Mars

EARTH

KALININGRAD: In a windowless conference room in the mission control complex, twenty men and women from six nations thrashed out the problem that assailed them from nearly two hundred million kilometers away.

The oblong conference table was littered with scribbled sheets of paper, crusts from sandwiches, charts and viewgraphs, Styrofoam beverage cups, ashtrays heaped high with smoldering butts. Some of the people around the table slouched miserably, heads in their hands, jackets long pulled off and shirtsleeves rolled high. A few paced pointlessly along the length of the stuffy, smoky room.

They had long ago shouted themselves hoarse without arriving at a conclusion.

At the head of the table sat the chief of mission control, a lean red-headed Russian with a saturnine pointed beard and red eyebrows like inverted vees. He tapped a long fingernail on the imitation wood of the tabletop. In the exhausted silence of the room every head swiveled toward him.

“We cannot merely sit here without making a decision. Human lives are at stake. The success of the entire mission is at stake!”

One of the women, a Swede, coughed slightly, cleared her throat, then said: “Our alternatives are clear—allow the traverse team to die or take the risk of killing more members of the expedition in an attempt to save them.”

“We can’t just let them die!” said another woman.

“But a rescue attempt might fail and there will be more deaths,” countered a Japanese male.

“Half the reporters in the world are pounding on our doors,” someone commented sourly. “We’ve got to do something, and do it now!”

“We should never have permitted an excursion into the canyon,” a Frenchman complained. “Not on the very first mission. It was not in our original plan. We bowed to blatant American political pressure. That is what has put us in this chamber pot.”

“But Brumado’s daughter is one of the people who are stranded. We can’t let her die! Who’s going to face him and say that we decided to let his daughter die?”

“I am convinced,” said a chubby, balding Russian, “that the only thing we can do is to bring up the people in the dome right now, get them up to safety in the orbiting ships, and then send the last lander down to the canyon to take up the four in the rover.”

“And abort the expedition two weeks earlier than the schedule calls for?”

“Schedule?” an American shouted. “Schedule? What the hell difference does the damned schedule make? We’re talking human lives here!”

The chief controller pressed both his hands together, almost as if praying. “I am afraid that your suggestion is the only reasonable course of action that we have open to us. Even though it is not entirely free of risk.”

“It means that the people in the rover will have to wait at least another two days before the lander can be sent to them.”

“I doubt that we can close down the operations at the dome and bring all those people up with their equipment and specimens in just two days. The schedule calls for a full week to shut down the dome.”

“This is an emergency! Leave the equipment and specimens. Bring up the people and get on with the rescue, for god’s sake!”

“Leave everything?”

“Retrieve it on the next mission.”

“There won’t be another mission. Not if we have to abandon this one, run away from Mars like thieves in the night.”

“That’s the most stupid metaphor I’ve heard yet!”

“Just because you’re a woman doesn’t give you the right to…”

“Silence!” roared the chief controller. “I will not have us squabbling like children in a schoolyard. We will abort the mission. We will bring up the people in the dome as quickly as possible and then send the last of the landers to pick up the traverse team in the canyon. Anyone who wants to go on record as being against that decision should raise his or her hand. Now.”

Not a single hand went up.

“And it is also agreed,” the chief controller added, “that none of the expedition members will be allowed back to Earth unless and until this medical problem is solved. They will remain quarantined in Earth orbit.”

“If they get that far,” someone said in a stage whisper.

WASHINGTON: Edith could tell from Alberto’s face that something had gone very wrong.

“What is it?” she asked.

They were in the kitchen of the Georgetown house, just finishing breakfast before heading to Capitol Hill. Brumado had a date to testify before a congressional subcommittee holding hearings on the next fiscal year’s budget for space. The kitchen overlooked a lovely garden bounded by a red-brick wall. Most of the flowers were gone this late in the season, except for the hardy little impatiens lining the curved brick walkway with pink-and-white blooms that nodded in the soft morning breeze.

“What is it?” Edith asked again.

Brumado was at the telephone by the sink. His face was ashen. “My daughter… the traverse team… they are stranded in the canyon. Their rover vehicle has bogged down.”

Edith got up from the glass-topped table, her breakfast instantly forgotten. “They have the backup rover, don’t they? They can pick them up…”

But Brumado was shaking his head. “They’re sick. All of them on the ground team. Something has made them all very sick and weak.”

“Jamie too?”

“Yes. Him too.”

Edith felt her own breath catch in her throat. She swallowed hard, then asked, “What’re they going to do?”

“NASA has offered to fly me to Houston, the mission control complex there.”

“But what about Jamie and your daughter?”

“I must testify to the subcommittee,” Brumado was muttering absently, like a man in shock. “They asked me not to reveal any of this. Not yet.”

“But Jamie?”

Abruptly he seemed to realize she was standing in front of him. “Edith, I must have your word that you will not break this news to your network.”

“Hey, I don’t have a network anymore. I’m unemployed, remember? But what about Jamie? Is he…”

“I don’t know!” Brumado snapped. Edith realized that he was fighting to maintain his self-control. She saw tears glimmering in the corners of his eyes.

“Maybe you ought to cancel the subcommittee appearance,” she suggested.

“No,” he said, more gently. “No, I can’t do that. It would raise suspicions.”

“You could have a cold, for god’s sake.”

“And then fly off to Houston?” He smiled without humor. “Half the subcommittee would be on the next plane. Or their aides, at least.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Edith admitted.

“Will you promise me not to call anyone, not to break the story?”

“Can I go to Houston with you?”

“Yes. Of course.”

“Okay.”

“You promise not to contact anyone about this while I am testifying this morning?”

“We have a deal, don’t we?”

But Edith was thinking, In Houston I can see how bad it really is, how tough a spot they’ve put Jamie into. An eyewitness account of Alberto Brumado watching as the team on Mars tries to rescue his daughter who’s stuck a thousand kilometers from their base. And sick. I could write my own ticket with that.

Sick from what? What’s happened to them? To Jamie?

Inwardly she made up her mind to keep her silence only until she was certain that they were doing everything they could for Jamie and the others. I’ve got to find out how they got into this mess. The minute I find out whose fault it is, then all deals are off.

This could be even bigger than finding life on Mars: four explorers trapped and sick a thousand kilometers from safety. That’s a real story! You don’t have to be a scientist to get excited about that.