People of Mars (18 page)

“Oh, please, Nat,
don’t start this now.” He wasn’t really in the mood to listen to
another lecture from the woman who persisted in criticising his
private life. He had now donned his trousers and shirt, but was
still looking for his shoes.

Still smirking,
Natalie looked around, then headed for the couch. “Let me help
you,” she added, lifting a pair of men’s shoes from under the piece
of furniture and showing them to him.

He went to her and
almost ripped the shoes from her hands, then he reconsidered his
action. “Thank you.” He planted a kiss on her lips. “You’re always
the best.” And he sat down on the bed to put them on.

“I know,” was her
ironic comment.

He felt short of
breath, as his body was pushed against his seat in a way he hadn’t
expected. Even after the acceleration ended, it took some minutes
before his nausea disappeared and he could return to his
senses.

“The first few times
are a little traumatic, but then you get used to it,” Miller
commented. The man from NASA, as he had defined himself, had come
to Jan’s villa to take him to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in
Pasadena, from where they had left for Houston on board a strange
kind of aircraft.

“
What did you call this
thing
?”

“Simply air shuttle.”
Miller seemed amused. “It’s a prototype for a passenger transport
aircraft conceived for intraplanetary supersonic travels.”

“And by
intraplanetary, you don’t mean Earth, I suppose.” Now he had the
sensation of being stationary, perhaps because the speed had become
constant. Looking from the window, he stopped to admire the
breathtaking sight of dawn on suburbia.

Miller smiled again.
“That’s right. The idea is to send a few of the crafts to Mars,
where subsonic flight is made difficult and expensive by the
planet’s thin atmosphere. But they work well in the hereabouts as
well, actually they work perfectly!”

“I don’t doubt that.”
Yet he felt anything but safe.

“One day they’ll
become as common as helicopters and private jets. Maybe even more
common.” And he laughed. Was there something funny? “Don’t worry,
Mr De Wit. Everything will end in twenty minutes.”

For a split second,
Jan stared at him with a quizzical look, then he understood. “What
do you mean, twenty minutes? We left less than five minutes
ago!”

“
These
things
are quite fast, Mr De Wit.”

Promptly, twenty
minutes later, the air shuttle underwent a deceleration which, if
possible, was even more abrupt than the initial acceleration. Or at
least that was Jan’s impression. It was followed by a much smoother
descent.

When, at last, the
aircraft had touched down and the pilot had given the go-ahead, he
unfastened his safety belt with some difficulty, and staggering to
his feet he headed for the exit, with Miller glued to him like a
shadow. As he disembarked from the shuttle, he found another group
of people waiting for him, led by an African-American with a grave
look. Behind him was a gorgeous woman in her forties and two more
men, perhaps in their thirties. He wasn’t sure, because they wore
informal clothing, giving them a juvenile appearance. One of them
was Asian, from the Far East, barely reaching one metre sixty in
height, frail, smart look, very neat. The other one was much more
corpulent, making the first one look even smaller. He had chestnut
hair that was a little too long, and a bored expression on his
face. They all looked distraught.

The group leader came
forward and shook his hand. “Mr De Wit, welcome to the Johnson
Space Center. I’m Jamal Nichols; we spoke on the phone.”

“Sure, yes, nice to
meet you,” Jan replied to his handshake, trying to appear
self-confident, but actually feeling intimidated being there. Like
a fish out of water.

“Please, follow me …”
Nichols added, gesturing with a hand. And he started walking at a
brisk pace.

Jan caught him up,
while the other three followed suit.

“
Please, let me introduce JSC Deputy Director
Maggie Moore,
Isis
program’s
deputy flight director, Masu Sasaki, and software engineer, Michael
Gray.” He introduced them as he kept moving, without pointing them
out, or turning round. Jan looked back to greet them. However,
there was no need of further explanations to match each of them to
a name. Only Moore replied with a smile. Sasaki did nothing but
nod, while Gray just ignored him. Miller had vanished without
trace.

They entered what
Nichols indicated as being the Ares Building. The journey inside
the complex, through long corridors and a ride in a lift, appeared
never-ending but it gave the mission director, with the help of the
others, the time to brief him about the events, thus disclosing the
reason for their presence. They served to speed up the explanations
and avoid wasting more time.

When they reached the
mission control room, Jan had already got a sense of the latest
incidents on Mars, starting with the death of two crew members,
which had occurred in mysterious circumstances and been kept hidden
from the public eye, and the doubts on the responsibilities of the
other three, in particular Robert Green and Hassan Qabbani. The
name of the latter made something ring in his memory. He recalled
that Anna had mentioned a certain Hassan during the training
period, and that she didn’t like him, which was quite an
understatement. She had often talked about him, ill concealing a
certain amount of contempt. Jan knew well what the origin of her
behaviour was, and was aware that his attitude, as referred to by
her, might have been a direct consequence of her hostility.
Apparently, considering Nichols’s statements about Anna’s
accusation against Qabbani regarding what had happened at Station
Alpha before her impromptu departure, their relationship hadn’t
improved much, in spite of the passing of time.

The strong smell of coffee almost knocked him out
as he entered the room, bringing him back to reality. It wasn’t
even eight in the morning, but everybody was at their place.
Actually, judging by their faces, it would seem they were
still
at their place.

The mission director
had explained him that most of the work was carried out during the
daytime in Station Alpha, which unfortunately moved forward about
thirty-nine and a half minutes each day, because a complete
rotation of the planet around its axis took longer on Mars than on
Earth. In the control room they actually lived with Martian time,
whose hours and minutes were a little longer.

“Please, take a seat.”
Nichols spoke to him, pointing at a workspace. Though feeling a bit
ill at ease, Jan obeyed and sat down, but the mission director
remained standing at his side, along with Moore, who stood to his
other side. Sasaki and Gray, instead, took seats in different zones
of the room, presumably at their workspaces.

On the huge screen was
a topographic diagram, on it he noticed a green spot marked by the
Greek letter alpha and, a little south of it, there was another
sign.

“This is the latest
position where Anna’s rover has been detected, before she turned
off the transponder,” Moore explained, pointing out the second
spot. He had heard about the woman, too, but wasn’t sure about the
context when it had happened. “We’ve tried to contact her, and as a
reply she disconnected from the satellite.”

“I think she will
reconnect eventually. I have the impression she wants to show us
something. Or at least I hope so.” Nichols paused and sighed, then
he sat facing Jan and fixing his eyes on him. “We’d like it so
that, when it happens, Anna will receive your message.”

“That was clear,” Jan
replied, holding his gaze.

“
No, I want you to fully understand this point: it
doesn’t matter how things between the two of you have ended up or
how much you’re mad at her. You must say something to persuade her
to come back,
anything
. You
must ensure her we are really working hard to get them away from
there, but most of all you must give her a good reason, a
great
reason, to do as you suggest.
Whether it is true or not isn’t important.”

“And the fact you are
working hard to get them back to Earth is true, isn’t it?” Jan
urged him.

Nichols hesitated. He
looked around, as if to check that nobody was listening. He moved
his head closer to that of his interlocutor. “This is another
matter, which unfortunately falls outside of my power. There are
various political forces in play.” He had lowered his voice. “But
one thing is certain: she won’t come back if she’s dead.”

Jan shuddered at the
mere thought of it. That surely didn’t go unnoticed by the mission
director, who kept on scrutinising him, evidently waiting for an
answer.

“Okay, let’s do this
thing.”

“Mr De Wit.”

Jan woke up with a
jump. He had fallen asleep on a couch in Deputy Director Moore’s
office and it had been Maggie’s voice that had woken him.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean
to frighten you, Mr De Wit.”

“No, don’t worry,” he
replied, still dazed. He was feeling quite rested. How long had
passed? “Please, let’s leave pleasantries aside, call me Jan.” And
he gave one of his smiles that used to strike a chord with women.
It came out spontaneously. A moment after he spoke, the feeling
that he may have been inappropriate occurred to him.

Maggie barely smiled.
“Jan, we need you in the control room.” Even though she called him
by his first name, she kept a formal tone. “We’ve received a
message from Dr Persson.”

Oblivious of the
previous embarrassment, he stood up. “Oh, thank God. Yeah, here I
am.”

Once in the control
room, he realised that the atmosphere was much more hectic then
before. Nichols went to meet him at the door.

“It’s a written
message, with a few attachments.”

They reached the
central workspace, where the mission director gestured Gray with a
hand. The main screen was populated with a series of sub-screens.
One window included a diagram, the second was a topographic map
with an area circled in red and the last one to appear was a
written message, but too small to be read from there.

The diagram was
brought into the foreground. “What you can see,” Nichols explained,
raising a hand to point out. “That is a graphic representation of a
high frequency acoustic wave, so high it is inaudible to the human
ear, but it’s been detected and analysed by a computer. The
transmission lasts a few seconds. At first, it seemed confused,
then we realised it was a series of pulses, exactly three short,
three long, and again three short pulses.”

The man was smiling
while pronouncing those words, but Jan had no clue as to what he
was referring to. His perplexity must have been obvious, because
the mission director immediately hurried to explain.

“It’s Morse! It’s the
equivalent of the distress signal: SOS. Do you understand?”

He wasn’t sure he
understood, but the mission director went on anyway.

“The other image.” The
topographic chart enlarged. “This area has been detected by the
Mars positioning satellite system. The radius runs for some
kilometres including part of Ophir Planum and Ophir Chasma. The
first one is a flatland; the second is a canyon belonging to Valles
Marineris.” He gesticulated, more and more agitated. “Anyway the
point is that the Morse transmission results coming from that
area.”

Finally, Anna’s
message was brought to the foreground.

Jan held his breath
whilst reading those words.

JAN, I HAVE NO
INTENTION OF DYING.

I WANT TO GO HOME. THIS
IS WHY I HAD TO LEAVE STATION ALPHA.

DO YOU REMEMBER WHAT I
TOLD YOU THE LAST TIME WE TALKED REGARDING WHAT WOULD ENSURE THE
SENDING OF A RETURN SPACECRAFT?

IN A WAY I’VE FOUND
THEM.

I LOVE YOU, A. XXX

A moment after he was
laughing. Sure, he remembered her words. He would’ve never
forgotten that conversation.

“Can you tell me what
she means?” Nichols incited him. “These data bring us to a
conclusion, even if it is theoretically impossible. The only thing
we don’t understand is her words.”

The most total silence
had pervaded the room. Everybody was watching, waiting for an
answer. Jan laughed again. Even in such a situation, Anna was
having fun with her plays, her mysteries. She hadn’t gone insane at
all.

“
She said that
Isis
mission wouldn’t include a return spacecraft, unless they
found the Martians.” And he laughed again at the absurdity of it.
The others were looking at him, astonished, absorbing that
information.

“The Martians wouldn’t
surely use Morse Code.” The sarcastic comment of Gray, who was at
once much more interested in the whole matter, broke the
silence.

“
If my memory doesn’t fail me.” A very close voice
spoke behind Jan, making him turn with a start. It was Sasaki. When
had he arrived? “That is the area where a few remains from
the
Hera
mission
shuttle were located.”

“Oh, fuck.” Nichols
was shaking his head. “I want an orbiter over that area, now,” he
ordered Sasaki, who jumped to a workspace.

“They are all quite
far,” the latter said after a while. “Anyway we have thousands of
shots taken in the latest thirty years. I doubt anything has
escaped us. If you like, I’ll show you the most recent ones.”

“No,” the mission
director boomed. “I wanna see what’s happening there now.”

Far from frightened by
the tone of his superior, Sasaki resumed working. “I’m going to
reposition the nearest one, but it might take several hours before
it gets over there.”