The Synopsis Treasury

by Christopher Sirmons Haviland

  What I didn’t know—at first—was that the protagonist of my story was part Navaho. When I began to actually write the opening scenes of the novel they seemed dull, constrained and confined. I took a long trip to New Mexico, because the arid mountain country of the Navaho lands reminded me very much of the photographs of the surface of Mars sent back to us by unmanned spacecraft.

  It was while I was in New Mexico that it hit me. The protagonist’s father was a Navaho, his mother was a descendant of the Mayflower Pilgrims. His name is Jamie Waterman. The red planet Mars and the blue planet Earth represent the two different cultures struggling against each other in his soul.

  Once I understood Jamie, he introduced me to his grandfather Al. They wrote the novel for me.

  —Ben Bova

  Mars

  Proposal for a Novel by Ben Bova

  This will be the definitive novel about the coming exploration of the planet Mars. A novel of the near future, Mars will be of interest to a far wider audience than the ordinary science fiction book. In 1988 the Soviet Union will launch unmanned probes that will land on the two moons of Mars. In the early 1990s other probes will follow, both from the USSR and the USA. Some will orbit the planet, others will land on its surface and return samples of Martian soil to scientists on Earth. Mars will be the goal of both nations’ space programs in the 1990s, and we may well see a cooperative effort to reach the Red Planet with the first human explorers before the end of the 1990s. Thus a novel that details realistically the first human team to reach Mars will have a very wide and enthusiastic readership, the kind of audience that was reached by Cosmos and Tom Clancy’s high-tech books.

  Background

  Picture a worldwide desert, far more barren than Death Valley. Rocks and rust-red sand are everywhere. Rugged mountains rise in the distance; one of them, an ancient volcano, is three times higher than Everest and as large at its base as the state of Iowa. The sun shines brightly in the thin air, yet it is a cold desert, where temperatures plummet down to -100°F each night. The sky is pink, not blue, and deadly dust storms can engulf the entire planet, carried by winds of 200 miles per hour.

  That is Mars.

  There is life on Mars, hidden within the rocks and boulders that strew the desert sands. And alien life, as well: explorers from the planet Earth.

  Mars will begin with the landing team setting down on the surface of the planet. All the main action will take place on Mars itself, although there will be some subplot action in the spacecraft orbiting Mars.

  A total of twelve men and women land on Mars; their mission plan calls for them to remain on the surface for six months. Their tasks include studying the native life forms that exist inside the Martian rocks, examining the polar ice cap, determining if water exists underground (it does, as permafrost), mapping the “Grand Canyon” and the ancient volcanoes, detailing the environmental changes as local winter changes into spring, and preparing a base that can receive the next set of explorers. Six men and women remain in orbit around the planet. Their tasks include detailed mapping of the whole planet, weather observations, communications link, backup personnel, and search/rescue operations—if necessary.

  The fundamental question facing the explorers is this: Does the microscopic life found within the Martian rocks represent the only kind of life that Mars has ever had? Or was there a more complex, higher form of life on Mars in an earlier era, when water was more abundant and the climate may have been warmer? If so, where are the remains of these higher organisms, and how far along the ladder to intelligence had they climbed?

  The landing team will try to grow its own food in the Martian soil, using the local underground water, oxygen extracted from the thin atmosphere, and whatever nutrients are available from the soil. They will, of course, have ample food stocks and life support materials, both on the surface with them and as backup stores in orbit.

  In addition, we will see glimpses of significant events and key characters who remain on Earth. Some actual persons will be mentioned, such as Carl Sagan, Roald Z. Sagdeev, former astronaut Alan Bean, cosmonaut General Aleksey Leonov, and various scientists and political leaders from many nations. To accomplish this without slowing the main narrative, I will use the techniques developed in my best-selling novel, Colony.

  The earlier history of the Mars mission, the selection of the team, their training in Antarctica and elsewhere, will be told in flashbacks. The major action will take place on the surface of Mars, and this fascinating new world—with all its surprises—will be a marvelous background for the novel.

  Characters

  The major characters for Mars are:

  Ken Grainger, American geologist. Ken is a substitute for the man originally picked to be the mission geologist, a Jesuit priest who became ill at the last minute and was removed from the flight. Ken keenly feels that he is regarded as only the second best man among a team of first-bests. However, he also believes that the priest was not as well qualified for this Mars mission as he is. He has always had to struggle to reach his self-imposed goals. The child of divorced parents, he worked his way through college and climbed the academic ladder on solid research achievements rather than social connections. He is not a “whiz kid;” Ken seems to move slowly, but he somehow gets to where he wants to go—often ahead of everybody else.

  Ken is tall, lean, tremendously self-contained. He finds it difficult to make friends with others (a factor that weighed against him in the crew selection process). However, he is not so much an introvert as a man who knows what he wants and will not put up with deviations from his goal; he has no patience with small talk and the social amenities. Yet he has infinite patience when it comes to his work. He is rational, not emotional. He is self-sufficient. Strangely, his combination of good looks and calm aloofness makes him very attractive to a certain kind of woman.

  His four-year-long marriage has broken up, mainly because his wife could not understand Ken putting his training for the Mars mission ahead of her. Divorce proceedings are going on while he is on Mars, a source of bitterly ironic humor for him.

  Joanna Brumado, Brazilian microbiologist. Joanna also feels that she has been made part of the team for reasons other than her own talents. Her father, Alberto Brumado, was the driving force behind the creation of this multi-national mission. She has been included because of her father, she believes. No matter how capable a microbiologist she is, she will still be seen as Alberto Brumado’s daughter.

  Joanna is petite, dark of eye and hair, and constantly on guard against plumpness. Born in Brazil, she was educated in the U.S. and won a full professorship at Arizona State before she was 30. She is an excellent administrator as well as a scientist, and is in charge of all the life sciences researchers on the Mars team.

  Ilona Maleter, Hungarian ecologist. Physically, Ilona is the opposite of Joanna: tall, blonde, gray eyed, willowy. She is in charge of the ecological studies of the planet, which includes the efforts to grow wheat, soybeans and other legumes in the Martian soil.

  Ilona is very Hungarian. She can be all business one moment, and a shameless flirt the next. She has easily outwitted all the psychologists on the screening boards, hiding from them her casual approach to sex and her hatred of Russians. Ilona’s mother was a child during the Hungarian uprising of 1956, and she filled her daughter’s mind with searing visions of the brutal Russian betrayal of their people. Ilona fought—and slept—her way through the selection process because she was driven by her deep inner fires to make certain that a Hungarian was among the first people to reach Mars. Not so much because she is a Hungarian nationalist as because she did not want the Russians to get the glory without a Hungarian there to share it.

  Antony Reed, British physician/psychologist. The only nobleman in the team, Tony is the son of an earl and will himself inherit the title one day. If he lives long enough. Tony is the sort of Englishman who assumes that he can do anything, muddle through any problem, if only he has a chance to “have a go at it.” He claims he b
elieves in fair play and decency toward everyone, especially those who are obviously inferior to him. In a man of lesser talents and charm, his personality would drive his companions to murder him. But Tony seems so well-meaning and open-handed that most people find it impossible to be angry with him for long. There is a darker side to Tony, but he keeps it well hidden.

  Tony is rather small, compact, and solidly muscled thanks to sports such as rowing and soccer. Sandy hair, ice-blue eyes. Among his eccentricities is his desire to investigate the effect of low Martian gravity on the game of tennis. He has brought a net, racquets and balls as part of his personal allotment of cargo, and sets up a tennis court on the red sands of Mars.

  Mikhail Andreivitch Vosnesensky, Russian geophysicist. A brooding, sad-eyed, squat and broad fireplug of a man with an intellect as sharp and brilliant as a laser beam. With an unruly mop of the flame-red hair that earned Russia her name, Mikhail is the official leader of the landing team. He feels this responsibility deeply, and tries to hide the resentment he feels toward several of the other team members. After all, Mikhail knows in his heart of hearts that it was the Soviet Union that made this expedition possible. Soviet rockets and Soviet scientists had been aiming for Mars for decades; Soviet cosmonauts had trained for this mission for years aboard their space stations in Earth orbit. Now these others have jumped aboard to share the glory.

  Like the others, Mikhail battled fiercely to beat the competition for this coveted assignment. He achieved membership in the Soviet Academy of Sciences, the youngest man ever to win such an honor, primarily because he needed that prestige as a stepping-stone to Mars. He is married with two children, both sons. He is slightly puritannical about sex, although the beautiful and flirtatious Ilona Maleter is slowly driving him mad—quite deliberately, even though he does not realize it.

  Back on Earth, the spiritual father of the Mars expedition is Alberto Brumado, Joanna’s father. A Brazilian biologist and leading Third World peace activist, Brumado has been the driving force that brought together East and West to make a cooperative Mars mission. He is in constant contact with the explorers on Mars, especially with his daughter. Too old to make the mission himself, Brumado feels half consciously that Joanna is an extension of his mind and spirit, his representative on the Red Planet.

  Plot Development

  The novel’s plot unfolds on three levels:

  1. The relationships among the explorers;

  2. The relationships between the explorers and the planet Mars;

  3. The relationships between the explorers and the events taking place back on Earth.

  There are a dozen scientists on the surface of Mars, living together in a geodesic dome structure, exploring the new world around them. They are bright, assertive, competent people, the kind who have the smarts and the drive to reach the top of their professions. We concentrate on the five named earlier, although the other seven play important secondary roles in the novel.

  The outward tensions among the explorers are political and professional, although personal relationships and conflicts lie just beneath the surface. As scientists, they have differing theories about the life forms in the rocks, the history of the planet, and everything else. Their debates can verge on violence, because beneath their academic postures there lurks deep emotional biases that not even the most careful psychological tests have been able to screen out.

  For example, Ilona Maleter automatically hates all the Russians. Mikhail Vosnesensky resents the non-Russians. Joanna Brumado feels that no matter what she accomplishes, she will still be seen as nothing more than Alberto Brumado’s daughter. Ken Grainger feels that he must prove himself to his teammates. Only Tony Reed seems coolly unconcerned with any of these problems, which is enough to make everyone upset with him. (And actually, Reed has deep-seated problems of his own; he is merely better than the others at hiding them. When they do finally emerge, Reed becomes a major threat to everyone’s lives.)

  These are essentially the kind of emotional conflicts that you would find in any university department But forty million miles from Earth, such conflicts can lead to violence and murder.

  There are also emotional complications caused by their isolation and the fact that the twelve of them must live in very intimate closeness to one another. The only way to get privacy is to go out for a walk, and for that you must wear a pressurized “hard suit.” The twelve scientists on the surface are evenly divided between men and women. Romantic entanglements are inevitable.

  While there are some East-West ideological conflicts among the team, back on Earth the old problems of the Cold War are fading in the light of the new confrontations of North-vs.-South. The industrialized nations of the world, east and west, are facing growing challenges from the poor and developing nations. Joanna is the only “representative” from the South, and she finds it ironic that these very bright scientists can argue about ancient Cold War grievances while the rest of the world has real problems facing them.

  Widespread famine and plague are sweeping the southern hemisphere, and news from Earth throws a glaring light on the explorers of Mars. They realize that most of the people of Earth regard what they are doing as an extravagance, a luxury. The money spent to bring them to Mars might have saved millions of starving diseased men, women and children. On a more practical line, they understand that unless they discover something spectacular, they will be the last expedition to Mars for many generations to come.

  Grainger is the protagonist, the pivotal character around whom the plot revolves. We see the world of Mars and the other explorers through his eyes.

  While most of the twelve team members remain at their base site, Grainger takes a few of the others (including Vosnesensky) on field trips from time to time. They go to the polar cap, the massive volcanoes, and the edge of the great rift valley dubbed the “Grand Canyon.” They travel long distances by ultralight plane, shorter distances by dune buggy.

  Gradually, Grainger and Vosnesensky come to like each other. The Russian grudgingly admires Grainger’s patient, logical, dogged way of tracking down the solution to each problem they encounter. The American finds that beneath his dour exterior, Vosnesensky is a sensitive man who feels the responsibilities of leadership very heavily. They both share a wry sense of humor, and a bond of friendship begins to grow between them.

  Despite his strictly rational approach to everything, Grainger slowly reveals himself to Vosnesensky as a romantic. He pictures the dead sandy wastes of Mars as Edgar Rice Burroughs saw them, populated by migrating bands of giant green Martians. He longs to find the “bone chess cities” that Ray Bradbury described. He begins to dream of ancient canals and a vanished high civilization on Mars.

  On one of the field trips Grainger and Joanna find that they both feel that they are “second-class citizens” among this team of high achievers. Trapped in the open by a sudden dust storm, Ken saves their lives by converting their dune buggy into a temporary shelter. As the storm howls outside, Ken admits that he would have done anything, even committed murder (almost), to be included in the first team to land on Mars.

  Joanna is exactly the same; although her father used his influence to get her accepted for the mission, she had to battle fierce prejudices and prove her abilities to the scoffers who regarded her as merely a political appointee. She is doing fine work in determining the life cycle of the Martian rock lichen, but still she fears that Alberto Brumado’s daughter will never get the recognition she has earned.

  Ken and Joanna make love in the Martian desert, alone in the wild storm. When they return to the base camp they both feel somewhat awkward about their episode. Embarrassment turns to anger, though, when Ilona begins to focus her charms on Grainger in an effort to make Vosnesensky jealous.

  Ilona has come to admire Vosnesensky, perhaps even to love him in her way. He is a Russian, yes, but she sees that he is a bluntly honest man, a brilliant scientist and a leader who uses his power in a fair and open way. But when Vosnesensky does not pay her the
attention she feels she is due, she tries to use Ken to make the Russian jealous. To her it is a game that she plays with hardly a conscious thought. But while Ken ignores her flirting, Joanna does not. Neither does the Russian.

  Grainger, meanwhile, has come to the conclusion that there must have been a higher form of life on Mars, perhaps even intelligence. In his dreams he sees the Martian cities; dream Martians begin to speak to him, telling him where to look for remains of their long-dead civilization. Grainger disregards these dreams at first, but they are so persistent that he starts to half-believe that somehow the “ghosts” of the extinct Martians are trying to contact him.

  At first he thinks he is going crazy, but under the continuing pressure of his dreams, he insists on exploring the Grand Canyon, the immense rift valley that runs for thousands of miles across the equatorial zone, eastward of the Tharsis Mountains. Vosnesensky flatly refuses to permit it; the canyon area is a “badlands” region, difficult and dangerous to traverse. Moreover, their mission plan does not call for a more detailed exploration of the canyon. They have already obtained rock and soil samples from a few selected sites along the edge of the canyon, further exploration is not called for.

  But Grainger is obsessed. He reminds Vosnesensky and the others of the rock formation that resembles a carving of a human face, and suggests they investigate it first-hand. The Russian replies that the orbital photos show it is a natural rock formation, not a deliberate carving, and besides it lies more than a thousand kilometers away. They have almost finished their six month stay on Mars; there will be no unplanned excursions.

  Then Grainger finds a curious piece of rock, about the size of a human hand, curved somewhat like a turtle’s shell. It has a much higher concentration of rare metals such as beryllium in it than any other Martian rock the explorers have found. The fossilized remains of an animal’s shell? The relic of some Martian artifact? Grainger is ablaze to push further, even though all the other scientists—except Ilona—regard the find as merely an unusual rock, nothing more. No other rocks like it are found. To the majority, that shows that Grainger’s find is just another piece of rock. To Grainger, it proves the uniqueness of the find and indicates that it is not just another rock.