by Ben Bova
It was the most difficult thing Antony Reed had ever done in his life. The others stared at him in surprise.
“I’ve got to go with you,” Tony pleaded, turning back to Vosnesensky. “Jamie and the others … they’ll need a doctor once we get there.”
Vosnesensky’s mouth was open, as if he wanted to reply but did not know what to say. The others began to look embarrassed, uncertain of what to do.
“He should go,” Yang said firmly. “He is right. The four in the rover will need immediate medical attention once you reach them.”
Vosnesensky stroked his broad chin. “I see.”
“So will you,” Yang added.
The Russian grinned weakly. “My personal physician?”
Yang did not smile back. “If you insist on making this traverse in your condition, you will need a physician with you.”
“Very well,” Vosnesensky said reluctantly.
“Thank you!” said Reed. He saw the look on Vosnesensky’s face, on all their faces. He had expected anger, or perhaps disgust at his stupidity. Instead they all seemed sympathetic, even the sickest of them. They don’t blame me, Reed realized with a surge of gratitude that nearly buckled his knees. They don’t blame me!
For the first time in his life he had admitted a shortcoming, accepted the consequences for his own actions, bared his guilt to the men and women around him. He had thought it would be more painful than slicing open his own guts. And it was. But he had survived the pain. Like a man facing suicide he had confronted the worst he could imagine and come through it alive.
Vosnesensky sank gratefully into the nearest wardroom chair. His legs were so weak he could not stand any longer. A good thing that I will be able to sit all the way out to the canyon, he told himself. I only hope I will be able to drive the damned rover without collapsing like a weak old woman.
Jamie was sitting in the cockpit again, Joanna beside him. Connors was stretched out on his bunk, moaning softly in his sleep. Ilona was also trying to sleep, on the bunk above the astronaut’s. None of them had possessed the strength to fold the cots back. They had eaten their gloomy breakfasts sitting on the edges of the lower cots, heads bent low to avoid bumping the uppers.
“Vitamin deficiency,” Jamie mused. “Of all the things that could have gone wrong with this mission, we come down With scurvy. Talk about Murphy’s Law.”
Joanna seemed barely awake. But she said, “Knowing what the problem is, somehow it does not seem so bad. It was the unknown that frightened me.”
“It can still kill us, whether we know what it is or not.”
She smiled wanly. “You won’t let us die, Jamie. I know you won’t.”
Why is she putting this load on me? he wondered, half angry. But aloud he said to her, “There’s not much any of us can do now except wait.”
Joanna’s weak little smile widened slightly, as if she knew something that Jamie did not.
The comm unit buzzed. Jamie flicked the switch and Abell’s froglike face appeared on the control panel screen. He looked just as sallow and gaunt as the four in the rover, his sunken cheeks making his protruding eyes seem to pop out even more than usual.
“There’s a message coming in for Joanna from Kaliningrad,” Abell said. “Is she up and about?”
“I am here,” Joanna said, leaning enough from the pilot’s seat so that Abell could see her even though the miniature camera built into the control panel was aimed at Jamie.
“Oh, good. I’ll tell them up in Mars 2 to pipe it right down to you.”
“How are you doing?” Jamie asked.
Abell swung his head back and forth. “Reed’s pumping so much vitamin C into us that I feel like I’m turning into an orange grove. I can shake my head without getting woozy, but I still feel like canned dog food.”
Jamie realized that he felt like used dog food. And that Abell refrained from asking how he felt.
“Dmitri and Ollie are outside rerigging the spare rover. Mikhail’s straw-bossing them over the TV link and making their lives miserable. He’s too weak to go out there himself so he’s giving them hell every inch of the way.”
“How long before they get under way?” Jamie asked.
“Another hour. Two at most. Mikhail’s taking Dmitri with him. Ollie’s sore as hell.”
“No sense risking more skins than you have to,” Jamie said.
“Reed’s coming, too.”
“Tony? Going outside?”
“Yeah. He says you’ll need a medic by the time they get to you.”
That’s a comforting thought, Jamie said to himself.
Abell said, “Okay. I’ll tell them to shoot you the message from Kaliningrad.”
The screen cleared briefly, flickered; then the image of a tired old man took form. His red hair was rumpled, his sharp little Vandyke beard messy, his shirt collar unbuttoned. He identified himself as the chief of mission control.
“My message is for Dr. Joanna Brumado, and it is of a personal nature. It is a question, actually, that Dr. Brumado must answer for us.”
Jamie swiveled the little ball-mounted camera on the control panel toward Joanna while the mission controller hesitated, as if waiting for him or expecting a reply. Then he took a deep breath and plunged onward:
“Dr. Brumado, this question concerns your father. As you know, he has been quite close to the day-to-day operations of our mission. Naturally, he has been informed of your … predicament. He is already heading for Houston. I have given strict orders that no one outside mission control is to know about the problem we are now facing until the situation has been resolved. This is to forestall the media from sensationalizing the situation, you see.”
Jamie thought, I sure as hell see that they don’t want the media to know the fix we’re in. They’d be buried alive by reporters.
“However,” the chief controller went on, “apparently your father is being accompanied by a representative of the American news media, a young woman television reporter. We have not been able to learn her affiliation, although we have her name.” The Russian looked down, obviously reading from a piece of paper. He pronounced stiffly, “Edie Elgin.”
Joanna frowned. Jamie felt a jolt of surprise. Edith? With Brumado?
The chief controller looked distinctly uncomfortable. “Your father will want to speak with you, of course. Apparently this newswoman with him wants permission to tape your conversation for possible broadcast—after this crisis is resolved. The tape would not be released, of course, without the permission of the Mars Project administrators. And your father’s permission also, of course.”
She’s hooked up with Brumado, Jamie realized. Son of a bitch! And she wants to make a tape of their conversation. What a cold-blooded piece of genius that is! If we die she’ll have terrific footage of the last tender moments between father and daughter. If we live, it’ll still be great human-interest material for her.
And she hasn’t asked to contact me. She doesn’t give a damn about me. Why the hell should she? She’s got Brumado now.
The chief controller was asking Joanna, “Will you be able to conduct a brief conversation with your father—allowing for the time lag between transmission and reception of messages, of course.”
Joanna glanced at Jamie, then seemed to draw herself up taller and straighter in the cockpit seat.
“I appreciate your solicitude toward my father and myself, and I thank you for it. But please do not bother to arrange a special transmission for us,” Joanna said, more firmly than Jamie had ever heard her speak before. “I repeat: do not set up a link with Houston. I want no special privileges. If you have chosen to maintain a news blackout about this problem we are facing, then please do not consider me to be an exception.”
Jamie cut off the transmission switch. “Wait a minute,” he said. “Doesn’t your father have a right …”
Her red-rimmed eyes flared at him. “I am not a little girl who must talk with her papa when she is in trouble. I want to be treated just the same w
ay you and the others are treated.”
“But he’s Alberto Brumado,” Jamie said. “It’s not you that they want to give special treatment to; it’s him.”
Joanna tried to shake her head. The effort made her grip the edge of the control panel with a white-knuckled hand. “No. I would not be able to keep my strength in front of him. I would break down and cry. I will not have that put on videotape.”
“Oh. I see. I guess.”
“Jamie—if we … if it becomes certain that we are going to die here, then there will be plenty of time to speak to my father. Each of us will tape messages for our families, I am sure.”
“I guess so.” And Edith will get it all for the goddammed prime-time news.
“But not now. I have not given up hope. You have not given up hope, have you?”
“Hell no,” he said, with a fervor that he did not truly feel.
“Then turn the transmitter on once again.”
Jamie did. Joanna took a breath, brushed her hands unconsciously through her tousled hair.
“I appreciate your offer,” she said calmly, with great dignity, “but my decision is that I want to be treated exactly like the others. I expect you to keep my father informed of our situation—and the newswoman with him. Thank you very much.”
She’s as sore about Edith as I am, Jamie saw. The realization gave him no comfort at all.
Dmitri Iosifovitch Ivshenko was at the controls of the backup rover, a crooked grin on his pinched face. He is happy to be on the ground doing something useful instead of sitting up in orbit, Vosnesensky thought.
Reed sat back on one of the midship benches. Vosnesensky wondered about the Englishman. He is here with us out of a sense of guilt; he wants to atone for the accident with the vitamins. Will he be a positive help to us or will he just get in our way? He doesn’t know how to drive the rover. He has no real experience in EVA. I doubt that he has been outside the dome more than a few hours, total, since we landed. What good will he be in an emergency?
The Russian turned in the cockpit seat and looked over his shoulder at Reed. The physician seemed lost in thought, dazed almost, as he leaned back on the bench, both hands gripping its edge.
Vosnesensky shook his head, then immediately regretted it. He still felt woozy and terribly weak. Having my own private physician aboard has done nothing to improve my health, he grumbled to himself.
Vosnesensky turned his attention back to Ivshenko. Studying the fellow, he realized for the first time that Ivshenko looked decidedly un-Russian. He was as lean as a willow and his hair was a thick curly thatch of midnight black. His eyes were coal dark too. A thin aquiline nose and even thinner lips. His complexion was pale, bloodless white, although Vosnesensky thought that he would tan to a deep brown if he could get some sun on him.
He is younger than I am, Vosnesensky thought, envying the energy that radiated from the cosmonaut’s taut, wiry frame. Younger and healthier. Vosnesensky’s head thundered; his arms and legs ached miserably. If Reed is right, these vitamin doses ought to be helping, but I certainly don’t feel any better. Perhaps worse.
“Tell me, Dmitri Iosifovitch,” Vosnesensky said aloud, his voice sounding harsh and strained even in his own ears, “where did you get such good looks?”
The younger man glanced at him, almost startled, then quickly turned back to his driving.
“My mother is Armenian, if that’s what you mean,” Ivshenko replied.
“Ah, I wondered. I thought perhaps you had some Turkish blood in you.”
Ivshenko’s nostrils flared. “No. Armenian.”
“I see,” said Vosnesensky. “And how is your love life, up there in orbit?”
Ivshenko’s grin returned. “Adequate, comrade. Quite adequate. Especially when that German physicist gets bored with her work.”
“Diels? The blonde?”
“She is teaching me things about physics that I never knew before.”
“The quest for knowledge is never-ending,” Vosnesensky agreed.
“A worthwhile goal.”
Vosnesensky started to laugh, but it made his chest hurt. He ended up coughing.
“You are in pain, Mikhail Andreivitch?”
“It’s nothing. Just a little agony.”
“Do you want to turn back?”
“No!” Vosnesensky thundered. “We go onward. No matter what happens, we go onward.”
Hours passed. They stopped the rover briefly and changed seats so that Vosnesensky could drive. Ivshenko watched him carefully, though. The younger cosmonaut had no great desire to allow his older comrade to get them both killed.
“At sundown you can take over again,” Vosnesensky said, feeling perspiration beading his face, trickling along his ribs, plastering the back of his coveralls against the seat.
“You will sleep then?”
“I will try.”
“The safety regulations forbid operating the rover unless a backup driver is awake and prepared to take over in case of an emergency. And operating at night …”
“I know the regulations quite thoroughly,” Vosnesensky snapped. “I helped to write them. This is an emergency situation; we will bend the rules a little.”
“A little,” Ivshenko murmured.
Jabbing a thumb over his shoulder, “If you get lonely while I sleep you can have our physician to keep you company.”
Ivshenko made a sour face.
Across the rubble-strewn plain they drove, south by east, the dwarf sun lowering toward the rugged horizon, throwing long blood-red shadows from every rock on the barren desert. To Vosnesensky the shadows looked like the lean claws of dead men’s hands reaching for him.
Back in the midsection of the command module Tony Reed felt every bump and dip of the rover as he sat gripping the edge of the bench with both hands. This is madness, he told himself. Why did I ever talk myself into coming out here? Penance? This is carrying expiation for one’s sins a bit too far, really.
But he stayed silent, uncomplaining, trying to hold down the fear that was building up inside him. We’re out in the middle of the empty Martian plain in this piddling little vehicle. If anything goes wrong, anything at all, we’re all dead men.
Up in the cockpit the comm unit buzzed. Ivshenko turned it on and Dr. Li’s long sallow face appeared on the screen. His mouth curved downward, his eyes looked weary, defeated.
“I have spent half the day arguing with Kaliningrad,” Li said, his voice hoarsely rasping. “The mission controllers are adamant.”
Vosnesensky grunted, but kept the rover moving forward.
“They insist that the crew in the dome must be evacuated to orbit, and only afterward can an attempt be made to rescue the team in the rover.”
“Have you told them that we are already on our way to the canyon?”
Li slowly shook his head. “No. I told them that we do not agree either with their assessment of the situation or their decision.”
“Yet they still insist?”
“Yes.”
“So what do you intend to do?”
The expedition commander tugged nervously at one end of his moustache. “It is my duty to command you to turn around and return to the dome so that you can carry out the orders from mission control.”
“Very well,” Vosnesensky said. “You have done your duty.” He reached across the control panel and turned off the communications unit. Then he slowed the rover to a halt.
Ivshenko was looking at him worriedly. “You’re going to turn around?”
Heaving a great pained sigh, Vosnesensky said, “Don’t be an idiot. You drive for the next two hours while I nap. If we go all night we could reach the canyon rim by midday tomorrow.”
Oliver Zieman stared at the comm screen.
He sat alone in the command section of the dome; most of the others were down sick. Dr. Yang was in the infirmary, running still more tests. Zieman scratched his head, thinking furiously. He had not expected a crisis of command.
Dr. Li’s image on th
e screen looked pained, tortured. He must be spending all his time right there in the command module, Zieman thought. He must be living there night and day. He looks almost as bad as the scurvy cases.
“We have a very difficult situation on our hands,” Li said to the astronaut, “and I want to be certain that you are fully aware of all the implications.”
“Yes, sir,” said Zieman, almost eagerly.
“Mission control has issued an order to abandon the dome and return the entire base crew here to orbit,” Li said.
“But the rover team …”
Li raised a long slim finger to silence the astronaut. He continued, “Kaliningrad reasons that we must think of the health and safety of the greatest number first. They are prepared to abandon the base and evacuate everyone in the dome.”
Zieman swiftly thought, That means I’ll have to pack them aboard the L/AVs myself. Eight of us, counting me. Can’t fit that many in a single L/AV. Who in hell’s going to pilot the second vehicle? Mironov and Abell are in no shape for it, and Dmitri’s off with Vosnesensky and Reed.
“After the contingent from the dome is safely in orbit,” Li was saying, “and we have all the astronauts and cosmonauts here, we can use the final landing/ascent vehicle to attempt to rescue the four in the rover.”
“Then you want Vosnesensky to turn back,” Zieman said.
“I have ordered him to do so. He has refused.”
Refused! A burning jet of fear shot through Zieman. A man can’t refuse to carry out orders! That’s crazy! The whole mission could fall apart if we don’t follow orders.
Li waited a moment for his words to register with Zieman. Then he said, “Vosnesensky has tied my hands. I cannot order the evacuation from the dome with only one healthy astronaut present there. I cannot send Tolbukhin and Klein down to you because that would use the last remaining lander. It would mean abandoning the team in the rover altogether.”
“Yeah. Right.” He still felt stunned that Vosnesensky had disobeyed orders. Of all the people on this mission! Vosnesensky, the straightest of the straight arrows.
“If Ivshenko were with you it would be possible to lift all personnel there in two of the vehicles,” Li said, stating the obvious. “Since he is off with Vosnesensky, I cannot order the dome evacuated.”