Tales of the Grand Tour

by Ben Bova

  Scratching his stubbly jaw, Craig said, “That data oughtta be in the computer files.”

  “Okay, go get it.”

  The older man hesitated. “We’ll need approval. I’ll have to tell Jamie what we’re plannin’ to do and he’ll prob’ly buck it up to Tarawa.”

  Trumball grinned his widest. “Ask for all the approvals you want, Wiley, as long as we do it anyway.”

  “Now wait a minute—”

  “What’re they going to say?” Trumball interrupted. “If they say no, they’re effectively cancelling the excursion. And we won’t let them do that to us, will we?”

  “You mean, even if they say no we go ahead anyway?”

  “Sure! Why not? How’re they going to stop us?”

  “Use the fuel cells for overnight power?” Jamie asked, not certain he had heard Craig correctly.

  “It’s sorta like turnin’ a lemon into lemonade,” Possum replied.

  Jamie stared at the display screen. Craig’s unshaven face was dead serious. He appeared to be sitting in the cockpit, in his coveralls. Dex must be right beside him, driving. A glance at the data readouts on the displays beside the main screen showed that the rover was plowing ahead at a steady thirty kilometers per hour.

  “It sounds risky to me,” Jamie said, stalling for time to think.

  “We been through the numbers,” Craig replied. “It oughtta work.”

  “And if it doesn’t?”

  “Then we’ll be ridin’ along without a backup power system, the way we are now.”

  “I don’t like it.”

  “The alternative,” Trumball’s voice interjected, “is to scrub this excursion and come home with our tails between our legs.”

  “That’s what your father wants,” Jamie said. He had intended to wait until evening and speak to Dex privately about the elder Trumball’s ire. Dex’s father had sent three replies to Jamie’s last message within the past twelve hours, each one more furious than the one preceding it.

  A hand engulfed the view of the rover’s cockpit and swivelled the camera to focus on Dex.

  “Dear old Dad’s prone to displays of temper,” he said easily, grinning. “Just relay his messages to me. I’ll handle him.”

  “You just might be shooting down the funding for the next expedition, Dex,” Jamie said.

  Trumball shook his head vigorously. “No way. Once we bring back this Pathfinder hardware, investors will be running after us with money in their hands.”

  So that you can come back to Mars and loot it of anything else you can lay your hands on, Jamie thought. He pictured Trumball in a conquistador’s steel cuirass and helmet.

  A hand swivelled the camera again. “I ain’t worried ’bout the next expedition,” Craig said somberly. “I just want to get through with this excursion in one piece.”

  “I’ll have to talk to Tarawa,” Jamie said, hating himself for bucking the decision upstairs.

  “Okay, fine,” came Trumball’s voice. “It’ll take us at least another week to reach the generator.”

  Damn! thought Jamie as he went through the motions of continuing their discussion. Dex knows damned well that the farther out they are, the less chance of calling them back.

  Once he signed off and cut the connection to the rover, though, a different thought wormed into his consciousness: The longer they’re out on their excursion, the longer Dex is away from here. Away from Vijay.

  He hated himself even more for that.

  “Y’know, we shoulda flown out to the Pathfinder site,” Wiley Craig mused as he drove the rover through the dry, cold morning across the Plains of the Moon.

  “Tired of driving?” Dex Trumball asked, sitting in the cockpit’s right seat.

  “Kinda boring right now.”

  “I checked out the idea,” Dex said. “The rocket plane doesn’t have the range to make it out to Ares Vallis.”

  “Coulda hopped the fuel generator and gassed ’er up, just like we’re doin’ for this wagon.”

  “I suppose so. But we’d need a couple of fill-ups and that would mean flying the generator at least two different hops. And landing the plane twice more, too.”

  “Too risky, huh?”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t mind the risk,” Dex said quickly. “But the rocket plane couldn’t carry the hardware once we got there. Not with a full fuel load, at least.”

  Craig let out a long sigh that was almost a moan. “So we drive.”

  “We’re getting there, Wiley.”

  “Awful slow.”

  “We’re setting a record for a land traverse of an alien world. We’ll be covering close to ten thousand klicks before we’re back at the base.”

  “More’n those guys who circumnavigated Mare Imbrium back on th’ Moon?”

  “Oh, hell yes. They only covered twenty-five hundred kilometers.”

  “Huh.”

  “Pikers.”

  “Small-time stuff.”

  Trumball grinned at his partner. They were both unshaven, their chins and cheeks bristly with the beginnings of beards they had agreed not to cut off until they returned to the domed base.

  “We’re driving across what used to be the bottom of an ancient sea,” Trumball said, gesturing at the undulating ground outside. “I bet if we stopped to do some digging we’d find plenty of fossils.”

  Craig cocked a brow at him. “And how d’you recognize what’s a fossil and what’s just a plain ol’ rock? Think you’ll find trilobites or a chambered nautilis that looks just like fossils on Earth?”

  Dex took a deep breath, almost a sigh. “No, I guess not. They’d be different.”

  After a few moments of silence, Dex said, “Let me ask you something, Wiley.”

  “What?”

  “I’ve been trying to convince Jamie we should move out base camp to the canyon, but he’s too stubborn to even consider it. Whose side are you on? Mine or Jamie’s?”

  Jamie stared at the three-dimensional image of the cliff face, bending over the immersion table display and concentrating as if he could make the ancient village appear before his eyes by sheer willpower.

  Stacy Dezhurova was at the comm console, as usual. Trudy and Vijay were tending the hydroponic garden. And Jamie was growing impatient.

  I should never have let Dex go out on this crazy excursion of his, he told himself. Not only is it getting me in hot water with his father, it’s screwing up the mission to the ancient village.

  Jamie knew that he could not head out for the canyon while four of the expedition’s people were in the field. He had to wait for them to come back to the dome. Fuchida and Rodriguez would return from Olympus Mons in a few days, unless they ran into trouble. But Dex and Possum won’t be back for another four weeks, at least.

  Don’t let yourself get so worked up about it, he said silently. Be patient. If it’s really an ancient village tucked in those cliffs, it’s been there a long, long time. Another few weeks isn’t going to make much difference.

  Still he burned to get going, to get out of this dome, out in the field, away from the others.

  Away from Vijay, he realized.

  She’s got me wound up like a spring. First no and then yes and now maybe. Is she doing it on purpose? Trying to drive me crazy? Is it her sense of humor?

  Strangely, he found himself grinning at the thought. We’re already crazy. We wouldn’t be here otherwise. This just adds another dimension to the craziness.

  Be calm, the Navaho side of his mind advised. Seek the balanced path. Only when you’re in balance can you find beauty.

  Sex. We tie ourselves into knots over it. Why? She can’t get pregnant. Not here. Not unless she really wants to and she’s too smart to want that. So what difference does a little roll in the hay make?

  Then he thought of her admission that she had slept with Trumball, and Jamie knew that sex could be a fuse that kindles an explosion.

  Take it one step at a time, he thought. One day at a time. Then he grinned again. One night at a time.
<
br />   Dezhurova’s voice cut into his awareness. “Jamie, you should take a look at this.”

  Jamie straightened up, felt his vertebrae pop, and turned toward the comm console, where Stacy was sitting with a headset clipped over her limp sandy-blond pageboy.

  “What is it?”

  “Latest met forecast from Tarawa.”

  Jamie saw a polar projection map of Mars’s two hemispheres, side by side, on Dezhurova’s main screen. Meteorological isobars and symbols for highs and lows were sprinkled across it.

  Stacy tapped a fingernail on a red L deep in the southern hemisphere. Jamie noticed that her nails were manicured and lacquered a dark red.

  “That is a dust storm,” she said.

  Bending over her shoulder to peer at the map, Jamie nodded. And noticed that Stacy was wearing a flowery perfume.

  “Way down on the other side of Hellas,” he muttered.

  “But they’re forecasting it to grow.” She touched a key and the next day’s map appeared on the screen. The storm was bigger, and moving westward.

  “Still way below the equator,” Jamie said.

  “Even so.”

  “Can you get a real-time view of the area?”

  “On two,” she replied. The screen immediately to her right brightened to show a satellite view of the region.

  “Dust storm, all right,” Jamie said. “Big one.”

  “And growing.”

  He thought aloud, “Even if it grows to global size it’ll take more than a week to bother us here. Fuchida and Rodriguez will be back well before then.”

  “But Dex and Possum . . .”

  Jamie pictured Dex’s reaction to being called back to base because of the possibility of a dust storm engulfing him. I’d have to order him to return, Jamie knew. And he might just ignore the order.

  “Tell Tarawa I need to talk to the meteorology people right away,” he said to Stacy.

  “Right.”

  Dex Trumball frowned as he listened to Jamie on the rover’s comm link.

  “The meteorology people don’t expect the storm to get across the equator, but they’re keeping an eye on it.”

  “So what’s the problem?” Trumball asked, glancing over at Craig, driving the rover.

  The ground they were traversing was rising slightly, and rougher than the earlier going. A range of rugged hills rose on their left, and the last rays of the dying sun threw enormously elongated shadows across their path, turning even the smallest rocks into dark phantoms reaching out to block their way.

  “It’s a question of timing,” Jamie replied. “Each day you get farther from the base. If we wait to recall you until the storm’s a real threat, it might be too late.”

  “But you don’t know that the storm’s going to be a real threat, do you?”

  “The prudent thing to do,” Jamie said, “is to turn back and try this excursion again late in the summer, when the threat of storms is practically zero.”

  “I don’t want to turn back because of some ding-dong threat that probably won’t materialize.”

  “It’s better than getting caught in a dust storm, Dex.”

  Trumball looked across at Craig again. The older man gave him a sidelong glance, then returned to staring straight ahead.

  “You made it through a dust storm, didn’t you?” he said. “On the first expedition.”

  It took several moments for Jamie to reply, “We had no choice. You do.”

  “Well, lemme tell you something, Jamie. I choose to keep on going. I’m not going to stop and turn back because of some cockamamie storm that’s a couple thousand klicks away.”

  Sitting in front of the comm console, with Stacy beside him and Vijay at his back, Jamie kneaded his fists into his thighs.

  If I order him to return and he refuses, then whatever authority I have over these people goes down the drain. But if I let him continue then they’ll all know that Dex can do whatever he wants to and I have no way to control him.

  He realized that it was Dex who was making the decisions. The idea of putting Craig in charge was a farce from the beginning. Possum was not raising his voice, not saying a word at all.

  Which way? Which path? Jamie thought furiously for several silent moments. He drew up in his mind an image of Trumball’s route across Lunae Planum and into Xanthe Terra.

  “Hold on for a minute, Dex,” he said, and cut off the transmission.

  Turning to Dezhurova, he ordered, “Let me see their itinerary, Stacy.”

  She punched up the image on the screen before Jamie’s chair. A black line snaked across the map, with pips marking the position expected at the end of each day. Jamie scanned it swiftly, then hit the transmit key again.

  “Dex?”

  “We’re still here, chief.”

  “If the storm crosses the equator and threatens you, it won’t happen for at least four or five more days. By then you’ll be much closer to the fuel generator than to the base, here.”

  “Yeah?” Trumball’s voice sounded wary.

  “In two days from now you ought to be at the halfway point between here and the generator.”

  “Right.”

  “That’s going to be our decision point. The point of no return. I’ll decide then whether you can keep going or have to turn back.”

  “In two days.”

  “Yes. In the meantime we’ll keep close track of the storm. Stay in touch with us hourly.”

  This time it was Trumball who hesitated for several moments before answering, “Okay. Sure.”

  “Good,” said Jamie.

  “We’ll be bedding down for the night in another hour,” Trumball said. “Call you then.”

  “Good,” Jamie repeated.

  He cut the transmission and leaned back in the little wheeled chair, feeling as if he had sparred ten rounds with a professional boxer.

  Dex Trumball was driving slowly through the inky blackness of the Martian night.

  “Supper’s on the table,” Craig called out. “Come on and eat it or I’ll throw it to th’ hawgs.”

  “Why don’t we keep on going, Wiley?” Trumball asked over his shoulder.

  “ ’Cause we don’t want to break our cotton-pickin’ necks, that’s why. Shut ’er down for the night, Dex.”

  “Aw, come on, Wiley. Just a few klicks more.”

  “Now,” Craig said, with iron in his tone.

  With a sigh, Trumball leaned on the brake pedals and brought the rover to a slow, smooth stop.

  Once he had shut down the drive motors and come back to the table between the bunks, Dex sank down on the edge of his bunk and stared for a few moments at the tray of prepackaged dinner.

  “I know what you’re up to, y’know,” Craig said, sitting on the edge of his own bunk, on the other side of the folding table.

  Dex grinned at the older man. “Yeah? What?”

  “You wanta get so close to the generator that when Jamie comes to his decision point we’ll be closer to it than to th’ base. Right?”

  With a nod, Trumball answered, “Why not?”

  “You’re not scared of a dust storm?”

  “Wiley, if Jamie weathered one of those storms during the first expedition, why can’t we?”

  “Be smarter to be back at the base when a storm hits, nice ‘n’ cozy.”

  “If a storm hits. How’d you feel if we turned tail and went back to the dome and then no storm materializes?”

  “Alive,” said Craig.

  Trumball considered the older man for a moment. Then, as he dug a plastic fork into the unidentifiable stuff on the tray before him, he asked, “If Jamie orders us back, what’ll you do?”

  Craig stared back at him, sad, pouchy, ice-blue eyes unwavering. “Don’t know yet,” he answered. “But I’m turnin’ over the possibilities in my mind.”

  Trumball grinned at him. “Yeah? Well, turn this over, too, Wiley. There’ll be a finder’s fee for picking up the Pathfinder hardware. A nice sizable wad of cash for the guys who bring it
back. That’ll be you and me, Wiley.”

  “How much?”

  Trumball shrugged. “Six figures, I guess.”

  “H’mp.”

  Watching the older man’s face carefully, Trumball added, “Of course, I don’t need the money. I’d be willing to give my half to you, Wiley. If we keep on going no matter what Jamie says.”

  Craig’s face was impassive. But he said, “Now that sounds purty interesting, ol’ pal. Purty damn’ interesting.”

  “How’s the weather report?” Craig asked.

  “About the same,” Dex replied, from up in the rover’s cockpit. He was driving while Craig cleaned up their breakfast crumbs and folded the table back down into the floor between the bunks.

  Craig came up and sat in the right-hand seat. The sun was just clear of the increasingly rugged eastern horizon.

  “Want me to drive?” he asked.

  “No way, Wiley. I’m going to break the interplanetary speed record today and get this baby up to thirty-five klicks per hour.”

  Craig made a snorting laugh. “You’ll need a helluva tailwind for that, buddy.”

  “Nope, just some downhill slope.”

  “Lotsa luck.”

  “I’m not kidding, Wiley. The plain slopes downhill all the way to Xanthe.”

  “Sure,” said Craig. “And if we had a good breeze behind us we could really make time.”

  Trumball glanced at him, then said, “Check the incoming messages, huh?”

  There were two messages in the file, both from Trudy Hall. The first one told them about Fuchida’s accident in the caldera atop Olympus Mons and Rodriguez’s rescue of him. And the biologist’s discovery of the siderophiles. The two men listened to Hall’s brief summary, then glanced at each other.

  Craig let out a low whistle. “I wonder what Mitsuo’s Jockey shorts look like.”

  Trumball laughed and shook his head. “I don’t want to know.”

  Hall’s second message was a weather report. The dust storm was spreading, but still confined below the equator.

  “Long as it stays in the southern hemisphere we’re free and clear,” Trumball said happily.

  Craig was less cheerful. As he stared at the weather map on their screen he muttered, “It’s growin’, though. If it crosses the equator we’re gonna be in trouble.”