by Ben Bova
“We are ready,” Jamie heard in his earphone. “Start the winch.”
The motor began whining. Joanna was pulled off her feet and began moving toward Jamie, dangling in the harness, her boots trailing bare centimeters above the rippled sand. Behind her, Vosnesensky attached four bulky boxes to the cable: the bio cases, with their samples of the Martian lichen safely inside them.
Joanna was absolutely silent as she rode across the treacherous lake of sand. Jamie heard Vosnesensky and Connors talking over the intercom, grunting and panting with the exertion of getting the half-conscious Ilona into her hard suit. Joanna’s suited figure rode past him, her gloved hands gripping the cable, but her feet dangling as if she were unconscious. Or dead.
She’s all right, Jamie said to himself. She just doesn’t know how to hang on properly. She’s forgotten what they showed us in training about riding the safety cable out of the shuttle if there’s a malfunction on the launch pad. She’ll be okay.
Still, it seemed like an hour before he heard the airlock hatch sigh open behind him. Jamie twisted in the cockpit seat to see Joanna step wearily into the module, encased in her bright suit, with Reed in his yellow suit supporting her like a solicitous robot helping one of its own kind. The pair of them clumped as far as the midship area, where Joanna half collapsed on one of the folded-up benches.
Jamie pulled himself out of his seat and stumbled aft toward her, surprised at how weak he still was.
“Can you take care of her?” Reed’s voice was muffled from inside his helmet. “The sample cases are on their way and Mikhail’s already yelling at me to take them off the cable.”
“Sure, I’ll take her,” Jamie said, his voice shaking.
He helped Joanna lift off her helmet. She smiled at him feebly. Gently, he moved her to a half-reclining position, her back against the rover bulkhead, then tried to pull off her dust-spattered boots. The tang of ozone almost felt good, reviving, like smelling salts.
“I think I can manage the rest,” Joanna said, once he had tugged her boots off.
Jamie sagged down onto the bench beside her, then turned her halfway around so he could reach her backpack.
“I’ll help you.”
“I was afraid… you had died out there.”
“So was I.”
“It was a very brave thing you did.”
He tried to laugh. It came out more like a groan. “Bravery is the other side of fear, I guess. I was afraid we were all going to die.”
“You saved us. You saved me.”
“Tony saved me. Tony and Mikhail. There’s enough heroism to go around for everybody.”
He undipped the last of the backpack connectors and lifted the bulky pack off her. It felt heavy, heavier than Jamie had remembered. Reaching across, he put it down on the opposite bench. Then he began to help unseal the suit’s hard-shell torso.
“Please, Jamie,” Joanna said. “I can do it for myself now. You should be ready to help Ilona. She is really in bad condition.”
He nodded. “Okay.”
Before he could get up from the bench, though, Joanna reached a hand to his cheek and pulled his face to hers. She kissed him tenderly.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
He clasped one hand around the nape of her neck, feeling the silky softness of her thick dark hair, and kissed her.
Before he could think of anything to say they both heard thumping sounds from the airlock.
“Ilona,” Joanna said. “She’ll need help.”
Jamie got up and went to the airlock hatch. Ilona was barely conscious and totally unable to stand on her own feet under the weight of her hard suit. Jamie and Reed laid her out on the bench opposite Joanna and removed her helmet and backpack.
She looks half dead, Jamie thought. Her eyes were vacant, glazed, bloodshot, with deep black circles beneath them. Her cheeks were hollow, gaunt, her breath fetid.
But she forced a little smile as she looked up at Jamie. “A man should never… see a woman… first thing in the morning.”
“This morning doesn’t count,” Jamie said.
“All right… but just… this once.”
Connors and finally Vosnesensky rode the cable across the sand-filled crater. By the time the sun was at high noon, they were all out of their suits and Vosnesensky was at the controls in the cockpit, grinning hugely.
“Now we return to the dome,” he said. “And from there to orbit in a few days.”
“And from orbit, back to Earth,” Connors said, perched on one of the benches.
Ivshenko was up in the cockpit with Vosnesensky. Jamie was sitting on the bench between Joanna and the astronaut. Reed was standing beside the galley, his back to the airlock hatch. They had pulled down the lower bunk on the opposite side so that Ilona could lie on it. She seemed to be asleep as the rover lurched into motion.
“You saved our necks, man,” said Connors.
“Not me,” Jamie said. “Tony…”
But Joanna interrupted him by laying a hand on his thigh. “You saved us. And not only us. You saved our Martian specimens.”
Jamie looked down at her urchin’s face, drawn and pale. Is that why she kissed me? Because I saved her damned lichen?
EARTH
Alberto Brumado smiled tiredly into the dazzling lights. He thought he knew how exhausted the explorers on Mars must feel; he felt the same way. He had lost track of how many hours he had been sitting before the lights and cameras and reporters, answering their questions, feeding them the news of the stranded team as it became available to him.
The little lobby of the hotel had quickly proved too small for Brumado’s impromptu news conference, so they had moved—reporters, camera crews, lights, and all—to the largest conference room in the hotel and quickly jammed it to the walls and out into the corridor beyond its wide double doors.
The Mars Project officials at the Johnson Space Center had been furious, at first, that Brumado was talking off the cuff to the media. But after the first few hours, and hurried phone discussions with Washington and Kaliningrad, the project bigwigs had offered Brumado their own spacious conference hall at the Johnson Center.
None of the media people wanted to shut down and move to Johnson, not while they had Brumado live, giving a bravura marathon performance. So, swallowing their resentment, the Johnson people began passing information to Brumado as it came in from Mars.
Brumado was sitting on a folding chair behind a little table, up on the makeshift dais that had been quickly erected at the far end of the room. Perspiring, hair tousled, suit rumpled, tie long gone from his collar, he took another sheet of paper from Edith’s hand, scanned it quickly, then smiled up at the cameras.
“They are safe,” he said, the three most wonderful words he had ever spoken. “Dr. Waterman carried the cable line to the second rover and cosmonaut Vosnesensky has brought the others to their vehicle. They have started on their way back to the dome.”
He could not see the pack of reporters beyond the glare of the TV lights, but he heard them sigh audibly, then break into spontaneous applause. Brumado felt surprised at that; then he wondered if they were applauding the good news or his own performance. The good news, of course. Joanna is safe. She will live. He stood up on weak, trembling legs and raised both his hands.
“If you will excuse me, I would like to take a break now. The public-information people at Johnson can take over, if you would be kind enough to go there.”
They applauded again, startling him anew. This time he realized it was for him. Alberto Brumado smiled boyishly and realized he needed to go to the toilet very badly.
Edith, standing off to one side of the dais, knew that Brumado would immediately want to speak to his daughter. She intended to be there when he did. It would be her chance to see Jamie.
He’s safe, Edith said to herself. And a hero. She felt proud of him. And of Alberto, who had turned this near disaster into a global media triumph.
It was only then, after more than twelv
e nonstop hours, that Edith began to think about how this event could be used to further her own career.
SOL 45: MORNING
Everyone feels so damned happy to be leaving, Jamie thought. Why don’t I?
They had packed their specimens and computer disks aboard the ascent modules of the L/AVs. All the lab equipment and what remained of their supplies had been carefully covered and sealed, to be left inside the dome with the furniture and life-support equipment, ready to be used by the next explorers—if there was to be a second Mars expedition.
Jamie felt as if he were leaving a home he had lived in all his life. He remembered the hollow, almost frightened feeling in the pit of his stomach the day he and his parents had left Santa Fe for their new home in Berkeley. He had been five years old then. Funny the things you remember, he thought.
The dome echoed now with emptiness. He felt sad, despondent about it.
“Message coming in for you,” Ollie Zieman told him, startling Jamie out of his reverie. The astronaut was manning the communications console until the last L/AV was ready to lift off.
Jamie followed him to the comm center and sat in front of the main console. He was surprised to see Edith’s face on the screen.
She looked very tired, as if she had not slept for days. But happy.
“Jamie, I’ve been trying to get through to you for five days now. The project people have finally let me send a personal message to y’all. We—Alberto and me—we’ve been on the air almost nonstop, trying to do what you guys call damage control for the project. Alberto gave them a blow-by-blow account of your rescue, and I saw to it that his version of what happened to y’all got out on the air before anybody else had a chance to say diddly-squat.”
Jamie grinned at her image. No matter what she was doing with her private life, Edith had become part of the Mars team.
“Now, they only gave me a minute of their precious transmission time, so all I got time to say is—I’ll be waiting for you in Washington when you got back. I’ll be the full-time regular space correspondent for Cable News, and I expect to get a private and exclusive interview with you. Don’t matter who else you been talking to, if you get what I mean. I want to interview you. Understand me?”
She looked out from the screen expectantly. Jamie glanced over his shoulder at Zieman, who busily pretended not to have been eavesdropping.
“Okay,” Jamie said, knowing it would take more than twelve minutes for his words to reach Edith. “A complete and exclusive interview. Like the one we did in Galveston when I found out that I’d been selected for the landing team. Maybe you can arrange to meet us at the space station. Zero gravity can be a lot of fun.”
He sensed another person standing behind him. Turning in the chair, he saw it was Joanna, looking at him with a strange, quizzical smile playing on her lips. She held up the fingers of both hands to him. Nine fingers. We’ll be in transit for nine months, Jamie translated her silent message.
Joanna walked away, still smiling. And Jamie realized that she was telling him that the trip back home was going to be very different from the voyage outward.
* * *
“It is time to suit up,” Vosnesensky said.
For the last time, Jamie said to himself. One final hour or so in the hard suits and then we’ll be aboard the spacecraft and ready to start for home. Everyone headed for the airlock and the racks of hard suits waiting for them.
Zieman and Dr. Yang went with Tony Reed, the diminutive Chinese physician walking in front of the Englishman, the husky astronaut behind him. Like a prisoner under house arrest, Jamie thought. They’re already blaming him for the scurvy outbreak. They’ll want a scapegoat back on Earth and they’ve decided it’s going to be Tony.
Reed looked pale and withdrawn, but when he saw Jamie coming up beside him his old crooked little smile returned. “My god, James, you look positively morose. Don’t you want to go home?”
“Sure I do.” But Jamie knew it was only partially true.
“You want to continue exploring Mars, don’t you?” Reed said.
“Don’t you?”
“No thanks,” Reed said fervently. “I’ve had enough of this dust bowl. I’m looking forward to England and rain and flower gardens.”
Jamie thought of the desert where his Navaho ancestors lived. How much like Mars it is; yet how different.
“If you’re feeling so melancholy,” Reed jibed, “then perhaps you ought to stay here.”
“I wish I could,” Jamie admitted.
Reed hiked an eyebrow.
“How are you doing, Tony?” Jamie asked.
“I’m fine. Don’t worry about me.”
Jamie said, “I’m going to have a long talk with Dr. Li, once we get back into orbit. And with the mission controllers.”
“On my behalf?”
“Right.”
“Don’t bother.”
“I damned well will bother,” Jamie said, with quiet intensity. “I’ll take it all the way up to the project directors, if I have to.”
“Don’t be silly,” said Reed. “And don’t give me that ‘you saved my life’ business again.”
“But they’re going to make you the scapegoat for everything that went wrong with the mission!”
Reed’s smile turned bitter. “What of it? The mission needs a sacrificial lamb, doesn’t it? One man killed in orbit. The entire ground team nearly killed by a stupid mistake. You can be the mission’s hero, James. I’ll be the goat.”
“That’s not right. It’s not fair.”
Reed’s smile turned sour. “Perhaps you’d better stay, then, my heroic friend. That’s the only way you’re going to get to explore more of this miserable ball of rust. Once we get back home and they start dissecting all the mistakes we’ve made, there will never be another expedition to Mars. Never.”
Jamie saw that the others had gathered around them, faces questioning. Even Vosnesensky looked doubtful, scowling worriedly. They had reached the row of lockers where their dust-spattered hard suits waited like the battered armor of knights who had sought the Holy Grail.
Jamie turned around to face Reed. Calmly, quietly, he said, “There will be no scapegoats among us. Not among us. We’re a team. Even when we get back to Earth we’re still a team. Without heroes and without goats.”
“I wish that could be true, Jamie,” said Reed, with real yearning in his voice.
“It will be.”
“It can’t be. The project directors will never trust me again. I’ll get a polite handshake and be mustered out into private practice. And think of what’s waiting for Mikhail. Our noble team leader fractured every rule in the regulations and thumbed his nose at Li and the mission controllers. Mikhail’s career is finished.”
Vosnesensky grunted. “So I will retire. I have achieved my dream. I was the first man on Mars. I will not return. I don’t think anyone will come back to Mars. Tony is right. There will be no more expeditions.”
“For how long?” Jamie demanded. “For my whole lifetime? For a hundred years? A thousand? I don’t think so. But even if it happens that way, what of it? We’ll come back to Mars one day, just as surely as the sun rises.”
“Really?”
“Yes! Because we have to. The human race has to. We’re explorers, Tony. All of us. Even you; it’s what brought you here. It’s built into our blood, into our brains. That’s what science is all about. Human beings have to learn, have to search and seek and explore. We need to, just like a flower needs water and sunlight. It’s what made our ancestors move out of Africa and spread all across the Earth. Now we’re spreading all across the solar system and someday we’ll start to move out to the stars. You can’t stop that, Tony. Nobody can. It’s what makes us human.”
Reed backed off a step, then lifted his chin a notch higher. “Very pretty speech, Jamie. But most of the human race doesn’t give a damn about Mars or anything else except their own squalid little greeds. They’re going to close down the Mars Project, Jamie. They’re goi
ng to kill it.”
“They’ll try, I know. They’ll do their best to shut us down. And I’ll do mine. Because I’m not going to rest until they send another expedition back here. If I have to do it with my bare hands, I’ll bring us back to Mars.”
Jamie stuck his hand into his coverall pocket and pulled out his bear fetish. He reached up and put it on the rack beside his gray helmet.
“And to prove it, I’m going to leave this little fellow here to greet me when I return.”
They all stared at the fetish. Jamie had not allowed any of them to see it before.
“My grandfather would say it has powerful magic,” Jamie told them. “But the real magic is in us. We make things happen. We’re coming back to Mars—all of us who want to.”
Reed huffed. “A gesture.”
“A symbol,” Jamie corrected.
“Speaking of gestures,” Ilona said, stepping through the group to stand between Jamie and Vosnesensky, “I had intended to do this in private, once we were aboard the spacecraft.”
She took from her breast pocket the dog-eared photograph that had been taped up over her bunk. Staring solemnly at Vosnesensky, Ilona methodically tore the photo into small pieces.
“Mikhail, I have wronged you and all the Russians on this mission. I apologize. You saved our lives, and it was wrong of me to hold a fifty-year grudge against you personally.”
Vosnesensky, totally surprised, shifted from one foot to another. “Well… I suppose…,” he stammered.
Ilona threw her arms around his neck and kissed him so soundly that Vosnesensky’s face turned as red as his hard suit. Everyone laughed. Even Reed.
Jamie looked at the other members of the Mars team. One by one, from Abell’s grinning frog face to Ivshenko, leaning heavily on a pair of stainless steel crutches. Mikhail was right, he thought. Mars has tested us. Each and every one of us. None of us is the same person we were when we arrived here.