by Ben Bova
Vosnesensky glanced at Ilona, then turned his gaze to sweep the men and women on the bench opposite him. “I feel resentment from some of you. Resentment that I am in command. Resentment, perhaps, that a Russian is in command.”
“That’s rather natural, is it not?” asked Katrin Diels. “There is bound to be some resentment against any authority figure.”
That started the discussion, and around and around it went. Jamie watched in silence, noticing that Ilona sat leaning back against the wall like a cat, her eyes following from one speaker to the next, her lips slightly curled in what might have been a smile. But she did not volunteer a word.
Like meetings of the student council, Jamie thought, remembering his undergraduate days. The ones who did most of the talking were the ones who were already in charge. The ones who needed to talk the most Were the ones who stayed silent and kept their anger bottled up inside them.
After nearly an hour Jamie was startled to hear O’Hara say, “Well, if we’re baring our souls and all that—I don’t particularly like the idea that I’m going to be sitting up in orbit all during our stay at Mars while my esteemed colleague here,” he jabbed a thumb in Jamie’s direction, “gets to spend the whole seven weeks down on the surface. I don’t think that’s fair.”
“I agree with you,” Jamie heard himself say. “It’s not fair.” But, he added silently, that’s the way the mission plan has been written and that’s the way it’s going to be.
O’Hara’s gripe launched another hour’s debate on why the mission had been planned the way it had been, and whether or not they could appeal to Dr. Li to change the procedure so that the backup teams could spend some time on the surface.
“It would be useless,” Vosnesensky said flatly. “All these procedures were examined very thoroughly for years. One team stays on the surface and the backup team remains in orbit. That will not be changed. I know this for a fact.”
“I agree with George,” Ollie Zieman grumbled. “It’s not fair.”
“But more efficient,” Vosnesensky countered, with the flat finality of a man who had decided the subject was closed.
“Why must the leader of each team be a Russian?” Ilona asked, her throaty voice purring, almost sleepy.
Everyone turned toward her.
“I mean, we have men and women of every nationality on this mission. Yet of the four teams, each group is headed by a Russian. A Russian male, at that.”
For a long moment there was absolute silence. Jamie could hear the electrical hum of the ship’s equipment and the quiet hiss of the air fans.
“I can answer that,” said Pete Connors.
“Please do,” Ilona said.
The black astronaut was sitting beside Vosnesensky, who had the other cosmonaut, Ivshenko, on his other side. Connors gave them a small grin, then turned back to Ilona.
“First,” he raised a long finger, “the commander of each team must be a pilot. A man from the military, accustomed to giving orders and having them obeyed. Accustomed to receiving orders from higher authority and carrying them out. Without discipline we could all get killed. This is no weekend hiking trip we’re on.”
“You said a man,” Katrin Diels interrupted. “Why not a woman?”
Connors made an elaborate shrug. “Guess they couldn’t find any women with, the necessary qualifications.”
All three women hooted at him. Even most of the men laughed.
Once they calmed down, Connors resumed, “Second, the Russian Federation has provided the boosters and the life-support equipment for this mission. Soviet cosmonauts have more experience in spaceflight than anyone on Earth; they’ve been doing long-term missions aboard their space station since 1971, for god’s sake!”
“Because you Americans waited twenty-five years before you put up a permanent space station,” Xenophanes said, practically sneering.
“Yeah, that’s true,” Connors agreed. “So when we started planning the Mars mission, the American government agreed that the team leaders would be picked from military pilots who had the most experience in spaceflight.”
“Meaning Russians,” said Xenophanes.
“That’s the way it worked out.”
Sliwa huffed, “The Russians outsmarted you at the very start of the program. They have always been clever at negotiations.”
“I don’t think you can say that Mikhail or Dmitri are here because some Russian politician outslicked his American counterpart,” Connors objected.
Sliwa hunched his shoulders. Vosnesensky was glaring at the Pole.
Ivshenko glanced at his compatriot, then said, “The Russian Federation has made some sacrifices for this privilege of providing leadership. No Russian scientist was selected for the ground team, even though we have many men—and women—who are highly qualified in the fields of planetary sciences.”
“Same thing with the States,” added Connors. “We have astronauts on all four teams, but no scientists on the ground team except for Jamie here.”
They all turned toward Jamie, who forced himself to remain silent. I’m here by accident, he told himself. They all know that. And back in the States I’m only half American, whichever way you look at it.
“Perhaps we should change the subject,” Reed suggested. “This kind of argument will get us nowhere.”
Jamie was tempted to ask Reed to explain how he could sneak sex-suppressant drugs into their food or drink. But he thought better of it. No sense starting a real fight, he told himself. So he remained quiet while the others stared at one another, unable or unwilling to find a new topic for discussion.
“Well then, perhaps we should get some sleep,” Reed said.
Vosnesensky nodded vigorously. “Yes. A good idea. In ten hours or so the radiation levels should be low enough for us to leave this shelter. Then we will have to check the ship’s systems and all our equipment thoroughly to assess what damage the storm has done, and then repair it. We should sleep now.”
It was an order, not a suggestion. No one argued, not even Ilona.
SOL 8: EVENING
Jamie and Vosnesensky had started as soon as the morning sunlight made the ground around them visible. All the previous day they had taken turns driving the rover at breakneck speed along the broken, rugged badlands country, heading north by east, away from the faulted canyons of Noctis Labyrinthus, away from their base camp. Breakneck speed, for the rover, was not quite forty kilometers per hour—almost the speed limit in a school zone.
Still they were exhausted by the time the sun had finally dropped behind the ragged horizon at their backs and the dark cold shadows of night overtook their vehicle. Two straight days of continuous driving, much of it detours around ridges too steep to climb or crevasses too deep to traverse, had sapped them physically and emotionally. They ate a sparse dinner in moody silence; then Vosnesensky checked in with Dr. Li and the base camp. Everything was going smoothly at the base, and to Jamie’s continuing surprise and delight, Li still did not order them to turn around and return to the domed camp.
“The mission controllers haven’t vetoed our excursion,” he said, leaning back on the bench that would later unfold to be his bunk. Vosnesensky sat across from him, the narrow folding table between them.
“Not yet,” said the cosmonaut, like a man waiting for the ax to fall.
Feeling something between guilt and embarrassment, Jamie said, “I’m sorry I had to go over your head about this.”
Vosnesensky shrugged his heavy shoulders. “It was your right to do so.” He looked into Jamie’s eyes and added, “My responsibility was to stick to the mission plan until higher authority changed the plan. I was only doing my duty. I was not objecting on personal grounds.”
A tendril of relief wormed along Jamie’s spine. “Then you’re not angry?”
“Why should I be? Do you think you scientists have a monopoly on curiosity?”
Jamie smiled broadly. “That’s great! I was afraid I’d made you sore.”
The Russian grin
ned back at him. “Not so. Once Dr. Li took the responsibility of allowing this change in the traverse, my objections vanished. I would like to see this Grand Canyon too.”
Jamie slept soundly, dreaming of Mesa Verde and his grandfather.
They awakened after their third night aboard the rover at the first eerie light of dawn, the faintest pale pink brightening of the sky along the flat eastern horizon. Jamie pulled his coveralls over his briefs, then set up the folding table between their bunks and popped two precooked breakfasts into the microwave while Vosnesensky was in the lavatory. The Russian, already in his tan coveralls and soft slipper-socks, spooned down his steaming oatmeal while Jamie took his turn at the toilet.
As Jamie was washing up he heard Vosnesensky shout, “Jamie! Look at this!”
He ducked out of the narrow lavatory and saw that Vosnesensky was up in the cockpit. Squeezing past the table, Jamie hurried there.
Vosnesensky had pulled back the thermal shroud. The plastiglass bubble canopy was twinkling with faintly glistening little glimmers that winked on and disappeared like fireflies. Jamie felt his breath catch in his throat.
“Dewdrops,” Vosnesensky said. “Morning dew.”
“It condenses on the glass.” Jamie reached out his fingers to touch the bubble. It was cold but dry inside. Even while he watched more tiny droplets appeared and flickered out, evaporating before his eyes, vanishing so quickly that he would have missed them altogether if others had not glimmered into brief existence. Like tiny diamonds they sparkled for a heartbeat and then were gone. After a few minutes they stopped completely. Jamie realized that he would never have suspected they had been there if he had not seen them himself. Mikhail caught them at just the right moment.
“There is moisture in the air here,” the Russian said. “A little, at least.”
“Frost,” Jamie murmured. “Must be ice particles that form in the air at night. They melted on the warm surface …”
“And evaporated immediately.”
“Where’s the moisture coming from?” Jamie asked. Turning to the Russian, “Mikhail, how far are we from the canyon?”
“An hour’s drive, perhaps a little more.” Vosnesensky slid into the pilot’s seat and punched up a map display on the control panel’s central screen. “Yes, about one hour.”
“Let’s get going! Right away! I’ll drive.”
“I will drive,” said Vosnesensky firmly. “You are too excited. You would drive like a cowboy, not an Indian.” Then he chuckled deep in his throat at his own wit.
Jamie blinked at the Russian. Humor, from Mikhail? That’s even more rare than morning dew on Mars.
Now the rover lurched and swayed as Vosnesensky threaded between rocks and over ridges, every ounce of his attention focused on his driving. He had the throttle full out and the segmented vehicle was making its best speed across the rusted desert. To Jamie, sitting at Vosnesensky’s right, the rover was a large metal caterpillar inching its way across the Martian landscape. The dusty red ground was strewn with rocks, as everywhere, although craters seemed to be much fewer than farther west. Boulders as large as houses lay here and there, making Jamie itch to go out and investigate them.
But they stayed inside the rover, comfortable in their coveralls, and stuck to their low-speed dash toward the Grand Canyon of Mars. Jamie gripped the stone fetish in his pocket. There’s moisture in the air in the morning, he kept repeating to himself. It must be coming from the canyon. Must be.
He worried in the back of his mind that Dr. Li’s approval might be countermanded by someone in the chain of command on Earth. He wanted to be at their destination when such a signal came in—or so close that they could do some exploring before they had to obey the command to return to base. Mikhail seems to want it too, Jamie thought. In his own way he’s as excited as I am.
“I have never met an Indian before,” Vosnesensky said abruptly, without taking his eyes from his driving.
“I’m not much of an Indian,” Jamie replied. “I was brought up to be a white man.”
“But you are not white.”
“No, not entirely.” The rover jounced over a little rill, bouncing Jamie in his seat. “In the States we have people from every part of the world—all the nationalities of Europe, Asians, Africans …”
“I have heard about the problems of your blacks. We learned in school how they are held down by your racist system.”
Jamie felt himself bristling. “Then why is the only black man on Mars an American? Why haven’t the African nations joined in this expedition?”
“Because they are poor,” the Russian answered, deftly maneuvering the rover around a new-looking crater about the size of a swimming pool. “They cannot afford luxuries such as space exploration. They can barely feed their people.”
“Is this really a luxury, Mikhail? Do you think that reaching out into space is a waste of money?”
“No.” Vosnesensky’s answer was immediate and firm beyond the shadow of a doubt.
Thinking of the run-down pueblos and crumbling old adobe homes in New Mexico, Jamie mused, “I wonder. Sometimes I think the money could have been better used to help poor people.”
The Russian shot him a quick glance, then returned to his driving. For long moments he said nothing and Jamie watched the dusty red land pass by, rocks, tired worn gullies, craters, little wind-stirred dunes. Off toward the horizon he saw a dust swirl, as red as a devil, spiraling into the pink morning sky.
“What we do helps the poor,” Vosnesensky said. “We are not taking bread from their mouths. We are enlarging the habitat of the human species. History has shown that every expansion of the human habitat has brought about an increase in wealth and a rise in living standards. That is objective fact.”
“But the poor are still with us,” Jamie said.
A slight note of exasperation crept into the Russian’s voice. “The Russian Federation alone has spent thousands of billions on aid to poor nations. The United States even more. This expedition to Mars has not hurt the poor. What we spend here is a pittance compared to what they have already received. And what good does it do for them? They go out and produce more babies, make a new generation of poor. A larger generation. It is endless.”
“So they’re not going hungry because we’re here on Mars.”
“Definitely not. They lack discipline, that is their problem. In the Russian Federation we pulled ourselves up from a backward agricultural society to a powerful industrial nation in a single generation.”
Yes, Jamie replied silently, with Stalin in the driver’s seat. He didn’t care how many millions starved while he built his factories and power plants.
“But tell me, what was it like when you were growing up in New Mexico? It is near Texas?”
“Yes,” Jamie said. “Between Arizona and Texas.”
“I have been there. Houston.”
“New Mexico is nothing like Houston.” Jamie laughed. Then, “Actually, I did most of my growing up in California. Berkeley. That’s where my parents taught, at the university. I was a kid when we moved there. But I spent a lot of my summers in Santa Fe, with my grandfather.”
It had been a trying day. Jamie was almost seventeen, finishing high school, a vast disappointment to his parents because he had no clear idea of what he wanted to study in college.
His parents had flown with him to Santa Fe, where he was to spend the summer. His grandfather had just announced that he had secured a full scholarship for Jamie at the university in Albuquerque—if Jamie wanted it.
They were sitting in the dining room of Al’s house, up in the hills north of Santa Fe, the evening meal long finished as they sat and talked across the big oak table littered with the remains of roasted goat.
The dining room was large and cool, with a slanted beamed ceiling high above the floor of gleaming ochre tiles. Through its broad window Jamie could see adobe-style town houses dotting the slopes that ran down to the city. Al owned most of them; rental condos for the skiers in
the winter and the tourists who wanted to buy genuine Indian artifacts all year long. The sun was going down toward the darkening mountains. Soon there would be another spectacular New Mexico sunset painting the sky.
Jamie had gobbled every scrap of the cabrito, enjoying the spices that Al’s cook had used so generously. His mother, who would eat lapin and even frogs’ legs without a qualm, had barely touched her dinner. Jamie’s father had eaten his portion easily enough, but now he unconsciously rubbed his chest, as if the spices had been too much for him.
“I’m sure you meant well, Al,” Lucille was saying, with her sweetest, most persuasive little-girl smile, “but we had just assumed that Jamie would stay at home and attend Berkeley.”
“Do the boy good to get a different slant on things,” Al said, pulling a pack of slim dark cigarillos from his shirt pocket. “That’s what schoolin’s supposed to be all about, isn’t it: gettin’ an education? That means more than books and class work, don’t it?”
Lucille frowned as her father-in-law lit up and blew a cloud of thin gray smoke toward the beamed ceiling. She cast a sharp glance at her husband.
With a slight cough, Jerome Waterman said, “Dad, the boy hasn’t even made up his mind about what he wants to study yet, let alone about where he wants to go to school.”
They’re talking as if I get to make the decisions, Jamie thought. But they’re not even asking me what I think.
His father was going on, “Considering his grades and the results of his aptitude tests …”
“Aw, bullshit on all that crap!” Al blurted. Then he turned his most flattering smile on his daughter-in-law. “Sorry for the language, Lucille. But I don’t think those psychologists could find a skunk in their own clothes closet, let alone help a seventeen-year-old boy figure out where he wants to head in life.”
“I will not have Jamie turned into an Indian,” Lucille said firmly.
Al guffawed, a reaction Jamie had seen him use often in his store when he needed a moment to frame his thoughts before replying to a tough question.
“What do you think, Lucy? You think I want him workin’ in a store, waitin’ on tourists from Beverly Hills or New York? You think I want him wastin’ away his life in some dumb-ass pueblo raisin’ sheep and drinkin’ beer the rest of his life?”