Mars

SOL 15: AFTERNOON

“This is kind of awkward, Edith,” Jamie said into the camera.

He was sitting on the bunk of his privacy cubicle, the vidcam perched on the flimsy little desk opposite him, focused on his face. First thing in the morning, before his scheduled work hours, he had suited up and gone outside to take a few minutes’ worth of panoramic shots of the rocks and dunes and distant mountains in the area around the dome. Now he sat on his bunk, wondering what he should say to Edith.

“Yesterday we had a bit of a scare. Things still aren’t quite back to normal yet. A stray meteorite punctured our dome. Just a little puncture. We never even found the meteorite; it must’ve been so small it evaporated from the energy of the impact. But it leaked out some of our air and for a couple of minutes everything was pretty tense.”

He looked upward. The dome was bathed in sunlight. The pumps and fans were throbbing their usual low notes. Jamie could hear voices and the cowboy twang of a country-and-western song from somebody’s tape player.

“We’re still breathing pure oxygen in here. We’ve got to tiptoe around and be extremely careful. In a pure oxygen atmosphere, the slightest spark could set the whole dome on fire. The separators are accumulating nitrogen from the air outside, but we won’t be back on normal air for another day or two.

“There wasn’t any damage, except for the puncture itself, which Vosnesensky and Paul Abell fixed inside of a couple of minutes. I was outside when it happened and another micrometeorite scratched my helmet. Oh yes, Tony Reed knocked over a whole bottle full of vitamin pills. He’s getting kidded about being so clumsy.”

Jamie turned off the camera with the remote control box in his hand and made a wide, long, exaggerated yawn. The pure oxygen atmosphere seemed to be affecting his ears. They felt clogged, as if they needed to pop. The yawn helped, but not much.

Turning the camera on again, he continued, “The meteors were probably the last remains of an old, ancient comet. Just a bunch of stray pebbles floating around the solar system that happened to drift right into our spot on Mars. Couldn’t happen again in a million years.”

Jamie hesitated for an instant. There was hardly any more news to tell her.

“I sure appreciated the tape you sent. And I’m glad you’re moving up in the world. Going to New York must have taken a lot of guts. If there’s anything I can do, like an interview or some background information about our work here on the surface, just send a request through the mission directors and I’ll be happy to tell you whatever you need to know.”

Jamie stopped the vidcam again, thinking, How much can I really tell her? How much would the mission directors let me tell her? He decided for now to stick to science and stay away from politics and personalities.

“It turns out that there’s a lot more water beneath the ground than the earlier unmanned landers led us to believe. It’s frozen, of course. We’re sitting on top of an ocean of permafrost that probably extends all the way down to the Valles Marineris — the Grand Canyon of Mars, that is. Maybe farther, but we haven’t crossed the canyon and investigated the other side.”

Jamie described the brief traverse to the canyon and his hopes that he would be able to return there, skipping over the arguments and debates he had triggered. He carefully avoided mentioning the “village”; time enough for that when we’ve got definite evidence, one way or the other, he thought. Instead, he told Edith about the copper-green rock they had found. Then he ran out of things to say.

Fingering the remote control nervously, he finally flicked the camera on again. “I’m glad all that nonsense about my speaking Navaho has settled down. At least, I presume it has. We haven’t seen much in the way of news here—mostly BBC stuff.”

He clicked it off again, licked his lips while he thought of what else he could tell Edith.

“Well, I guess that’s about it for now. We haven’t found any signs of life yet, living or fossils, but maybe conditions down in the Grand Canyon will be more conducive. Monique Bonnet has a nice little garden growing out of Martian soil, using Martian water for it. I don’t know what a few days of pure oxygen is going to do for her plants, though. We all go over and breathe on them now and then, to give them some carbon dioxide. It was nice of you to call me, Edith. I’ll be talking with you some more, later on.”

He turned the vidcam off for good, thinking, I can edit this tape for Al and for my parents and have mission control send it to them. That’ll surprise them. Maybe my parents will even send me a message in return.

Seiji Toshima had listened to all the arguments raging between Waterman and the rest of the team without once opening his mouth. Their fight had nothing to do with him, and he had been trained from earliest childhood to refrain from interjecting his own opinions where they had not been specifically requested.

But now Waterman was asking, not for his opinion, but for knowledge. That was different. Toshima was happy to exchange knowledge with the American Indian. After all, that was the purpose of this expedition to Mars, was it not? To gain knowledge. And what good is knowledge if it is not exchanged with others?

Jamie Waterman sat on a spindly-legged plastic stool in the center of the Japanese meteorologist’s laboratory. Toshima’s area had been dubbed “weather central” by the team. It was the smallest of all the labs, as neat and gleamingly clean as if a squad of maintenance robots scrubbed and dusted the place every half hour.

The area looked like a showcase for an electronics shop. Where the other scientists’ workbenches were cluttered with glassware and instruments, Toshima had a row of computers humming quietly, their display screens showing graphs and curves. At the far end of the row, where it bent in an ell shape at the corner of the partitions, was a scanner that could take videotape and digitize the images for computer storage.

Toshima sat in the other corner on a rickety-looking stool. He had given Jamie his best stool, the only one with a back.

Since the death of Isoruku Konoye, Toshima felt an unexpected weight of responsibility on his shoulders; the responsibility of honor, of upholding the proud name of Japan even here, on this strange world. He knew that most of the others belittled everything Japanese; he could see it in their eyes when they spoke to him, in the barely tolerant smugness of men like Antony Reed and the overly solicitous politeness of the Americans and the Russians.

Back on Earth, Japan was a power to he reckoned with. Without Japan’s contributions of funding and technology the Mars Project would have died in bickering and cost-accounting among the Europeans, the Russians, and the Americans. Yet no Japanese was among the first group to land on Mars. And the only man to have been killed on this expedition had been the brilliant Japanese geochemist Konoye.

Seiji Toshima was the son of a factory worker, but within him beat the heart of a samurai. I will uphold the honor of the Japanese people. I will make these aliens respect Japan. I will make the entire world recognize the contributions of Japan to the exploration of Mars.

Suddenly he realized where his thoughts were leading. This is unworthy, he told himself. We are scientists. Knowledge knows no nationality. I am part of a team, not a medieval egomaniac.

“We can use the central processor,” he was saying to Jamie Waterman, unconsciously bending over to pat the minicomputer that stood slightly more than knee-high in that corner of the lab. Waterman was a curious one; as withdrawn and inward as a Japanese, almost. A man who understands correct behavior, Toshima thought, yet is willing to do battle for his beliefs.

“Can you access the geological file from here or should I go to the geology computer and copy it onto a floppy?” Jamie asked.

“I should be able to access it,” Toshima replied, his round flat face intently serious. Then he smiled slightly. “Unless you have put a special restrictive code on the file to keep it secret.”

Jamie shook his head. “No. Not at all.”

The meteorologist pulled a keyboard to his lap and flicked his stubby fingers over it. Jamie saw the display screen of the computer in front of him go blank for a moment, then show a full-color map of Mars made from a montage of photos taken from orbit.

Toshima muttered something in Japanese and the screen suddenly sprouted a weather map superimposed on the photo montage. Jamie recognized the symbols for a cold front, high and low pressure systems, and the irregular lopsided loops of isobars.

“That is the situation at this moment,” Toshima said. “And here is the computer’s forecast for tonight”—the symbols shifted slightly; the numbers representing temperatures plummeted by a hundred or more—“and tomorrow at noon, our time.” Again the front advanced slightly. The temperatures shot upward. At their latitude they even rose above freezing.

A hint of pride crept into Toshima’s voice as he added, “I can even show the wind speeds and directions for much of the planet.”

“How?” Jamie asked, as vector arrows speckled the map. They showed the direction of the winds; the number of flags on their tails denoted the wind speed.

“The network of remote observation stations that has been placed around the planet,” Toshima replied. “And, of course, the balloons.”

The meteorology balloons were brilliantly simple, little more than long narrow tubes of exquisitely thin, tough Mylar filled with hydrogen. They were released as needed from the orbiting spacecraft, dropped into the Martian atmosphere in their tiny capsules, and inflated automatically when they reached the proper altitude. They floated across the landscape like improbable giant white cigarettes.

Dangling below each balloon was a “snake,” a long thin metal pipe that contained sensing instruments, a radio, batteries, and a heater to protect the equipment against the cold.

By day the balloons wafted high in the Martian atmosphere, sampling the temperature (low), pressure (lower), humidity (lower still), and chemical composition of the air. The altitude at which any individual balloon flew was governed by the amount of hydrogen filling its long narrow cigarette shape. The daytime winds carried them across the red landscape like dandelion puffs.

At night, when the temperatures became so frigid that even the hydrogen inside the balloons began to condense, they all sank toward the ground like a chorus of ballerinas daintily curtsying. The “snakes” of instruments actually touched the ground and faithfully transmitted data on the surface conditions through the night as the balloons bobbed in the dark winds, barely buoyant enough to hover safely above the rock-strewn ground.

Not every balloon survived. While most drifted across the face of Mars for days on end, descending tiredly each night and rising again when the morning sunlight warmed them, some drooped too far and were torn by rocks. Some became snagged on mountainsides. One disappeared in the vast sunken crater of Hellas Planitia and could not be found even with the best cameras aboard the surveillance satellites orbiting Mars.

But most of the balloons carried on silently, effortlessly, living with the Martian day/night cycle and faithfully reporting on the environment from pole to pole.

“As you can see,” Toshima said, with a barely perceptible nod toward the display screen, “the weather situation here in the northern hemisphere is quite stable, quite dull.”

“Summertime pattern,” Jamie muttered.

Toshima was pleased that the geologist understood at least that much about the Martian climate. Even in the southern hemisphere, where it was winter, the weather was also calm, disturbances weak. No major dust storms, not even a decent cyclonic flow to study and learn from.

“Can we zero in on Tithonium?” Jamie asked as he studied the meteorology screen.

“Yes, of course,” said Toshima.

The twisted gash of the great rift valley seemed to rush up at Jamie until Tithonium Chasma and its southerly companion, Ius Chasma, filled the screen. For a moment Jamie ignored the meteorological symbols superimposed on the picture; he saw only the miles-high cliffs and the vast slumping landslides that partially filled in small areas of the huge canyon.

“There is an anomaly here,” Toshima said.

The meteorologist had pulled his stool close to Jamie’s chair. Their heads were practically touching as they examined the screen, Jamie looking at the gigantic handiwork of ancient fractures in the crust, Toshima examining the meteorological data with narrowed eyes.

“An anomaly?”

“I should have recognized it days ago, but with so much data coming in now…” He made a little shrug that was both an apology and an excuse. “We are even tracking the discarded parachutes from our landing vehicles as the surface winds blow them across the ground.”

“What’s the anomaly?” Jamie asked.

“Only two of the balloons have flown over this section of the Grand Canyon,” Toshima said, tracing a fingertip across the image of Tithonium on the screen. “They both reported much higher temperatures in the air than our metsat gives us.”

Jamie looked at him. “The meteorological satellite tells you the temperatures in the canyon are lower than the balloon instruments reported?”

“Correct,” said Toshima.

“What kinds of sensors do they use?”

“Infrared detectors on the metsat, of course. That is the only way to obtain temperature data remotely. The balloons carry a variety of thermometers. They measure temperature directly.”

“And the balloons say the air down in the canyon is warmer than the satellite data.”

Toshima nodded, eyes closed, almost a little bow.

“Any other anomalies?”

He made a thin smile. “I had thought that the humidity data was unusable. It seemed to me that the sensors had saturated.”

“Saturated?”

“They hit the top of their scale and jammed there for as long as they were in the canyon—a few hours, as it turned out. We have no way to control their direction or speed, you understand.”

“Yes, I know.”

Toshima looked away from Jamie, toward the image on the screen. “Now that you have reported seeing mists in the canyon, however, I think I can explain what is happening.”

Jamie waited for him to continue.

“The humidity sensors are calibrated for the very minor humidity we have expected on Mars. If the balloons passed through the mists you reported, then they encountered a much higher humidity than the sensors were equipped to handle. The sensors became saturated.”

“Okay, that sounds right.”

“On the other hand, we have the matter of the temperature differences.” Toshima smiled broadly. “Consider: the metsat infrared sensors are not seeing deeply into the canyon when the mists are there. The sensors see the mist and report its temperature.”

Jamie understood. “And if the mist is made of ice crystals…”

“Or even water droplets,” Toshima picked up, “it would appear much cooler to the infrared sensors than the air below the mist.”

“The mists act as a kind of blanket, insulating the warm air at the bottom of the canyon!”

“Exactly. Yet the radar aboard the metsat penetrates the mist as if it were not there and gives us a true reading of the depth of the canyon. Until you reported the mists I had no idea they existed.”

“So the balloons gave you a truer temperature reading than the satellites did,” Jamie said, feeling the thrill of understanding tingling through his body.

“That is how I interpret the data,” Toshima replied, grinning now with all his teeth.

“Okay, let’s pump the geological data into this display,” Jamie urged. He found it difficult to sit still, he was getting so excited.

Toshima pecked away at the keyboard, still on his lap.

“What are you seeking?” he asked.

“Heat,” said Jamie. “Something’s making that canyon warmer than the plains surrounding it. Warmer than we had any right to expect. Maybe it’s heat welling up from the planet’s interior.”

“Ah! Hot springs, perhaps. Or a volcano.”

“Nothing so dramatic as a volcano,” Jamie said, eagerly watching the screen, waiting for the geological data to appear.

“There are very massive volcanoes on Mars,” Toshima muttered, his fingers working the keyboard.

“A thousand kilometers away from Tithonium. And they’ve been dead cold for millions of years. Billions, maybe.”

Toshima half whispered, “Now,” and ostentatiously pressed the ENTER key with his stubby forefinger.

A thin train of bright red symbols sprang onto the screen.

“Can we back away from this close-up and see the region between our base and the canyon’s rim?” Jamie asked.

“Of course,” said Toshima.

There they were, the real-time readings from the sensors Jamie had planted on the ground during his traverse with Vosnesensky. The symbols formed a single track from their domed base to the Noctis Labyrinthus badlands, then out to the edge of Tithonium, and finally back to the base. Each cluster of sensors included heat-flow instruments. On Earth such sensors measured the heat welling up toward the surface from the molten magma deep below the crust.

“Not a helluva lot, is it?” Jamie muttered, straining his eyes at the tiny red numerals as if he could make them come alive by just staring hard enough.

Toshima said nothing. He sat with his hands folded politely on his lap.

“The planet’s colder than a frozen potato,” Jamie grumbled. “There’s not enough heat coming up from its core to warm a cup of tea.”

“No thermal flow in the canyon?”

Unconsciously kneading both thighs in frustration Jamie replied, “That’s just it: we don’t have any instruments down on the canyon floor. That may be the one place where some heat actually is flowing up out of the core, but we don’t have any sensors down there to check it out!”

Toshima bowed his head slightly, this time to show understanding. “I see. We must put sensors on the canyon floor if we hope to understand what forms the mists.”

“Not just sensors,” Jamie said, his voice urgent. “We’ve got to get down there ourselves. Somehow, we’ve got to get a team down on the floor of that canyon.”

Li Chengdu smiled thinly at the trio of images on his screen. This was such an important decision that all three project directors wanted to discuss it with him.

I can thank Waterman for this, Dr. Li said to himself. If it were not for him everything would be going according to plan.

“…we have therefore instructed the mission controllers,” the somber-faced Russian director was saying, “to prepare a plan for a traverse of the Tithonium Chasma region, including—if possible—a direct examination of the floor of the canyon. Since it will take a minimum of two weeks to put such a plan into effect…”

He’s done it, Dr. Li thought as he listened with only half his attention to the Russian’s droning voice. Waterman has gotten them to shatter the mission schedule completely and agree to a traverse of Tithonium.

The expedition commander eyed the other two project directors as the Russian continued his formal instructions. The Japanese director was trying his best to look impassive, but Li could detect a gleam of pleased excitement in his dark eyes. The American, veteran of Washington’s political knife fights, had a benign little smile playing across his fleshy, florid face.

“…Father DiNardo will chair the ad hoc committee that will prepare the traverse plan. Dr. Brumado will attend the committee meetings as an ex officio member…”

The Russian droned on and on, like an old Orthodox priest reciting some inflexible ritual.

How they must have connived! Li thought. The American Vice-President has agreed to this change in the mission plan, obviously. Brumado must have swayed her somehow. She is no longer seeking to destroy Waterman; somehow Brumado has made the two of them allies. The man is a miracle worker.

A traverse into Tithonium Chasma. We’ll have to tear up the final four weeks’ worth of the schedule and reorient everything for this. I’ll have to curtail Patel’s excursion to Pavonis Mons. The poor man will be apoplectic. He has spent half his life preparing to survey Pavonis Mons. That will have to be scratched now; we won’t have the time or the resources to devote to it.

Even the work here in orbit will have to be redirected to support the Tithonium excursion. O’Hara will be especially upset—he has not been very secretive about his hopes that the American politicians would send him down to the surface to replace Waterman.

No chance of that now. Somehow Waterman has become the true leader of the ground team. He has stolen the lightning from the gods. He is even overshadowing me now.

Yet Li kept on smiling placidly at the images of the three project directors on his screen.

A traverse to the floor of the Grand Canyon! His scientist’s mind was thrilled by the possibilities. Warmth and moisture. Perhaps life. Life! What a finding that would be. It would mark a new epoch in history.

Still the political side of his mind worried about the difficulties of changing the schedule, the dangers of moving so boldly into new territory, the risks that always haunted every step into the unknown.

Waterman, he thought. If it were not for him everything would be going smoothly and safely according to plan.

Li’s smile broadened slightly. How dull that would be! Besides, if anything goes wrong he will take the brunt of the blame, not me.