by Ben Bova
MORNING: SOL 100
YOU GOT THE BEST FUEL CELLS, WILEY CRAIG WAS SAYING AS JAMIE
and Dex suited up. “Swapped ‘em outta rover numero uno.”
“There should be no problem of dust storms,” Fuchida assured them. “The weather has stabilized. Summer is almost here.”
Dex laughed. “Yeah. Maybe we’ll get a couple hours above freezing out there.”
Vijay hovered to one side as the two men wormed their arms through the sleeves of the hard suit torsos. Craig was assisting Jamie, Fuchida helped Dex.
Boots, leggings, torso. Check the seals at ankles, waist and wrists. Backpack. Check the connections: electrical, air, water.
“Stacy wants to talk to you before you go out,” Vijay said.
Reaching for his helmet on the shelf above the suit rack, Jamie said, “You’d better call her, then.”
“Yeah,” said Dex, pulling his helmet over his head. “We’re ready for the big game, coach.”
Vijay walked quickly away. Jamie put his helmet on, sealed the neck ring, then he and Dex went through the radio check.
Stacy strode down the corridor formed by the equipment lockers, wearing regulation coveralls. Jamie noticed that with Vijay walking beside her, Stacy looked big, solid, bulky almost. Vijay, also in coveralls, seemed petite yet dark and lush and glowing.
And worried. Jamie looked into Vijay’s midnight-black eyes and saw fear.
Before he could say anything to her, Stacy spoke up, ”I have carved one full week out of the schedule. I expect you back here in seven days or less.”
“Unless we find some Martians,” Dex quipped.
Stacy let a tight smile break her stern facade. “Naturally, if you find something startling, we will have to rework the schedule.”
Jamie thought that she was turning into a bureaucrat, more worried about the schedule than what they might discover. But she’s doing a better job of running the expedition than I did, he admitted to himself.
“The scheduled excursions to the volcanoes and back to the floor of the Canyon are waiting for your return,” Stacy reminded them. “All our exploratory work is on hold until you get back.”
“I understand,” Jamie said softly.
“The soarplanes have mapped your route in detail,” Stacy went on.
“We’ve got the imagery,” Dex replied.
“Well … good luck, then.” She put her hand out to Jamie. It trembled slightly. She’s as excited about this as I am! Jamie realized. But she hides it damned well.
Dex shook hands with her, then blew a kiss to Vijay. Jamie wanted to take her in his arms, but he knew that would be awkwardly foolish in the hard suit. She looked into his eyes and he saw fear, anxiety, and something else, something he could not pin down. But she cares, he thought. She cares about me. Or about Dex.
“Good luck,” she said, keeping her voice calm, neutral.
“We’ll be back in a week or less,” Dex assured them.
Jamie ignored the others and stared only at Vijay.
“Come back safe,” she said, looking straight at him.
He nodded inside his helmet. I’ll come back to you, he wanted to say. But in front of all the others, in front of Dex, he could not speak the words aloud.
Instead, he slammed down the visor of his helmet and started for the airlock hatch.
“Gloves!” Wiley Craig shouted. “Jamie, you gotta put your gloves on.”
Jamie stopped in midstride. His gloves, with the power-boosting miniaturized servo motors on their backs, were still on the bench in front of his locker, resting there like a pair of dead lobsters.
“Chrissakes,” Craig grumbled, handing the gloves to Jamie, “what-tuvwe got a checklist for if you’re just gonna ignore it?”
“Thanks, Wiley,” Jamie said, pulling on the stiff gloves and sealing the cuffs around his wrists.
“Jamie wants to Indian wrestle his Martians barehanded,” Dex kidded.
Holding up both his gloved hands, Jamie said through his sealed visor, “I won’t forget them again.”
“Once’ll be enough to kill you,” Craig grumbled.
Jamie glanced again at Vijay. She looked stricken.
Stacy, ever practical, said firmly, “You two check each other out completely before leaving the rover. Every time. Call in to me whenever you are going outside and we will go down the checklist together. Understood?”
“Yes, Mama,” said Dex, with a laugh.
Jamie thought it might be a damned good idea.
Vijay spelled Rodriguez at the communications console until dinner, then the astronaut came back into the comm center.
“Dinnertime,” he said, gesturing with his bandaged hand in the general direction of the galley.
“Why don’t you eat first,” Vijay said. “I’ll be okay here until you’re finished.”
“Already ate,” Rodriguez said, easing himself into the chair next to her. “I’m getting the hang of doing it one-handed.”
Despite herself, Vijay grinned at him. “You mean you don’t need Trudy to spoon-feed you anymore?”
His swarthy cheeks flushed noticeably. “Naw. But don’t let her know!”
Vijay laughed.
“Go on and eat,” Rodriguez said. “If they call in, I’ll give you a yell, okay?”
Reluctantly, Vijay slipped the headset off. “Okay,” she said.
Dex put through a routine call when they stopped for the night; strictly business, no personal messages. Vijay picked at her dinner, then headed for her quarters.
Stacy intercepted her. “Come to my office,” she said. “We must talk.”
Vijay followed Stacy to her cubicle and sat on the stiff little desk chair. Stacy plunked herself down on the edge of the bunk.
“Do you understand why I decided to have Dex go with Jamie?” Stacy asked, with no preamble.
“So that Jamie wouldn’t worry about Dex being here with me while he’s out on the excursion.”
“That is part of it.”
Vijay felt her brows rise in a silent question.
“The rest of it is that I didn’t want Dex here, where he could— what’s the expression?—hit on you.”
Vijay scoffed, “I could handle that.”
“Perhaps. But this way there is no problem at all; you don’t have to worry about handling it.”
“Thank you, then.”
“I didn’t do it for you, Vijay. I did it for Jamie. I didn’t want him out there worrying about you. He is too good a man to have to carry that burden.”
“I see.”
“And also,” Dezhurova hunched forward slightly, “I am not so certain how well you would handle Dex. He can be very seductive.”
“I had my fling with Dex,” Vijay said, feeling a simmering of anger stir within her. “It’s over and done with.”
“And your fling with Jamie?”
“I don’t think that’s any of your business, is it?”
Stacy smiled like a patient mother. “No, of course it is not. It’s just that … I like Jamie. I respect him. I don’t want to see him hurt again.”
“Again?”
“His first marriage. It left its marks on him, you know.”
Vijay nodded. “Yes.”
“Do you love him?”
Startled by the question, Vijay flared, “How should I know? How can any of us know what we’re feeling while we’re here? This isn’t the real world! We’re so far away from the real world, so isolated and alone …”
Strangely, Dezhurova’s smile widened. “Good. That is a good, honest answer. It is what I expected, what I hoped for.”
“What are you talking about?”
Stacy got up from the bunk and stood beside Vijay. Bending down to put her face next to Vijay’s, she said softly, “There was the chance that you are just a hot-blooded young woman who enjoys sleeping with strong men. Or worse, a fool who thinks it is romantic to go to bed with every man who is attracted to her.”
Vijay shot to her feet.
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“Don’t get angry,” Dezhurova said quickly. “I was fairly certain you were not really like that, but I had to find out for myself. A woman like that could wreck this team. Someone could be hurt badly, maybe even killed.”
Reining in her resentment, Vijay hissed, “So what have you decided?”
Stacy patted her shoulder. “You are not a safety risk. Not a deliberate one, at least. You have a good head on your shoulders.”
The anger drained out of Vijay. She sank back onto the chair and looked up at Dezhurova. “So what should I do about Jamie?”
Stacy shook her head and went back to the bunk. “Don’t ask me. All I know about men is that they always end up hurting you.”
“Take a look at this,” Dex called to Jamie.
He was sitting in the cockpit, a message from his father on the panel’s central screen.
The rover was buttoned up for the night. Tomorrow they would reach Tithonium Chasma and Jamie would go down to the cleft in the cliff face and see what was to be seen. Already he felt a tightness in his gut, an anticipatory tingle of excitement and worry.
He made his way past the bunks and ducked into the cockpit, leaning his arms against the back of Dex’s seat. The screen showed a list of names, individuals, schools, corporations, with dollar figures to one side of each.
“What is it?” Jamie asked.
“My dear old dad is already lining up backers for the next expedition,” Dex explained. “He’s raised three mil, just like that.” He snapped his lingers.
Jamie slid into the driver’s seat and stared at the screen. “Global News … Universal Entertainment … who’s Puget Sound Inc.?”
“Holding company,” Dex said. “They own or control half the travel agencies in North America.”
“Travel agencies?”
Dex nodded. “Don’t get worked up. Not yet. We’re a long way from bringing tourists up here.”
“Then why would travel agencies want to help fund the next expedition?”
“To get VR tour rights, I guess. Take a trip without leaving the comfort of your living room.”
Jamie looked at Dex. The younger man seemed perfectly serious.
“Look, Jamie, I’d be lying if I said they didn’t intend to bring tourist groups to Mars eventually. Hell, they’re already packaging trips to the Moon, aren’t they?”
“Tourists,” Jamie muttered darkly.
“Well you don’t have to look at me as though I led the massacre at Wounded Knee, for chrissakes,” Dex said.
“You’re the one who wants to do this, Dex, not me.”
“We’ve got to! How the hell do you expect to raise the money you need to explore this planet otherwise?”
“I’d rather go begging on street corners.”
“And you’d get nickels and dimes,” Dex snapped. “Get real!”
Getting up from the chair, Jamie said, “There’s got to be a better way, Dex.”
“Sure. Get the government to do it. It took Brumado twenty years to get the first expedition funded and you didn’t see the government rushing to back this one, did you?”
“There’s got to be a better way.”
“You find it, let me know about it.”
Starting for the galley, Jamie said, “You’re going to turn Mars into a tourist attraction.”
“How the hell d’you think we got here this time?” Dex said, with some heat in his voice.
Jamie turned back to face him. “Because your father ramrodded the funding drive, I know.”
“Because I got him to do it!” Dex said, jabbing a thumb at his own chest. “He didn’t have the faintest frigging interest in Mars. I got him interested.”
“By telling him he could sell tickets to tourists.”
“By telling him he could make money out of it, yeah. What’s wrong with that?”
“We can’t do scientific research with tourists crawling over us.”
“Aw, come on, Jamie! We’ve got a whole planet here. We can keep the tourists out of our way.”
“Really?” Jamie felt the old seething anger boiling up in him. “They’ll want to go to the most interesting places, won’t they? Down at the Canyon floor, where we found the lichen, for example. They’ll be picking samples and tramping all over the place.”
“We won’t let that happen.”
“How’re you going to stop it, Dex? Once we let them start coming here, where do we draw the line? Money talks, doesn’t it? The people who pay the money are going to want to do what they want to do, won’t they?”
Dex strode up the narrow aisle to stand almost touching noses with Jamie. “Christ, you think you’re the only scientist in the frigging solar system? I want to do good science, too, y’know.”
“If your tourists allow us to.”
“Damn!” Dex slammed a fist against the folded upper bunk above his own. “This damned holier-than-thou shit! I’ve had it up to here!” He pointed his other hand at his Adam’s apple.
Jamie felt the heat rising in his own face. “And then you’ll want to start building big tourist facilities. Hotels. Parks where they can walk around in their shirtsleeves. You’re going to wreck this planet, Dex. A whole world destroyed, and its native life-forms with it.”
“That’s a hundred years in the future, maybe more.”
“It’s now, Dex. What we do now shapes the future. Every step we take creates our path into tomorrow. What you want to do is going to destroy this world, just as surely as the Europeans destroyed the world of the Native Americans.”
‘ ‘You think I want it this way?”
“You talked your father into doing it this way, didn’t you?”
“It’s the only way we could get here, Jamie! Dammit, the politicians weren’t going to back another expedition. Why do you think it took six years to get this one here?”
Jamie glared at him.
“I’m a scientist, too,” Dex said. “I talked my father into getting the money for us because I wanted to go to Mars! You think you’re the only one?”
With a shake of his head, Jamie said, “But the price, Dex. The price. It’d be better if we’d left Mars alone for another hundred years and waited until we could come here purely for the science.”
“In a perfect world, maybe,” Dex replied, his voice lower. “But then you and I wouldn’t be here, would we?”
“No, I guess not.”
“Well, I want to be on Mars. Now. Me. Whatever it costs. And you feel the same way, too, or you wouldn’t be here.”
Jamie looked into the younger man’s face. The brash grin was gone, the blue-green eyes were deep and unwavering.
“Maybe you’re right,” Jamie admitted, heading back toward the galley again. “But 1 feel like a Judas goat.”
“Or Kit Carson, maybe?”
Jamie whirled back and saw that Dex was grinning again. He knows about the Long Walk, when Carson and the army forced the People off their own land.
“Right,” he said tightly. “Kit Carson. That’s me.”
AFTERNOON: SOL 101
JAMIE DANGLED HALF A MILE FROM THE CLIFF’S RIM, SWAYING IN THE HARNESS, the layered reddish rock face a mere arm’s length from him. He touched it with one booted foot, then pushed away. It made him tilt back and forth dizzily like a kid on a swing.
“Almost there,” he grunted. He realized that he was panting and sweaty, even with the motorized winch doing most of the work.
“Take it easy now.” Dex’s voice sounded tight, harsh in his earphones. The two men had said almost nothing to one another after their argument the previous night; their only words had been those necessary for their work.
Jamie realized he was trusting his life to Dex, up there with the winch that held his lifeline. He almost laughed to himself. Our argument is purely philosophical, not physical. But then he thought of Vijay and realized that it could get physical quickly enough, once they returned to the dome.
Carefully, he touched the power control. The rock face slid past, too f
ast, almost a blur. He lifted his gloved finger from the control stud and the harness jerked to a stop again, swinging him even more violently than before. He banged against the rock with his shoulder, forcing a grunt from his lungs, then put his legs out again to cushion the next blow.
“You okay?”
“Yeah. Okay,” Jamie answered.
“I’m getting seasick watching your imagery,” Dex complained.
The balky VR cameras clipped to Jamie’s helmet were recording everything, not so much for show business but to maintain a record of the descent. Dex had set up a portable monitor beside the winch, up at the rim of the Canyon.
Reluctantly, Jamie looked down. The cleft in the rock wall was still several hundred meters below. And the bottom of the canyon seemed thousands of kilometers deeper, swaying rhythmically, so far down that it looked like a carpet of red blood waiting for him to fall into it.
How’s that look, wiseass? he asked Dex silently.
Then his own stomach heaved. Jamie clutched the thin Buckyball cable with both hands. Closing his eyes, he told himself that the cable could hold more than a ton of weight, that he himself weighed only a third on Mars of his weight on Earth, that the harness held him securely and had never been known to break.
Still, it was a long way down. A long way. He leaned back as far as he dared to look up through the visor of his helmet and realized it was a long way back up to the canyon rim, too.
Licking his lips, he said into his helmet microphone, “Okay, one more time ought to do it.”
“Be careful,” Dex said.
“Right,” Jamie said, adding silently, Great advice. Like he gives a damn.
He touched the power stud as lightly as he could, barely kissing it, and the cliff wall slid past more slowly. Maybe I’m getting the hang of it, Jamie told himself. The ride smoothed out as he held his finger frozen on the button and watched the rock face unreel past his staring eyes, layer upon layer, red and brown, pink and bleached pale tan, a streak of yellowish white, a smear of gleaming silver. It looked to him like sedimentary deposits that had been put down billions of years ago, when Mars was young and an ocean covered what was now bleak waterless desert.
And then the land had split apart, ripped open for thousands of kilometers, a jagged wound that left a scar eight kilometers deep; it made the Grand Canyon of Arizona look like a dimple. What broke the ground open like this, what could rip open a canyon so wide you can’t even see the other side of it because it’s over the horizon?