answered Reed, “but I’m not so certain that I did right.”
“We do not need another, doctor here. It will only cause problems. You heard what Li said: already he is thinking of cutting the mission short.”
“But, Mikhail Andreivitch, if we are becoming sick …”
“You are the team physician.” Vosnesensky pointed a stubby finger at the Englishman. “You find out what is wrong and fix it. One doctor here is enough.”
He turned and slid the accordion-fold door open, ending the discussion.
Left alone in his infirmary, Reed drummed his fingers on his desktop. Something was definitely amiss, he knew. Despite the physical exams, there is something incubating here. Vosnesensky would never have reacted like that a week ago. The man was so safety conscious it was almost ludicrous. Now he refuses to consider bringing Yang down here to assist me.
Are we all infected with something? Are we all going mad?
Vosnesensky walked scowling past the galley, straight to his own privacy cubicle. Only then did he let himself sigh wearily and sit on his cot. The air mattress sighed back at him. His legs ached. He felt edgy, almost angry.
Doctors, he grumbled to himself. The more they poke you the more they find that is wrong. We have caught a bug, some form of flu, and for that Li thinks of abandoning the mission altogether. Madness! Absolute madness.
“Are you sick?” Jamie asked.
Ilona looked up at him with bleary eyes. “I don’t know what it is. My arms and legs ache terribly. I don’t seem to have any strength …”
“What did Tony say?”
A guilty look flushed her face. “I didn’t call him. I didn’t want to take the chance that he might order us to return to the dome because of me.”
They were in the lab module of the rover, Ilona sitting by the small diamond-tipped saw that they used to slice rocks into thin sections for examination. Jamie was standing next to her in the narrow aisle between the racks of equipment and the workstation counter tops. Joanna sat a few feet away, by the microscope, watching them intently.
“Maybe you should rest,” Jamie said.
Ilona shook her head stubbornly. “No. It doesn’t help. And there’s work to do.”
Jamie’s own head was throbbing. He felt that Ilona should lie down, that he should call Tony Reed and report that she was sick. But he knew she would argue against it, and he hadn’t the strength to start a fight.
“I’ll be all right in the morning, I’m sure,” Ilona said with a forced smile. “I need a good night’s sleep, that’s all.”
“We all do,” Joanna said. “I haven’t felt this poorly since we all had those colds when we first came aboard the Mars spacecraft.”
“You too?” Jamie asked.
“Perhaps there is something wrong with the air filters in here?” Joanna made the suggestion sound like a question. “Perhaps they are not taking enough carbon dioxide out of the air?”
Jamie’s nod made his head hurt even worse. “I’ll check it out.” He started for the hatch, then turned back to Ilona. “Take it easy. Don’t push yourself.”
“Well, something’s wrong, that’s for sure,” Connors said when Jamie got back to the cockpit. “I feel like somebody’s been kickin’ the shit outta me for the past six hours.”
“I’d better call Tony,” Jamie said. “This is getting serious.”
But as Jamie reached for the radio switch on the control panel Connors grabbed his wrist. “Wait till tomorrow morning,” the astronaut said.
Jamie gave him a questioning look.
“Never call the medics until you absolutely have to,” Connors explained. “All those pill pushers know how to do is tell you to come back home so they can stick needles into you.”
“But something’s wrong, you said so yourself.”
“You and I will check out the CO2 system. That might be it. Then we’ll have a good hot dinner and get a good night’s sleep. If we still feel shitty tomorrow morning, then we can call for an ambulance.”
Jamie reluctantly agreed.
Seiji Toshima felt that of all the men and women on this exploration team, he was the only one who truly dealt with the entire planet Mars.
Waterman and the others in the rover may be excited about their traverse to the canyon. Patel and Naguib were enraptured by their study of the giant volcanoes. The astronauts and cosmonauts maintained the dome’s equipment while the English physician looked after their health and little Monique tended her garden and studied rocks.
I alone consider this world in its entirety.
He slowly swiveled his creaking plastic chair and surveyed his row of display screens. The entire planet was on view. Three screens showed the whole planet, pole to pole, as seen by the three observation satellites in synchronous orbit. The others showed data recorded by the satellites and roving balloons and the remote beacons that had been placed across the desolate sandy tracts of the red planet: air density, temperature, wind speed and direction, humidity, even the chemical composition of the air.
It was foolish of me, Toshima thought, not to realize that there would be enough humidity in Tithonium Chasma to form mists even in midsummer. He regarded this lapse as a failure of his own. It was known that the canyon floor is two to three kilometers below the surface of the surrounding plains. It was known from the probes that the air density down there was somewhat higher than elsewhere. Of course the air would be somewhat warmer and capable of holding more moisture. I should have foreseen that. I should have predicted it.
He did not dwell on the shortcomings of the past, however. On the largest of all his display screens, the one directly in front of the chair on which he sat, was his masterwork: a fully detailed weather map for the entire planet. Synthesizing all the data coming in to him, Toshima had drawn in the highs and lows, the cyclonic disturbances and wind-flow patterns, for all of Mars. At the touch of a keyboard button he could display the weather as it existed yesterday, or two weeks ago, or as he predicted it would exist tomorrow—or two weeks hence.
The longer-range forecasts were not as firm as the twenty-four-hour prediction, naturally. Even on a world as meteorologically dull as Mars, with no oceans and little humidity to complicate weather patterns, it was difficult to make forecasts more than forty-eight hours ahead. But he was learning, extending the predictive power of his vision further and further.
He rubbed his throbbing temples as he peered closely at his weather map. The dust storms swirling in the northern latitudes fascinated him. Driven by the energy released into the atmosphere by the melting polar cap, they appeared and vanished like ghosts. Unpredictable, so far. Toshima knew that in the spring season such storms could merge together, coalesce into a single gigantic storm that could blot out the whole planet for weeks on end.
He had no fear that these little storms would do that. What worried him was the cold front advancing southward across the broad sweep of Chryse Planitia.
As Martian weather systems went, that cold front contained considerable energy. Noontime high temperatures south of the front were still up into the midtwenties, Celsius. On the other side of the front they were below freezing, even at high noon. The front would pass the eastern end of the Grand Canyon complex during the night. Waterman and the others were more than a thousand kilometers west of there, but still Toshima worried about them.
He did not understand why he was worried. The rover was in no danger from the weather. The four men and women were prepared to face overnight lows of a hundred and fifty below zero. Why was a drop of thirty degrees worrisome?
Toshima felt an inner trembling take hold of him, almost like a sexual urge. There was something in the data before his eyes, something important that he did not recognize. He knew it. He could feel it within him. His subconscious mind was trying to tell him something, awaken him to a revelation, an important discovery. He bit his lips and squeezed his eyes shut, concentrating furiously. In vain.
His head pulsated with a dull pain. Again he kneaded his temples, then the back of his neck.
Opening his eyes again he took a deep breath, trying to calm the tension cording the tendons in his neck and cramping his shoulders. Turning slowly on his creaking stool he studied each of the display screens, one by one. The information is here, before my eyes, he knew. Yet he could not consciously grasp what his inner mind was trying to tell him.
Relax, said the long-forgotten voice of the monk who had guided him in childhood. Do not attempt to force your spirit, it will resist your efforts and cause you nothing but pain. Relax and empty your mind of all wants, all needs. Meditation is the key to understanding, the bridge to the great cosmic all.
Toshima closed his eyes once again, this time gently, without strain. He folded his arms across his chest, and let his chin droop to his chest. To a casual passerby it would look as if the Japanese meteorologist were taking a nap.
He tried to clear his mind by drawing up a picture Of the divine Fujiyama, its exquisitely proportioned cone covered with snow against a clear blue winter sky. His thoughts drifted, slowly, languorously, from one past vision to another. He recalled the first time he had been in the U.S.A., in Boston, how cold the winter wind was at the airport, blowing in off the frigid water of the harbor. How cutting the wind was even in the city, at the hotel where the world meteorology congress was meeting.
The towers of Boston’s Prudential Center created an inadvertent wind tunnel, he had been told. All the meteorologists marveled at the phenomenon. Even when the winds were calm elsewhere in the city, at the Prudential Center they screeched between the buildings so fiercely that they stirred whitecaps in the decorative ponds and fountains.
Toshima’s eyes snapped open. Wind tunnel!
He rolled his little chair to the keyboard in front of his master map and began pecking furiously, headache forgotten. What will be the effect of a strong pressure gradient on the long narrow corridor of the Valles Marineris? How will the approaching cold front affect the winds in Tithonium Chasma?
It took a good part of the night, but finally Toshima had his answer. He checked it, then checked it again. Yes, the result was certai
n.
Again he trembled, this time with the exultation of victory. And the knowledge of fear. He had made a great discovery. It told him that Waterman and the others were in grave danger.
As the first light of dawn filtered into the dome, Toshima rose in bleary-eyed anxiety to awaken Vosnesensky.
“The people in the rover must be warned of this,” he muttered to himself. “There is no time to waste.”
THE LONG WINTER
The blue world was far luckier than its red companion. Closer to Father Sun, bigger, it held its deep oceans of water and protective mantle of air. Life flourished.
Not without interruption, however. Not without calamities. Great creatures took command of the seas, the land, even the air, only to die away completely into utter extinction. At times the hand of death swept the blue world so thoroughly that it was almost emptied of life completely.
Yet each time life struggled back, repopulating the blue world with new and different creatures.
Great sheets of ice marched outward from the poles; massive glaciers came grinding down from the mountains to cover the land with layers of ice miles thick. So much of the oceans’ waters was turned into ice that the level of the sea sank. The blue world turned white and glittering under the pale sun of winters that lasted a hundred thousand years or more.
The cold reached the red world, too.
The red world had not yet fully recovered from that great cataclysm of long ago. Yet a broad new sea had arisen, gleaming water that covered almost half the planet. Enormous volcanoes reared their mighty peaks toward the stars and spread hot lava and steaming gases over the land. There was still energy deep, beneath the red world’s crust, the molten energy to build the tallest mountains of all time.
As always when there is water and energy, there was the chance for life to begin. Water and energy and time: those are all that life needs.
But then the cold began to do its deadly work. The great hemispherical sea froze and vanished into the ground. The volcanoes stilled. The red world began a long, long winter that has lasted to this very day.
