Mars

by Ben Bova

  “Dr. Malater must be Athena,” Naguib said. “She’s quite tall and athletic.”

  “Yes, and little Joanna is Aphrodite, wouldn’t you say?” Tony murmured. “She’s got the right figure for a sex goddess, hasn’t she?”

  “And Dr. Bonnet is older, so she must be Hera, queen of the gods.”

  Tony smiled at the brown-skinned Egyptian. “Rather a good fit, don’t you think?”

  Naguib nodded agreement, then added, “But wasn’t it those three goddesses who started the Trojan War? We must be careful with them.” He laughed.

  Tony granted him a sly smile. “Careful, yes, by all means. But remember that goddesses can become angry if you don’t worship them properly.”

  It was too much for Jamie. Reed and his slightly sneering way of looking at the world was more than he wanted to deal with at the end of this long, exciting, exhausting day. He hauled himself to his feet and headed for his privacy cubicle where he could strip off the rest of his clothes and then maybe go take a shower.

  Before he got halfway there, though, Paul Abell intercepted him.

  “Your turn before the cameras, friend.” The American astronaut’s frog eyes were wide and bulging, his smile curved almost from ear to ear.

  “What do you mean?” Jamie asked.

  “The media back on Earth. Looks like you’re a very popular guy. They want to interview you, and mission control has set it up.” Abell pointed. “The comm console awaits your pleasure.”

  Each of the explorers was expected to respond to the news media’s demands for interviews “live, from the planet Mars.”

  With the distance from Earth growing larger every hour, it took nearly ten minutes for a radio or TV transmission to travel from one world to the other, so truly “live” interviews were out of the question. How could you conduct an interview with a twenty-minute wait between each question and its answer?

  The media producers had their solution: each explorer would receive a list Of questions. The explorer would then answer those questions before the camera, one after the other. On Earth, the answers would be snipped apart so that a questioning reporter could be inserted into the appropriate spots. The result looked as if the reporter and the explorer on Mars were indeed talking to one another “live.” Almost. There was little of the spontaneity of a truly face-to-face interview. But the world’s audiences were accustomed to wooden performances from scientists and astronauts, or so the TV producers assured their executives.

  Besides, these people were speaking from Mars!

  Wearily, Jamie slid into the creaking plastic chair in front of the main communications screen, still in his thermal undergarment, like white longjohns covered with tubing. Abell sat off to one side, monitoring the equipment and grinning as if he enjoyed watching a scientist trying to field questions from the media.

  It surprised Jamie when the screen lit up to show, not Li Chengdu up in the orbiting command spacecraft or even one of the mission controllers at Kaliningrad. He found himself looking into the sad gray eyes of Alberto Brumado.

  Brumado had flown to Washington the morning after the tumultuous celebration in Rio. There was a public relations furor brewing in the States and no less than the Vice-President herself was making outrageous demands that one of the scientists be removed from the team of explorers on the surface of Mars.

  He had spent two days calming the politicians, but he could not deny that the American media was in a hot-breathed frenzy over the fact that a Native American was among the Martian explorers and he had refused to speak the speech that the space agency public relations officers had written for him.

  Brumado had met with the media as well as the politicians and discovered that, like sharks attracted by the scent of blood, the media were circling around the figure of James Waterman, ready to close in for the kill.

  Brumado had one goal and one only: to make such a success of this first mission to Mars that the people of the world would demand further exploration of the red planet. He was not going to allow one man—foolish or stubborn or simply a victim of circumstances—to wreck what he had fought for thirty years to accomplish. He would not permit one man—red, yellow, white, or green—to turn public opinion against Mars.

  Now he sat before a display screen in an office in Washington. Through the half-drawn blinds he could see the modernistic square facade of the Air and Space Museum, with thousands of people streaming through its front doors.

  “Ready to transmit to Mars, sir,” said the young woman sitting across the office. She had a headset clamped across her curly dark hair and a jumble of electronic gray boxes piled on the desk in front of her.

  Brumado saw on the screen a man in white coveralls with a smiling frog’s face. The NASA patch on his chest identified him as the astronaut Abell. He looked relaxed, perfectly at ease; his lips were moving. Brumado realized this transmission had taken place more than ten minutes ago, and the technicians had turned off the sound so that he would not be confused. They wanted him to begin speaking now, knowing that it would take almost ten minutes for his words and image to reach Mars. By then James Waterman should be sitting where the astronaut was.

  Unconsciously, Brumado smiled as he began, “Dr. Waterman, this is rather awkward for me, for several reasons. First, I don’t see you on the screen yet since it takes so much time to send messages back and forth. Second, I have to ask you for a favor. I recall that we met once during your training, and I regret that we did not have the chance to spend more time together and get to know each other better.” Brumado hesitated, then plunged ahead. “I suppose you realize that you have caused something of an uproar here in the United States.”

  Jamie watched Brumado’s neatly bearded face: kindly, a bit sad, his gray hair slightly rumpled. Just three lousy words, Jamie thought as Brumado talked to him. Three little words and there’s an uproar back home.

  “… So what I have done is to sit down with the major networks and smooth things over as much as possible for you. They will not be satisfied, however, unless they have the chance to interview you. They have agreed to have one reporter ask the questions, and I have reviewed the questions they have put on tape. We have no objections to your answering any of them. They have your complete biographical file from the agency, of course, and there have already been several interviews with your parents and other people you have known in school and socially. So far, the coverage has been very sympathetic, very favorable to you. But now they want to speak to you.”

  Brumado pulled in a deep breath, then went on. “I know it must sound almost ridiculous to you, where you are now and with what you are trying to accomplish, but you must understand that you have touched on a very sensitive nerve back here. Indian activists are proclaiming you a hero. The Vice-President is quite angry with the space agency for allowing you to become part of the Mars mission. She thinks you are a troublemaker, although she used much stronger language than that. I pointed out to her that I myself pushed to get you assigned to the mission, but that only made her angrier, I think. So—what to do?”

  Jamie almost started to answer the question, then realized that Brumado was not waiting for an answer. “We will transmit the media’s questions to you immediately after I finish talking to you. We want you to answer the questions as honestly and openly as you can. The tape of your answers will be screened here in Washington by the Space Council before being released to the media. The Vice-President herself will make the decision to release your tape to the media or not. I suggest you review the entire tape, listen carefully to every question, and then go back and answer each one in turn.”

  Brumado seemed to hunch closer to the screen. His face took on a more intense, more sorrowful look. “I must warn you that the quality of your answers will determine whether or not you are allowed to remain with the surface team. I have spoken at length with Li Chengdu and he is vehemently against your being replaced for political reasons. But if the Vice-President insists upon it, we will have no choice but to send you u
p to the orbiter and send the Australian, Dr. O’Hara, to the surface in your place.”

  Brumado leaned back again, then said, “Well, that’s it. I regret that this is happening, but we must try to deal with it as quickly and honestly as we can. The interviewer’s questions will follow immediately. Good-bye for now. And good luck.”

  The screen flickered momentarily, then the smooth smiling face of a network anchorman appeared. Jamie recognized the face, but could not recall the name. From somewhere in the dome Jamie could hear music floating softly through the air: a Rachmaninoff piano concerto, no less. Dark and melancholy. Must be one of the Russians’ tapes, he thought. Strange that Brumado didn’t ask to speak with his daughter. Maybe he already did. Maybe Paul told him Joanna’s busy in her lab.

  The anchorman did not bother to introduce himself; perhaps he felt that he was so famous that no introduction was necessary.

  “Dr. Waterman, I’m going to read off a list of questions we would like you to answer. As I understand, it, your answers will be screened by the government before they’re turned over to us. Please feel free to answer as completely as you want. Don’t worry about time. We can edit any redundancies or coughs or sneezes out of the final interview.”

  His smile grew wider although his eyes seemed hard and intense, like a wolf’s. Jamie remembered Edith warning him that a videotape could be edited to make an interviewee look good or bad, but he barely had time to think of that before the anchorman asked his first question.

  “Your records from Berkeley and the University of New Mexico show no indication that you were involved in pro-Indian activism or any causes at all, other than student housing, even though you were president of the student council in your senior year at Albuquerque. Were you politically active in secret? If not, when did you become active?”

  And so it went. Jamie followed Brumado’s advice and went through the entire tape before trying to answer any of the questions. It was all the same: an attempt to get Jamie to take a stand on Indian affairs and against the U.S. government’s handling of them. The Anglo even had the gall to bring up Wounded Knee and Custer.

  Abell laughed out loud at several of the questions. When the tape was finished he showed Jamie how to rewind it and then stop it at the end of each question, so that he could give his response.

  “And when did you stop beating your wife?” Abell asked gleefully. “He forgot to ask you that one.”

  Jamie leaned back in the flimsy plastic chair and stared at the empty screen, his mind churning. For many minutes he said nothing, remained absolutely still.

  Finally Abell asked, “Are you ready?”

  Behind him Jamie could hear the voices of the others and Rachmaninoff s dark melodies. Above him he saw the curve of the dome, darkened now against the encroaching cold of the Martian night. Beyond that thin barrier was another world waiting to be explored.

  He nodded to Abell. “I’m ready.”

  The anchorman’s face came back on the screen, repeating his first question with that earnest little smile that was meant to convey sincerity. The face froze on the screen as Jamie answered.

  “I’ve never been active in politics of any kind, on campus or afterward. I vote every election day, but that’s about it. I consider myself to be an American citizen, just like you do. My ancestry is part Native American, part New England Yankee—a mixture of Navaho and Mayflower. To me, it’s just the same as if all my ancestors came from some country in Europe, like yours did. I’m proud of my Navaho ancestry, but no more so than you’re proud of your own heritage, whatever it may be.”

  Jamie took a breath, then went on, “I’m speaking to you from the planet Mars. This afternoon my fellow scientists and I discovered water here. That is far more important than the color of my skin or the nature of my political activities. For the first time in our exploration of the solar system we have found water in a liquid state on another world. You should be interviewing us about that, not over a few words I spoke at a very emotional moment in my life. All the others of our team spoke in their native languages when they gave their first words from Mars, I spoke in mine—spoke the only words of Navaho that I really know. And that’s all there is to it. Now let’s stop this bullshit and get on with the exploration of Mars.”

  He turned in his chair toward Abell. “That’s it.”

  “You don’t really expect them to put that last line on the air, do you?”

  “I don’t really give a damn.”

  Looking slightly worried, the astronaut punched up the anchorman’s next question.

  “No,” Jamie said. “That’s it. I’ve said all I have to say. Send it up to Dr. Li and on to Washington. I’ve got nothing to add to that.”

  Despite himself, Li Chengdu smiled as he reviewed the tape of Jamie’s abbreviated interview. They will not like this back in Washington, but the young man has courage.

  Li steepled his fingers and wondered how much trouble he would cause if he refused to remove Waterman from the ground team. Of course, Washington had not made that demand yet. But he had no doubt that they would once they saw Waterman’s tape.

  Yes, the young man has courage, Li said to himself. Do I have the courage to stand with him and defy the politicians?

  They cannot reach out to Mars and replace me. But what might they do once we return to Earth? That is the interesting question. More than interesting. Perhaps my Nobel Prize hinges on this matter. Certainly young Waterman’s entire career does. His career and his life.

  EARTH

  HOUSTON: It had taken Edith two days to make up her mind. Two days and all her courage.

  When she had watched Jamie utter his Navaho greeting from the surface of Mars she had smiled to herself. Standing in the jam-packed KHTV newsroom that morning, she had no premonition of the uproar his few words would cause. One of her co-workers nudged her shoulder slightly as the picture on the screen focused on his sky-blue space suit.

  “That’s your significant other, isn’t it?” the woman whispered to Edith.

  She nodded, thinking, He used to be. Used to be.

  Edith was surprised when the network news show that evening spent so much time on the fact that an American Indian was on Mars. The next morning, on her own, she called several of her contacts at the Johnson Space Center and found that there was considerable consternation among the NASA brass about Jamie’s impromptu little speech.

  “The guys upstairs are goin’ apeshit,” one of her informers told her. “But you didn’t hear anything from me, understand?”

  By the second day there were rumbles that the Space Council in Washington was reviewing the Indian’s refusal to speak the words NASA had prepared for him. The Vice-President was up in arms, rumor had it. What she did was news. Everyone knew that she wanted to be the party’s choice for their presidential candidate next year.

  Edith reviewed tapes of boringly standard interviews with Jamie’s parents in Berkeley and blandly evasive NASA officials. She went to sleep that second night thinking about what she should do.

  She awoke the next morning, her mind made up. She called the station and told her flabbergasted news director that she was taking the rest of the week off.

  “You can’t do that! I don’t …”

  “I have two weeks’ vacation and a whole mess of sick days I never took,” Edith said sweetly into the phone. “Ill be back by Monday.”

  “Goddammit, Edie, they’ll fire your ass! You know what they’re like upstairs!”

  She made a sigh that he could not help but hear. “Then they’ll have to fire me and give me my severance pay, I guess.”

  She hung up, then immediately called for a plane reservation to New York.

  Now, winging thirty-five thousand feet above the Appalachians, Edith rehearsed in her mind what she would tell the network news chief. I can get to James Waterman’s parents. And his grandfather. And the people he trained with who were not selected to go to Mars. I know his story and I know the inner workings of the Mars Project. I ca
n produce you a story of how this thing works, from the inside. The human story of the Mars Project. Not just shining science, but the infighting, the competition, the guts and blood of it all.

  As she went through her mental preparation she thought of Jamie. He’ll hate me for doing this. He’ll absolutely hate me.

  But it’s my ticket to a job with the network. He’s got Mars. He left me for Mars. Now I can use Mars my own way, for myself.

  THE DEPARTURE

  1

  The personnel chosen for the Mars expedition were shuttled to the assembly station riding in low orbit a scant three hundred kilometers above the surface of the Earth. At that altitude, the ponderous bulk of the planet curved huge and incredibly beautiful, filling the sky, overwhelming the senses with broad expanses of blue oceans decked with gleaming while clouds, a world rich and vibrant with life glowing against the cold black emptiness of space.

  Mars was a distant pinpoint in that blackness, a steady ruddy beacon beckoning across the gulf that separates worlds.

  The assembly station itself was a composite habitat made out of a Russian Mir space station linked to a reconditioned external propellant tank from an American space shuttle, bigger than a twenty-room house. The Mir part of the assembly station was attached to the shuttle tank about midway along the tank’s long curving flank, looking like a tiny green gondola on a huge matte tan blimp. The Russian hardware contained three docking ports for shuttles or the smaller orbital tugs.

  Here the sixteen chosen scientists would live and work for more than a month before they departed for Mars, getting accustomed to one another and to their expedition commander, Dr. Li. And to the eight astronauts and cosmonauts who would operate the Mars spacecraft and be in command of the ground teams.

  Hanging in the black emptiness a few hundred meters from the assembly station were the two long, narrow Mars spacecraft, gleaming white in the harsh sunlight, attended by swarms of orbital tugs and massive shuttles while tiny figures in space suits hovered around them, dwarfed to the size of ants, buzzing back and forth constantly; transferring supplies and equipment every day, every hour. Compared to the bulbous dull brown and green shapes of the assembly station the Mars craft looked like sleek racing shells.