Man Plus

Fifteen How the Good News Went from Mars to Earth

When we first realized that there was a serious risk that a major war would destroy civilization and make the Earth uninhabitable — which is to say, shortly after we collectively began to realize anything at all — we decided to take steps to colonize Mars.

It wasn’t easy for us.

The whole human race was in trouble. Energy was in short supply the world over, which meant fertilizer was expensive, which meant people were hungry, which meant explosively dangerous tensions. The world’s resources were none too ample for the bare necessity of keeping billions of people alive. We had to find ways to divert capacities that were badly needed elsewhere to long-range planning. We set up three separate think tanks and gave them all the facilities we could steal from daily needs. One explored options for solving the growing tensions on Earth. One was charged with setting up refuges on Earth itself, so that even if a thermonuclear war did occur a small fraction of us could survive.

The third looked into extraterrestrial possibilities.

In the beginning it seemed as though we had a thousand options to choose from, and each of the three major tracks had branches that looked hopeful. One by one the tracks closed off. Our best estimates — not the ones we gave the President of the United States, but the private ones we showed to nobody but ourselves — were of point nine to ten nines probability of thermonuclear war within a decade; and we closed down the center for solving international tensions in the first year. Setting up refuges was a little more hopeful. It developed that worst-case analysis indicated a few places on the Earth that would be unlikely to experience direct attack — Antarctica, parts of the Sahara, even some of Australia and a number of islands. Ten sites were selected. Each one had only a point zero one or less probability of being destroyed; if all ten were considered, the probability that they would all be destroyed was relatively insignificant. But fine-grain analysis showed that there were two flaws. For one, we could not be sure how much long-life isotope would remain in the atmosphere after such a war, and the indications were that there would be excessive levels of ionizing radiation for as much as a thousand years. Over that time scale, the probability that even one of the refuges would survive became far less than point five. Worst of all, there was the necessity for capital investment. To build the refuges underground and fill them with the immense quantity needed of complex electronic equipment, generators, fuel reserves and so on was, as a practical matter, impossible. There was no way for us to get the money.

So we terminated that think tank and put all the resources we could manage into extraterrestrial colonization. At the beginning, that had looked like the least hopeful solution of all.

But — almost! — we had managed to make it work. When Roger Torraway landed, that completed the first and hardest step. By the time the ships that were following him reached their positions, in orbit or on the surface of the planet, we would be able, for the first time, to plan for a future, with the survival of the race assured.

So we watched with great satisfaction as Roger stepped out on the surface of the planet.

Roger’s backpack computer was a triumph of design. It had three separate systems, cross-linked and sharing facilities, but with enough redundancy so that all systems had point nine reliability at least until the 3070 backup computer reached orbit. One system mediated his perceptions. Another controlled the subsystems of nerve and muscle that let him walk and move. The third telemetered all of his inputs. Whatever he saw, we saw on Earth.

We had gone to some trouble to arrange this. By Shannon’s Law there was not enough band width to transmit everything, but we had included a random sampling feature. Approximately one bit per hundred was transmitted — first to the radio in the landing craft, where we had assigned one channel permanently for that purpose. Then it was rebroadcast to the orbiter, where General Hesburgh floated, watching the television screen while the calcium oozed out of his bones. From there, cleaned and amplified, it was burst-transmitted to whichever synchronous satellite of Earth was at that moment locked into both Mars and Goldstone. So what we all saw was only about one percent “real.” But that was enough. The rest was filled in by a comparison program we had written for the Goldstone receiver. Hesburgh saw only a series of stills; on Earth we broadcast what looked exactly like on-the-spot movies of whatever Roger saw.

So all over the Earth, on television sets in every country, people watched the beige and brown mountains that rose ten miles tall, saw the glint of Martian sunlight off the window frames of the lander, could even read the expression on Father Kayman’s face as he rose from prayer and for the first time looked out on Mars.

In the Under Palace in Peking the great lords of New People’s Asia interrupted a planning session to watch the screen. Their feelings were mixed. It was America’s triumph, not theirs. In the Oval Office President Deshatine’s joy was pure. Not only was the triumph American, it was personal; he was identified forever as the President who had established humanity on Mars. Almost everybody was at least a little joyous — even Dorrie Torraway, who sat in the private room at the back of her shop with her chin in her hands, studying the message of her husband’s eyes. And of course in the great white cube of the project outside of Tonka, Oklahoma, everyone left on the staff watched the pictures from Mars almost all the time.

They had plenty of leisure for that. They didn’t have much else to do. It was astonishing how empty the building became as soon as Roger was out of it.

They had all been rewarded, from the stockroom boys up: a personal commendation for everyone from the President, plus a thirty-day bonus leave and a jump in grade. Clara Bly used hers to finish up her long-delayed honeymoon. Weidner and Freeling took the time to write a rough draft of Brad’s paper, transmitting every paragraph to him in orbit as it came off their typewriters, and receiving his corrections via Goldstone. Vern Scanyon, of course, had a hero’s tour with the President, in fifty-four states and the principal cities of twenty foreign countries. Brenda Hartnett had appeared on television twice with her kids. They had been deluged with gifts. The widow of the man who had died to put Roger Torraway on Mars was now a millionaire. They had all had their hour of fame, as soon as the launch got off and Roger was en route, especially in those moments just before the landing.

Then the world looked out at Mars through the eyes of Roger, and the senses of the brother on Roger’s back, and all their fame blew away. From then on it was all Roger.

We watched too.

We saw Brad and Don Kayman in their suits, completing the pre-egress drill. Roger had no need of a suit. He stood on tiptoe at the door of the lander, poised, sniffing the empty wind, his great black wings hovering behind him and soaking in the rays of the disconcertingly tiny, but disconcertingly bright, sun. Through the TV pick-up inside the lander we saw Roger silhouetted against the dull beige and brown of the abrupt Martian horizon…

And then through Roger’s eyes we saw what he saw. To Roger, looking out on the bright, jewel-like colors of the planet he was meant to live on, it was a fairyland, beautiful and inviting.

The lander had stretched out skeletal magnesium steps to stroke the surface of Mars, but Roger didn’t need them. He jumped down, the wings fluttering — for balance, not for lift — and landed lightly on the chalky orange surface, where the wash of the landing rockets had scoured away the crust. He stood there for a moment, surveying his kingdom with the great faceted eyes. “Don’t rush things,” advised a voice in his head that came from Don Kayman’s suit radio. “Better go through the exercise list.”

Roger grinned without looking around; “Sure,” he said, and began to move away. First he walked, then trotted; then he began to run. If he had sped through the streets of Tonka, here he was a blur. He laughed out loud. He changed the frequency responses of his eyes, and the distant towering hills flashed bright blue, the flat plain a mosaic of greens and yellows and reds. “This is great!” he whispered, and the receivers at the lander picked up the subspoken words and passed them on to Earth.

“Roger,” said Brad petulantly, “I wish you’d take it easy until we get the jeep ready.”

Roger turned. The other two were back at the steps of the lander, deploying the Mars vehicle from its fold-down condition behind its hatch.

He bounded back toward them joyously. “Need help?”

They didn’t have to answer. They did need help; in their suits it was a major undertaking to slip the retaining strap off one of the basketwork wheels. “Move over,” he said, and quickly freed the wheels and stretched the stilted legs into stand-by position. The jeep had both: wheels for the flat parts, stilts for climbing. It was meant to be the most flexible vehicle man could make for getting around Mars, but it wasn’t. Roger was. When it was done he touched them and promised, “I won’t go out of line of sight.” And then he was gone, off to see the patches of color around a series of hummocks, Dali-bright and irresistible.

“That’s dangerous!” Brad grumbled over the radio. “Wait till we finish testing the jeep! If anything happens to you we’re in trouble.”

“Nothing will,” said Roger, “and no!” He couldn’t wait. He was using his body for what it had been built to do, and patience was gone. He ran. He jumped. He found himself two kilometers from the lander before he knew it; looked back, saw that they were creeping slowly after him and went on. His oxygenation system stepped up the pump-rate to compensate for the extra demands; his muscles met the challenge smoothly. It was not his muscles that propelled him but the servo-systems that had been built in instead; but it was the tiny muscles at the ends of the nerves that ordered the servos. All the practice paid off. It was no effort at all to reach two hundred kilometers an hour, leaping over small cracks and craters, bounding up and down the slopes of larger ones.

“Come back, Roger!” It was Don Kayman, sounding worried. A pause while Roger ran on; then a dizzying sense of movement in his vision, and another voice said, “Go back, Roger! It’s time.”

He stopped flatfooted, skidded, flailed with his wings against the almost indetectable air, almost fell and caught himself. The familiar voice chuckled, “Come on, honey! Be a good boy and go back now.”

Dorrie’s voice.

And out of the distant thin whirl of drifting sand the colors coalesced into the shape of Dorrie to match the voice of Dorrie, smiling, not ten meters away, long legs disappearing into shorts, a gay halter for a top, her hair blown in the breeze.

The radio voice in his head laughed, this time in the tones of Don Kayman. “Surprised you, didn’t we?”

It took a moment for Roger to reply. “Yeah,” he managed. “It was Brad’s idea. We taped Dorrie back on Earth. When you need an emergency signal, Dorrie will give it to you.”

“Yeah,” said Roger again. As he stared, the smiling figure turned wispy, the colors faded, and it disappeared.

He turned and went back. The return trip took a lot longer than the joyous outbound run, and the colors were no longer quite so bright.

Don Kayman drove the jeep steadily toward the trudging shape of Roger Torraway, trying to get the hang of staying in the plunging seat without being thrown back and forth into the restraining belts. It was in no way comfortable. The suit that had been tailored to his body had developed tight spots and loose ones in the long months up from Earth-or maybe, he reminded himself fairly, he was the one who had swelled a little in some places and shrunk in others — he had not, he conceded, been wholly diligent about his exercises. Also he had to go to the bathroom. There was relief plumbing in the suit. He knew how to use it, but he didn’t want to.

Above the discomfort was an overlay of envy and worry. The envy was a sin that he could purge himself of, whenever he could find someone to hear his confession — a venial sin at most, he thought, considering the manifest advantages Roger had over the other two. Worry was a worse sin, not against his God but against the success of the mission. It was too late to worry. Maybe it had been a mistake to set up the simulation of Roger’s wife to punch home urgent messages — at the time, he hadn’t known quite how complicated Roger’s feelings were about Dorrie. But it was too late to do anything about it.

Brad didn’t seem to have any worries. He was chuckling fondly over Roger’s performance. “Did you notice?” he was demanding. “Didn’t fall once! Perfect coordination. Normative match, bio and servo. I tell you, Don, we’ve got it knocked!”

“It’s a little early to tell,” Kayman said uneasily, but Brad went on. Kayman thought of turning off the voice in his suit helmet, but it was almost as easy to turn off his attention. He looked around him. They had landed near the sunrise terminator, but they had used more than half the Martian day in preexit check and in putting the jeep together. It was becoming late afternoon. They would have to be back before it was dark, he told himself. Roger would be able to navigate by starlight, but it would be chancier for Brad and him. Maybe some other time, after they had had the practice… He really wanted that very much, to stroll the ebony surface of a Barsoomian night, with the stars pinpoints of colored fire in a velvet black sky. But not yet.

They were on a great cratered plain. The size was hard to estimate at first. Looking around through his faceplate Kayman had trouble remembering how far away the mountains were. His mind knew, because he knew every grid-square of the Martian maps for two hundred kilometers around their impact point. But his senses were deceived by the absolutely transparent visibility. The mountains to the west, he was aware, were a hundred kilometers away and nearly ten kilometers high. They looked like nearby foothills.

He clutched the jeep down and stopped it; they were within a few meters of Roger. Brad fumbled himself free and slid clumsily out of the seat, lurching in an ungainly slow gait over toward Roger to study him. “Everything all right?” he said anxiously. “Of course it is; I can see that. How’s your balance? Close your eyes, will you — I mean, you know, shut off your vision.” He peered anxiously at the faceted hemispheres. “Did you? I can’t tell, you know.”

“I did,” said Roger through the radio in his head.

“Great! No sense of dizziness, eh? No trouble keeping your balance? Keeping your eyes closed,” he went on, circling Roger and staring at him from all angles, “swing your arms up and down a few times — fine! Now windmill them, opposite directions—” Kayman couldn’t see his face, but he could hear the broad grin in the tone of Brad’s voice. “Beautiful, Roger! Optimal all the way!”

“My congratulations to you both,” said Kayman, out of the vehicle and watching the performance. “Roger?”

The head turned toward him, and though there was nothing about the appearance of the eyes that changed, Kayman knew Roger was looking at him. “I only wanted to say,” he went on, not quite sure where the sentence was going to go, “that I’m — well, I’m sorry we sprang that bit about using Dorrie’s image to convey messages on you. I have a feeling we’ve given you too many surprises.”

“It’s all right, Don.” The trouble with Roger’s voice, Kayman reflected again, was that you couldn’t tell much from its tone.

“Having said that much,” he said, “I think I ought to tell you that we do have another surprise for you. A pleasant one, I think. Sulie Carpenter’s following us up here. Her ship should arrive in about five weeks.”

Silence, and no expression. “Why,” said Roger at last, “that’s very nice. She’s a fine person.”

“Yes.” But the conversation didn’t seem to have anywhere to go after that, and besides Brad was impatient to put Roger through a whole bending and stretching series. Kayman allowed himself the privileges of a tourist. He turned away, staring toward the distant mountains, squinted at the bright sun, which even the auto-darkening of his faceplate didn’t make quite comfortable, then looked around him. Clumsily he managed to kneel and to scoop up a clutch of pebbly dirt in his gloved hand. It would be his job next day to start the systematic collection of samples to return to Earth that was one minor task of the mission. Even after half a dozen manned landings and nearly forty instrumented missions, there was still an insatiable demand for samples of Martian soil in the laboratories of Earth. Right now, however, he was allowing himself to daydream. There was plenty of limonite in this sand, and the quartz pebbles were far from round; the edges were not sharp, but neither had they been milled to roundness. He scraped into the soil. A yellowish powder rested on top; underneath it the material was darker and coarser. There were shiny specks, almost like glass. Quartz? he wondered, and idly scooped around one.

He froze, his hands cupping an irregular rounded blob of crystal.

It had a stem. A stem that thrust down into the ground. That spread and divided into dark, rough-surfaced tendrils.

Roots.

Don Kayman jumped up, whirling on Roger and Brad. “Look!” he shouted, the object plucked free in his gauntleted hand. “Dear God in Heaven, look at this!”

And Roger, coming up out of a crouch, spun and leaped at him. One hand knocked the glittering crystal thing spinning fifty meters into the air, bending the metal of the gauntlet. Kayman felt a sharp, quick pain in that forearm and saw the other hand striking toward his faceplate like the claw of an angry Kodiak bear; and that was the last he saw.