by Ben Bova
The screen went blank. Jamie reran the whole message, then froze Trumball’s angry, snarling image at its end.
Leaning back in the squeaking little wheeled chair, Jamie wondered if he should be firm or conciliatory. A soft answer may turneth away wrath, he thought, but Trumball won’t be diverted that easily.
There’s more involved here than a squabble between Trumball and me, he told himself. That old man is a primary force behind the funding for this expedition—and the next. If you want a smooth road for the next expedition, Jamie told himself, you’ve got to keep Trumball on the team.
Yet as he stared at the coldly furious image on the screen, anger simmered anew within Jamie. Trumball has no right to scream at me or anybody else like that. If he’s sore at his son he should take it out on Dex, not me. And if I give him the impression that he can push me around, he’ll start making more demands. He’s a bully; the more I give in to him the more he’ll take.
What’s the best path, Grandfather? How can I do this without causing more pain?
He took a deep breath, then pressed the key that activated the computer’s tiny camera. Jamie saw its red eye come on, just atop Trumball’s stilled image on the screen.
“Mr. Trumball,” he began slowly, “I can understand your concern for your son’s safety. I had no idea you sent a message that Dex was not to go on the excursion to pick up the Pathfinder hardware. There was no such message addressed to me. And with all due respect, sir, you are not in command of this expedition. I am. You are not in a position to give orders.”
Jamie looked directly into the camera’s unblinking red eye and continued, “Neither Dex nor anyone else here will receive any special privileges. The idea for picking up Pathfinder was his, and he certainly wanted to go out on the excursion. Even had I known of your wishes, I’m afraid I would have had to go against them. This is Dex’s job, and I’m sure he’ll do it without trouble.
“He’s got the best man we have along with him: Dr. Craig. If they run into any difficulties, they will return to base. I had—I have, no intention of taking foolish risks with anyone’s life.”
Unconsciously hunching closer to the camera, Jamie concluded, “I know that you helped to raise most of the money for this expedition, and we’re all very grateful for that. But that doesn’t give you the authority to make decisions about our work here. You can go to the ICU and complain to them if you want to. But frankly, I don’t see what even they could do for you. We’re here, more than a hundred million kilometers from Earth, and we have to make our own decisions.
“I’m sorry this particular decision has you so upset and worried. Maybe when Dex comes back with the Pathfinder and Sojourner you’ll feel differently. Good night.”
He tapped the keyboard twice: once to turn off the camera, the other to transmit his message to Trumball. Only then did he blank the old man’s image from the screen.
“I would’ve told him to stick it up his arse.”
Jamie wheeled around and saw Vijay leaning against the partition doorway, holding a steaming mug in both hands, as if she were trying to warm herself with it.
“How long have you been there?”
She came in and sat down beside him. “I was getting myself a cuppa when I heard Dex’s dad ranting.”
She was in her bulky coral-red turtleneck sweater and loose-fitting jeans instead of the usual coveralls, sitting so close to him that Jamie caught the delicate scent of the herbal tea she was drinking, sensed its warmth.
He said, “The old man must’ve told Dex he didn’t want him going out on this excursion and Dex never informed me about it.”
Vijay took a sip from the steaming mug. “Should he have?”
“It would’ve helped.”
“Maybe he was afraid you’d nix the excursion if you knew.”
Jamie shook his head. “I couldn’t do that. Let somebody like Trumball think he can boss you around and you’ll never hear the last of him.”
She dipped her chin in agreement. “There is that.”
“I just hope nothing happens while he’s out there,” Jamie said.
“Didn’t you hope that anyway? Before Trumball’s blast, I mean.”
“Yeah, sure, but . . . you know what I mean.”
“Yes, I suppose I do.”
Jamie blurted, “You slept with him, didn’t you?”
“With Dex?”
“During the flight.” Jamie was shocked that he mentioned it. The words had come out before he realized what he was going to say.
Vijay nodded, her expression fathomless. “Yes. Once.”
“Once,” he repeated.
With an odd little smile, Vijay said, “You get to know a lot about a man when he’s got his pants down.”
Jamie ran out of words.
“I told you he was an alpha male,” she said. “Same as you are.”
He nodded glumly.
“I’m attracted to alpha males.”
“So you’re attracted to him.”
“I was. Now I’m attracted to you.”
“Me?”
She broke into a smile. “Do you see anybody else around here?”
Jamie felt off-balance. She’s teasing me. She must be teasing.
Placing her mug on the corner of the console desk, Vijay said, “You’re attracted to me, aren’t you?”
“Um, sure.”
She got to her feet and put her hand out to him. “So the only question remaining is, your place or mine?”
Jamie stood up slowly, not certain his legs would support him. “It’s not that simple, Vijay.”
She planted her hands on her hips. “My god, Jamie, you’re as bad as most Aussie blokes!”
“I didn’t mean—”
She stepped up to him and slid her arms around his neck. “Don’t you ever feel lonely?” she whispered. “Or scared? We’re so alone out here. So far from home. Doesn’t it ever get to you?”
Her voice wasn’t teasing now. He held her tightly and could feel her trembling. Beneath all the flip talk she was tense with anxiety.
“I don’t want to be alone tonight, Jamie.”
“Neither do I,” he admitted at last. “Neither do I.”
Pale morning sun slanted through the rover’s curved windshield as Dex drove steadily across the rolling, rock-strewn plain. Each pebble and gully cast long early morning shadows. The sunlight looks different here, Dex thought. Weaker, pinker . . . something.
He and Craig had been underway for nearly an hour when Dex saw a red light suddenly glare up from the control panel.
“Hey, Wiley,” he called over his shoulder. “We’ve got a problem here.”
Craig shuffled into the cockpit and sat in the right seat, muttering, “What’s this ‘we,’ white man?”
Dex jabbed a finger at the telltale.
“Oh-oh,” said Craig.
“That doesn’t sound so good, Wiley.”
“Fuel cells’re discharging. They shouldn’t oughtta do that.”
“We don’t have to stop, do we?”
“Naw,” said Craig. “I’ll take a look.”
He headed for the rear of the rover module. The fuel cells were the backup electrical system, to be used if the solar panels outside were unable to charge up the batteries that ran the rover’s systems at night. The fuel cells on this old rover were powered by hydrogen and oxygen, which meant that their “waste” product was drinkable water. The fuel cells on the newer rovers ran on methane and oxygen generated from permafrost water and the Martian atmosphere.
Trumball drove on across the monotonous landscape. “Miles and miles of nothing but miles and miles,” he murmured to himself. He knew he should be studying the land with a geologist’s professional eye, categorizing the rock formations, watching how the sand dunes built up, checking the density of the rocks scattered everywhere, looking for craters. Instead he simply felt bored.
Precisely at the one-hour mark the timer on the panel chimed.
Dex called back to
Craig, “Time to stop and plant a beacon, Wiley.”
“Keep goin’,” Craig said. “I’ll suit up; gotta go outside anyway to check out the damned fuel cells.”
Dex kept the rover trundling along while Craig struggled into his hard suit on his own. Once Craig announced he was ready, Dex stopped the vehicle and went back to check the older man’s suit and backpack.
“Looks good, Wiley,” he said.
“Okay,” came Craig’s voice, muffled by the sealed helmet. “Gimme one of the beacons.”
Dex did that, and then started to tug on his own suit. Stupid flathead safety regs, he said to himself as Craig cycled through the airlock and went outside. I’ve gotta stand here in this tin can like some deadhead just because Wiley’s outside. If anything goes wrong, he’ll pop back into the airlock; he won’t need me to come out and rescue him.
While Dex grumbled to himself he thought briefly about the safety regulation that required a second person to check out his suit. How the hell can you do that when the second man is already outside? he complained silently. He had no intention of going outside anyway, not unless Craig got into some unimaginable difficulty. The morphs who wrote these regulations must be the kind of guys who wear suspenders and a belt, he told himself. Old farts like Jamie.
Dex clomped back to the cockpit and sat awkwardly in the left seat. All the lights on the board were green, except the one for the fuel cells.
“How’s it going, Wiley?” he called on the intercom.
“Checkin’ these drat-damn fuel cells. Gimme a few minutes.”
“Take your time,” said Dex.
Sitting there idly, Dex scanned the horizon. Nothing. Dead as Beethoven. Deader. Nothing but rocks and sand and every shade of red the human eye could register. Not a thing moving out there—
He sat up bolt upright, not an easy thing to do in the hard suit. Something was moving out there! Just a flicker, off on the horizon, and then it was gone.
Dex went back to the equipment lockers beneath the bunks in the module’s midsection. Bending over in the suit was awkward, he had to lower himself to his knees to reach the latches that opened the lockers. Cursing the suit and its gloves, he fumbled through the neatly ordered sets of tools until he found the electronically boosted binoculars. Then he hurried back to the cockpit, like some old movie monster trying to gallop.
His helmet visor was up, so Dex could put the binoculars against his eyes to scan the horizon. Nothing. Whatever it was had disappeared, gone away.
Wait! A flicker . . .
Dex adjusted the focus and it came into crisp view. A dust devil. A swirling little eddy of dust, red as a real devil. It would have been called a pillar of fire in the Old Testament, Dex thought, except that this one is on Mars, not Israel or Egypt. It occurred to him that there was a region on Mars called Sinai, south of the Grand Canyon.
“You oughtta be down there, pal,” he murmured as he watched the minicyclone twist and dance across the distant horizon.
As he put the binoculars down Dex remembered that giant dust storms sometimes blanketed Mars almost from pole to pole. Usually during the spring season. He shook his head inside his helmet. It’s too late in the season now; we timed the landing so the storms would be over. Besides, there weren’t any this year.
Not yet, warned a tiny voice in his head. Spring lasts six months on Mars.
Jamie felt decidedly awkward at breakfast. Usually the team members took their morning meal when they chose to; there was no set time when everyone gathered at the galley each morning. It just happened that when Jamie came out of his quarters, Vijay, Dezhurova, and the English biologist Trudy Hall were already sitting at the table, heads together, chatting busily.
When they saw Jamie approaching their chat stopped. He said “Good morning” to them and got a chorus of the same in return. Then watchful silence as he picked a breakfast package from the freezer. He could feel their eyes on him.
“The strawberries ought to be ready for picking in another few days,” he announced to no one in particular.
“Yes, and the tomatoes, too,” answered Trudy Hall.
Trudy and Fuchida were the gardeners, although everybody pitched in as needed. The hydroponic garden, in its own plastic dome, was intended not only to supply the bulk of the expedition’s food; it also recycled their wastewater.
Jamie sat at the head of the table, with Trudy and Stacy on his left and Vijay at the other end, facing him. She smiled at him and he made a self-conscious smile back at her.
“Sleep well?” Trudy asked, her face the picture of innocent curiosity.
Jamie nodded and turned his attention to the bowl of instant cereal in front of him.
Conversation was a strain. No matter what Hall or Dezhurova said, it sounded to Jamie like arch references to sex. Vijay seemed perfectly relaxed, though. She’s enjoying this banter, Jamie thought.
He went through his meal as quickly as he could and then headed for the comm center.
“I’ve got to check in with the others,” he said to them.
“I already talked with both teams,” Stacy called to his retreating back. “Possum has a cranky fuel cell, but otherwise everything is okay.”
Jamie stopped and turned back toward her. “And Tómas?”
“They’re heading off for the big caldera, on schedule.”
“Good,” said Jamie. Then he kept on walking toward the comm center.
A few minutes after he had spoken with Fuchida, Vijay slipped into the cubicle and sat beside him.
“It isn’t a crime, you know,” she said, a slight smile curving her lips.
“I know.”
“Consenting adults and all that.”
“I know,” he repeated.
“Did you think the others’d be jealous?”
“Aw, come on, Vijay . . .”
She laughed lightly. “That’s better. Lord, you were uptight back there!”
“Do they know?”
“I didn’t say anything, but the way you were behaving they must have guessed it.”
“Damn.”
“It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
“I know, but—”
“It happened, Jamie. Now forget about it. Get on with the program. I’m not trying to force a commitment out of you. I don’t want that.”
He felt relieved and disappointed at the same time. “Vijay, I . . . look, this kind of complicates everything.”
She shook her head. “No worries, mate. No complications. It happened and it was very nice. Maybe it’ll happen again, when the moon is right. Maybe not. Don’t give it another thought.”
“How the hell can I not give it another thought?”
Her smile returned. “That’s what I wanted to hear from you, Jamie. That’s all I wanted to hear.”
“Hydrogen is the cussedest damned stuff in the universe,” Craig was muttering as he drove the rover. That red warning light still glared from the control panel.
Sitting beside him, Dex said, “But the Lord must’ve loved hydrogen—”
“Because He made so much of it,” Craig finished for him. “Yeah, I know.”
“Ninety percent of the universe is hydrogen, Wiley. More.”
“That’s why the universe is so damned cantankerous.”
“What’ve you got against hydrogen—beside the fact that it’s leaked out of the fuel cells?”
“Stuff always leaks. It’s sneaky-pete stuff, leaks through seals and gaskets that’d hold anything else.”
“The seals on that fuel cell should’ve held the hydrogen,” Trumball said, more seriously. “The manufacturer’s going to pay a forfeiture fee because they didn’t make the seals hydrogen-tight.”
“Helluva lot of good that’ll do us if we get ourselves killed out here.”
“Hey, lighten up, Wiley! It’s not that serious. We’re okay.”
“I don’t like headin’ away from the base with our backup power system dead.”
“We can take on more hydrogen when
we get to the fuel generator,” Trumball said.
“Uh-uh. The generator produces methane and oxy. Not hydrogen.”
“There’s a water generator on board, isn’t there?”
“Yeah.”
“So,” Trumball waved a hand in their air, “we take on extra water and electrolyze it into oxygen and hydrogen. Voila!”
Craig cast him a sour look. “Electrolyze the water.”
“Right.”
“And what do we drink, amigo?”
“Water from the fuel cells.”
“Now wait a minute . . .”
“Naw, you listen to me, Wiley. Here’s the thing of it: We take on the water, electrolyze it, and use the hydrogen to run the fuel cells.”
“What about the oxygen?”
“Store it, dump it, whatever. We’ve got plenty of oxy anyway. You with me so far?”
“We pump the hydrogen into the goddamned leaky fuel cells, big deal.”
“Yeah, but we run the fuel cells to provide our electricity at night, instead of the lithium batteries.”
“Now, why the hell—”
“So it doesn’t matter if the fuel cells leak; we’ll work ’em and get power out of ’em before the hydrogen leaks away.”
Both hands on the rover’s steering wheel, his eyes fixed on the land ahead, Craig looked like a man waiting for a card shark to deal him a deuce.
“Now what else do the fuel cells produce besides electricity?” Trumball asked, grinning with all his teeth.
“Water.”
“Which we drink a little of and electrolyze the rest into fresh hydrogen and oxygen to run the fuel cells!”
Craig shook his head. “Great. You’ve invented the perpetual motion machine.”
“Yeah, sure. I’m not that dufo, Wiley. We’ll lose hydrogen all the time, I know that. But the loss’ll be slow enough so we can use the fuel cells for overnight power all the way out to Ares Vallis and back to the generator!”
“You done the math?”
“I did some rough numbers. I’ll put it through the computer as soon as you give me an accurate fix for the fuel cells’ normal efficiency rating.”
