Return to Mars

by Ben Bova

  “We agreed to keep off the pill before we left Earth,” Shektar explained. “The three of us are volunteers in a medical experiment on the harem effect.”

  “You’re going to write a paper about this?”

  “When we get back, yes. Publish or perish, you know.”

  Jamie could not tell if she were serious or baiting him.

  “Of course,” she went on, “if any of us thinks she has cause to, she can take a ‘morning after’ pill. I’ve got a good supply of those on hand.”

  Jamie heard himself ask, “Has anybody …?”

  Her smile became dazzling. “Patient-doctor confidentiality, Jamie. My lips are sealed.”

  He sighed with exasperation. It sounded more like a growl.

  Suddenly changing the subject, Shektar said, “You haven’t done a medical diagnostic since you left base, you know.”

  “I don’t need—”

  “You okayed the regulations, Dr. Waterman. We all agreed to abide by them.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “It’s my responsibility to look after your physical and mental health.” She was totally serious now. “But I can’t do that if you don’t cooperate.”

  “Have the others …?”

  “Dex and Trudy have been very cooperative. Stacy has an astronaut’s aversion to medics, but she went through a diagnostic last night. I’ve got the data here.”

  “I’d rather have you examine me personally than that dumb machine,” he blurted.

  Her brows rose. “Really?”

  Jamie cursed himself for an idiot. “What I meant to say is—”

  But Vijay was smiling again. “I’ll be happy to examine you when you return. But for now, I’m afraid the diagnostic machine is as romantic as we can get.”

  “Romantic?”

  She laughed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to fluster you. It’s my evil sense of humor.”

  He forced a smile back at her. A weak one. “I’m not flustered. It’s all right.”

  “Yes, I can see that.”

  Trying to regain command of the conversation, Jamie said, “I’ve got to talk with Tomas.”

  “Now?”

  “Before I sign off.”

  “Do you want to make your formal report?”

  “I want him to program one of the soarplanes to do a reconnaissance run past the cliff dwelling.”

  MORNING: SOL 11

  DESPITE ALL THE VACUUMING, JAMIE SAW, THE SUITS WERE STARTING TO look soiled, used. The once-gleaming white boots and leggings now had a faintly reddish tinge. The hand vacs don’t take off all the dust, he realized. He remembered how stained and used the suits had looked on the first expedition, after only a couple of weeks.

  “Here’s the rig,” Dex Trumball said, handing Jamie his helmet. Its visor was already closed; the VR cameras attached just above eye level. Stacy Dezhurova had plugged the virtual reality electronics module into Jamie’s suit backpack.

  “Okay,” Jamie said, sliding the helmet carefully over his head. As he sealed the neck ring, he said, “Once I get the VR gloves on I’m ready for my big chance at show biz.”

  Trumball was all business. “Just take it slow and easy. No sudden moves. You don’t want to make the viewers back home dizzy.”

  Dezhurova was in her suit, visor raised, ready to check out Jamie before he went through the airlock. Jamie heard their voices muffled through his padded helmet. Then Dezhurova came through his earphones: “Radio check.”

  “Loud and clear, Stacy.”

  “Then you are go for the excursion.”

  Jamie trudged awkwardly into the airlock and started its pump-down cycle. We could bring a couple of samples inside, he thought. As long as they’re sealed in sample cases they’ll be okay. The cases are insulated and the UV lights can’t get through them. But then he thought, why take a chance? Leave them outside; they’ll be better off in their natural environment.

  The light on the indicator panel flicked to red. Jamie touched a gloved thumb on the stud that opened the outer hatch. Then he stepped out onto the red sand of Mars once again.

  The ground was covered with bootprints. Jamie walked a dozen paces away from the rover, then looked up the face of the gigantic cliff that ran out to the horizon in either direction. His vision blocked by the hard suit’s helmet, he could not see the top of the cliff even when he bent back as far as he could.

  His breath caught in his chest as he realized all over again that he was on another world, a magnificent, bold, fresh planet that held an entire world of surprises and mysteries for them to discover and decipher. He could feel the warmth of the morning sun soaking into the rocks strewn across the ground and the massive cliff that rose beyond hut vision.

  A river ran through here, Jamie told himself. A tremendous torrent that carried boulders as big as houses along with it. But when? How long ago? What happened to it?

  The cliff dwelling’s less than fifty klicks from here, Jamie told himself. We could drive out there for a quick look at it and be back before sunset.

  Turning, he stared out across the Canyon floor. The cliffs on its other side were over the horizon, out of sight. The horizon itself seemed too close, disturbingly close, and as sharp as a razor cut across the edge of the world. A whole planet to explore. A whole world. If there really was one cliff dwelling out there, how many others will we find?

  But the voice of his responsibilities answered, not today. You can’t » searching for your cliff dwelling. Not on this mission. You’d be cutting into the rover’s fuel reserve, taking an unnecessary risk.

  He patient, he counseled himself. Get the soarplane to make a recon of the area. Then you can plan a specific excursion out there.

  If the soarplane’s cameras show anything worth looking at.

  “Are you ready for your fifteen minutes of fame?” Stacy Dezhurova’s voice in his earphones startled Jamie out of his musings.

  Turning back toward the rover, Jamie saw her standing by the airlock hatch, the boots and legs of her hard suit stained faintly pink, the yellow stripes on her sleeves still as bright and pristine as buttercups.

  “I guess,” he said.

  “Tarawa is ready for your transmission,” she said. “Pete Connors is running the comm console.”

  “Which frequency is he on?”

  “Two.”

  Jamie took a deep breath as he tapped the keyboard on the wrist of his suit. It’d be good to talk with Pete, he thought. Have a nice, long, friendly chat. But Jamie knew that distance defeated that hope. It would lake almost fifteen minutes for his words to reach Earth, an equal span of time for Connors’ reply. We could spend the whole morning just saying hello, how are you, Jamie knew.

  Reluctantly, Jamie spoke into his microphone, “Welcome again to Mars, from the floor of the Grand Canyon. Today we’re going to show you real Martians …”

  Fulvio A. DiNardo, S.J., sat in his one-room apartment on the top floor of what had once been a Renaissance palazzo. The stately old building overlooked the ornate fountain in the center of the Piazza Nuvona. Centuries ago it served as the Roman home for the boisterous family of u prosperous dealer in precious metals; for the past two centuries it housed a do/en marble-lined apartments that generated lucrative rents for that family’s distant descendants.

  Fr. DiNardo had been born to considerable wealth, although to his credit he took his Jesuit vows seriously enough to live modestly. Geology was his passion, his one vice. He burned to understand how God had built this Earth and the other worlds He had been pleased to create.

  A brilliant student, marked early for success, he had become a world-class geologist, the obvious choice for a berth on the first mission to Mars. He tried to be as humble as possible about it, but inwardly he glowed with pride at the thought of leading the way to another world.

  The sin of pride brought him a punishment: a gall bladder attack that required surgery and removed him from the First Mars Expedition.

  Now he sat in his small but well-appoint
ed apartment, a virtual reality helmet over his head and data gloves on his thick-fingered hands, experiencing Mars through an electronic illusion.

  He saw the rocks that Jamie Waterman saw, hefted them and inspected their pitted, coarse surfaces closely. He examined the yellowish patches where the Martian lichen lived a few millimeters below the surface of some of those rocks. He felt the solidity of the compact electronically boosted microscope Waterman gripped in one hand as he knelt to peer closely at the alien lichen.

  “Those dark patches along the lichen’s surface,” he heard Waterman’s voice explaining, “are actually windows that allow light to penetrate through the outer skin of the organism.”

  DiNardo nodded with understanding.

  “At night, they close, like eyes,” Waterman continued, “so that the organism’s internal heat doesn’t leak through the windows back into the atmosphere.”

  Of course, thought DiNardo. A wonderful adaptation.

  Through the senses of Jamie Waterman the Jesuit walked along the cliff face, examined rocks, scuffed boot marks in the rusty sand.

  To his surprise, Jamie found himself enjoying his stint as a tour conductor. Maybe I was cut out to be a teacher, after all, he thought as he walked slowly along the cliff face, pointing out the layers of different colored stone: iron-dark red, ocher, bleached tan, even a few extrusions of pale yellowish rock.

  “These layers give every indication of being laid down over a long period of time, billions of years, most likely. They’re probably telling us that there was an ocean here, or at least a very large sea, that deposited this material, layer by layer.”

  He came to a house-sized boulder that had obviously tumbled to the Canyon floor from some height.

  “Problem: What are the ages of these rocks?” Jamie asked rhetorically us he ran his gloved fingers over the boulder’s strangely smooth mil I ace. “Before we learned how to date rocks by radioactive decay, geologists determined age by how deep a stratum was from the surface. Now …”

  As he explained how radioactive dating works, how geologists estimate the age of a rock from the ratio of radioactive elements in it, Jamie climbed up to the boulder’s top, scrambling up clefts in its side until he was standing atop the big rock.

  “As you can see …” he said, panting. Then stopped. His visor had erupted into a cascade of blinking red lights. The data gloves, the eye-slaved cameras, the entire VR rig was down, no longer functioning.

  Jamie muttered a string of curses.

  Across the world, people raptly exploring Tithonium Chasma with Jamie suddenly were cut off. Their visual displays went dark.

  Before they could remove their helmets, the somber dark face of former astronaut Pete Connors appeared before them.

  “We’ve lost VR contact with Dr. Waterman,” Connors said, his voice serious but not anxious. “All our data links here tell us that Dr. Waterman’s life-support equipment is still functioning; he’s in no danger. But the virtual reality link is down because of some technical malfunction.”

  Fr. DiNardo slowly removed his helmet.

  I was on Mars, DiNardo told himself. God granted me that much, at least. I should be thankful.

  I hope Waterman is all right and that he is in no danger. I will offer a prayer for his safety.

  Still, as he ran a tired hand over his shaved head, Fr. DiNardo’s eyes were filled with sad, bitter tears. It should have been me on Mars. It should have been me.

  My God, my God, why did you abandon me?

  NEW YORK CITY

  “SO WHERE DO WE STAND ON THIS?” ASKED ROGER NEWELL.

  Two other men and three women sat around the conference table in the headquarters offices of Allied News. Dress was strictly informal: sweaters, chinos and Levis, not a tie or jacket in sight.

  Newell prided himself on keeping the office relaxed. Gathering and broadcasting the news was a high-pressure profession; no sense adding to the strain with silly dress code requirements.

  “They’re okay,” said the lean, languid young man sitting on his left. “No physical danger. Just the VR equipment crapped out on them.”

  Newell suppressed a smirk.

  One of the women—roundly overweight and pasty-faced—said in a crisp, biting tone, “This morning’s poll results show the Mars expedition ranks behind the animal rights conference and the fruit picker’s strike in Florida.”

  “It’s the old story,” said the woman beside her, who was considerably younger. She radiated ambition, from her modish blonde buzz cut to her stiletto heels. “Nobody gives a rat’s fart about what they’re doing on Mars unless they get into some trouble.”

  “And a breakdown of their VR equipment isn’t trouble?”

  “Not enough, anyway.”

  “The tabloids don’t think so,” said the man on Newell’s right. “Did you see ‘em last night? Three straight shows about how Martians living underground are using psychic powers to destroy the expedition’s equipment.”

  The pasty-faced woman laughed. ‘ ‘Last week the tabloids were saying that the Martians would show themselves to our people and give them the cure for cancer.”

  They all snickered, even Newell.

  But then he said, “So their equipment breakdown doesn’t mesmerize our viewers, eh?”

  “Naw. People want a real disaster.”

  “Lives at stake.”

  “Burning and bleeding.”

  “All right,” Newell said, raising his hands. Their banter shut off immediately.

  He smiled at them. “So they can’t beam their virtual reality broadcasts to their subscribers, is that it?”

  “Not until they patch up the equipment.”

  “So their subscribers have to tune in to us to get their news about Mars, right?”

  “Or the competition.”

  “So what do we do? We can’t take ten-fifteen seconds every night to tell our audience that nothing’s happened on Mars.”

  “We could do a quickie science report,” said the overweight woman.

  Everyone groaned. Science reports lost viewers, they all believed that firmly. Science was dull. Doing science reports was like handing the audience to your competition.

  “Do we just ignore Mars altogether?”

  The oldest woman at the table—she must have been approaching forty, at least—tapped a forefinger against her chin. “I remember …”

  “What?” asked Newell.

  “Something they showed us in school … when I was—no! It was in tin-media history class I took a couple of years ago.”

  “What?” Newell repeated, with some exasperation.

  “Cronkite did it! Yeah, that’s right.”

  “What?” the others chorused.

  “There was some kind of crisis. Hostages or something. Dragged m for more than a year. At the end of every broadcast, Cronkite would say. ‘This is the fifty-fourth day’ of whatever it was.”

  “Like a countdown?”

  “More like a reminder. A calendar, sort of.”

  Newell cocked his head to one side, a sign that he was thinking. The others stayed silent.

  “I like it,” he said at last. “At the end of the evening news we have the anchor say, “This is the fifty-fourth day that our explorers are on Mars.’ “

  “Whatever the right number is.”

  “Of course.”

  “The phrasing needs work, I think.”

  “That’s what we’ve got writers for,” said Newell, somewhat crossly.

  “This way, we remind the audience that those people are still on Mars.”

  “But we don’t waste air time doing a science story.”

  “Unless something happens to them.”

  “Oh, if they get into trouble we’ll hop on it with both feet,” Newell promised. “Nothing like real danger to boost the ratings.”

  BOSTON

  DARRYL C. TRUMBALL HAD BEEN MUCH TOO BUSY TO PLUG INTO THE LATEST virtual reality transmission from Mars. He had watched the first two of them, which his
son had conducted on the first two days of their arrival on the planet. That was enough.

  He kept tabs on the income from the VR transmissions, of course. The first two broadcasts had an audience of slightly more than twenty million. Twenty million paying viewers, at ten dollars each, had watched the explorers on the day they landed on Mars and the next day, when Dex took them on a tour through the dome in which they were going to live for the next year and a half.

  And then the audience had quickly dwindled to about three million. If you’ve seen Mars rocks once, who wants to see them again, except school kids and space nuts? But three million was respectable: it meant thirty million dollars for the expedition with every transmission.

  Of course, not everybody paid their ten bucks, Trumball knew. It was ten dollars per receiver, not ten bucks per head. A school class of thirty kids paid only ten dollars. A family could pay their ten dollars and plug in all their relatives. Bars full of drunks paid their ten bucks and that was that. Trumball fumed at the thought, but there was no practical way to stop the freeloaders.

  Now the VR equipment had broken down. That damned Indian broke something while he was out frolicking over some damned rocks.

  They’d better get it repaired P.D.Q., Trumball groused. We’re losing thirty million dollars a shot.

  AFTERNOON: SOL 15

  “THERE SHE is!” DEX TRUMBALL EXCLAIMED.

  He was sitting in the copilot’s chair as Stacy Dezhurova piloted the rover up the gentle grade of the ancient landslide.

  “Did you expect it’d moved off?” Trudy Hall asked lightly. She was sitting in the jumpseat behind Jamie; Trumball sat in the fold-down behind Dezhurova.

  Jamie tapped at the comm console and got Mitsuo Fuchida’s face on the control panel’s small screen.

  “We’re approaching the old rover,” Jamie reported. “We’re going to stop and inspect it.”

  “I understand,” Fuchida said.

  “How’s everything there?”