by Ben Bova
Jamie heard out the rest of his message, then sent an acknowledging, “Mr. President, thanks for your good words. I’ll wait for the Nation’s official answer. Thanks again.”
Then he put in a call to Dex Trumball.
Dex was at breakfast when Stacy Dezhurova called him to the comm center. He slid into the empty chair beside her and saw Jamie’s stolid, earnest face on the message screen. Beside him, Stacy was scrolling through the logistics inventory, checking their supplies.
“What’s up, chief?” Dex asked casually.
Jamie said, “I’ve offered Mars to the Navaho Nation.”
Dex nearly popped off the chair. ”You what?”
“I’ve asked the president of the Navaho Nation if his people will formally claim utilization rights to all the areas of Mars that we’ve explored so far.”
“But they’re in Arizona!”
“I’m here,” Jamie said firmly. “I represent the Navaho Nation.”
“Holy crap,” Dex muttered.
Stacy had frozen her screen. She was staring at Dex and Jamie.
“As I understand it,” Jamie said, “if the Navaho claim use of this land, then your father can’t get his hands on it.”
“That’s right,” Dex said, a grin working its way across his face. “He’d have to be here, physically present, to claim utilization rights.”
“And we’re already here. So I’m going to file the claim as soon as I get a go-ahead from the Navaho council.”
“Jesus H. Christ on a jet ski,” Dex said, laughing. “My old man’s gonna pop an artery over this! The Indians pull a land steal on the white men! Wow!”
Jamie asked, “Do you think that will really stop your father?”
“It’ll keep him away from the cliff building, the main dome, the volcanoes that Mitsuo’s explored—yeah, he won’t be able to set up for business anyplace we’ve already been.”
“That still leaves a lot of Mars for him.”
“Yeah, but we’ve got the good parts! Or, your redskin pals do.”
“Then it can work.”
“Yeah, sure,” Dex said, sobering. “Only one problem.”
“What’s that?”
“There goes the funding for the next expedition.”
Dex was too excited to do any useful work. He went to the geology lab, but spent his lime sending frantic messages toward Earth, calling lawyers and professors of international law. Finally, after several hours, Wiley Craig looked up from the heat flow map he was working on and shook his head.
“Hey, buddy, whatever you’re doin’, it ain’t on the work schedule.”
Dex looked up from his computer screen. “I’m gathering information, Wiley.”
“Not about geology, I bet.”
“No, that’s damn straight.” Dex got up from the stool and headed for the door of the lab. “I’ve got to get over to the second dome. Got to talk with Jamie, face-to-face.”
Wiley merely shook his head and returned to his work, muttering, “Well, somebody’s got to get the job done.”
Stacy was not surprised that Dex wanted to join Jamie at Dome Two. But she was not sympathetic, either.
“You have work to do here,” she said sternly, standing in the middle of the comm center like an immovable linebacker. ‘ ‘Task assignments are—”
“You want me to walk to the Canyon?” Dex snapped. “I’ve got to go there, Stace. The funding for the next expedition is important, for chrissake!”
She planted her chunky fists on her hips. “You are going to raise ten billion dollars over at the Canyon?”
Dex gave her a boyish grin. “Maybe, maybe not. But we’re sure as hell going to lose ten bil if we can’t work out a way to get around my father.”
Dezhurova snorted. Before she could reply, though, Vijay stuck her head through the open comm center doorway.
“Did I hear you say you want to take a rover out to Dome Two?” she asked. “I’d like to go there, too.”
“What? Why?” Dezhurova demanded.
“I need to run physical exams on the people there,” Vijay answered. “And psych profiles.”
The cosmonaut raised her eyes to heaven. “Maybe we should all go and abandon this dome completely.”
“I’ve been saying that for months,” Dex replied, grinning mischievously.
“Go!” Dezhurova blurted, nearly shouting the word. “Forget about the work, go traipsing around anywhere you like.”
“Now don’t be sore, Stace,” Dex said soothingly. “If it wasn’t really important, I wouldn’t do it, you know that.”
“I know that you always get your way. Go! Take the old rover. At least leave me with one of the new machines.”
Night fell before they were even a quarter of the way to Dome Two, but Dex kept driving through the darkness—slowly, but still making progress.
Sitting beside him in the rover’s cockpit, Vijay saw that wheel tracks across the dust-covered ground were clearly visible in the rover’s headlights.
“You’re following the beaten path,” she said.
“Yep. Makes it easier. You know you’re not going to hit any major rocks or craters.”
“Is Jamie’s idea really going to work?” Vijay asked, turning slightly in the seat to look squarely at Dex. “Will he be able to keep your father from taking over this region?”
“Looks that way,” Dex said, watching his driving. “But the other side of the coin is that we lose my father’s drive for funding the next expedition.”
Vijay thought about that for a moment, then said, “So you’ll have to take his place.”
“What?” Dex glanced at her, his eyes wide, startled.
“If your father won’t raise the money for the next expedition, then you’ll have to do it.”
He pressed the brake pedals and brought the rover to a halt. Slowly, methodically, he shut down the drive motors.
“I’ll have to do it,” he muttered.
“Who else?”
Dex seemed lost in thought as they went back to the galley and microwaved their dinners. They ate in almost total silence. Vijay could see that Dex’s mind was a hundred million kilometers away.
“The thing is,” he said as they cleaned up the table, “I’ve never gone against my father. I’ve always had to do things his way—unless I could wheedle him around to make him think that what I wanted was his idea in the first place.”
“Now you’re going to have to stand up to him,” Vijay said.
Dex nodded slowly. “I don’t know if I can.”
“Don’t you think it’s about time you found out?”
They were standing by the galley sink, between the microwave and the racks of hard suits. Dex grasped Vijay’s arm just above the elbow and pulled her toward him.
She put the flat of her free hand against his chest. “No, Dex.”
“No?”
“There must be several million women waiting for you to return to Earth. You’ll have your pick of them.”
“That’s then,” he said. “This is now.”
“I’m afraid not.”
He let out a breath. “Jamie, huh?”
“Jamie,” she admitted.
“He’s u lucky guy.” Now she sighed. “I wish he knew that.” Dex looked puzzled.
“He’s in love with Mars,” Vijay explained. “I’ve got this whole bloody planet for a rival.”
NEWS CONFERENCE
DARRYL C. TRUMBALL WAS NOT ACCUSTOMED TO THE GLARE OF PUBLICITY.
He preferred to remain in the background and let his hirelings and puppets face the public.
But as the first “ordinary” person to go to Mars, he had become a celebrity. Now, a scant four days before the backup mission was scheduled to launch from Cape Canaveral, he found himself sharing a long table with four young archeologists and two astronauts, staring out at a sea of reporters and photographers who filled the auditorium to overflowing.
Like his crewmates, Trumball wore coral-red coveralls bearing the stylish
logo of the Second Mars Expedition over his heart. He was of course older than any of them, older than any two of them put together, almost. But he was slim and hard and fit. No one knew the fear that chilled his blood; no one could hear how his heart thundered in his chest when he thought of actually climbing into that flying bomb and riding it all the way to distant, freezing, dangerous Mars.
“Why isn’t this mission called the Third Expedition?” a reporter was shouting from the floor.
“This is a backup mission for the Second Expedition,” explained the senior astronaut, an old hand at fielding inane questions.
“We’re going specifically to explore the ancient building that’s been discovered in the cliffs of the Grand Canyon of Mars,” said the chief archeologist, all of forty years old.
“What about the Third Expedition?” another reporter asked.
“Will there be a Third Expedition?”
Everyone along the table turned to Trumball. “Yes,” he assured them all smoothly. “There will be a Third Mars Expedition.”
“When?”
“How soon?”
“We are working out the details,” Trumball said.
“What about other kinds of flights to Mars?” a woman asked. “When will we he able to take vacations there?”
A slight snickering laugh tittered through the news people.
But Trumball answered the planted question, “That’s why I’m going along with the scientists. I want to show the world that ordinary people can go to Mars, can see for themselves the glories of the vanished Martian civilization, walk where the Martians walked, reach the peak of the tallest mountain in the solar system, explore the longest, widest, deepest Grand Canyon of them all.”
Several of the archeologists looked dismayed, but no one dared to contradict Trumball.
”Why you, sir?” asked a bald, portly reporter from the last row of the auditorium. “Why do you have to go yourself? Couldn’t someone— er, of less prominence, be sent instead?”
Trumball smiled patiently. “You mean why would an old fart like me want to go?”
Everyone laughed.
“I want to show that even someone of my age can make the trip easily, and enjoy it.” He paused, made certain the news people were hanging on his next words, then went on, “But remember, older men than I have gone into space, starting with Senator Glenn, nearly forty years ago.”
“But, all the way to Mars?”
“Yes,” Trumball said, still keeping his smile in place. “All the way to Mars. I’ll be the first of millions of ordinary men and women to go there.”
Besides, he added silently, there’s money to be made up there, and I’m going to make damned certain nobody screws me out of it.
AFTERNOON: SOL 360
JAMIE WAS HANGING IN THE CLIMBING HARNESS, SCRAPING ROCK SAMPLES from the cliff face, when the message came through.
“You did it!” Dex’s voice sounded exultant in his helmet earphones. “Listen to this!”
It was the message from the president of the Navaho Nation, the message he’d been waiting for. Jamie wished he could see the man’s face, but his words were good enough to make him burn with pride and gratitude.
“The Navaho people accept the responsibility of claiming utilization rights to the areas of Mars explored by the Second Mars Expedition,” the president said slowly, as if reading from a prepared script. “We intend to hold it in trust for all the peoples of Earth, and to encourage the careful scientific study of the planet Mars and all its life-forms, past and present.
”We recognize that Dr. James Waterman, whose father was a pure-blood Navaho, will be our people’s representative on Mars while this claim is officially filed with the International Astronautical Authority.”
There was more, and Jamie listened patiently through it all, dangling two kilometers above the Canyon floor. But he listened with only a fraction of his attention. For a voice in his mind was saying, You’ve done it. Now Trumball won’t be able to claim use of this land. Now we can keep it out of Trumball’s hands, out of the greedy paws of the developers and the exploiters. We can keep Mars clean and preserve it for scientific study.
Once the president’s message ended, Dex came back on, jabbering, “I just wish I could see my father’s face when he hears about this. He’ll go ballistic! He’s all suited up and ready to come here and now it’s gonna be for nothing. He can’t touch a thing here! I’ll bet—”
Jamie clicked off the suit radio. He hung there in the harness in blessed silence, swaying slightly on the cable, hearing nothing but the soft thudding of his pulse and the faint whir of his suit’s fans.
He planted both boots against the cliff face and pushed as hard as he could and let out a wild war whoop of sheer joy as he swung dizzyingly on the cable.
Only four reporters showed up for the Navaho president’s news conference, but his announcement that the Navaho Nation, through Jamie Waterman, was claiming usage rights to Mars sizzled through the news media with the speed of light.
By the next morning, the president’s office at Window Rock was besieged by an army of TV vans and reporters. Headlines around the world were blaring:
INDIANS CLAIM MARS
NAVAHO NATION TAKES OVER RED PLANET
CUSTER REDUX: INDIANS AMBUSH TRUMBALL ENTERPRISES
NAVAHOS SEIZE E.T. RESERVATION
The chairwoman of the International Astronautical Authority looked distinctly uncomfortable. Darryl C. Trumball had flown her to Boston in his own private jet, put her up in the best hotel on the harborfront, and sent his personal limousine and driver to bring her to his office.
Still, she was obviously nervous and ill at ease as she sat before
Trumball’s massive desk, a rail-thin woman with graying hair and the hard-bitten features of someone who had struggled against steep odds to rise to the position she now held.
Jet lag, Trumball said to himself. She’s just jet-lagged from her trip here. But he didn’t really believe that; she looked displeased, almost angry that she had been summoned to him.
“If you’re inquiring about the Navaho request,” she said, with no preamble except the coldest of good-mornings, “it seems to be in perfectly legal form and entirely valid.”
Trumball sank back in his tall leather desk chair and steepled his fingertips. “I am scheduled to take off with the replenishment mission in two days,” he said mildly. “If this Navaho claim is valid, that would seem to be pointless.”
“I can find nothing wrong with their claim,” the IAA chairwoman replied. Her accent was difficult for Trumball to place. German, perhaps. He had no idea of her background, he had merely told his staff to bring the head of the IAA to his office.
“Then their claim will be accepted?”
She arched a brow. “The full committee must meet and formally approve their request, but I see no problem with that. We are bound by international law and the treaties that the various governments have ratified, going back to 1967.”
“I see,” said Trumball.
“I would suggest,” she said stiffly, “that you cancel your travel plans and allow another archeologist to take your space on the flight to Mars.”
Trumball nodded. “That would seem to be the prudent thing to do.”
A long silence stretched between them. She’s waiting for me to sweeten the pot, Trumball thought. Or to make threats. Pressure her. He studied her thin, sallow face and saw real hostility there. She doesn’t like me. She doesn’t like American billionaires who throw their weight around. But she likes my money. That’s why she agreed to come to see me.
“Mr. Trumball,” she said at last, her voice slightly husky.
“Yes?”
“I know that you are disappointed by this turn of events.”
He nodded agreement.
“But I hope that this will not affect your contribution to the Third Expedition.”
“Why shouldn’t it?” he snapped.
“Because the exploration of Mars is mo
re important than … than … your plans to make money.”
There. It was out in the open. She’s a damnable socialist, just like the rest of the bureaucrats.
But he kept his voice calm and reasonable as he replied, “More important to you, madam. Not to me.”
She looked him squarely in the eye. “Are you telling me that you will not contribute to funding the Third Expedition if we allow the Navahos to claim utilization rights?”
“That is precisely what I am telling you.”
“But as I explained to you, we have no choice in the matter. Their claim is legally valid and we must accept it.”
“Then you must find your money elsewhere,” Trumball said.
The IAA chairwoman shot to her feet. “That is exactly what I expected from someone like you!”
Trumball got up, too. Slowly. “Then I haven’t disappointed you. How delightful.” He pointed to the door. “Have a pleasant day.”
Once she left, Trumball sat down again and swivelled his chair to look out on the city and Boston Harbor, far below him.
I shouldn’t blame the Indian for this. Waterman would never have thought of this by himself. Dex did this. Dex has screwed me out of a whole planet. The little sonofabitch has kicked me in the balls.
Strangely, he smiled.
Jamie spent as much time as he could outside, sampling the strata of the cliff face, going all the way down to the Canyon floor to help Trudy and Fuchida, walking alone through the silent and empty Martian building.
But he had to go back to the dome eventually. The cliff face darkened into shadow as the sun sank toward the western horizon. Fuchida and Hall rose past the rock niche on their way to the dome. Vijay, handling the comm console, told him it was almost sundown and he had to come back.
As soon as Jamie stepped through the airlock’s inner hatch, he saw that Dex was practically bouncing around the dome floor with delight.
“Half the news media in the world want to talk to you, pal,” he exclaimed as soon as Jamie took off his helmet. “They’re going nuts back there!”