by Ben Bova
The front of the plane seemed to be on fire. They were bouncing, jolting, rattling along like a tin can kicked across a field of rubble.
Then a final lurch and all the noise and motion stopped.
“We’re down,” Rodriguez sang out. “Piece of cake.”
“Good,” came Dezhurova’s stolid voice.
Fuchida urgently needed to urinate.
“Okay,” Rodriguez said to his partner. “Now we just sit tight until sunrise.”
Like a pair of tinned sardines, thought Fuchida as he let go into the relief tube built into his suit. He did not relish the idea of trying to sleep in the cockpit seats, sealed in their suits. But that was the price to be paid for the honor of being the first humans to set foot on the tallest mountain in the solar system.
He almost smiled. I too will be in the Guinness Book of Records, he thought.
“You okay?” Rodriguez asked.
“Yes, certainly.”
“Kinda quiet, Mitsuo.”
“I’m admiring the view,” said Fuchida.
Nothing but a barren expanse of bare rock in every direction. The sky overhead was darkening swiftly. Already Fuchida could see a few stars staring down at them.
“Top of the world, Ma!” Rodriguez quipped. He chuckled happily, as if he hadn’t a care in the world. In two worlds.
DOSSIER: TOMAS RODRIGUEZ
“NEVER SHOW FEAR.” TOMAS RODRIGUEZ LEARNED THAT AS A SCRAWNY asthmatic child, growing up amidst the crime and violence of an inner-city San Diego barrio.
“Never let them see you’re scared,” his older brother Luis told him. “Never back down from a fight.”
Tomas was not physically strong, but he had his big brother to protect him. Most of the time. Then he found a refuge of sorts in the dilapidated neighborhood gym, where he traded hours of sweeping and cleaning for free use of the weight machines. As he gained muscle mass, he learned the rudiments of alley fighting from Luis. In middle school he was spotted and recruited by an elderly Korean who taught martial arts as a school volunteer.
In high school he discovered that he was bright, smart enough not merely to understand algebra hut to want to understand it and the other mysteries of mathematics and science. He made friends among the nerds us well as the jocks, often protecting the former against the hazing and casual cruelty of the latter.
He grew into a solid, broad-shouldered youth with quick reflexes and the brains to talk his way out of most confrontations. He did not look for fights, but handled himself well enough when a fight became unavoidable. He worked, he learned, he had the kind of sunny disposition—and firm physical courage—that made even the nastiest punks in the school leave him alone. He never went out for any of the school teams and he never did drugs. He didn’t even smoke. He couldn’t afford such luxuries.
He even avoided the trap that caught most of his buddies: fatherhood. Whether they got married or not, most of the guys quickly got tied down with a woman. Tomas had plenty of girls, and learned the pleasures of sex even before high school. But he never formed a lasting relationship. He didn’t want to. The neighborhood girls were attractive, yes, until they started talking. Tomas couldn’t stand even to imagine listening to one of them for more than a few hours. They had nothing to say. Their lives were empty. He ached for something more.
Most of the high school teachers were zeroes, but one—the weary old man who taught math—encouraged him to apply for a scholarship to college. To Tomas’ enormous surprise, he won one: full tuition to UCSD. Even so, he could not afford the other expenses, so he again listened to his mentor’s advice and joined the Air Force. Uncle Sam paid his way through school, and once he graduated he became a jet fighter pilot. “More fun than sex,” he would maintain, always adding, “Almost.”
Never show fear. That meant that he could never back away from a challenge. Never. Whether in a cockpit or a barroom, the stocky Hispanic kid with the big smile took every confrontation as it arose. He got a reputation for it.
The fear was always there, constantly, but he never let it show. And always there was that inner doubt. That feeling that somehow he didn’t really belong here. They were allowing the chicano kid to pretend he was as smart as the white guys, allowing him to get through college on his little scholarship, allowing him to wear a flyboy uniform and play with the hotshot jet planes.
But he really wasn’t one of them. That was made abundantly clear to him in a thousand little ways, every day. He was a greaser, tolerated only as long as he stayed in the place they expected him to be. Don’t try to climb too far; don’t show off too much; above all, don’t try to date anyone except “your own.”
Flying was different, though. Alone in a plane nine or ten miles up in the sky it was just him and God, the rest of the world far away, out of sight and out of mind.
Then came the chance to win an astronaut’s wings. He couldn’t back away from the challenge. Again, the others made it clear that he was not welcome to the competition. But Tomas entered anyway and won a slot in the astronaut training corps. “The benefits of affirmative action,” one of the other pilots jeered.
Whatever he achieved, they always tried to take the joy out of it. Tomas paid no outward attention, as usual; he kept his wounds hidden, his bleeding internal.
Two years after he had won his astronaut’s wings came the call for the Second Mars Expedition. Smiling his broadest, Tomas applied. No fear. He kept his gritted teeth hidden from all the others, and won the position.
“Big fuckin’ deal,” said his buddies. “You’ll be second fiddle to some Russian broad.”
Tomas shrugged and nodded. “Yeah,” he admitted. “I guess I’ll have to take orders from everybody.”
To himself he added, but I’ll be on Mars, shitheads, while you’re still down here.
NIGHT: SOL 48
IT WAS ALREADY NIGHT ON THE BROAD ROLLING PLAIN OF LUNAE PLANUM, yet Possum Craig was still driving the old rover—cautiously, at a mere ten kilometers per hour. He and Dex Trumball had agreed that they could mooch out a little extra mileage after sunset, before they stopped for the night.
Trumball had the radio set to the general comm frequency, so they heard Rodriguez and Fuchida’s landing at the same time the four in the base camp did.
“Those two poor bastards gotta live in their suits until they get back to th’ dome,” Craig said.
“Look on the bright side, Wiley. They get to test the F.E.S.”
The hard suits had a special fitting that was supposed to make an airtight connection to the chemical toilet seat. The engineers called it the Fecal Elimination System.
“The ol’ trapdoor,” Craig muttered. “I bet they wind up usin’ Kaopectate.”
Sitting beside him in the cockpit, Dex replied with a grin, “While we’ve got all the comforts of home.”
Craig made a thoughtful face. “For an old clunker, this travelin’ machine is doin’ purty well. No complaints.”
“Not yet.”
Dex had spent most of the day in his hard suit. They had stopped the rover every hundred klicks for him to go outside and plant geology/ meteorology beacons. Now he sat relaxed in his coveralls, watching the scant slice of ground illuminated by the rover’s headlights.
“You could goose her up to twenty,” Dex prodded.
“Yeah, and I could slide ‘er into a crater before we had time to stop or turn away,” Craig shot back. He tapped a forefinger on the digital clock display. “Time to call it a day, anyway.”
“You tired already?”
“Nope, and I don’t want to drive when I am tired.”
“I could drive for a while,” said Dex.
Pressing gently on the brake pedals, Craig said, “Let’s just call it a day, buddy. We’ve made good time. Enough is enough.”
Trumball seemed to think it over for a moment, then pulled himself out of the cockpit chair. “Okay. You’re the boss.”
Craig laughed. “Shore I am.”
“Now, what’s that suppos
ed to mean?” Trumball asked over his shoulder as he headed back to the minuscule galley.
Craig slid the plastic heat-retaining screen across the windshield, then got up and stretched so hard that Dex could hear his tendons pop.
“It means that I’m th’ boss long’s you want to be agreeable.”
“I’m agreeable,” Dex said.
“Then ever ‘thing’s fine and dandy.”
Sliding one of the prepackaged meals from its freezer tray, Trumball said to the older man, “No, seriously, Wiley. Jamie put you in charge. I’ve got no bitch with that.”
Still stretching, his hands scraping the curved overhead, Craig said, “Okay. Fine.”
“Something bugging you?”
“Naw. Forget it.”
As he put the meal tray into the microwave cooker, Dex said, ‘ ‘Hey, come on, Wiley. It’s just you and me out here. If something’s wrong, tell me about it.”
Craig made a face somewhere between annoyed and sheepish. “Well, it’s kinda silly, I guess.”
“What is it, for chrissakes?”
With a tired puff of breath, Craig sank onto his bunk.
“Well, I’m kinda pissed about bein’ a second-class citizen around here.”
Trumball stared at him in amazement. “Second-class citizen?”
“Yeah, you know—they all think I’m nothin’ more’n a repairman, for shit’s sake.”
“Well—”
“I’m a scientist, just like you and the rest of y’all,” Craig grumbled. “Maybe I didn’t get my degree from a big-name school, and maybe I’ve spent most of my time workin’ for oil companies …” he pronounced oil as awl “… but I was smart enough to get picked over a lotta guys with fancier pedigrees.”
“Sure you are.”
“That Fuchida. Damned Jap’s so uptight I think if he sneezed he’d come apart. Looks at me like I’m a servant or something.”
“That’s just his way.”
“And the women! They act like I’m a grandfather or somethin’. Hell, I’m younger’n Jamie. I’m younger than Stacy is, did you know that?”
For the first time, Dex Trumball understood that Craig was hurting. And vulnerable. This jowly, shaggy, good-natured bear of a man with the prominent snoot and permanent five-o’clock shadow wants to be treated with some respect. That makes him usable, Dex realized.
“Listen, Wiley,” Dex began, “I didn’t know that we were hurting your feelings.”
“Not you, so much. It’s the rest of ‘em. They think I’m just here to be their bleepin’ repairman. ‘Least you call me Wiley. Never did like bein’ called Possum. My name’s Peter J. Craig.”
The microwave oven chimed. Dex ignored it and sat on his own bunk, opposite Craig’s. “I’ll get them to call you Wiley, then. Or Peter, if you prefer.”
“Wiley is fine.”
A smile crept across Trumball’s face. “Okay. Then it’s going to be Wiley from now on. I’ll make certain that Jamie and the others get the word.”
Looking embarrassed, Craig mumbled, “Kinda silly, ain’t it.”
“No, no,” Dex said. “If Jamie and the others are bothering you, you’ve got a right to complain about it.”
To himself Trumball thought, If and when we get to a place where I’ve got to outgun Jamie, I’ll need Wiley on my side. Wiley, and as many of the others as I can round up.
Jamie spent nearly an hour after dinner talking with Rodriguez and Fuchida atop Olympus Mons. They were spending the night in their seats in the plane’s cockpit. Like trying to sleep in an airliner, Jamie thought. Tourist class. In hard suits. He did not envy them their creature comforts.
Still in the comm center, he scrolled through the messages that had accumulated through the long, eventful, draining day. It took more than another hour to deal with them: everything from a request for more VR sessions from the International Council of Science Teachers to a reminder that his mission status report for the week was due in the morning.
One message was from Darryl C. Trumball. Since it was marked PERSONAL AND CONFIDENTIAL, Jamie saved it, planning to go to his own quarters before he looked at it.
But when he finished all the other messages, he glanced up from the comm screen and saw that the dome was darkened for the night. Suddenly it seemed chilly, as if the frigid cold of the Martian night were seeping through the dome’s plastic walls.
No one seemed to be about. No voices, only the background sounds of the machinery and, if he listened carefully enough, the soft sighing of the night wind outside.
So he opened Trumball’s personal message.
Darryl C. Trumball’s eyes were blazing, his skull-like face grim as death.
“Who in the hell gave you the authority to send my son out on this excursion to the Sagan site?” he began, furious, with no preamble.
”Goddammit to hell and back, Waterman, I specifically gave orders not to allow Dex out on that excursion!”
And so it went, for nearly fifteen blistering minutes. Jamie watched Trumball’s angry face, flabbergasted at first, then growing angry himself.
But as the older man blathered on, Jamie’s anger slowly dissolved. Behind Trumball’s bluster, he saw a man worried about his son’s safety, a man accustomed to power and authority, but totally frustrated now because there was no way he could control the men and women on Mars. No way he could control his own son.
He can’t even talk to us face-to-face, Jamie knew. All he can do is rant and rave and wait to see if we respond to him.
Trumball finally wound down and finished with, “I want you to know, Waterman, that you cannot countermand my orders and get away with it. You’ll pay for this! And if anything happens to my son, you’ll pay with your goddamned blood!”
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 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. Trumbull 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 1 heard Hex’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.
“Din’t you hope that anyway? Before Trumball’s blast, I mean.”
“Yeah, sure, but … you know what I mean.”
“Yes, I suppose I do.”