by Ben Bova
He said to Vijay, “We can walk along the crest a while. It’s still early, we’ve got time.”
“I’d like that.”
“We can’t stay out very long,” Jamie said. “It’ll get dark as soon as the sun sets.”
“Stacy told me you showed her the aurora,” she replied.
“That’s right,” he said. “I did.”
After a few minutes of walking in silence, Jamie stopped and turned completely around. The sky off in the east was already darkening, even though the sun had not quite touched the undulating western horizon.
There ought to be, Jamie thought … yes! There it is!
Clutching Vijay’s shoulder and pointing with his other hand, Jamie said, “Look up there.”
“Where? What is—an airplane!”
“No,” Jamie corrected. “It’s Phobos, the nearer moon.”
A bright spark was moving purposefully across the sky, unblinking, unhurried, traveling across the darkening sky as if on a mission of its own.
“It’s too small to make a disk,” Jamie explained, “and so close to the planet that it moves like an artificial satellite in low orbit, from east to west.”
“I can see a star,” she said, pointing.
“Probably Deimos, the bigger moon.” Jamie looked to where she was pointing and realized he was wrong. He felt the breath gush out of him.
“That’s Earth,” he said. Whispered, really.
“Earth?”
Jamie nodded inside his helmet. “Big and blue. That’s Earth. It’s the evening star here, for the next several months.”
“Earth.” Vijay’s voice was hollow with wonder.
Stacy Dezhurova’s voice shattered the moment. “Base to Waterman. Sun is on the horizon. Start back home.”
He turned and saw that the sun had indeed touched the distant hills. “Okay,” he said reluctantly. “We’re heading in.”
Safety regulations. Even with the helmet lamps they were not permitted to walk around outside at night. Not a smart thing to do unless there was some overriding reason for it. Still, Jamie would have enjoyed at least a few minutes alone with Vijay and the glittering night sky of Mars.
“No aurora, I’m afraid,” he said ruefully.
“Stacy’s jealous.”
“No, she’s just following the regulations.”
“Well … thanks for the walk,” she said as they started back.
“I’m glad you enjoyed it,” he said.
“I should get out more often. I’ve been cooped up in that dome too long.”
“You don’t mind being cooped up in a suit?”
“Not really. Do you?”
“Not really,” he echoed. “I feel kind of free out here, almost like I could take off the suit and run off to the horizon.”
“Do you?”
The sudden change in the tone of her voice alarmed Jamie. “Oh-oh. I shouldn’t have admitted that to the team psychologist, should I?”
She laughed. “No worries. It’s off the record.”
Jamie knew better. He tried to make light of it. “I’m not really delusional, you know.”
“Not yet,” she bantered back at him.
“I’ve wondered why we needed a psychologist on this mission,” he said. “We got along fine on the first expedition without one.”
Vijay replied, “You need a psychologist because you’re all borderline crazy.”
“Crazy?”
‘ ‘Who else but a madman would journey millions of kilometers to this frozen desert? I could write a research paper on each and every individual on the mission. Every one of them.”
“The women too?”
“Yes,” she answered easily. “Myself also. Sometimes I think I must be the maddest one of us all.”
“You?” He was genuinely surprised.
“Me.”
“But you’re so level-headed. Always full of good spirits and all that.”
She sighed. “I must tell you the story of my life someday.”
“Anytime.”
“In the meanwhile,” she said, quite serious now, “it seems to me that you and Dex are managing to get along rather smoothly.”
“Dex isn’t that bad … as long as he gets what he wants.”
“He’s a very ambitious young man, and quite accustomed to getting his own way. The more you give in to him the more demands he’ll make on you.”
And what demands is he making on you? Jamie wanted to ask. But lie buried that and said instead, “As mission director, it’s my job to make certain that we don’t have any personal conflicts that will interfere with the expedition’s work.”
“That is ridiculous, Jamie. Neither you nor anyone else can avoid personal conflicts. You have four very intelligent, highly motivated and thoroughly individualistic scientists under your leadership. Not to mention the two astronauts, who also have their quirks.”
“Plus the expedition’s physician/psychologist.”
“Her too,” Vijay admitted.
“And we’re all borderline lunatics, according to you.”
“We’re living under extremely stressful conditions,” she countered. “We’re millions of kilometers from home, Jamie.”
“We’ve all been trained to deal with that,” he said.
“Perhaps so, but there will be conflicts,” she continued, deadly serious. “You won’t be able to smooth everyone’s feelings all the time.”
They walked in silence for several uneasy minutes, passing the plane that Rodriguez had been working on. No sign of him; he must already be inside, Jamie thought.
“Well,” he said lamely, “we’ve survived the first three weeks okay.”
The sun was dipping behind the hills now. They were in shadow now. Twilight lasted only a little while, unless a recent dust storm filled the air with particles that scattered the dying sunlight. The curve of the dome was just visible over the rim of the hill before them. Jamie turned as he walked toward the airlock, took a final look at the red world.
“I love it here.” The words surprised him. He didn’t realize he was going to say them until they tumbled from his lips.
Vijay followed his gaze across the broken rocks scattered across the rusty landscape and the wind-sculpted dunes that waited for the next big sandstorm to rearrange them.
“It’s so barren,” she said. “So cold and bleak.”
“It’s like home to me,” he said.
“It’s not home, Jamie. It’s an alien world that could kill you in the flash of a second.”
He stared for a moment at her spacesuited figure. ‘ ‘Mars is a gentle world, Vijay. It means us no harm.”
“Not until the air in your suit runs out.”
He tried to shrug. “Yes, there is that.”
“There’s always the urge to live,” she said. “The impact of reality. It limits our dreams.”
“Maybe.”
They trudged back toward the shelter. Jamie saw the rounded hump of the dome rising slowly above the horizon with each step. He felt reluctant; he knew he really would prefer to walk out past the dune field, out into the unknown, across the lace of this red world.
“You were married to Joanna Brumado, weren’t you?”
Startled by her question, Jamie answered, “It didn’t work out.”
“Do you blame yourself for that?” Vijay asked.
He stopped walking, forcing her to stop and turn to face him.
“Is this part of your psych profiling?” Jamie asked coldly.
“I suppose so,” she said.
“In that case, no, I don’t blame myself for the divorce. I don’t blame anybody. It just didn’t work out, that’s all.”
“I see.”
“No-fault divorce. Nobody’s to blame.”
“Yes.”
Wondering why he felt so angry, Jamie said, “I don’t see what my marriage has to do with my job performance here. Hell, the marriage didn’t even last three years.”
“I’m sorry I asked,”
Vijay said. “I din’t realize it would upset you so.”
“I’m not upset!”
“No, I can see that you’re not.”
DIARY ENTRY
What really hurts is that they don’t respect me. They tolerate my presence among them, but behind my back they laugh at me. I’m as good as any of them, but they all think of me as second-class or worse. All of them. Each and every one of them.
NIGHT: SOL 21
JAMIE LINGERED OVER A CUP OF WEAK COFFEE, FEELING ALMOST SATISFIED.
“Four thousand kilometers,” said Vijay. “No one’s gone even half that distance before.”
She was the only other one sitting at the galley table with Jamie. Dinner was over, the table cleared except for their dishes. Rodriguez and Fuchida had trooped off to the bio lab, while Trumball, Craig and Stacy Dezhurova had gone to the geology lab. They were planning two excursions: a trek across nearly four thousand kilometers to Ares Vallis and a flight to the tallest mountain in the solar system. Trudy Hall had pulled the final comm center shift before they all went to sleep.
”I think the trip to Olympus Mons will get more attention from the media,” Jamie said.
“Dex is so excited about retrieving the Pathfinder spacecraft, though. Don’t you think the media will get excited, too?”
He shrugged. “I suppose so, once they get there. But Dex and Possum are going to be driving across the landscape for several weeks. Pretty boring.”
“Unless they run into trouble.”
“Yeah,” said Jamie. “There is that.”
He had been mildly surprised when the technical directors at Tarawa had agreed to the long-distance run. God knows what kind of pressure Trumball and the other financial backers put on them, Jamie thought. Must have been pretty fierce.
“D’you really think the flight to the volcano will draw more attention from the media?” Vijay asked.
“It won’t be exactly the same as climbing Mt. Everest,” he replied, “but it should draw a lot of interest.”
She seemed to think it over before agreeing. “If the virtual reality rig works, millions of people can share in the moment.”
The VR equipment had been cranky for more than a week.
“I shouldn’t have gone up on that boulder,” Jamie admitted. “I shook something loose, I guess.”
“That’s the technical term for it,” Vijay said, with a grin.
Possum Craig had gone over the VR rig briefly and found no identifiable fault. Yet the equipment worked only in sputters now; it would function well enough for a while, then cut off unpredictably.
“I wish Possum had more time to spare,” Jamie said. “I’m getting pressure from Tarawa about the lack of VR sessions.”
“Dex says we’re losing money,” said Vijay. “He means, we’re not making the money we could make if the VR sessions were going smoothly.”
Jamie nodded gloomily. “I’ve got half a dozen messages from Dex’s father. He’s not an easy guy.”
“Could I see them?” she asked.
Jamie felt his eyebrows rise. “Trumball’s messages to me?”
“They might help me understand Dex,” she explained. “See what kind of father he’s got.”
Jamie thought it over briefly, then said, “Okay, come on.”
He got up and went to the comm center, Vijay alongside him. As they approached the geology lab they heard the passionate voices of Dex and Stacy, heatedly arguing.
Then Craig’s calm, flat Texas twang broke in. “You two are just engagin’ in a spittin’ contest. Doesn’t matter what particular spot y’all pick for landin’ the fuel generator, it ain’t gonna be the spot y’all actually land it, I can guarantee that.”
Jamie glanced in as they passed the lab’s open door. Dex was glowering at Craig, but Stacy’s strong, heavy features seemed stolid, unemotional.
“He is right, Dex,” the cosmonaut said. “I can put the bird down exactly where you want it, but I will bet there will be a field of big, stupid boulders right at that spot and we will have to jink the bird over to a smoother area.”
“But we’ve got the satellite imagery of the territory,” Dex insisted as Vijay and Jamie passed the lab.
“Yeah, with a resolution of one meter,” Craig grumbled. “Got any idea what a one-meter rock’ll do to the landing struts of yore fuel percolator?”
Vijay laughed softly. “It’s hard to argue with Possum. He doesn’t open his mouth unless he’s got the facts.”
“I wish he could find out what’s wrong with the VR rig,” Jamie said.
“What about the backup?”
“Mitsuo’s taking it on the Olympus Mons excursion.”
“Oh. Of course.”
They stepped through the open doorway of the comm center. Even though its partitions were only two and a half meters high, the room felt warmer to Jamie than anywhere else in the dome. Maybe it’s the equipment always running, giving off heat, he thought. But the life-support equipment was always running, too, and that section of the dome didn’t feel as warm. With an inward shrug he told himself, It’s your imagination. It’s all in your mind.
Trudy was sitting at the main console, twitching in rhythm to the primal rock music playing in the earphones she had clamped to her boyishly styled dark brown hair. Jamie could hear its heavy thump even through the earphones.
She turned and pulled the headset off. A blast of shrill noise filled the comm center; Trudy quickly clicked it off.
“How did you hear us come in?” Jamie asked, incredulous.
“Didn’t, actually,” Hall said, “but you’re not vampires, are you?”
“Huh?”
She hiked a thumb toward the monitor screen. “I saw your reflection in the display.”
“Oh.”
“I’m all finished here.” She got up from her chair. “Everything’s tucked in for the night.”
“You really shouldn’t play that stuff so loud,” Vijay said, quite seriously. “It can damage your hearing.”
“What?” Trudy cupped an ear, pretending deafness. Both women laughed and Trudy headed for the doorway with a lighthearted, “Ta.”
As Trudy pranced out of the comm center she passed the square, boxy form of the immersion table. I ought to be spending more time planning my own trip out to the cliff dwelling, Jamie told himself. I ought to spend as much time on that as Dex is spending on this damned silly excursion to Ares Vallis. But I’m stuck doing the stratigraphy work that he should be doing instead of planning my own excursion.
Feeling almost weary, he sat in one of the wheeled swivel chairs and pulled up the elder Trumball’s messages on one of the display screens. Vijay sat beside him and stared in silence at the icily demanding old man. There were six messages so far, the shortest of them running more than twelve minutes.
“… this is a totally unacceptable situation, Waterman,” Darryl C. Trumball was saying. “Totally unacceptable! Each VR transmission is worth upwards of thirty million dollars to us. Thirty million dollars! That’s how much money you’re pissing down the drain because you and your pack of brilliant scientists can’t get some simple electronics equipment to function properly!”
Vijay sat through all six of Trumball’s increasingly vitriolic tirades without speaking. When the last of them was finished she said, “Wow!”
Jamie blanked the display screen. “I’m glad there’s a hundred million kilometers between us.”
“That’s what Dex has had to deal with all his life,” she murmured. “No wonder he’s so driven.”
Jamie said nothing. She’s not worried about what I have to put up with; she’s thinking about Dex.
“What are you doing to placate him?” Vijay asked.
Jamie said, “Nothing will placate him unless we get the VR transmissions going again. I’ve thought about using the backup equipment, hut Mitsuo’s going to use it at Olympus Mons and I don’t want to take the chance of messing it up before then.”
“I suppose that’s right,” Vijay sa
id, nodding slowly. “And Possum can’t fix this rig?”
“He’s looked at it and he can’t find what’s wrong. He calls it engineer’s hell: everything checks but nothing works.”
A pair of tiny furrows took form between Vijay’s brows. She looked as if she were trying to fix the situation by thinking hard on it.
“The fault must be in the VR system’s computer,” Jamie said. “The cameras and data gloves look okay.”
“Can we switch another computer …?”
“No, it’s built into the system.”
She leaned back in the chair. “You’ve got a problem, mate.”
“It’s an annoyance,” Jamie said. “Not a problem. I can’t get too worked up about it, even if it’s giving Dex’s dad a stroke.”
She looked at him curiously. “Well, I’d certainly be worked up about it if somebody was coming down on me like he’s leaning on you.”
Jamie smiled. “What’s he going to do, fire me?”
“There is that.” She smiled back.
“Some things are important and others aren’t. You’ve got to find the path that lets you deal with the important things.”
“And ignore the rest?”
He shook his head. “Not ignore them. Just keep them in their proper balance.”
Vijay’s gaze took on a slightly different air. “You know, Jamie, you just might be the sanest man I know.”
“I thought we were all crazy.”
“Oh, we are,” she said, standing up. “Certainly we are. But for a madman, you’re quite level-headed.”
He got up beside her and noticed again that she barely reached his shoulder. “Do you like level-headed men?”
She cocked her head, as if thinking. “Actually, I think the crazy ones are more interesting.”
“Is that a personal reaction or a professional one?”
“A little of both, I imagine.”
Without thinking, without even knowing he was going to do it, Jamie put his arms around her waist, pulled her to him, and kissed her.
Vijay lingered in his arms for a few breathless moments, then gently disengaged.