Mars

EARTH

WASHINGTON: Edith was standing beside Alberto Brumado when the phone call came.

They had just returned to the red-brick house after dinner in Georgetown. Edith knew instinctively that the man was going to make his play for her. What she did not yet know was how she would react. Brumado was kind, intelligent, gentle, and even suave in a sort of bashful, boyish way.

What would he be like in bed? she wondered. And she found herself also wondering, Is Jamie bedding his daughter?

But the telephone interrupted Brumado as he was pouring two snifters of Osborne brandy. He crossed the bookshelf-lined living room and picked up the phone.

“Yes, this is he… Oh, hello, Jeffrey, how are…” Brumado’s face went white. “What? She did? It’s certain?” He lapsed into a string of rapid Brazilian Portuguese. Then, realizing it, he switched back to English, breathless. “Yes, yes, yes. I’ll be right down. As soon as I can get a taxicab. Yes. Thanks! Thank you for calling! I’ll be there, surely!”

If he hadn’t been grinning from ear to ear Edith would have thought some disaster had hit the Mars explorers.

He looked across the room to her. “They’ve found living organisms on Mars. My daughter made the discovery!”

Edith yelled a Texas war whoop and ran to him and threw her arms around his neck. He held her around the waist and they kissed the way strangers do on New Year’s Eve.

Then, “I’ve got to get a taxi. We’re expected at NASA headquarters.”

“I’ve got to tell my boss!” Edith said.

“All the media will be informed,” Brumado said, pecking at the phone with a trembling hand. “They’re calling a news conference for midnight.”

While he paced the oriental carpet, impatiently waiting for the taxicab, Edith phoned the network vice-president at his apartment in Manhattan.

“You have reached…,” an answering-machine tape started.

Edith felt a moment of exasperation, then started laughing. When the beep sounded she shouted into the phone, “This is Edie Elgin. I’m in the nation’s capital with Alberto Brumado and as soon as a cab can get here we’re goin’ to NASA headquarters. They’ve found life on Mars, buddy! And you weren’t home to take the call!”

Edith then phoned the network news office. The news director was at home, and the woman in charge at this hour of the evening had never heard of Edie Elgin.

“I’m a consultant to the vice-president’s office,” Edith explained.

“So?”

“I’ve got a story. I’ve got to get on the air from the Washington office here. Top priority.”

“What’s this all about?”

“It’s the biggest news break in the history of the business, honey!”

“Really?” The woman’s voice dripped suspicion.

Suddenly Edith hesitated. They’ll take it away from me, she realized. I’ll tip them off and they’ll call in the managing editor and the evening news anchor bastard and I’ll wind up in the cold.

“Can you give me the news director’s home number?” she asked.

“No.” Flatly.

“This is important, dammit!”

“If it’s that important you’d better tell me what it is.”

Edith took a deep breath. “Okay,” she said sweetly. “Just remember this call tomorrow when they fire y’all.”

She hung up the phone and turned to Brumado. “Is the taxi here? Do I have a minute to go to the bathroom?”

In the hour and a half between their arrival at NASA’s headquarters building and the official start of the news conference, Edith used up four spools on her miniaturized tape recorder, talking to the men who had gathered together to drink champagne and smoke cigars. She was not the only woman at the impromptu party, but she was the only member of the media among the Mars Project people.

The news conference filled the building’s largest auditorium, even at midnight. Television crews elbowed one another for choice spots up front. The lights were blindingly bright, but nobody seemed to mind. Phalanxes of microphones and tape recorders were propped up on the long table at which the grinning NASA people assembled, shaking hands with one another, glowing with self-vindication. They sat Alberto Brumado in their midst.

Edith took a folding chair set up by the side wall, next to an emergency exit. She smiled to herself. She had her story, and she would continue to gather in all the details of the human side of this fantastic night. Even if she had to finish the job in bed with Brumado. That might not be such a bad way to end a night like this, she thought.

Although stodgy gray-haired NASA administrators officially broke the news to the goggle-eyed reporters, it was Alberto Brumado who ended up doing most of the talking. The soul of the Mars Project had his hour in the limelight. His smiling, triumphant face and voice were broadcast all across the world.

Life on Mars.

While Brumado answered the reporters’ myriad of questions and bantered happily with them, no one noticed that the physician in charge of the medical section sat at the very end of the table of NASA officials, looking tired and grim. No one asked him a question. No one paid him any attention at all. Which was just as well, because he had made up his mind to remain absolutely silent, no matter what. He was not the kind of man to rain on the organization’s parade.