Appointment in Sinai

Illustration by Todd Lockwood

“No, I am not going to plug in,” Debbie Kettering said firmly. “I’m much too busy.”

Her husband gave her his patented lazy smile. “Come on, Deb, you don’t have anything to do that can’t wait a half-hour or so.”

His smile had always been her undoing. But this time she intended to stand firm. “No!” she insisted. “I won’t.”

She was not a small woman, but standing in their living room next to Doug made her look tiny. A stranger might think they were the school football hero and the cutest cheerleader on the squad, twenty years afterward. In reality, Doug was a propulsion engineer (a real rocket scientist) and Deborah an astronaut.

An ex-astronaut. Her resignation was on the computer screen in her bedroom office, ready to be e-mailed to her boss at the Johnson Space Center.

“What’ve you got to do that’s so blasted important?” Doug asked, still grinning at her as he headed for the sofa, his favorite Saturday afternoon haunt.

“A mountain of work that’s been accumulating for weeks,” Debbie answered. “Now’s the time to tackle it, while all the others are busy and won’t be able to bother me.”

His smile faded as he realized how miserable his wife really was. “Come on, Deb. We both know what’s eating you.”

“I won’t plug in, Doug.”

“Be a shame to miss it,” he insisted.

Suddenly she was close to tears. “Those bastards even rotated me off the shift. They don’t want me there!”

“But that doesn’t mean—”

“No, Doug! They put everybody else in ahead of me. I’m on the bottom of their pecking order. So to hell with them! I won’t even watch it on TV. And that’s final!”

“It’s all set up, man. All we need’s a guy who’s good with the ’lectronics. And that’s you, Chico.”

Luis Mendez shifted unhappily in his desk chair. Up at the front of the room Mr. Ricardo was trying to light up some enthusiasm in the class. Nobody was interested in algebra, though. Except Luis, but he had Jorge leaning over from the next desk, whispering in his ear.

Luis didn’t much like Jorge, not since first grade when Jorge used to beat him up at least once a week for his lunch money. The guy was dangerous. Now he was into coke and designer drugs and burglary to support his habit. And he wanted Luis to help him.

“I don’t do locks,” Luis whispered back, out of the side of his mouth, keeping his eyes on Mr. Ricardo’s patient, earnest face.

“It’s all ’lectronics, man. You do one kind you can do the other. Don’t try to mess with me, Chico.”

“We’ll get caught. They’ll send us to Alcatraz.”

Jorge stifled a laugh. “I got a line on a whole friggin’ warehouse full of VR sets and you’re worryin’ about Alcatraz? Even if they sent you there you’d be livin’ better than here.”

Luis grimaced. Life in the hood was no picnic, but Alcatraz? More than once Mr. Ricardo had sorrowfully complained, “Maybe you bufónes would be better off in Alcatraz. At least there they make you learn.”

Yeah, Luis knew. They also fry your brains and turn you into a zombie.

“Hey,” Jorge jabbed at Luis’s shoulder. “I ain’t askin’ you, Chico. I’m tellin’ you. You’re gonna do the locks for me or you’re gonna be in the hospital. Comprendes?”

Luis understood. Trying to fight against Jorge was useless. He had learned that lesson years ago. Better to do what Jorge wanted than to get a vicious beating.

Senator Theodore O’Hara fumed quietly as he rolled his powerchair down the long corridor to his office. The trio of aides trotting behind him were puffing too hard to speak; the only sound in the marble-walled corridor was the slight whir of the powerchair’s electric motor and the faint throb of the senator’s artificial heart pump. And obedient panting.

He leaned on the toggle to make the chair go a bit faster. Two of his aides fell behind but Kaiser, overweight and prematurely balding, broke into a sprint to keep up.

Fat little yes-man, O’Hara thought. Still, Kaiser was uncanny when it came to predicting trends. O’Hara scrupulously followed all the polls, as any politician must if he wants to stay in office. But when the polls said one thing and Kaiser something else, the tubby little butterball was inevitably right.

Chairman Pastorini had recessed the committee session so everybody could plug into the landing. Set aside the important business of the Senate Appropriations Committee, O’Hara grumbled to himself, so we can all see a half-dozen astronauts plant their gold-plated boots on Mars.

What a waste of time, he thought. And money.

It’s all Pastorini’s doing. He’s using the landing. Timed the damned committee session to meet just on this particular afternoon. Knew it all along. Thinks I’ll cave in because the other idiots on the committee are going to get all stirred up.

I’ll cave them in. All of them. This isn’t the first manned landing on Mars, he thought grimly. It’s the last.

Jerome Zacharias—Zack to everyone who knew him—paced nervously up and down the big room. Part library, part entertainment center, part bar, the room was packed with friends and well-wishers and media reporters who had made the trek to Phoenix to be with him at this historic moment.

They were drinking champagne already, Zack saw. Toasting our success. Speculating on what they’ll find on Mars.

But it could all fail, he knew. It could be a disaster. The last systems check before breaking orbit had shown that the lander’s damned fuel cells still weren’t charged up to full capacity. All right, the backups are OK, there’s plenty of redundancy, but it just takes one glitch to ruin everything. People have been killed in space and those kids are more than a hundred million miles from home.

If anything happens to them it’ll be my fault, Zack knew. They’re going to give me the credit if it all works out OK, but it’ll be my fault if they crash and burn.

Twenty years he’d sweated and schemed and connived with government leaders, industrial giants, bureaucrats of every stripe. All to get a team of twelve men and women to Mars.

For what? he asked himself, suddenly terrified that he had no real answer. To satisfy my own ego? Is that why? Spend all this money and time, change the lives of thousands of engineers and scientists and technicians and all their support people, just so I can go to my grave saying that I pushed the human race to Mars?

Suppose somebody gets killed? Then a truly wrenching thought hit him. Suppose they don’t find anything there that’s worth it all? Suppose Mars is just the empty ball of rusty sand and rocks that the unmanned landers have shown us? No life, not even traces of fossils?

A wasted life. That’s what I’ll have accomplished. Wasted my own life and the lives of all the others. Wasted.

She was sorting through all the paperwork from her years with the agency. Letters, reports, memos, the works. Funny how we still call it paperwork, Debbie thought as she toiled through her computer files.

Her heart clutched inside her when the official notification came up on her screen. The final selection of the six astronauts who would be the American part of the Mars team. Her name was conspicuously absent.

“You know why,” she remembered her boss telling her, as gently as he could. “You’re not only married, Deb, you’re a mother. We can’t send a mother on the mission; it’s too long and too dangerous.”

“That’s prejudice!” Debbie had shrilled. “Prejudice against motherhood.”

“Buffalo chips. The mission is dangerous. We’re not talking about a weekend camping trip. They’re going to Mars, for chrissake! I’m not going to be the one who killed some kid’s mother. Not me!”

She had railed and fumed at him for nearly half an hour.

Finally, her boss stopped her with, “Seems to me you ought to be caring more about your kid. Two and a half years is a long time for him to be without his mother—even if nothing goes wrong with the mission.”

Suddenly she had nothing left to say. She stomped out of his office before she broke into tears. She didn’t want him or anybody else to see her cry.

Pecking at her keyboard, Debbie pulled up the stinging memoranda she had fired off to Washington. She still felt some of the molten white heat that had boiled within her. Then she went through the lawyers’ briefs and the official disclaimer from the agency’s legal department: they denied prejudice against women who had children. The agency’s choice had been based on “prudent, well-established assessments of risks, performances, and capabilities.”

“Jeez, Deb, are you going to take this to the Supreme Court?” Doug had asked in the middle of the legal battle.

“If I have to,” she had snapped at him.

Doug merely shook his head. “I wonder how the rest of the crew would feel if the Supreme Court ruled you have to go with them on the mission.”

“I don’t care!”

“And little Douggie. He’d sure miss his mother. Two-and-a-half years is a long time. He won’t even be five yet when the mission takes off.”

She had no reply for that. Nothing except blind fury that masked a deeply hidden sense of guilt.

The Supreme Court refused to hear the case, although the news media splashed the story in lurid colors. Astronaut mother denied chance to be part of Mars crew. Space agency accused of anti-mother bias. Women’s groups came to Debbie’s aid. Other groups attacked her as an unfit mother who put her personal glory ahead of her son’s needs.

Her work deteriorated. Sitting in front of her computer screen, scanning through her performance appraisals over the three years since the Mars crew selection, Debbie saw that the agency wasn’t going to suffer grievously from her loss. She had gone into a tailspin, she had to admit.

They’ll be happy to see me go, she thought. No wonder they don’t even want me at mission control during the landing. They’re afraid I’ll screw up.

“Mommy?”

Douggie’s voice startled her. She spun on her little typist’s chair and saw her five-year-old standing uncertainly at the bedroom doorway.

“You know you’re not allowed to bother me while I’m working, Douggie,” she said coldly.

He’s the reason I’m stuck here, she raged to herself. If it weren’t for him I’d be on Mars right now, this instant, instead of looking at the wreckage of my career.

“I’m sorry, Mommy. Daddy said I should tell you.”

“Tell me what?” she said impatiently. The boy was a miniature of his father: same eyes, same sandy hair. He even had that same slow, engaging grin. But now he looked frightened, almost ready to break into tears.

“Daddy says they’re just about to land.”

“I’m busy,” she said. “You watch the landing with Daddy.”

The boy seemed to draw up all his courage. “But you said you would watch it with me and ’splain what they’re doing for me so I could tell all the kids in school all about it.”

A little more gently, Debbie said, “But I’m busy here, honey.”

“You promised.”

“But—”

“You promised, Mommy.”

Debbie didn’t remember making any promises. She looked into her son’s trusting eyes, though, and realized that he wasn’t the reason she wasn’t picked to go to Mars. It’s not his fault, she realized. How could it be? Whatever’s happened is my responsibility and nobody else’s.

Her anger dissolved. She was almost sorry to see it go; it had been a bulwark that had propped her up for the past three years.

With a reluctant sigh she shut down her computer and headed off to the living room, her son’s hand clasped in hers.

“Luis!” Mr. Ricardo called as the teenagers scrambled for the classroom door the instant the bell sounded.

Luis scooped up his books and made his way through the small stampede up to the front of the classroom. He walked slowly, reluctantly. Nobody wanted his friends to think that he liked talking to the teacher.

Mr. Ricardo watched Luis approaching him like a prizefighter watches the guy come out from the other corner. He looked tight around the mouth, like he was expecting trouble. Ricardo was only forty or so, but years of teaching high school had made an old man out of him. His wiry hair was all gray; there were wrinkles around his dark brown eyes.

But when Luis came up to him, the teacher broke into a friendly smile. “Have you made up your mind?” he asked.

Luis had been afraid that Ricardo would put him on the spot. He didn’t know what to say.

“I don’ know, Mr. R.”

“Don’t you want to do it?” Ricardo asked, sounding kind of disappointed; hurt, almost. “It’s the opportunity of a lifetime.”

“Yeah, I know. It’d be cool, but…”

Luis couldn’t tell him the rest, of course.

Ricardo’s demanding eyes shifted from Luis to Jorge, loitering at the classroom door, watching them intently.

“He’s going to get into a lot of trouble, you know,” the teacher said. He kept his voice low but there was steel in it.

Luis shifted his books, shuffled his feet.

“There are only ten rigs available at the planetarium. I’ve reserved one. If you don’t use it I’ll have to let some other student have it.”

“Why’s it gotta be now?” Luis complained.

“Because they’re landing now, muchacbo! They’re landing on Mars today! This afternoon!”

“Yeah…”

“Don’t you want to participate in it?”

“Yeah, sure. I’d like to.”

“Then let’s go. We’re wasting time.”

Luis shook his head. “I got other things to do, man.”

“Like running off with Jorge, eh?”

“Obligations,” Luis muttered.

Instead of getting angry, as Luis expected, Ricardo sat on the edge of his desk and spoke earnestly to him.

“Luis, you’re a very bright student. You have the brains to make something of yourself. But only if you use the brains God gave you in the right way. Going with Jorge is only going to get you into trouble. You know that, don’t you?”

“I guess so.”

“Then why don’t you come with me to the planetarium? It could be the turning point of your whole life.”

“Maybe,” Luis conceded reluctantly. He knew for certain that if he went to the planetarium, Jorge would be furious. Sooner or later there would be a beating. Jorge had sent more than one-kid to the hospital. Everybody knew that sooner or later Jorge was going to kill somebody; it was just a matter of time. He had no self-control once he started beating up on somebody.

“Are you afraid of Jorge?” Ricardo asked.

“No!” Luis said it automatically. It was a lie and they both knew it.

Ricardo smiled benignly. “Then there’s no reason for you not to come to the planetarium with me. Is there?”

Luis’s shoulders sagged. If I don’t go with him he’ll know I’m chicken. If I do go with him, Jorge’s gonna pound the shit outta me.

Ricardo got to his feet and put one hand on Luis’s shoulder. “Come on with me, Luis,” he commanded. “There’s a much bigger world out there and it’s time you started seeing it.”

They walked past Jorge, hanging in the hallway just outside the classroom door. Mr. Ricardo went past him as if he wasn’t even there. Luis saw the expression on Jorge’s face, though, and his knees could barely hold him up long enough to get to Ricardo’s ancient Camaro.

The outer office of Senator O’Hara’s walnut-paneled suite had been turned into something of a theater. All the desks had been pushed to one side of the generous room and the central section filled with folding chairs. Almost his entire staff was seated there, facing the big hologram plate that had been set up on the wall across from the windows. On a table to one side of the screen rested a single VK helmet, a set of data gloves, and the gray box of a computer.

The stall had been buzzing with anticipation when the senator pushed in through the hallway door. Instantly, though, all their talk stopped. I hey went silent, as if somebody had snapped off the audio.

“All excited like a bunch of pissant children,” the senator grumbled to himself. “Half of ’em would vote in favor of another Mars mission, the young fools.”

O’Hara snorted disdainfully as he wheeled up the central aisle among the chairs. Turning his powerchair smartly to face his staffers, he saw that they were trying to look as blank and uninvolved as possible. Like kids eager to see a forbidden video trying to mask their enthusiasm as long as he was watching them.

“I know what you all think,” he said, his voice a grating bullfrog’s croak. “Well, I’m going to surprise you.”

And with that, he guided his chair to the VR rig and the two technicians, both women, standing by it.

“I’m going to use the rig myself,” he announced to his staff. Their shock was visible. Even Kaiser looked surprised, the fat sycophant.

Chuckling, he went on, “I his Mars hoopla is the biggest damned boondoggle pulled over on the American taxpayer since the days of the Apollo project. But if anybody in this room plugs himself into the landing, it’s going to be me.”

Kaiser looked especially crestfallen. He’s the one who won the lottery, Senator O’Hara figured. Thought you’d be the one to plug in, did you? O’Hara chuckled inwardly at the disappointment on his aide’s face.

“You all can see what I’m experiencing on the hologram screen,” the senator said as the technicians began to help him worm his hands into the data gloves.

An unhappy murmuring filled the room.

“I’ve always said that this Mars business is hooey. I want to experience it for myself—see what these fancy astronauts and scientists are actually going to do up there—so’s nobody can say that I haven’t given the opposition every possible opportunity to show me their point of view.”

One of the technicians slipped the helmet over the senator’s head. He stopped her from sliding down the visor long enough to say, “I always give the other side a fair break. Then I wallop ’em!”

The visor came down and for a brief, terrifying moment he was in utter darkness.

For nearly half an hour the oversized TV screen had been split between a newscaster chattering away and an unmoving scene of a rusty-red, rock-strewn landscape on Mars. Zacharias kept pacing back and forth in the back of the big room, while his guests seemed to edge closer and closer to the giant screen.

“We are seeing Mars as it was some eleven minutes ago,” the newscaster intoned solemnly, “since the red planet is so distant from Earth that it takes that long for television signals to reach us.”

“He’s only told us that twenty-six times in the past five minutes,” somebody in the crowd muttered.

“Hush! They should be coming down any moment now.”

“According to the mission schedule,” the newscaster went on, “and taking into account the lag in signal transmission time, we should be seeing the parachute of the landing craft within seconds.”

The unmanned landers had been on the ground for days, Zacharias knew, automatically preparing the base camp for the ten astronauts and scientists of the landing team. Over the past half hour the news broadcast had shown the big plastic bubble of the main tent, the four unmanned landers scattered around it, and the relatively clear, level section of the Sinai plain where the crewed landing craft would put down.

If all went well.

No sonic boom, Zack knew. The Martian air’s too thin and the lander slows down too high up, anyway. The aerobrake should have deployed by now; the glow from the heat shield should be visible, if only they had programmed the cameras to look for it.

What am I saying? he asked himself, annoyed, nervous. It all happened eleven minutes ago. They’re on the ground by now. Or dead.

“There it is!” the announcer yelped.

The crowd of guests surged forward toward the TV screen. Zacharias was drawn, too, despite himself. He remembered the two launch failures that he had witnessed. Put the project back years; almost killed it. After the second he vowed never to watch a rocket launch again.

Yet now he stared like any gaping tourist at the TV image of a beautiful white parachute against the deep blue Martian sky. He was glad that the meteorologists had been able to learn how to predict the planet-wide dust storms that turned the sky pink for months afterward. They had timed the landing for the calmest possible weather.

The chute grew until he could see the lander beneath it, swaying slightly, like a big ungainly cylinder of polished aluminum.

They all knew that the landing craft would jettison the chute at a preset altitude but they all gasped nonetheless. The lander plummeted downward and Zack’s heart constricted beneath his ribs.

Then the landing rockets fired, barely visible in the TV cameras, and the craft slowed. It came down gracefully, with dignity, kicking up a miniature sandstorm of its own as its spraddling legs extended and their circular footpads touched gently the iron rust sands of Mars.

Everyone in the big rec room cheered. All except Zack, who pushed his way to the bar. He felt badly in need of fortification.

“Nuthin’s happ’nin,” Douggie complained. “Can’t I watch Surfer Morphs?”

“Wait a minute,” his father said easily. “They’re just waiting for the dust to settle and the rocket nozzles to cool down.”

Debbie saw the two virtual reality helmets on the coffee table in front of them. Two pairs of gloves, also. Doug and Douggie can use them, she thought. Not me.

“Look!” the child cried. “The door’s open!”

That should be me, Debbie thought as she watched the twelve-person team file down the lander’s impossibly slim ladder to set their booted feet on the surface of Mars. I should be with them.

Douggie was quickly bored with their pretentious speeches: men and women from nine different nations, each of them pronouncing a statement written by teams of public relations experts and government bureaucrats. Debbie felt bored, too.

But then, “Two of us have virtual reality sensors built into our helmets and gloves,” said Philip Daguerre, the astronaut who commanded the ground team.

Debbie had almost had an affair with the handsome French Canadian. Would things have worked out differently if I’d had a fling with him? Probably not. She knew of three other women who had, and all three of them were still as Earthbound as she.

“Once we activate the VR system, those of you on Earth who have the proper equipment will be able to see what we see, feel what we feel, experience what we experience as we make our first excursion onto the surface of Mars.”

Doug picked up one of the VR helmets.

“Can’t I watch Surfer Morphs?” their son whined.

It wasn’t until Mr. Ricardo handed him the VR helmet that Luis realized his teacher had sacrificed his own chance to experience the Mars team’s first excursion.

There were only ten VR rigs in the whole planetarium theater. The nine others were already taken by adults. Maybe they were college students, Luis thought; they looked young enough to be, even though almost everybody else in the big circular room was his teacher’s age or older.

“Don’t you want it?” Luis asked Ricardo.

His teacher made a strange smile. “It’s for you, Luis. Put it on.”

He thinks he’s doin’ me a big favor, Luis thought. He don’ know that Jorge’s gonna beat the crap outta me for this. Or maybe he knows an’ don’ care.

With trembling hands, Luis slipped the helmet over his head, then worked the bristly gloves onto his hands. Ricardo still had that strange, almost sickly smile as he slid the helmet’s visor down, shutting out Luis’s view.

As he sat there in utter darkness he heard Ricardo’s voice, muffled by the helmet, say, “Enjoy yourself, Luis.”

Yeah, Luis thought. Might as well enjoy myself. I’m sure gonna pay for this later on.

Senator O’Hara held his breath. All he could hear from inside the darkness of the helmet was the faint chugging of his heart pump. It was beating fast, for some reason.

He didn’t want to seem cowardly in front of his entire staff, but the darkness and the closeness of the visor over his lace was stifling him, choking him. He wanted to cry out, to yank the damned helmet off and be done with it.

With the abruptness of an eyeblink he was suddenly looking out at a flat plain of rust red. Rocks and boulders were littered everywhere like toys scattered by an army of thoughtless children. The sky was deep blue, almost black. A soft hushing sound filled his ears, like a distant whisper.

“That’s the wind,” said a disembodied voice. “It’s blowing a stiff ninety knots, according to our instruments, but the air here is so thin that I can’t feel it at all.”

I’m on Mars! the Senator said to himself. It’s almost like actually being there in person.

It’s just like we expected it to be, Jerome Zacharias thought. We could have saved a lot of money by just sending automated probes.

“Over that horizon, several hundred kilometers,” Valerii Mikoyan was saying in flat midwestern American English, “lies the Tharsis bulge and the giant shield volcanoes, which we will explore by remote-controlled gliders and balloons later in this mission. And in this direction…”

Zack’s view shifted across the landscape quickly enough to make him feel a moment of giddiness.

“…Just over that line of low hills, is the Valles Marineris. We are going to ride the rover there as soon as the vehicle is checked out.”

Why don’t I feel excited? Zack asked himself. I’m like a kid on Christmas morning, after all the presents have been unwrapped.

For a moment Debbie was startled when Doug solemnly picked up one of the VR helmets and put it on her, like a high priest crowning a new queen.

She was sitting in the springy little metal jumpseat of the cross-country rover, her hands running along the control board, checking out all its systems. Solar panels OK. Transformers. Backup fuel cells. Sensors on and running. Communications gear in the green.

“OK,” said the astronaut driving the buggy. “We are ready to roll.” It might as well have been her own voice, Debbie thought.

“Clear for canyon excursion,” came the mission controller’s voice in her earphones. The mission controller was up in the command spacecraft, hanging high above the Plain of Sinai in a synchronous orbit.

With transmission delays of ten to twenty minutes, mission control of the Mars expedition could not be on Earth; it had to be right there, on the scene.

“Go for sightseeing tour,” Debbie acknowledged. “The bus is leaving.”

Luis watched the buggy depart the base area. But only for a moment. He had work to do. He was a geologist, he heard in his earphones, and his job was to take as wide a sampling of rocks as he could and pack them away in one of the return craft.

“First we photograph the field we’re going to work in.” Luis felt a square object in his left hand, then saw a Polaroid camera. He held it up to the visor of his helmet, sighted and clicked.

“What we’re going to be doing is to collect what’s called contingency samples,” the geologist was saying. “We want to get them aboard a return vehicle right away, the first few hours on the surface, so that if anything happens to force us to make an unscheduled departure, we’ll have a decent sampling of surface materials to take back with us.”

At first Luis had found it confusing to hear the guy’s voice in his head when it looked like he himself was walking around on Mars and picking up the rocks. He could feel them in his hands! Feel their heft, the grittiness of their surfaces. It was like the first time he had tried acid; he’d been inside his own head and outside, looking back at himself, both at the same time. That shook him up so much he had never dropped acid again.

But this was kind of different. Fun. He was the frigging geologist. He was there on Mars. He was doing something. Something worthwhile.

Collecting rocks, Senator O’Hara growled inwardly. We’ve spent a hundred billion dollars so some pointy-headed scientists can add to their rock collection. Oh, am I going to crucify them as soon as the committee reconvenes!

Zack felt as if he were jouncing and banging inside the surface rover as it trundled across the Martian landscape. He knew he was sitting in a comfortable rocking chair in his big library/bar/entertainment room. Yet he was looking out at Mars through the windshield of the rover. His hands were on its controls and he could feel every shudder and bounce of the sixwheeled vehicle.

But there’s nothing out there that we haven’t already seen with the unmanned landers, Zack told himself, with mounting despair. We’ve even brought back samples, under remote control. What are the humans on this expedition going to be able to accomplish that will be worth the cost of sending them?

Easy now, Debbie told herself. Don’t let yourself get carried away. You’re not on Mars. You’re sitting in your own living room.

Luis could feel the weight of the rock. It was much lighter than a rock that size would be on Earth. And red, like rust. Holding it in his left hand, he chipped at it with the hammer in his right.

“Just want to check the interior,” he heard the geologist say, as if he were saying it himself.

The rock cracked in two. Luis saw a tracery of fine lines honeycombing the rock’s insides.

“Huh. Never saw anything like that before.” And the geologist/Luis carefully put both halves of the split rock into a container, sealed it, then marked with a pen its location in the Polaroid photograph of the area he had taken when he had started collecting.

This is fun, Luis realized. I wish I could do it for real. Like, be a real astronaut or scientist. But reality was something very different. Jorge was reality. Yeah, Luis said to himself, I could be on Mars myself some day. If Jorge don’ kill me first.

Bored with the rock-sampling task, Senator O’Hara lifted the visor of his VR helmet.

“Get me out of this rig,” he told the two startled technicians. Turning to Kaiser, he said, “You can try it if you like. I’m going into my office for a drink.”

The ground was rising slightly as the rover rolled along. “Should be at the rim in less than a minute,” the driver said.

Zack felt his hand ease back on the throttle slightly. “Don’t want to fall over. It’s a long way down.”

Nothing ahead of them but the dull, rock-strewn ground and the deep blue sky.

Debbie checked the timeline on the dashboard computer screen and slowed the rover even more. “We ought to be just about… there!”

The rim of the grandest canyon in the Solar System sliced across her field of view. Craning her neck slightly, she could see the cliffs tumbling away, down and down and down, toward the valley floor miles below.

Mist! The floor of the valley was wreathed in mists that wafted and undulated slowly, rising and falling as Zack watched.

It’s the wrong time of the year for mists to form, he knew. We’ve never seen this before.

As far as the eye could see, for dozens of miles, hundreds of miles, the mist billowed softly, gently along the floor of Valles Marineris. The canyon was so wide that he could not see the opposite wall; it was beyond the horizon. Nothing but gentle, whitish mist. Clouds of mystery. Clouds of excitement.

My gosh, Zack thought, do they extend the whole three-thousand-mile length of the valley?

Luis roamed across the rust-colored sandy landscape, staring at more rocks than he had ever seen in his whole life. Some the size of pebbles, a few bigger than a man. How’d they get there? Where’d they come from?

And what was over the horizon? The geologist said something about big volcanoes and mountains higher than anything on Earth. Luis thought it’d be great to see them, maybe climb them.

Debbie stared at the mists billowing along the valley floor. They seemed to be breathing, like something alive. They’ve got to be water vapor, she thought. Got to be! And where’s there’s water there could be life. Maybe. Maybe.

We’ve got to get down onto the valley floor. Got to!

Zack felt like a child, the first time his father had taken him up in a helicopter. The higher they went, the more there was to see. The more he saw, the more eager he was to see more.

Staring out at the mist-shrouded rift valley, he finally realized that this was the difference between human explorers and machines. What’s beyond the horizon? What’s beneath those mists? He wanted to know, to explore. He had to seek the answers.

He realized he was crying, tears of joy and wonder streaming down his cheeks. He was glad that none of the others could see it, inside the VR helmet, but he knew that neither embarrassment nor disapproval mattered in the slightest. What’s beyond the horizon? That was the eternal question and the only thing that really counted.

Yeah, this is great, Luis thought. For these guys. For scientists and astronauts. It’s their life. But it’s not for me. When I leave here tonight it’s back to the ’hood, and Jorge, and all that crap.

Then a powerful surge of new emotion rose within him. Why can’t I go to Mars for real someday? Mr. Ricardo says I’m smart enough to get a scholarship to college.

Fuck Jorge. Let him do what he wants to me. I’ll fight him back. I’ll kick the shit outta him if that’s what I gotta do to get to Mars. He’ll have to kill me to keep me away from this.

Senator O’Hara was mixing his third martini when Kaiser came in, looking bleary-eyed.

“You been in the VR rig all this time?” O’Hara asked. He knew Kaiser did not drink, so he didn’t bother offering his aide anything.

“Mostly,” the pudgy little man said. O’Hara could see his aide’s bald head was gleaming with perspiration.

“Bad enough we have to waste a hundred billion on this damned nonsense. Is it going to tie up my entire staff for the rest of the day?”

“And then some,” Kaiser said, heading for the bar behind the Senator’s desk.

O’Hara watched, dumbfounded, as his aide poured himself a stiff belt of whiskey.

He swallowed, coughed, then swallowed again. With tears in his eyes, he went to the leather sofa along the side wall of the office and sat down like a very tired man.

O’Hara stared at him.

Holding the heavy crystal glass in both hands, Kaiser said, “You’re going to have to change your stand on this Mars business.”

“What?”

“You’ve got to stop opposing it.”

“Are you crazy?”

“No, but you’d be crazy to try to stand a-gainst it now,” Kaiser said, more firmly than the senator had ever heard him speak before.

“You’re drunk.”

“Maybe I am. I’ve been on Mars, Teddy. I’ve stood on fuckin’ Mars!”

Kaiser had never used the senator’s first name before, let alone called him “Teddy.”

“You’d just better watch your tongue,” O’Hara growled.

“And you’d better watch your ass,” Kaiser snapped. “Do you have any idea of how many people are experiencing this Mars landing? Not just watching it, but experiencing it—as if they were there.”

O’Hara shrugged. “Twenty million, maybe.”

“I made a couple of phone calls before I came in here. Thirty-six million VR sets in the US, and that’s not counting laboratories and training simulators. There must be more than thirty million voters on Mars right now.”

“Bullcrap.”

“Yeah? By tomorrow there won’t be a VR rig left in the stores. Everybody’s going to want to be on Mars.”

O’Hara made a sour face.

“I’ll bet that half the voters in dear old Pennsylvania are on Mars right this instant. You try telling them it’s all a waste of money.”

“But it is!” the senator insisted. “The biggest waste of taxpayer funds since SDL”

“It might be,” Kaiser said, somewhat more moderately. “You might be entirely right and everybody else totally wrong. But if you vote that way in the committee you’ll get your ass whipped in November.”

“You told me just the opposite no more’n ten days ago. The polls show—”

“The polls are going to swing around 180 degrees. Guaranteed.”

O’Hara glared at his aide.

“Trust me on this, Teddy. I’ve never let you down before, have I? Vote for continued Mars exploration or go out and find honest work.”

With enormous reluctance, Debbie pulled the helmet off and removed the data gloves. Doug was still in his rig, totally absorbed. He might as well be on Mars for real, Debbie thought.

Shakily, she got up from the living room sofa and went to Douggie’s room. Her son was watching three-dimensional cartoons.

“Come with me, young man,” she said in her not-to-be-argued-with voice. The boy made a face, but turned off his 3-D set and marched into the living room with his mother.

She helped him into the gloves and helmet.

“Aw, Ma,” he whined, “do I hafta?”

“Yes,” she whispered to her son. “In a few years, you would never forgive yourself if you didn’t.”

And she left her son and her husband on Mars and went back to her computer to erase her letter of resignation.

There’s a lot of work to be done, she told herself. The exploration of Mars is just beginning.