Mars

SOL 9: EVENING

“He died of natural causes, then,” Jamie said.

Vosnesensky shrugged. “But would he have died if he had remained on Earth? Or if he had not gone on the EVA?”

Jamie shrugged back at the Russian. “We’ll never know.”

They were in the cramped confines of the airlock, slowly, laboriously pulling themselves out of their hard suits, tired from the day’s work, depressed by the news from orbit.

“I still don’t see why Li had to order us to return to base,” Jamie grumbled, “Doesn’t he understand what we’ve found here?”

“What have we found?” Vosnesensky smiled tolerantly. “An optical illusion?”

“Well… maybe,” Jamie admitted.

“When we get back to the base we can ask the team in orbit for computer enhancement of the videotapes. If there is any chance that the rock formations are man-made… er, Martian-made—we will certainly return here.”

“It’s more than that, Mikhail. This canyon is an open book of the history of the planet. We should be here, studying what the rocks have to tell us. Joanna and the life-sciences people should be down there where the mists hang around all day. That’s the best chance for life to be found.”

Vosnesensky had peeled down to his water-tubed skivvies. Jamie was still in his hard-shell pants, leaning against the airlock bulkhead to tug off a boot.

The Russian looked at the red dust on Jamie’s boots and sniffed loudly. “It smells different from the moon.”

“What?”

“After a moon walk your shelter smells as if someone had shot off a revolver inside. The lunar dust that clings to your suit and boots has a burnt odor to it. This stuff—” he fingered the thin film of rusty powder on the sleeve of his empty hard suit “—this Martian dust smells different.”

Jamie wrinkled his nose. “Now that you mention it—it smelled the same way back at the dome, didn’t it?”

Nodding, Vosnesensky pulled on his hard suit’s arm; it swung upward with the slight hissing sound of its slick Teflon shoulder joints.

“Smell.”

Jamie sniffed at the metallic arm. Pungent. Harsh. Then he pulled one of his own gloves from the rack where he had tucked them. Somewhere deep in his memory the picture of an approaching thunderstorm formed itself, strange eerie afternoon light, the summer air heavy and still. Lightning flickering against approaching black clouds.

“Yeah. Strange smell. Almost like… could it be ozone?”

Vosnesensky rubbed at his eyes. “Yes, I think you are right. Ozone.”

“The soil’s loaded with superoxides,” Jamie said.

“And in the high temperature inside here they are breaking down, baking out of the dust.”

Jamie’s own eyes were smarting now. The rover’s airlock was much smaller than the clean-up area in the dome. “Maybe we ought to get out of the airlock.”

“Not until we clean the suits.”

Jamie finished pulling off his boots and wriggled out of the hard suit’s pants. They vacuumed their suits thoroughly, yet the pungent odor remained in the airlock. Then he followed Vosnesensky through the hatch that led into the main compartment of the rover’s forward section.

Blinking his eyes, Jamie said, “Wow, it feels like downtown Houston in there.”

“The ozone will break down quickly enough,” said Vosnesensky. “It becomes molecular oxygen. Harmless.”

Scanning the shelves of equipment neatly stacked on either side of him Jamie muttered, “We have a GC/MS in here, don’t we? They’re not both back in the equipment section.”

Vosnesensky pointed to the lowest shelf. “That is the quadruple device. The magnetic one is in the equipment module.”

“This’ll do just fine.” Jamie knelt down to pull the instrument from the shelf. The gas chromatograph/mass spectrometer analyzed the chemical composition of materials, virtually atom by atom. It was neatly packaged in a gray plastic casing, surprisingly light. The manufacturer’s logo identified it as Japanese.

“I want to monitor the levels of ozone in the airlock. See how it decomposes, what else the soil might be outgassing.”

“Good,” said Vosnesensky.

“I’ll set it up in the airlock and connect it to the secondary display screen in the cockpit. You set up dinner. I’m starving.”

The Russian’s dark brows knitted slightly. “You are giving me orders? I am the commander.”

Jamie was already starting to open the airlock hatch, the spectrometer in one arm resting on his hip. He glanced back over his shoulder at the cosmonaut.

“I give the orders, Yankee. You set up the GC/MS while I prepare our meal.”

“Right, boss,” said Jamie, laughing.

Joanna watched the display screen as Vosnesensky and then Jamie Waterman made their evening reports. She was sitting on a spider-legged stool at the workbench in the biology lab, cocooned in the bulky equipment that surrounded her. She felt almost at home in the laboratory area; the microscopes and isolation boxes and racks of glassware made her feel more comfortable and protected here than in the bare narrow cubicle that served as her sleeping quarters.

She had patched her lab computer into the base’s communications system so that she could see the excursion team’s report in some privacy. Jamie’s face looked serious yet happy. He was not really smiling, but there was an excitement in his eyes that she had never seen before as he described his day’s observations.

“This is where we should have landed,” he was saying, looking out from the screen as if he knew his eyes would meet hers. “There’s moisture here and I’m willing to bet that the temperatures down at the bottom of the valley are significantly warmer than up here on the plain.”

He went on, his eyes sparkling as he described the rock formations that looked to him so much like the adobe cliff dwellings of southwestern America.

“He’s a handsome red devil, isn’t he?”

Joanna whirled on the stool. Tony Reed was standing there, one arm casually leaning on the transparent plastic hood of an empty isolation box. He wore a black turtleneck shirt beneath his tan coveralls. One corner of his lips was curved slightly in a strange sardonic smile. Joanna stared at him for a wordless moment. It was almost as if Reed’s face had been split in two: half his face was smiling, the other half not.

“Jamie makes a strong case for studying the canyon,” she said. “The chances for finding living organisms, or even the fossils of extinct species…”

Reed moved closer to her, pulled up the other stool, and straddled it. Gesturing toward the screen he said, “Our Indian friend seems to think he’s found the ruins of an ancient village. How preposterous.”

Sudden anger flared within Joanna. “How do you know it is preposterous? How can we say anything about this world until we have explored all of it?”

Reed’s smile widened. “I’m not a betting man, but I’d be willing to wager long odds that there are no ancient civilizations to be found on Mars.”

“Yes, and a century and a half ago you would have bet that Schliemann would never find the ruins of Troy.”

“My, aren’t we fiery!” Reed laughed.

Joanna turned back to the computer, but Vosnesensky’s heavy-featured, morose face filled the screen now. She clicked it off.

“You’re right, of course,” Reed admitted easily. “One mustn’t jump to conclusions—either way.”

Joanna accepted it as an apology.

“Jamie’s doing good work, isn’t he?” Reed asked rhetorically. “I’m glad we fought to get him onto the team.”

“He is a great asset,” Joanna agreed.

“Much better than Hoffman would have been, although I wonder how DiNardo would have fared here.”

“What do you mean?”

Leaning both his elbows on the lab bench behind him, Reed appeared as relaxed as if he were in a London pub. “Well, DiNardo has this enormous reputation, you know. If he had seen what Jamie’s seen out there at the Grand Canyon, I wonder if his prestige would have been big enough to get us to move the camp there.”

“The entire base?”

Reed cocked his head slightly, sending a boyish lock of sandy hair over his forehead. “If Jamie’s right and the canyon is the best place to look for life, then we should at least set up a secondary camp there, don’t you think?”

Nodding slowly, Joanna said, “But we can’t pick up this entire dome and move it.”

“With that silly Japanese getting himself killed,” Reed answered, “the mission controllers probably won’t allow us to do anything that’s even a millimeter off our official schedule.”

“But the schedule was meant to be flexible! They cannot hold us to a preset routine, as if we were puppets.”

“You think not? I can’t help supposing, though, that if DiNardo were here we’d already be working out a plan to set up a camp on the floor of the canyon.”

“That is what Jamie wants to do, is it not?”

“Rather. But he’s in trouble with his own politicos back in the States, you know, over this Navaho nonsense he said when we landed. I doubt that his recommendations would be accepted by the powers that be.”

Joanna studied the English physician’s face. He was no longer grinning. He seemed completely serious.

“I can speak to my father about it,” she said. “I am sure he already knows about the possibility—or he will, as soon as today’s data reaches mission control.”

“Yes, surely your father would be helpful. I was thinking more of DiNardo, though. If we can get his agreement that we should set up a secondary camp in the canyon, that would help enormously, I should think.”

Joanna felt a thrill of excitement run through her. “Yes! Of course! They could not fail to agree with Father DiNardo.”

“Hardly,” said Reed.

“I will contact him myself,” Joanna said. “And suggest to my father that he enlist Father DiNardo’s aid, as well.”

“Yes, that’s the ticket.”

“I will send a message now, this evening. Right away.”

“Good show,” said Reed. He straightened up and got off the stool. Leaning closer to Joanna he whispered, “We can accomplish a great deal, you and I, working behind the scenes.”

“Oh, yes. Thank you. I am grateful for your help.”

“Think nothing of it, dear lady.”

But as he strolled casually away from the biology lab back toward his own cubicle, Reed thought: She’s hot for Jamie, that’s for certain. Now the game is to work things out so that he remains out there in the Grand Canyon and she stays here. A thousand kilometers or so between them ought to give me enough working room. I’ll have her, sooner or later. All I need is patience. And a little help, which she herself will provide. How nice!

He actually whistled, tunelessly, as he strode past the wardroom where most of the others sat huddled together, discussing the day’s events like a gaggle of schoolchildren. Reed ignored them and headed for his cot and his dreams.

Jamie and Vosnesensky sat in the rover’s cockpit as they made their evening report. Once they were finished with their official duty, Pete Connors filled them in on the reactions to Konoye’s accident. While he watched the astronaut’s troubled features on the display screen in the center of the cockpit control panel, Jamie glanced at the secondary screen. The glowing curves of its graphic display showed that the ozone outgassing from the Martian dust in the airlock was now down almost to zero.

“The accident’s got everybody pretty down,” Connors was saying worriedly. “Dr. Li has been on the horn with Kaliningrad for hours now. God knows what they’re going to do.”

“But nothing went wrong with the equipment,” Jamie said. “The cosmonaut and the rest of the team worked just the way they’ve been trained. Konoye just had a stroke.”

“Or panicked for some reason and then suffered the stroke,” Vosnesensky said, heavy with gloom.

Connors was also deeply somber. “Whatever happened, the politicians are going apeshit. It doesn’t look good to have somebody killed.

“He wasn’t killed,” Jamie snapped. “He died.”

“D’you think that matters in Tokyo? Or Washington?” Connors growled.

“No, I guess it doesn’t.”

Vosnesensky said, “We will start back at first light tomorrow morning, as ordered. In the meantime, I will transmit to you all the videotape and other data we have accumulated.”

“Okay. I’ll set up the computer to receive your transmission.”

He’s not even mentioning the cliff dwellings, Jamie realized. Not a word about them.

“Can I talk with Dr. Patel, please?” he asked Connors. “Is he there?”

“Sure.”

In a few moments Connors’s image was replaced by the round, dark face of the geologist from India. Both the geologists on this mission are Indians, Jamie thought without humor. We can thank Columbus and his wacky sense of direction for that.

Patel’s dark skin seemed to shine always, as if covered with a fine sheen of perspiration or newly rubbed with oil. His eyes were large and liquid, giving him the innocent look of a child near tears.

“I would appreciate it, Rava, if you’d get O’Hara to put the videotape footage we shot today through the image-enhancement program,” Jamie said to his fellow geologist.

“Is there something in particular you wish me to examine?”

Jamie realized his fellow geologist had not bothered to listen to his oral report. Probably too busy gossiping with the rest of them about the accident.

“You’ll see a formation in a cleft set into the cliff face,” he said. After a moment’s hesitation, “It— it almost looks like buildings erected there deliberately.”

Those liquid dark eyes went even rounder. “Buildings?” Patel squeaked. “Artificial buildings?”

Jamie forced himself to state calmly, “The odds against them being artifacts are tremendous; you know that as well as I do.” He took a breath. “But they sure remind me of the cliff dwellings I’ve seen in the southwest.”

Patel blinked several times. Then he said, “Yes, of course. I will study the tapes most carefully. I will ask Dr. O’Hara to put them through the image-enhancement program. By the time you return here we will have the data thoroughly analyzed, I assure you.”

Jamie said, “Thanks.” In his gut he felt an irrational suspicion that they would distort the data, mess up the images, fix it so that the cliff dwellings he had seen would look like nothing more than weathered old rock.

He crawled into his bunk at last. Vosnesensky turned out all the lights except the dim telltales on the control panel up in the cockpit.

“Sleep well, Jamie,” the Russian said, yawning as he stretched out in the bunk on the opposite wall.

“You too, Mikhail.”

The soft night wind of Mars brushed past the parked rover, stroking its metallic skin mere inches away from Jamie’s listening ears. He strained to catch a hint of a voice in the wind, even the moaning wail of a long-dead Martian spirit. Nothing.

No ghosts haunting the night here, Jamie said drowsily to himself. He felt disappointed.