Mars (7 page)

“We’re on Mars now,” Jamie said softly.

“Yes. What of it?”

Jamie turned and left her cubicle without another word. Ilona would keep on deviling Vosnesensky, just as she had all during the long months of the flight here. She thought she had a reason to hate all Russians. All during the years of training she had cleverly hidden her hatred. And nursed it. Now it was coming out into the open. Now, when it might get us all killed.

We bring it all with us, Jamie said to himself. We come to a new world with words of peace and love, but we carry all the old fears and hatreds wherever we go

Feeling completely spent, Jamie tumbled onto his cot without bothering to undress. Nearly an hour later he lay still awake on the spindly cot in his cubicle, worrying about Ilona. The dome was dark now, but not silent. The metal and plastic creaked and groaned as the cold of the Martian night tightened its frigid grip. Pumps were chugging softly and air fans humming. The psychologists had decided that such noises would actually be comforting to the lonely explorers. If the machinery noise suddenly stopped it would alert them to a dangerous situation, just as the sudden cutoff of a plane’s engine starts the adrenaline flowing immediately.

As he lay on his cot, though, Jamie heard another sound. A rhythmic sort of signing that came and went, started and stopped. A low whispering, almost like a soft moaning, so faint that Jamie at first thought it was his imagination. But it
persisted, a strange ghostly breathing just barely audible over the background chatter of the man-made equipment.

The wind.

There was a breeze blowing softly across their dome, stroking this new alien artifact with its gentle fingers. Mars was caressing them, the way a child might reach out to touch something new and inexplicable. Mars was welcoming them gently.

Jamie let his thoughts drift as he clasped his hands behind his head and listened to the soft wind of Mars until at last he fell asleep.

He dreamed of spaceships landing in New Mexico and whole tribes of Indians stepping out of them, naked, to claim the harsh barren land for their own.

McMurdo Base reminded Jamie of a cross between a seedy mining town and a run-down community college campus, set on the edge of frigid McMurdo Sound between the snow-covered mountains and the Ross Ice Shelf, a quarter-mile-thick shield of ice that covered most of the Ross Sea. All the buildings looked government issue: curved-roof metal huts and square wooden barracks, even the newer cinderblock two-story administrative offices. There was a farm of oil tanks, endless rows of equipment sheds, a U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker anchored in the harbor, and an airfield literally carved out of the shelf of glittering ice that extended past the horizon, covering an area bigger than France.

The streets were plowed clear of snow, but hardly anybody ventured out into the piercing wind. The coldest temperature ever recorded on Earth had been measured in Antarctica, one hundred twenty-seven degrees below zero Fahrenheit.

A midsummer overnight low on Mars, Jamie knew.

Inside the hut provided for the Mars Project trainees it was almost comfortably warm, thanks to the new nuclear power system that had been installed the previous year. Old-style environmentalists had protested bringing nuclear power to Antarctica, while the new-style environmentalists protested against further use of fuel oil that soiled the increasingly polluted Antarctic air with its sooty emissions.

Each group of trainees for the Mars mission had to spend six weeks at the Antarctic station learning what it was like to
live in a research outpost cut off from the rest of the world, crowded tensely together in barely adequate facilities with few amenities and little privacy, struggling to survive in a barren frozen world of ice and bitter cold.

As Jamie strode briskly down the narrow corridor of the half-buried hut he thought to himself, All project scientists are equal. Except that some are more equal than others. And now Dr. Li is more equal than all the rest of us.

Dressed in his usual thick red-and-black corduroy shirt and faded denim jeans, his western boots thumping against the worn wooden flooring, Jamie headed toward the office of Dr. Li Chengdu, the man who had just been designated to be the expedition commander. No other appointment had been made for the mission, not yet, not officially. But the snow-blanketed base was a buzzing beehive of rumors and speculation about who would be picked to fly to Mars and who would not. The men and women cooped up in the crowded base had set up betting pools. Some of them were even trying to hack their way into the computer’s confidential personnel files.

Tomorrow Jamie and the group he was attached to would fly out of McMurdo and back to civilization, weather permitting, ending their mandatory six weeks. Jamie had spent much of his, time in searches for meteorites out on the snow-covered glacier that fed into the ice pack covering the Ross Sea. Antarctica was a good place for meteorite hunting. The perpetual ice and snow of the frozen continent preserved the rocks that had fallen from the sky, keeping them relatively free of terrestrial contaminants. Some of those meteorites were in fact suspected to have come from Mars. Jamie had hoped to find one in his searches of the wind-swept glacier. If I can’t get to Mars, he had told himself, maybe I can find a chunk of Mars that’s come to Earth.

In six weeks he had found four meteorites in the ice, none of them Martian.

For more than three years Jamie had worked and trained with scientists from a dozen different nations in laboratories and field centers from Iceland to Australia. For most of that time he—and everyone else—had known that he would not be selected as the geologist to land on Mars. Father Fulvio DiNardo was the top choice for the mission, not only a world-class geologist but a Jesuit priest as well.

“He’s what we call a ‘twofer,’” one of the American mission administrators had explained cheerfully over breakfast, months earlier, when they had been at Star City, outside Moscow, “Fills two slots: geologist and chaplain.”

Tony Reed had agreed, a slight smirk twitching at his lips. “Yes. He can hear confessions and baptize any babies born during the mission. No other geologist could be so useful.”

Jamie reluctantly accepted the reality of DiNardo’s unassailable position. The priest had been involved in planetary studies since the great second wave of space probes had been sent to Jupiter and the asteroids; he had actually helped design some of the instruments they carried. He had been the first geologist on the moon since the
Apollo 17
mission, thirty-some years ago. Even now, while the scientists trained for the first manned mission to Mars, Father DiNardo spent most of his time in the isolation laboratory up in the Russian space station,
Mir 5
, directing the geological studies of the rock and soil samples returned by the unmanned probes sent to scout the red planet in advance of the human expedition.

It was Father DiNardo’s backup who bothered Jamie. Franz Hoffman seemed to have the inside track, according to all the gossip. The Viennese had been a physicist originally, then had switched to geology only a few years ago. Jamie was certain that it was his Austrian nationality more than his work in geology that placed him in the number-two slot behind DiNardo. And ahead of Jamie.

For months Jamie had felt a simmering anger rising within him. I’m a better geologist than Hoffman, he told himself. But he’ll get the nod to go to Mars as DiNardo’s backup and I’ll stay here on Earth. Because the politicians want a balance of nationalities and there’s no other Austrian in the group. Worse yet, he knew, the politicians are trying their damnedest to keep the numbers of Americans and Russians equal. And they count me as an American.

As he approached Dr. Li’s door he wondered for the thousandth time what he could do to change the situation. Why has he sent for me? Now that Li’s officially been named as expedition commander is he going to act as a scientist or as a politician? Can he help me? Will he, if he can?

Jamie knocked on Dr. Li’s door.

The position of expedition commander had been selected with extreme care by the politicians and administrators. He
had to be a highly regarded scientist, a natural leader, an inspiration to the men and women whom he would command on another world. He had to be able to placate wounded egos and solve emotional problems among his sensitive scientists—and astronauts.

Most of all, he had to be from a neutral nation: neither East nor West, neither Arab nor Jew, neither Hindu nor Moslem.

Dr. Li Chengdu was, an ascetically lean, sallow-faced man who had been born in Singapore of a Chinese merchant family, educated in Shanghai and Geneva, and was rumored to be in line for a Nobel Prize for his research in atmospheric physics: he had found a way to reverse the depletion of the ozone layer and close the long-dreaded ozone hole in the upper atmosphere. A man in his early fifties, he was young and hale enough to make the long journey to Mars, yet old and respected enough to be the unquestioned leader of the expedition in fact as well as in name.

“Enter please,” came Dr. Li’s voice, only slightly muffled by the thin pressed-wood door.

Jamie stepped into the room that served as Li’s office and living quarters. Li got to his feet from behind the desk that had been shoehorned in between the bunk bed and the sloping curve of the outer wall. He was so tall that he had to stoop to avoid hitting his head against the curving ceiling panels.

The room had no personality in it at all, no stamp of an individual’s presence. Li had come in only a few days ago and was scheduled to leave with Jamie’s group the following morning. The desk was bare except for a laptop computer that hummed softly, its screen glowing a pale orange. The bed was made with military precision, blankets meticulously tucked in under the thin mattress. The one window was blocked by the plowed snow heaped against the side of the building. A strip of fluorescent lamps ran along the low. ceiling, turning Li’s sallow skin tones into something almost ghastly.

When he had first met Dr. Li, two years earlier, Jamie had been surprised at the man’s height. Now he felt surprised all over again. Li was almost six-five, lean to the point of gauntness, a tall scarecrow of a man, with hollow cheeks and long slim fingers. The newly named expedition commander wore
a soft velour shirt of deep charcoal that hung loosely on his thin frame.

“Ah, Dr. Waterman. Please sit down.” Li indicated the only other chair in the room, a government-issue piece of worn dull-gray steel with a thin plastic cushion that felt iron hard.

Li took his chair behind the desk once again. For a long moment he said nothing. He peered intently at Jamie, as if trying to see inside him. Jamie returned the gaze calmly. He had watched his grandfather conversing with other Navahos often enough; they were never in a hurry to speak. It was important to allow time for thought, for reflection, for sizing up the other man.

Jamie studied Li’s face. His hair was still dark, though receding from his high domed forehead. Decidedly oriental eyes, hooded, unfathomable; with the drooping moustache they made him look like an ancient Chinese sage, or perhaps the villain in an old-fashioned tale of intrigue. He ought to be dressed in a long silk robe and be living in a palace in Beijing, not stuck in the snow down at the ass end of the world.

There was a slightly cloying odor in the tiny room. Incense? Cologne? It almost smelled like marijuana.

“I have a favor to ask of you,” said Dr. Li at last. His voice had become soft, almost a whisper. Jamie found himself leaning forward slightly to catch his words over the incessant hiss of the air blowing through the heating ducts.

With an almost furtive glance at the orange display screen of the computer on his desk, Li went on, “You have done very good work here—and in your other training activities, as well.”

“Thank you.” Jamie bowed his head slightly.

“I wonder if you would consider staying here for another six weeks?”

“Stay? Here?”

“The group you have been working with is scheduled to go to Utah next, I believe.” Another glance at the computer screen. “Yes, survival training on high desert.”

Before Jamie could reply, Li added, “I would appreciate it if you would remain here at McMurdo and help the next group to acclimatize themselves to the Antarctic environment.
It would be extremely helpful to me and to your fellow scientists.”

Jamie’s mind was racing. He’s just been appointed expedition commander. It wouldn’t be smart to refuse his request. But why is he asking me to do this? Why is he asking me?

“Uh … the ten of us have been training pretty much as a unit, you know.”

“I realize that,” said Dr. Li. “But you understand that these groupings made for training will not be the same as the teams selected for the actual flight.”

Jamie nodded, wondering what was going on and why.

“Among the group due to come here next is Dr. Joanna Brumado. She is an excellent microbiologist.”

“I’ve met her.”

Li nodded slowly. In his softest voice he said, “Daughter of Alberto Brumado.”

Jamie leaned back in his chair. Now he understood. Alberto Brumado’s daughter would get special consideration. With the rest of the scientists it was sink or swim, survive the rigors of training or get scratched from the list of possible Mars team members. But with Brumado’s daughter the situation was different. They want to make sure she gets through her six weeks here without packing it in.

Because he did not know what else to do, Jamie said, “I see. Okay, sure. I’ll stay over the next six weeks and help them all I can.”

Dr. Li smiled, but to Jamie it seemed more sad than happy. “Thank you, Dr. Waterman. I am deeply grateful.”

Jamie got up from the chair. Dr. Li extended his hand and wished him good fortune.

It was not until he was halfway down the corridor on the way back to his own quarters that Jamie realized the implications of Li’s request. He would miss the next six weeks of training. He was being asked to act as a special teacher-guide-escort for Alberto Brumado’s daughter.