Mars Life

The Old Ones knew that The People had come to the blue world after a long struggle. Once they had lived on the red world, but Coyote—the Trickster—led them to their downfall and then brought on a devastating flood that drove them away.

First Man and First Woman emerged into the blue world and carried all the memories of The People with them. But in time the memories faded and the younger generations began to doubt that they were anything more than dreams and visions. What they forgot was that dreams and visions show a reality that is as strong and certain as the greatest tree or the highest mountain.

What they forgot was that without dreams and visions.

The People wither into mere husks.

Crater Malzberg

Well, y’know, a watched pot never boils.”

“Oh lord, spare me your stupid clichés.”

Itzak Rosenberg and Saleem Hasdrubal were unlikely partners. Izzy was an Oxford-educated Londoner, small and soft-looking, with the frizzy reddish blond hair of his distant ancestors from Poland and Belarus. Sal was from Chicago, tall and lanky enough to have made his way through school playing basketball.

They argued about everything, from international politics to ethnic cuisines. They even argued about the importance of geology versus biology. Izzy, a geologist, had been blown away when he was nine years old by his first visit to the chalk cliffs of Dover; the secret history that they contained in their layered striations set him on his life’s course. Sal had been equally thrilled with his first visit to the dinosaur reconstructions at Chicago’s Field Museum, on a class trip when he was in the seventh grade. He won a basketball scholarship to Purdue, then went on to the University of Chicago for an eventual doctorate in cellular biology.

Now they stood glumly in their nanosuits on the surface of Mars, near the minor crater Malzberg, disappointed that the geyser they were hoping for had so far refused to erupt.

They had been living at the crater’s edge for more than a week in one of the campers, a bullet-shaped vehicle with a big, bulging windshield that looked like an insect’s eyes; it rode on a set of eight springy metal wheels. It looked to Sal’s city-raised eyes like an urban bus, although he’d never seen a bus so coated and smeared with reddish dust.

All around them stretched the barren rusty plain, cold and silent except for the faint whisper of a thin breeze. The Sun hung high in the cloudless butterscotch sky, but the thermometer on the wrist of Izzy’s nanofabric suit read thirty-six below zero. Summer weather, he thought wryly.

Dr. Chang, the mission director, was stretching the safety regulations to allow these two scientists to go out on this Excursion without an astronaut to drive the camper. But there were only nine astronauts at Tithonium Base and they were committed to other, larger excursions along the floor of the rift valley and out to the huge volcanoes of the Tharsis highlands.

Originally, Chang had sent an automated rover to the Malzberg crater, a small six-wheeled robot that was supposed to go into the crater and deploy a set of sensors that would monitor the heat flow and other conditions at the site. But the doughty little rover had broken down inside the crater. Rosenberg and Hasdrubal had been sent to repair it, but the machinery was too old, too worn, too clogged with years of Martian dust, for them to get it working again. Despite the detailed advice from technicians back at the base, they could not bring the rover back to life.

So now they stood at the edge of the crater waiting like expectant fathers for a geyser that had so far failed to materialize. They had come out as repairmen but had urged Chang to let them stay and observe as scientists. Chang had reluctantly allowed it; not all that reluctantly, actually: he wanted to capture a geyser as much as they did.

The crater was slightly less than two hundred meters across, oval in shape, about thirty meters deep. Its rim of rubble was new and fresh looking. There were no smaller craters inside it, an indication that it was quite young. Two dozen metal boxes and pole-like instruments were arrayed along its slopes and bottom: seismometers, heat-flow probes, digital cameras, even miniaturized spectrometers in case the geyser actually blew and there was some erupting gas to analyze. A half-dozen shallow trenches showed where they had scooped up soil samples to analyze back at the base for the dim chance of finding microbial life.

“Everything’s right,” Sal Hasdrubal said, to no one in particular. “It’s a young crater. The heat flow measurements peak at its bottom. The permafrost layer is only a dozen meters down from the surface. Why doesn’t it blow?”

“It will, sooner or later,” said Rosenberg.

“Later might be a thousand years from now.”

“Or this afternoon.”

Hasdrubal shook his head inside his transparent helmet. “Nah. The fucker’s gonna blow soon’s as we pack up and leave.”

“Which will be tomorrow,” said Izzy. “We’ll have to lift the rover into the cargo bay, if we can.”

Sal shifted his gaze to the inert rover, sitting squat and silent alongside their camper. Dumb little fucker, he said to himself. Then he shrugged inwardly. Shouldn’t complain. I guess after ten years of work you’re entitled to a breakdown.

“We’ll get it in,” he said to Izzy. “Only weighs one-third of what it would on Earth.”

Rosenberg gave him a doubtful look. “We’ll have to use the winch.”

“Yeah,” Hasdrubal agreed. Then, drawing in a deep breath, he said, “Come on, let’s get back into the camper. This friggin’ suit’s startin’ to smell like a garbage can.”

“You have a lovely way with words, Sal.”

They began trudging back to the waiting camper, two nanosuited figures completely alone as far as the eye could see.

“How come they don’t name craters after Muslims?” Hasdrubal abruptly asked.

“They’re named after scientists, mostly,” said Rosenberg. “Newton, Kuiper, Agassiz…”

“Plenty named after Jews. Why not Muslims?”

Rosenberg sighed heavily. “Perhaps it’s because there are so few Muslim scientists?”

They had reached the camper’s airlock hatch. As he pecked at the keypad to open it, Sal countered, “Oh yeah? What about Abdus Salam? He won the Nobel Prize, for chrissake. What about Alhazen or Avicenna or Omar Khayyam? He was a great astronomer, you know.”

“Oh, spare me,” Rosenberg muttered.

“It’s anti-Islamic prejudice,” Sal said as he climbed up into the coffin-sized airlock and sealed the hatch, leaving Rosenberg standing outside by the silent robotic rover.

“By the well-known Jewish cabal,” Rosenberg retorted, his voice sounding close to exasperation in Sal’s clip-on earphone.

“You said that, I didn’t.”

Once they had wormed out of their suits and vacuumed most of the dust off them, they went up to the camper’s front end and sat at the padded seats. The faint pungent tang of ozone penetrated even up to the cockpit, baked out of the superoxides in the dust by the heat of the camper’s interior.

Hasdrubal sat in the driver’s seat, Rosenberg beside him. Through the curving windshield they could see the crater, as inert and uncooperative as ever. Both men were unshaven: Rosenberg’s once-neat little goatee looked decidedly ragged, Hasdrubal’s jaw was covered in dark fuzz.

As they checked the instruments, Sal muttered, “The heat flow’s there, goddammit. Why don’t she blow?”

“Not enough heat to melt the permafrost, obviously,” said Rosenberg.

“Oughtta be. Look at the numbers.”

Rosenberg sighed again. “Science, my friend, is the difference between what you think ought to be and what actually is.”

Sal nodded reluctant agreement. “It’s a perverse universe.”

“It is indeed.” Rosenberg started out of his seat. “Let’s get some lunch. I’m famished.”

Hasdrubal watched him head back to the minuscule galley built into the camper’s curving bulkhead, then turned back to stare out the windshield again. Come on, goddammit, he urged silently. I know you’re gonna blow, why not do it while I’m watchin’? Why not let me see what you can do?

But the crater remained silent, inactive.

Sonofabitch, Sal cursed fervently.

Suddenly a bright streak arched across the sky. A sonic boom pinged weakly in the thin Martian air.

“Hey, there’s a ship comin’ in,” Hasdrubal called back to the galley.

Rosenberg barely looked up from the sandwiches he was making. “It must be the flight that’s bringing Waterman in,” he said.

Tithonium Base: Arrival

Vijay could see Jamie’s spirits rising as the landing craft screeched through the cloudless atmosphere of Mars toward the Tithonium Base site.

“There’s the domes,” he said, pointing at the display screen set into the bulkhead of the windowless passenger compartment. She saw three pinkish white circular structures huddled close together, connected by short hump-topped passageways.

He’s happier here, she thought. He’s in his element. He’s home.

The flight from Earth orbit to an orbit around Mars had taken only four days in the new-smelling torch ship. Powered by nuclear fusion, the vessel accelerated at almost one full g halfway to its destination, then decelerated at a slightly lower rate until it was orbiting around the red planet. Vijay remembered her first flight to Mars, nearly twenty years earlier, in an old-style ballistic rocket. It had taken more than six months, on a graceful, gradual elliptical trajectory that arced between the two worlds. With the fusion torch, their trajectory was almost a straight line.

Tithonium Base had sent the spindly-legged L/AV, a landing/ascent vehicle, to mate with the torch ship and take them aboard, together with several tons of supplies. Now the fragile-looking lander was descending to the surface of Mars like a spider gliding down an invisible silken thread to the ground.

His hand clutching hers, Jamie stared at the screen that displayed the outside camera views, eager as a little boy watching for Santa’s sleigh. Leaning close to him, Vijay couldn’t help feeling a tremble of trepidation as she watched the craggy cliffs of the valley sliding past. They seemed terribly near.

The lander’s retro rockets screeched once, twice in the thin air and kicked up a cloud of rust-colored dust that blotted out their view. They felt a gentle bump as the noise died away.

“We’re down,” Jamie whispered, still staring at the screen, still gripping Vijay’s hand.

“We’re on the ground,” announced the pilot astronaut, from up in the cockpit. “You can unbuckle your safety harnesses now.”

But the two of them still peered at the screen as the reddish dust wafted away on the gentle breeze. Vijay realized that the domes were much larger than the one she and Jamie had lived in, some twenty years ago. This close, she saw that their white tops were rusty looking, caked with years of Martian dust, although closer to the ground they were transparent. She could see vague figures of people moving around inside the dome closest to them. The farther dome’s insides looked lushly green: the hydroponics greenhouse, she knew. On the other side of the main dome stood the maintenance center and its garage where the big camper vehicles were housed.

Slowly they got to their feet, a little cautious in the light gravity. Jamie’s hair almost brushed the low overhead of the cramped compartment. The cockpit hatch opened and the pilot ducked through, smiling.

“Made it,” he said. “Piece of cake.”

“Good landing,” said Jamie.

“It’ll take a minute for the access tube to connect. Be careful of the low gravity.”

“The downside of getting here so fast,” Jamie said. But he was grinning about it.

Vijay had been to Mars twice before. Each time, the months-long flight had given her and the other passengers plenty of time to adapt to Mars’s gravity. Their big wheel-shaped spacecraft had started out spinning at a rate that gave a feeling of regular Earth gravity, then gradually slowed its spin until the wheel was simulating the one-third g of Mars. By the time they landed on the red planet they were fully acclimated to the lower gravity.

They stepped to the L/AV’s main hatch and peered through its tiny window, heads touching. The access tube was inching across the dusty ground like a giant segmented caterpillar, one end connected to the main airlock in Tithonium Base’s dome, the other blindly groping for the lander’s hatch. It too was coated with a fine powdering of red dust.

The lander’s hatch was part of the vessel’s own airlock, Vijay knew, but they could walk through the access tube in their shirtsleeves from the hatch into the dome. No need for airlocks or spacesuits.

“Just like getting off a plane back on Earth,” Vijay murmured.

Jamie nodded. “Almost.”

He went back to their seats and took their travel bags from the webbed overhead bin. Vijay reached for her bag, but Jamie grinned at her. “I can handle them both; they’re much lighter here.”

The access tube connected at last and the astronaut, after ducking quickly back into the cockpit to check his instrument readouts, came back and unlocked the hatch.

“Pressure’s in the green,” he said, pushing the hatch open and making a sweeping gesture. “Welcome back to Mars, folks.”

Jamie took Vijay’s wrist with his free hand and together they stepped through the slightly springy plastic tube toward the open hatch of Tithonium Base’s main dome.

There was a crowd on the other side of the hatch. Vijay saw the surprise on her husband’s face, then the slow, pleased, warm smile that spread across his features. The dome’s high ceiling was lost in shadows, but clear Martian sunshine poured through the transparent windows that circled the lower section. Beyond the heads of the people clustering around them she could see partitions for workshops, laboratories, and people’s living quarters. There was a large open space across the way with tables arranged in orderly rows: the cafeteria, she guessed.

A stone-faced Chinese gentleman in high-collared blue coveralls stepped forward and put out a chubby hand. Jamie had to let go of Vijay to take it in his own.

“Welcome to our humble abode,” said Chang Laodong.

“Thank you,” Jamie said. “It’s good to see you again, Dr, Chang.” He raised his voice and said to the crowd, “Thank you all.”

They applauded. They actually clapped their hands together in spontaneous applause. Vijay saw her husband’s coppery cheeks flush slightly with embarrassment. And pleasure. The crowd—scientists, engineers, astronauts, technicians—gathered around Jamie to shake his hand, pat his back, smile and tell him how glad they were to have him here among them.

Vijay stepped aside and let Jamie have his moment. Then she saw that Dr. Chang had also been shunted aside by the crowd’s press. He did not look happy at all.

“May I ask,” said Dr. Chang, with exaggerated politeness, “why you have chosen to come here at this time?”

The mission director had invited Jamie and Vijay into his office for tea and a few moments of private conversation. Chang had apparently converted one of the sleeping rooms into an office, Jamie realized once he saw that the compartment had walls topped by a ceiling, rather than the usual two-meter-high partitions. He noticed a bookcase filled with precisely spaced specimens of rock behind the mission director’s metal desk. Jamie recognized samples of the Martian “blueberries” first discovered by an early robotic camper, and a slab of the layered sedimentary rock from the Condor Chasma region.

The three of them sat around a low lacquered table where a beautifully enameled teapot and tiny sipping cups had been arranged in careful symmetry. Off to one side of the table stood an incongruous, strictly utilitarian ceramic thermos of scalding hot water.

Jamie hesitated before answering. The old Navaho way, Vijay understood. Jamie seldom spoke without thinking first, even in casual conversation. She realized that this particular conversation was anything but casual. Although he was trying hard to conceal it, Chang seemed as tense as a drawn bowstring.

“We’re facing a crisis,” Jamie said at last.

Chang nodded solemnly and muttered, “The American government’s withdrawal of funds.”

“It’s more than that,” said Jamie. “There is a concerted effort to force us to shut down our work here. To force us to abandon Mars altogether.”

Chang lifted his pudgy chin a notch. “So I understand. But surely you could counter such a threat better on Earth than here.”

“Perhaps,” Jamie admitted.

“Then…?”

Vijay understood the conflicts simmering beneath Jamie’s impassive expression. She waited for her husband to find the right words.

“I need to know how the men and women here feel about their situation,” he began slowly. “I need to know how you feel about all this, what steps you are prepared to take. You personally, not merely as director of the program here.”

Now it was Chang who fell silent before replying. Vijay suppressed an urge to giggle. Between them they could be monuments on Mount Rushmore, she thought. Two great stone faces.

“I personally? I do not understand.”

“Dr. Chang, would you be willing to spend another year here? After your regular term is finished?”

“Stay an additional year?”

“Yes.”

“Without returning home?”

Jamie nodded. “If we can get a significant number of people to agree to extend their stays on Mars, we could cut our transportation costs almost in half.”

“Transporting personnel is one thing. Transporting supplies is another matter altogether. Supplies will still be needed, no matter how long the staff agrees to stay without replacement.”

“I understand,” said Jamie. “I need to talk with the life-support team. I want to see if we can grow more of our food here, in situ. That would cut down on the resupply flights we need.”

Chang rocked back in his chair.

Before the mission director could say anything, Jamie added, “I want to determine how close to self-sufficiency we can make this base.”

“Self-sufficiency,” Chang echoed, in a near whisper.

“Selene is willing to lend us technical expertise,” Jamie added. Vijay felt her brows go up. That was a stretch. Stavenger hadn’t promised anything so definite.

“This is an extremely difficult matter,” said Chang, picking his words carefully. “It will require much thought, much investigation.”

“That’s why I’m here,” Jamie said, with a slow smile.

“I see. I understand.”

Shifting in his chair slightly, Jamie shifted the subject. “I’d also like to meet Dr. Carleton. He is here at the base, isn’t he?”

Chang nodded. “He was not among those who greeted you on your arrival.”

“No, he wasn’t.”

“He is most likely at his digging site. He spends much time there.”

“Of course.”

“He will undoubtedly want to meet you this evening, when he returns from his digging.”

“Good,” said Jamie.

But Vijay thought there was something beneath Chang’s bland words, something unspoken about Dr. Carter Carleton. She wondered what it might be.

Tithonium Base: Introductions

Carter Carleton was not at his excavation site. He was in bed with Doreen McManus, propping himself on one elbow as he gazed down at her lean naked body, glistening with perspiration. A line from an ancient motion picture popped into his mind: Not much meat on her, but what there is is choice. Doreen smiled up at him. “This is much more fun than digging in that pit.”

He grinned back. “We’ve got two professors of geology, a biochemist and an astronaut working the dig, if I remember the schedule correctly.”

She nodded. “They ought to be finishing their shift right about now.”

Carleton made an exaggerated sigh. “I guess I’ll have to get dressed and see them when they come in.”

“And Dr. Waterman is due to arrive this afternoon. I think he’s already here.”

“Really?” Carleton got up from the bed and picked up his paper-thin bathrobe.

“Didn’t you hear the applause a little while ago?”

“Applause? No.” With a grin, “I was busy.”

Doreen’s face grew serious. “You really didn’t hear it?”

“You did?”

“You mean you were so completely absorbed by lovemaking that you didn’t pay attention to anything else?”

He sat on the edge of the bed and began to stroke her hip. “This is the very ecstasy of love,” he quoted, “Whose violent property leads the will to desperate undertaking.”

“No more desperate undertakings,” Doreen said, putting a finger to his lips. “You’d better—”

The intercom phone buzzed. Carleton had the answering recording on. They heard his voice say, “I’m either not in or busy. Please leave your name and I’ll get back to you.” Doreen smiled at the word busy.

“Dr. Carleton,” said a man’s voice, “this is Jamie Waterman. I’ve just arrived at the base and I’d like to see you at your earliest convenience. Thanks.”

Carleton slowly got to his feet. “Duty calls.”

The living quarters at Tithonium Base were nothing more than single rooms shaped like wedges of a pie, in sets of ten built in a circle around a common lavatory. Carleton flung his robe over his bare shoulder and opened the lavatory door a crack. It was empty, so he stepped in.

Sitting up in bed, Doreen heard the door click shut. She sat there unmoving, thinking that the only time Carter ever mentioned the word “love” to her was in one of his silly quotations from Shakespeare. Still—it was better than nothing.

She got out of bed and padded to the lavatory. Carleton was in the shower stall, singing off-key in the billowing steam. He looked surprised when Doreen squeezed in. The stall was so narrow their bodies pressed together.

“That’s what I like about you,” Carleton said, grinning. “A dirty mind in a clean body.”

After several slithering moments, Doreen said, “I’d like to meet Dr. Waterman.”

“Sure,” he said absently, his soapy hands slithering along her buttocks.

“I think he’d be interested in using nanotechnology to enlarge—”

“No.”

She flinched at the sharpness of his rejection.

“Why not?”

“I don’t want you making an ass of yourself in front of Waterman or anybody else.”

“But I can show him how to enlarge the base! We could turn the whole rift valley into a completely Earthlike environment! It’s called terraforming.”

Carleton scowled at her. “It’s called contamination. Mention that to Waterman and he’ll send you packing on the next flight out of here. He’s dead set against altering the native environment.”

“But the base, this dome, isn’t that altering the native environment?”

“We’ve got to do that. Waterman won’t stand for anything more than the bare minimum we need to survive here.”

“But Carter—”

“No,” he said again, even more firmly. “Not a word of it. That’s final.”

She bit back a reply, but to herself Doreen said, It’s not final, you chauvinist old fart.

Chang showed Jamie and Vijay to one of the larger cubicles and left them to unpack.

“This is bigger than what we had before,” Vijay said, looking around the spare little space. “Two bunks, even.”

“The dome’s much bigger,” said Jamie. “And stronger. Did you notice the ribs supporting it? Not like the pressurized plastic bubbles we used back when. This dome’s built to last.”

Tossing their bags onto the nearer of the two beds, Jamie said, “We’ll have to push them together.”

Vijay nodded as Jamie went to the phone and placed a call to Dr. Carleton. By the time they had hung their clothes in the slim closet and arranged their toiletries on the bureau nearest the lavatory door, Carleton had called back and invited Jamie to meet him at his laboratory.

“You go ahead,” Vijay told him. “I’ve got to talk with the medical staff, see where I can fit in.”

Carleton had appropriated one of the dome’s smaller laboratory spaces for himself and turned it into a combination workshop, office and conference room. Jamie rapped on the shaky accordion-fold door; after a couple of moments Carter Carleton slid the door open.

“Dr. Waterman,” Carleton said, smiling handsomely. “This is a pleasure.”

Taking Carleton’s proffered hand in his own, Jamie said, “Please call me Jamie.”

“And I’m Carter.”

Stepping into the laboratory, Jamie saw that it was crammed with a worktable along the far partition, a miniature desk with a swivel chair made of bungee cords, bookshelves that were mostly empty, two spindly-looking stools and a small chair of molded plastic. Blank roll-up smart screens were taped onto two of the room’s two-meter-high partitions.

“It’s not much,” Carleton said, still smiling as he gestured to the plastic chair, “but it’s home.”

Jamie saw the fossil sitting squarely in the middle of the otherwise empty desktop.

“That’s it?” he asked.

“That’s a cast,” said Carleton, crossing the room in three swift strides to pull a plastic container from the bookshelf. Popping its lid open, he held it out for Jamie. “This is the real thing.”

Jamie peered into the container. The fossil was gray, ridged; it looked hard and durable.

“Go ahead and take it out,” Carleton urged. “It’s okay.”

Jamie turned it over in his hands. “I don’t know much about anatomy, but it sure looks like a vertebra to me.”

“The best paleontologists Earthside agree. It’s a vertebra, all right. Probably of an animal that walked on four legs, not upright.”

“Then it’s not from one of the intelligent Martians.”

“Who knows?” Carleton said. “Maybe they scuttled around on four legs. Or six. Or a dozen!”

“Have you found anything else?” Jamie asked.

“Not yet. We’re digging by hand now, going much slower.”

“I understand.”

Carleton took the fossil back from Jamie and placed it lovingly in the plastic container. He put the container back on the bookshelf, then perched himself on a corner of his desk.

“The talk around here is that you’ve come to tell us we’re going to shut down,” he said.

Jamie shook his head. “Just the opposite. I’m here to find out how we can stretch what funding we have to allow us to stay as long as we can.”

“Good.”

“I’d like you to talk with Dex Trumball and some of his Foundation people. We should be setting up a video program to show your fossil and explain what you’re doing here.”

“Fine by me,” said Carleton.

Jamie eyed the anthropologist for a silent moment, framing his thoughts. Then he asked, “How would you feel about staying here for another year or so? Without going home.”

Carleton broke into a dazzling smile. “I wouldn’t leave here under any circumstances. The only way they’ll get me back to Earth is in a coffin.”

Manhattan: Worldwide News Network

Orlando Ventura sat at the foot of the small conference table, but he knew all the others depended on him for the crucial decisions. Well, almost all the others: the “consultant” from the New Morality depended on no one except his own inner certainties—reinforced by orders from Atlanta.

Ventura was a compact type, prone to paunchiness, but he kept his figure reasonably trim with daily workout sessions and ruthless, no-mercy games of tennis on the rooftop courts of the Worldwide News building. He had touched up his long, wavy hair with subtle dabs of gray at his temples; it made him look more mature, he thought, more serious and reliable.

“So what’s our approach on this Martian fossil?” asked the bureau chief, sitting at the head of the table. The chief was rake thin, all nerves and twitches, totally bald except for a ridiculous fringe of darkish hair that he kept long enough to tickle his collar.

Everyone turned to Ventura, but before he could reply the New Morality consultant said softly, “Alleged fossil. No one has proved its age or even proved that it came from a Martian creature. It might be simply a strangely shaped piece of rock.”

“It makes for more audience interest if we call it a fossil,” said Ventura, strongly enough to be firm, not so intense as to sound confrontive.

Ventura thought of the consultant, who sat at the bureau chief’s right hand, as a censor. No one in the network hierarchy would admit it, but they didn’t want the New Morality causing trouble for them. The rival network Global News had nearly gone bankrupt when the New Morality arranged an international boycott of their broadcasts—and the products that they advertised.

The consultant’s name was Shelby Ivers. He was a minister from the New Morality’s headquarters in Atlanta. He looked like a chubby, pink-faced, well-scrubbed young man with short dark hair combed forward to hide a receding hairline. Instead of the usual ministerial garb of funereal black he wore a cheerful checkered sports jacket and a tie of royal blue. Beneath his white shirt, Ventura was certain, a silver crucifix hung around his neck, its size determined by the man’s estimation of the cleanliness of his soul.

“The scientists themselves haven’t agreed that it’s a fossil,” sniffed the consultant, frowning down the table toward Ventura.

Lena Pickering, a sharp-eyed blond producer, said with her usual annoying nasality, “The scientists never really agree on anything, do they?”

Score one for Lena, Ventura thought, knowing that she was ambitious and wanted a spot on his staff.

“Look,” said the bureau chief, squirming in his chair, “everybody’s calling it a fossil. We’d look pretty dumb if we just called it a rock, wouldn’t we?”

“Call it an alleged fossil, then,” insisted the consultant.

“A probable fossil?” suggested Ventura’s director, sitting halfway down the table.

“A possible fossil,” said the woman across the table from him.

“A fossil,” Ventura insisted.

“But—”

“We can put in a disclaimer at the beginning of the show,” Ventura said, raising his voice enough to cut off all the others. “Say that the scientists believe it’s a fossil and until proven otherwise that’s what we’re going to call it.”

Everyone fell silent as the consultant drummed his fingers on the conference tabletop for a few moments. At last he shrugged. “I’ll write the disclaimer for you,” he said.

“Fine,” said Ventura.

“All right,” the bureau chief said, trying to smile, “that’s settled. Now, I’ve got an idea for you to consider. How about having a cohost on this show with you, Lannie?”

Ventura winced at the nickname, but shuddered inwardly at the thought of sharing the spotlight. “A cohost?” he asked, in a deathly sort voice. “On my show?”

“Edie Elgin. She was a media star back during the First Mars Expedition,” the bureau chief said.

“She’s retired. Lives on the Moon now,” said Ventura’s top researcher, a meek-looking younger guy whose bland exterior hid a Invent ambition.

“She was shacked up with one of the scientists who went to Mars,” Ventura said thinly.

“Right. James Waterman. He’s chief scientist of the whole Mars program now.”

The consultant spoke up. “She’d be prejudiced in his favor then, wouldn’t she?”

Nodding in the consultant’s direction, Ventura said, “There is that.”

“Or maybe she’s pissed at him for dumping her,” said one of the women.

“She dumped him, more likely. She’s married to Douglas Stavenger now.”

“The man whose body is filled with nanomachines?” the consultant blurted, frowning with distaste. “She’ll be even more biased. We can’t have that kind of imbalance.”

The bureau chief steepled his fingers in front of his chin. “Maybe not, then,” he muttered. “It was just a suggestion.”

Ventura shot a silent glance of thanks toward the consultant, thinking that he owed the guy one. He also realized for the first time that the bureau chief was out to get him.

“So who’s going to be on your panel, Lannie?” the chief asked, as if he’d never suggested a cohost.

“We’ll need a scientist, of course.”

“More than one,” said Ventura’s own producer, sitting on his left.

Lena Pickering said with a grin, “You put on two scientists, they’ll start arguing with one another.”

“You put on three and you’ll get six different opinions,” muttered one of the men halfway down the table.

“Well, that’s good, isn’t it?” said the bureau chief. “Controversy builds audience interest.”

Ventura shook his head. “When scientists start arguing they go into their own specialized language. It’s all incomprehensible gobbledygook. The audience can’t follow them.”

“It’s a real turnoff, chief.”

The bureau chief scratched at his bald pate. “Okay, okay. One scientist, then. Who else?”

“A Believer,” said the consultant. “We’ve got to have a Believer on the panel.”

“You volunteering?” Ventura asked. He meant it to sound like an invitation, but despite his intentions it came out more like a challenge.

The consultant stared at him for a moment. “Me? Heavens, no! I’m not a public persona.”

No, Ventura replied silently. You never show your face to the public. You do your work behind their backs.

“How about Penny Quinn?” one of the women suggested. “She’s always interesting.”

“She’s off the wall.”

“Is she a Believer?”

“I’m pretty sure she is. And she’s a woman. You don’t want this panel to be all male.”

“Why not?”

“Neanderthal!”

The consultant folded his hands on the tabletop and said earnestly, “We must have a Believer. If we have a scientist, then we must have a Believer, in the interests of fairness and balance.”

Where do you get this “we” stuff, Ventura asked silently. But he owed the guy a favor, so he said nothing.

Half a dozen names were suggested, all of them shot down by one or another of the people around the table.

“Why not get the Pope?” someone grumbled.

Ventura brightened. “That’s not a bad idea.”

The bureau chief scowled down the table at him.

“No, I don’t mean the Pope himself,” Ventura explained. “But there’s that priest at the Vatican, the one that was supposed to go on the First Expedition but got sick and had to be replaced.”

“Yeah, I remember. He got appendicitis, didn’t he?”

“Gall bladder.”

“Anyway, why not him?” Ventura asked. “He’s a scientist and a priest, for god’s sake. He advises the Pope about scientific matters, if I remember right.”

“What’s his name?”

“Di something-or-other.”

“DiNardo,” said Ventura.

The consultant looked less than pleased. “He’s a geologist, isn’t he? A scientist.”

“But he’s a priest, as well.”

“But he’s a scientist.”

The argument went around the table for more than half an hour. In the end, while the bureau chief swallowed a handful of pills without water, they decided that the panel would consist of a British paleontologist who was spending a year at Yale; an evangelist minister whose TV shows always pulled in a huge audience; an actress who was starring in a docudrama series about the Salem witch trials; an author who’d written several books debunking the notion that intelligent life had ever existed on Mars; and two university students, one majoring in planetary sciences and the other in theology. Plus the Rev. Dr. Fulvio A. DiNardo, S.J.

Ventura nodded, satisfied that he had gotten what he needed for an exciting, informative show. And no goddamned cohost.

Tithonium Base: The Dig

Jamie and Vijay were finishing their breakfasts in the nearly empty cafeteria.

“They start early here,” Vijay said, between sips of tea.

Jamie started to reply, but saw a lanky young man walking slowly toward their table. Like almost everyone else at the base, he wore plain grayish blue coveralls, unadorned except for the nametag pinned above the left breast pocket.

“Dr. Waterman?” the youngster asked, in a voice so soft Jamie had to strain to hear it. “I’m supposed to guide you around the dig this morning.”

The young man stopped a respectful two meters from Jamie’s chair. As he got to his feet, Jamie saw that he was quite tall, well over six feet, but youthfully slim, not yet grown into his adult weight. He wore his jet black hair in a long ponytail, and his face was lean, with high cheekbones and the coppery skin of a fellow Native American.

“You’re Billy Graycloud?” Jamie asked, putting out his hand.

“Yessir. The resident Navaho. Until you arrived, of course.” He smiled shyly.

“Have a seat. We were just finishing. This is my wife, Vijay.”

The kid dipped his chin. “Billy Graycloud,” he said to Vijay as he sat down.

“I’m pleased to meet you, Billy,” she said, with a smile.

Jamie said, “Dr. Chang tells me you’re a computer analyst.”

Graycloud looked down at his boots. “I will be, I guess, once I get my doctorate.”

“From UNM?”

“Uh, nosir. Arizona. In Tucson.”

Jamie knew that Graycloud had been picked to maintain the Navaho presence on Mars. No nation was allowed to claim Mars or any other body in the solar system as its sovereign territory. But corporations or other legally recognized “entities” could claim exclusive use of an asteroid or part of a planet, as long as they maintained a physical presence on-site. By international agreement, the Navaho Nation had been granted control of the utilization of the red planet—as long as at least one Navaho actually resided on Mars. The Navaho Council regarded this grant as a sacred trust and, under Jamie Waterman’s direction, kept Mars off limits to everyone except the scientists who were exploring Mars and their support staff.

As Vijay gently teased out Graycloud’s life history from the awkward, insecure student, Jamie realized with a jolt of surprise that if they had to abandon their work on Mars and return everyone home, the planet would be wide open to any other group that wanted to exploit it. Just like the whites did to the red men in America, he thought. The fact that his mother was a descendant of the Mayflower pilgrims didn’t alleviate Jamie’s fears one whit.

“Well, anyway,” Graycloud was saying to Vijay, “Dr. Chang told me to escort you out to the dig… Not that you need escorting, I know. You’ve been on Mars a lot more’n I have.”

Jamie smiled at him. “I’m glad of your help, Mr. Graycloud.”

“Uh, Billy. Call me Billy, sir.”

“Okay, Billy. And you’ll have to call me Jamie.”

Graycloud blinked at Jamie. “I… I don’t know if I can do that, sir.

“You’ll have to. When you call me sir it makes me feel a thousand years old.”

Graycloud smiled uneasily.

The three of them got up from the table and left the cafeteria. Vijay gave Jamie a peck on the cheek and headed off for the infirmary. Graycloud led Jamie to the main airlock area.

“You ever use a nanosuit before, si… uh, Dr. Waterman?”

Jamie shook his head. He saw a row of transparent suits hanging limply along a partition. They looked like plastic raincoats, almost.

“They’re a lot better than the old hard-shells,” Graycloud said. “Easier to put on. Quicker, too.”

Picking up the drooping arm of the nearest suit, Jamie asked, “Do they give you as much protection against radiation?”

“Supposed to. We’ve got a nanotech expert from Selene here at the base and she checks radiation dosages all the time. No problems so far.”

“So far,” Jamie echoed.

Graycloud’s brows knit. “If you’d feel more comfortable in a hard-shell—”

“No,” Jamie said gently. “I’ll go with your recommendation, Billy.”

Graycloud swallowed visibly, then nodded. “Okay, let’s find you a size medium.”

Jamie felt slightly nervous as he and Graycloud stepped through the main airlock’s outer hatch and onto the ruddy sand of Mars. The nanosuit seemed terribly flimsy; it was like wearing nothing more than a plastic slicker.

Then it struck him. I’m on the surface of Mars! Not inside one of those stiff old hard suits, clomping around like a two-legged turtle. I’m practically in my shirtsleeves!

The reddish ground was littered with rocks, some as small as pebbles, many as large as a man’s head. Jamie looked up, and through the transparent bubble that enclosed his head he saw the cables running up the seamed, rugged cliff face to the niche in the rocks where the Martian buildings were.

“You okay, Dr. W?” Graycloud’s voice sounded concerned in the headphone Jamie had clipped to his ear.

“I’m fine, Billy.”

“No problems with the suit?”

“None.” Jamie almost laughed. “I was thinking about the first time Dex Trumball and I rappelled down the cliff face from up top on the plateau. The first time we walked into the buildings and actually touched them.”

“Must’ve been a helluva moment,” Graycloud said.

“It sure was.”

“Uh, if you want to see the dig, it’s over this way.”

Jamie followed the student across the rock-strewn floor of the canyon. He noticed several areas along the cliffs base that were taped off, like a crime scene. The endolithic lichen, he realized. The biologists don’t want anybody near them.

They walked toward a small group of people who were clustered around a hole in the ground. Most of them wore nanosuits, although a couple were in the bulkier hard-shells.

“Which one is Dr. Carleton?” he asked Graycloud.

The younger man pointed. “Over there, in the hard suit with the orange sleeve stripes, by the sifter. That’s Doreen McManus with him. She’s the nanotech specialist I told you about.”

The figure in the hard-shell suit turned slowly, awkwardly, like a medieval knight in a rusted suit of armor.

“Waterman!” Carleton called. “Over here.”

Jamie stepped carefully around the scattered rocks toward Carleton, Graycloud beside him. The anthropologist’s face was hidden behind the reflecting coating of his helmet visor but his voice in Jamie’s headphone was brimming with enthusiasm.

“Take a look at these.” He gestured with a gloved hand to a half dozen plastic containers arranged in a neat row along the table by the sifter. Each one had an odd-shaped rock in it. “We just pulled them up this morning.”

None of the rocks was larger than palm-sized. They all looked gray and undistinguished to Jamie. His geologist’s eye noticed that one of them had a darker band in its middle.

Reaching for it, Jamie asked, “May I?”

Carleton said, “Gently. Be careful with it. I think that darker streak might be pigment.”

“Pigment?”

“Might be a shard from pottery.”

Using two hands, Jamie picked up the irregularly shaped piece out of its plastic container. The gloves of his nanosuit were so delicate that he could feel the rough edges of the shard. It was thinner than his little finger, slightly curved. By god, Jamie thought, this really could have been part of a bowl once.

He looked up at Carleton. “You’ll have to have this analyzed.”

“Damned right.”

Jamie handed the piece back to the anthropologist. “Do you have the equipment you need?”

“Some. I can do a spectral analysis of the pigment.”

“If that’s what it is.”

Carleton’s voice dropped a tone, went darker. “Yes, if that’s what it is.”

“The geology team can do a thorium/lead dating measurement,” Jamie mused, “to tell how old it is.”

“Not potassium/argon?”

Remembering earlier attempts at fixing the dates of Martian rocks, Jamie replied, “The argon tends to outgas over time; throws the measurement off.”

“I’ll want a carbon-14 run, too. Then we can see if the pigment’s a different age from the rest of the shard,” Carleton said as he carefully deposited the piece back in its container.

Jamie shook his head. “This stuff probably dates back sixty million years. C-14 won’t be any good for that kind of time.”

Carleton chuckled. “You’re right. I was thinking of human artifacts, on Earth. We’re a lot younger, aren’t we?”

“Yes, we are,” said Jamie. Silently he added, And we’re still here. Not extinct.

Jamie looked again at the other rocks in their little boxes. “And what about these?”

“Don’t know yet. I’m collecting anything that looks even faintly interesting. For example, this one,” he pointed to a slim fragment, “just might be a piece of bone.”

Jamie saw that it had a slight indentation running its length, but otherwise there was nothing that looked bonelike to his eyes.

“You’ll have to do an MNA test on it.”

“Martian nucleic acids, right.” Carleton hesitated, then said, “The bio people tell me they need more sensitive equipment. The stuff they have here is pretty primitive compared to what’s available back on Earth.”

Jamie remembered that biologists on Earth had teased molecules of DNA from sixty-million-year-old fossils of dinosaurs. There was even talk of recreating a Tyrannosaurus rex a few years ago, before the fundamentalists took control of the Congress. What would the New Morality think about us recreating a Martian? Jamie wondered. They’d blow up this base and everybody in it, he thought.

He asked Carleton, “You’ve already talked to the biologists here at the base?”

“About my vertebra. I asked them to do an MNA run on it.”

“I see.”

“Their equipment isn’t sensitive enough. If there’s any organic material left on the vertebra it’s so minuscule that their reading is down in the noise.”

“We’ll need better equipment, then,” Jamie muttered. Then he added, “Or we’ll have to send the fossil back to a lab on Earth.”

“Oh no!” Carleton said sharply. “That’s my discovery. That fossil doesn’t leave my sight.”

“We could ship you back home with it.”

“I’m staying here. And so are whatever finds we make. I’m not letting any Earthside lab steal my credit.”

Jamie started to reply, but pulled in a deep breath instead. No sense starting a fight here, he told himself. The man’s had his troubles with university bureaucracies in the past. I can’t blame him for being possessive. He wants the mountain to come to Mohammed. Trouble is, resupply missions cost money. Money that we haven’t got.

Then he thought, But on the other hand, if the biologists want so badly to test his fossil for nucleic acids, maybe they’ll have enough clout to fund a mission here. That would be helpful.

“I’ll see what I can do,” Jamie said.

“Good,” said Carleton. “And while you’re at it, I could use a few trained paleontologists, too.”

Jamie smiled at him and suppressed an urge to ask if he wanted anything else.

Rome: The Vatican

Monsignor Fulvio A. DiNardo, S.J., scurried along the garden pathway from the television studio toward the stately building that housed the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, where his office was.

He walked fast, short arms pumping, short legs scampering beneath his black, knee-length surplice, which he wore over his workaday clerical suit. He looked more like an overaged wrestler than a priest. Although he was not tall, his build was burly, with a barrel-shaped body and thick limbs heavy with muscle. He kept his scalp shaved but there was always a dark stubble over his jaw no matter how closely he shaved. Despite his fierce appearance, Monsignor DiNardo was a truly gentle man, a dedicated Jesuit, a confidant of the Pope and the cardinals who advised the pontiff. He was also a world-class geologist.

He nodded perfunctorily to the priests and nuns and friars strolling much more leisurely along the walk. They seemed almost like statues compared to his heart-pumping pace. DiNardo had always been a man on the go. Once he had tried using a bicycle to get across the Vatican grounds faster, but Cardinal Castiglione had nearly had a heart attack over the incident and forbade DiNardo from resorting to such infamous tactics. DiNardo obeyed, of course, although he tried to point out to his apoplectic superior that he had considered a motorbike but rejected the idea as too noisy, too disruptive.

So now he hurried toward his office on foot, looking like a black-garbed badger trotting on its hind legs.

DiNardo had actually been selected to be the lead geologist on the First Martian Expedition, but was struck down by a gall bladder attack mere days before he was to leave Earth. Jamie Waterman replaced him and went on to discover the ruins of Martian buildings in the cliffs of Tithonium Chasma.

I might have made that discovery, he had often thought. And just as often he’d told himself that God, in His infinite wisdom, had given that glory to the Navaho. DiNardo couldn’t see how that furthered God’s plan for the universe, but he accepted the situation with a good heart—or tried to.

Now DiNardo mopped his shaved scalp with a blood red handkerchief as he neared the Academy building.

The television broadcast had been a farce, he thought angrily. That slimy moderator, Ventura, had no interest in discussing the discovery of a fossil bone on Mars. He was out for sensation, not science. Moderator! DiNardo silently spat the word. The man is an immoderate egomaniac.

Ventura: “So is this odd-shaped piece of rock really the remains of a living creature?”

DiNardo: “I believe it probably is. It appears—”

Ventura: “Probably?”

DiNardo: “Very likely.”

Evangelist: “It’s all a matter of what the Lord expects us to believe: either His word as revealed in the Bible or the doubtful guesses of scientists all the way out on Mars.”

Ventura: “What do you think, Becky? Is it a fossil or just a funny-shaped rock?”

Actress: “It’s hard to tell, isn’t it?”

Author: “Look, I proved in my book, The Mars Hoax, that all this baloney about intelligent Martians is just hype by scientists trying to increase their funding.”

DiNardo: “Then how do you explain the buildings? The cliff dwellings?”

Author: “Built by some of the Navahos that that guy Waterman brought to Mars.”

DiNardo: “That is nonsense! Preposterous!”

Ventura: “You heard it here, folks. But remember, Mr. Quentin’s opinions are his own, and not necessarily the view of Worldwide News.”

Author: “You can read the truth in my latest book, The Mars Hoax Revisited.”

And so it went, for a solid hour. DiNardo was glad that he had been in Rome, in the Vatican’s TV studio, and not in New York or wherever Ventura’s show originated. The temptation to throttle that idiot author would have overpowered his self-control.

He almost smiled as he rushed up the marble stairs to his office. That would have made a spectacular television moment: Jesuit priest strangles popular author. I wonder what penance Cardinal Castiglione would have given me for that?

DiNardo’s smile faded as he stepped into his cramped little office and dropped his bulk into his desk chair. The parts of the Vatican that tourists saw were adorned with frescoes by Titian, Raphael and other Renaissance masters. Vatican wallpaper, some wags called it. But here at the Academy of Sciences the walls were plain, bland eggshell white: economical and not distracting.

I must word this memorandum carefully, DiNardo told himself as he stared at his blank computer screen. It must be logical and convincing. Yet although he placed his fingers on the grubby keyboard, smudged with years worth of his banging on it, no words came to him. And his mind drifted, turned without his conscious volition to the problem that had become the central focus of his existence.

How could a just and merciful God have created a race of intelligent creatures and then snuffed them out in the flicker of a moment? All right, it was longer than a moment, but geologically speaking the Martians perished virtually overnight. How could God allow that?

An intelligent race, knowledgeable enough to build structures, to erect cliff dwellings high up in the walls of Mars’s Grand Canyon. Intelligent enough to worship God, undoubtedly. Perhaps their vision of God was different from ours; certainly it must have been. But they were intelligent! God gave them the brains to build a civilization, just as He did for us.

DiNardo’s breath caught in his throat. God sent the Flood to us. He destroyed all of humankind except for Noah and his family. Or is that merely a metaphor, a faint remembrance of an ecological disaster that caused widespread devastation?

It was no metaphor on Mars, he knew. A giant meteor came crashing down out of the sky and blasted the poor Martians into extinction. Dead, every last one of them. Killed.

Why? DiNardo cried silently. Why did God permit this to happen? Why did He make it happen?

As a lesson to us? Could a loving God be so cruel as to extinguish an entire race, just to teach us to fear Him?

Could the fundamentalists be right? Is this greenhouse warming we’re suffering now a retribution from a God grown angry at our evil ways? Did He create the Martians merely to show us what He can do when we displease Him?

No. DiNardo shook his head. That I cannot accept, cannot believe.

But why, then? Dear Lord, why did You wipe them out?

He realized with a sudden flash of inspiration that there was only one way for him to find the answer to that question. The answer lay millions of kilometers away, buried beneath the red sands of Mars. I’ve got to go there! he told himself. I’ve got to find out for myself what happened to those creatures, why they perished.

You had your chance, more than twenty years ago. God sent Waterman to Mars instead of you. Looking up at the plain wooden crucifix above his office door, DiNardo asked fervently, Lord, may I have another chance? May I get to Mars at last? Is it Your will that I reach Mars and seek out the truth of what happened to those souls?

I’m nearly ten years older than Jamie Waterman, he thought. But if Carter Carleton is young enough to go to Mars, then why not me? I’m in presentable physical condition. My blood pressure is under control as long as I take my medications. The fusion ships travel there in a matter of mere days. It’s no more difficult than flying from Rome to Los Angeles, really.

Monsignor DiNardo began pecking at his keyboard, his passionate yearning to go to Mars burning all other thoughts out of his mind, even the tightness of breath he felt as he bent over the keyboard and poured out his soul.

I’ve got to get to Mars, he told himself. I’ve got to!

Tithonium Base: Number Crunching

Jamie sat at the desk in the cubicle that Dr. Chang had given him to use as an office. It was a minuscule enclosure, barely big enough for a couple of bungee-cord chairs and a fold-up writing table that served as a makeshift desk. Like all the other cubicles in the dome, its walls were two-meter-high plastic partitions. Only the pie-slice personal quarters and Dr. Chang’s office had real walls that extended to a real ceiling.

Jamie had spent the morning out at the dig, actually helping the learn patiently excavate Carleton’s pit, using modified laser drills to break up the rock floor and then old-fashioned whisk brushes to carefully, tenderly clean eons of dust from the fragments. Most of the pieces they uncovered were meaningless lumps of stone, as far as Jamie could see, but every once in a while Carleton would exclaim:

“This could be a knee joint!”

Or: “Looks like the end of a handle to me.”

The anthropologist was amassing a small but growing collection of what could be fossils and ancient artifacts. The geologists dated them all to between sixty-seven and sixty-three million years old, the right approximate age for the time when the meteor bombardment had wiped out almost all life on Mars. Jamie wondered if the dating was accurate. Sometimes even the most unbiased of scientists saw what they wanted to see, instead of what was before their eyes.

He thought of Percival Lowell, the wealthy Bostonian who built an observatory in the clear mountain air of Flagstaff, Arizona, and spent the rest of his life studying Mars. Lowell saw canals on Mars and wrote popular books about the possibility—the certainty, as far as he was concerned—that Mars was inhabited by intelligent engineers who built a planetary system of canals to save their cities from global drought. Lowell’s canals turned out to be mostly eyestrain, and his own zealous desire to prove that intelligent Martians existed.

They did exist, Jamie thought wryly, sixty-some million years before Lowell’s time. But they weren’t clever enough to build a global network of canals. It wouldn’t have helped them, anyway. The catastrophe that wiped them out would have buried their canals along with their villages and every trace of them, except for the cliff dwellings.

Yet Lowell was right in one sense, Jamie knew. Mars is dying. A long, slow, agonizing death. The hardy little lichen that have made an ecological niche for themselves inside the rocks strewn across the valley floor are dying away. The atmosphere’s faint trace of moisture is dwindling. Unless we step in and intervene, the lichen will go extinct, just like all the other life on the cold, dry surface of Mars.

But long before that we’ll be gone, Jamie thought. Our funding is petering out. We’ll have to leave Mars. Leave the planet and let it die.

Trying to shake off his feelings of impending doom, Jamie left his cubbyhole and went to the infirmary to take Vijay to lunch. Afterward he repaired to his shoebox of an office and pulled up the latest messages from Selene. The distance between Mars and the Earth/Moon region made two-way communication impossibly awkward. Even traveling at nearly three hundred thousand kilometers per second, it took light about four minutes to span the distance when Mars was closest to Earth. At the moment, the oneway lag in transmission was almost nine minutes, which meant eighteen minutes between hearing “Hello” and the next words sent from the Earth or the Moon.

So one side talked while the other side listened. Then they reversed roles. At the moment, Jamie was listening to Douglas Stavenger.

“We have a good deal of experience in developing life support facilities out of local resources,” Stavenger was saying. His handsome, smoky-skinned face was smiling genially. “The key to Selene’s success has been building a self-sufficient community out of what’s available here on the Moon.”

Jamie nodded to himself. During its war for independence, Selene was cut off from all imports from Earth. The embargo was brief, but it taught the lunar inhabitants a crucial lesson: they had to survive on their own resources.

“From what my engineer friends tell me, you’ve got an easier situation on Mars than we do here on the Moon. You’ve got an atmosphere, and it’s got some oxygen and nitrogen in it. All we’ve got is vacuum: we have to bake oxygen out of the soil—er, I mean the regolith.” Stavenger’s smile turned slightly embarrassed. “The tech guys would pound me if they heard me call it soil.”

Soil contains living creatures, Jamie knew. The powdery crust of the Moon was absolutely lifeless. And waterless, except for reservoirs of ice in deep craters near the poles where comets had crashed eons ago.

“Anyway, I’ve asked a few friends to put together a study on how you can make your base self-sufficient—or as close to self-sufficiency as possible. They’re mostly retired engineers and geologists, so it won’t cost you much. They’re glad of an interesting project to occupy their minds.”

And I’m glad it won’t be expensive, Jamie thought.

“They’ll be pestering you with questions,” Stavenger went on. “In time, one or two of them might actually want to come to your base and see the conditions there for themselves. I presume that will be okay with you. That’s all I’ve got for you at the moment. I’ll wait for your answer.”

Jamie activated his computer’s microphone and replied, “I’m delighted that you can help us, and I’ll be willing to field any questions your people send. I’ll get our most competent people to provide any information you need. One thing: remember that the, um, regolith here on Mars is loaded with superoxides. We can get plenty of oxygen from it, but we also have to bake the superoxides out of the soil if we want to try growing plants in it.”

He talked for another ten minutes while the computer typed out his words on its display screen. Jamie read the message, made a few corrections, then finally tapped the transmit key.

It’s all in the numbers, he told himself. Whether we leave or stay, whether we live or die, it’s all a matter of numbers.

But then the Navaho side of his mind corrected, It’s a matter of spirit, as well. Who will have the courage to stay on this red world? Who will dare to stand against Coyote and his devilish tricks?

Tithonium Chasma: The Village

This is what we’ve got so far,” Carleton said, bending slightly over the display that lit up the big, square stereo table.

It was late afternoon. Carleton’s digging crew was still out at the excavation site. The rest of the dome’s personnel were in their labs or workshops, except for a team of scientists and astronauts on their way back from an excursion to the Tharsis volcanoes, and the inevitable few people lounging in the cafeteria, on the other side of the big dome.

Jamie looked down at the three-dimensional image of a gridwork of lines. Most of them were straight and intersected in neat right angles, although along one side of the image the lines meandered crookedly.

“This is the radar imagery?” Jamie asked.

“Deep radar, yes,” said Carleton. Doreen McManus stood at his side, tall, lean, silent. The glow from the table’s display underlit her sculptured, serious face.

Carleton was much more animated. Pointing to a small red rectangle at one corner of the display, he explained, “This is where we’ve been digging. We’re already pulling up some blocks that might be bricks from the foundations of these buildings.”

“Those are buildings?”

Nodding vigorously, Carleton replied, “Certainly looks that way. Foundations, at least. The buildings themselves must have collapsed under the weight of the millions of years of dust accumulating over them.” Tracing the lines with a fingertip, “These were streets. They laid out their village in a grid, very orderly.”

“And here?” Jamie pointed to the lines that curved lazily.

“They must have been running along the edge of the river. That’s where the stream flowed.”

Jamie straightened up and focused on Carleton’s face. The anthropologist was beaming happily.

“We’ve got a lot of work to do,” Carleton said. “We’ve only just begun to peck at one corner of this village.”

“Dr. Chang wants to send out teams to follow the ancient riverbed and scout for other sites,” said Jamie. “The satellite imagery shows some interesting possibilities.”

“Chang.” Carleton almost spat the word. “He’s a geologist. What does he know about excavating sites?”

“He’s the mission director.”

“And you’re the science director for the whole program. You outrank him.”

Glancing at McManus, Jamie saw that she was looking across the dome toward Chang’s office cubicle. Its door was firmly closed.

“I don’t want to get into a power struggle with Dr. Chang,” he said quietly.

Carleton’s jaw settled. “The man’s belittled my work since day one. I honestly believe he doesn’t understand the magnitude of what we’ve found.”

Jamie took a slow breath. “I’ll speak with him. He does have the responsibility for the whole team here, you know. You’re not the only—”

“I know I’m not the only scientist working here,” Carleton acknowledged. Then, with an impish grin, he added, “But I’m the most important one.”

McManus spoke up. “Have you seen the bricks that we’ve uncovered? They’re from the foundation of this building here.” She pointed with a bright red lacquered fingernail.

“You’re sure?” Jamie asked Carleton.

“Absolutely. It’s from their village. They lived down here where the water was, where the river flowed.”

“And the buildings up in the cliffs?”

Carleton shrugged. “Who knows? A ceremonial center, most likely. I don’t think we’ll ever know for sure.”

“Maybe not,” Jamie murmured.

“So you’ll talk with Chang?” Carleton pressed. “We need to expand the dig. That means more people working on it. We need to uncover the entire village, the farms around it, everything.”

Nodding, Jamie said, “I’ll talk to him. But don’t expect miracles. I don’t want to go over his head.”

“Somebody’s got to,” Carleton said darkly.

As if he knew what was transpiring, Chang remained closeted in his office the rest of the day. Jamie was reluctant to interrupt whatever the mission director was doing, even if it was nothing more than avoiding him. No confrontations, he told himself. This isn’t going to he settled by power politics, not here, not among these people. We’ve got to find a path that we can all travel, a method we can all agree on.

So Jamie spent the rest of the afternoon catching up on reports from Dex and the research groups scattered around more than a dozen universities on Earth—and Selene University, on the Moon. In his mind’s eye Jamie pictured a delicate web of thoughts and ideas as men and women in Asia, Europe, the Americas, Australia and even in the underground city of Selene, worked to puzzle out the history of Mars and its vanished people.

He couldn’t help thinking of the extinct Martians as people, even though he knew consciously that they probably did not look at all like human beings. But they thought the way we do, Jamie realized. They loved and feared and hoped and died the way we do. Maybe that’s what the Bible means when it says God created man in his image: it means intelligence, the moral knowledge of good and evil. It doesn’t matter what the body form looks like. It’s intelligence that makes us godlike.

Then he remembered the Navaho creation myth. The People had lived on a red world before coming to the blue world. A great flood had driven them out of the red world.

No, he told himself firmly. That is myth. The Martians didn’t migrate to Earth. They died here, every last one of them.

Jamie tried to use dinner as a social opportunity. Although he almost inevitably took his meal with Vijay, Jamie always attempted to invite one or two of the staff people to share their mealtime. It was easier to catch up on who was doing what over the dinner table. And the discussions weren’t always limited to the scientific work going on.

This evening they dined with Itzak Rosenberg and Saleem Hasdrubal at a table for four in a corner of the busy, noisy cafeteria. The area smelled of sizzling cooking oil and a vague aroma of vinegar. Whoever selected the evening’s music had picked Russian classics. Jamie thought he recognized the dark strains of Rachmaninoff over the clatter of dishware and hum of conversations.

Jamie wanted to ask the two of them about staying another year on Mars. But he wanted to approach the subject obliquely, carefully. Better to sound them out first, get to know them a little, before popping the big question.

Rosenberg seemed somewhat nervous at first, but Hasdrubal leaned back in his creaking plastic chair and, despite his stern, almost fierce appearance, joked about their disappointing stint at the crater Malzberg.

“It’s all Izzy’s fault,” Hasdrubal said, draping a long, lean arm around his colleague’s shoulders. “The crater wouldn’t pop a geyser as long as he was watching.”

Rosenberg looked uncomfortable, as if his partner’s arm weighed too heavily on him. “We’re accustomed to disappointments,” he murmured.

“We?” asked Vijay.

“The Children of Israel,” Hasdrubal answered immediately. “Their history has been full of disappointments and diasporas.”

“That’s not really funny, Sal,” said Rosenberg.

Hasdrubal looked at Rosenberg for a long, silent moment. “No, I guess it’s not, considering what happened to Israel.”

Thinking of the nuclear holocaust that had devastated much of the Middle East, Jamie glanced at his wife, then poked at the soymeat steak on his plate. Vijay’s a shade darker than Hasdrubal, he realized.

Trying to change the subject, Vijay asked, “What kind of a name is Hasdrubal?”

“Carthaginian,” said the biologist. Before anyone could ask more, he explained, “My great-grandfather was one of the original Black Muslims. When he changed his name from Jefferson he wanted something elegant, so he picked Hasdrubal.”

“He was a brother of Hannibal, wasn’t he?” Jamie asked.

Nodding, Hasdrubal added, “And my great-grandad was a reader of ancient history. Damned near took the name Caesar, but my great-grandmam talked him out of it.”

“Are you planning to go back to the crater?” Vijay asked.

Rosenberg answered, “No. We have it fully instrumented. If and when it blows we’ll get it all on record: imagery, heat flow, seismic data, the works.”

“I’ve analyzed the dirt for biological activity,” said Hasdrubal.

“And?” asked Vijay.

“Nada. Zip. Dirt’s loaded with superoxides. Not enough organic material in it to support a bacterium.”

“How deep does the superoxide layer go?” Jamie asked.

“It varies,” said Hasdrubal, waggling a long-fingered hand in the air.

“It’s more than twenty meters down at the Malzberg site,” said Rosenberg.

“That’s awfully deep, i’n’t it?” asked Vijay.

Hasdrubal nodded. “In some places it’s only a couple of meters down. Depends on where you are.”

“So what are you going to do now?” Jamie asked.

Hasdrubal took a swig of his fruit juice, then answered, “Carleton wants us to volunteer for his dig.” He broke into a toothy grin as he put his mug down. “But we have other plans.”

“We’re going to take a camper out and follow the path of the old river,” said Rosenberg.

“See if we can find other villages buried underground,” Hasdrubal put in.

“Dr. Chang has approved that?”

“Approved it?” Hasdrubal echoed, his grin going even wider. “He just about insisted on it. ’Specially when we told him Carleton had approached us.”

Rosenberg leaned his elbows on either side of his dish and dropped his voice several decibels. “If Carleton’s for it, Chang’s against it. They don’t like each other. Not at all.”

Jamie studied the geologist’s round, bland face with its mop of tightly curled strawberry hair and the silly-looking little tuft of a goatee. The man was grinning, as if he found the conflict amusing.

“That troubles me,” Jamie said.

Rosenberg made an elaborate shrug. “Not much you can do about it, actually.”

Hasdrubal interjected, “Unless you wanna get in the middle of it.”

Tithonium Chasma: The Cliff Dwellings

Jamie’s heart was thumping as he rode the cable lift up the sheer face of the cliff. He was excited, not afraid. Sealed inside a nanofabric suit, he felt almost as if he were in his shirtsleeves riding past layer after layer of Mars’s geologic history. Bands of red rock, then gray, then an almost golden tan. Cracked, seamed, striated. The history of a world sliding past his eyes as he dangled in the climbing harness that hauled him up to the cleft where the buildings stood.

He remembered the First Expedition, their third morning on Mars, the jolt of sheer exhilaration he’d gotten when he’d spotted a rock that bore a streak of green. He’d been certain, rationally, that the green was an inclusion of copper. But still, green in the middle of the planetwide desert of rusty red! It turned out to be copper, as Jamie had suspected, but the excitement that it might have been life—that was a moment he’d never forget.

And then he’d discovered the cliff dwellings. At first no one believed him. He had seen the niche from a distance; even the camera imagery he had brought back to their base was hazy, indistinct. A Navaho imagining things that remind him of home, they all said. It wasn’t until the Second Expedition when he and Dex had driven purposefully out to the edge of the canyon and rappelled nearly a full kilometer down to the cleft in the worn old cliffs that they saw beyond a doubt that the buildings actually were there.

That was more than a thrill. Even inside the cumbersome old hard-shell suit he wore his knees had gone weak on him.

Chang had recited safety protocols at him when Jamie told the mission director he wanted to go to the cliff buildings. Jamie had quietly insisted on going alone.

“I don’t want to take anyone from their work,” he’d said.

Scowling, Chang said, “Take your fellow Navaho.”

“Graycloud? He’s got his own tasks to do, doesn’t he?”

It took some discussion, but Chang had finally agreed to allow Jamie to ride up to the buildings alone. Jamie got the impression that the mission director was just as glad that he didn’t have to take anyone away from their assigned jobs to escort him.

Now he pressed the control stud on the front of his climbing harness and the cable drive decelerated. Jamie rose slowly past the lip of the cleft and stopped the cable altogether, his feet dangling in midair, his body twisting slightly in the harness. His throat went dry. There they were, six buildings made of sun-dried brick, bleached white with age, silent, empty, waiting for him.

It’s better to do this alone, he told himself. Just these ancient buildings and me. No one else. No distractions.

He swung his legs and planted his booted feet on the edge of the cleft, unhooked the harness, then walked a dozen steps toward the buildings. The solid rock overhead formed a shield against the elements, not that it had rained or snowed on Mars for eons. There was frost from time to time, Jamie knew, pitifully thin coatings of rime that condensed on the rocks overnight and evaporated with the morning sun. The endolithic lichen living inside the rocks on the valley floor depended on that meager source of moisture.

Stepping to the face of the nearest building, Jamie wondered why the seasonal frosts hadn’t eroded the brickwork more. It’s had sixty-some million seasons to do its damage, he told himself. Yet, as he touched the bleached white wall with his nanogloved fingers, he saw that its surface was scarcely pitted. Archeologists had studied these buildings, he knew. He’d read their reports. No one could explain how the structures had remained relatively undamaged over all those millions of years. These bricks must be more than adobe, he reasoned. Maybe the Martians could teach us something about construction materials.

Another one of Mars’s mysteries, Jamie said to himself. And he smiled. Someday we’ll figure out the answers to all the mysteries. And Mars will be a lot less interesting.

Or will it? The answer to one mystery usually leads to still more unknowns.

Morning sunlight was slanting into the cleft as Jamie ducked through the low doorway of the building and stepped inside. Whoever built these structures wasn’t very tall. He remembered how he and Dex Trumball had to get down on all fours, inside their bulky hard-shell suits, and crawl through the entrance. In the flexible nanosuit he could walk through if he hunched over.

Twenty years worth of curious, two-legged explorers from Earth had swept away all the dust that had accumulated in the buildings. The rooms inside were bare, their stone-covered floors cleared and somehow sterile looking. Archeologists had come and gone, cleaning, searching, sifting the dust, seeking artifacts, fossils, some hint of who built these cliff structures, some clue about their purpose in the lives of their vanished builders.

Over the span of more than twenty years they had found precious little. Practically nothing, Jamie knew. The rooms had been empty. No furniture, no altars, not a scrap or a shard to indicate why the structures had been built up here in this inaccessible site, or what they had been used for. The Martians had taken their secrets with them.

Except for the drawings.

Jamie clambered up the aluminum ladder that had been placed for access to the next floor. The drawings were on a wall on the uppermost floor. One wall out of the entire complex of buildings. Was this your shrine? Jamie asked the vanished Martians. Your school?

A battery of full-spectrum lamps faced the wall, connected to a thermionic nuclear power pack, pointing at the drawings like an execution squad. The lamps were off, but there was enough sunlight coming in through the light well in the ceiling that Jamie could make out the etched figures clearly.

Archeologists had sprayed the wall with a monomolecular coating of clear hard plastic, so that no one could damage the lines of finely etched figures. Jamie shook his head at their precaution. Sixty million years of time hadn’t erased the drawings. But maybe a handful of thoughtless assholes could mess them up, he admitted to himself.

At first the scientists thought the figures had been writing: line after line of delicate curves and swirls etched into the rock facing of the wall. Gradually the teams of archeologists and philologists who had come to Mars to study the figures came to the conclusion that they were pictographs: a form of writing, to be sure, but one that used pictorial symbols rather than arbitrary shapes to form words.

Jamie reached out with a gloved hand, barely able to suppress the very human urge to touch the symbols. He saw a circle with rays coming out of its perimeter, so much like the sun symbols of the southwest Native Americans that his breath still caught in his throat whenever he looked at it. Other symbols vaguely reminded him of snakes, triangles, even a few that sort of looked like trees.

Line after line of carefully wrought pictographs. They had eyes like ours, Jamie told himself. And hands, fingers. They had minds like ours.

The lines of precise, regularly spaced figures ended about a meter above the cleanly swept floor. Then came ragged, lopsided symbols, obviously scrawled in desperate haste compared to the orderly pictographs above them. The methodical lines of symbols had been inscribed deeply into the stone by chisels or similar instruments. The childlike scribbles had been scratched out quickly, roughly, as if the person who scraped them onto the rock had been looking over his shoulder, staring death in the face.

It’s their history, Jamie was certain. They were telling the story of their people, their way of life, their beliefs, their dreams. And then it happened. That giant meteor hit like the fist of devastation. The skies went dark. Their crops died. It became winter forever.

Jamie stared at the symbols as if he could make them speak to him by sheer willpower. But they remained mute, lifeless.

Are they prayers? Jamie asked himself. Was this collection of buildings placed up here in this inaccessible cleft in the rocks as some sort of temple? Will we ever know?

Jamie stood there, as silent and unmoving as the stones themselves, until the sunlight began to fade.

“Dr. Waterman.” The excursion monitor’s voice in his earplug sounded foreign, alien. “You’re at the limit. Temperature’s starting to go down.”

It took him two tries to make his voice work. “Right. I’m starting hack.”

With enormous reluctance he turned away from the carvings and made his way back down to the lowest level of the building. It was late afternoon. He’d been in the building almost the whole day.

Time to get back to the base, he told himself. Before it starts to get really cold.

As he slipped his arms into the climbing harness and clicked its lock on his chest, Jamie took one more look at the bleached white buildings. And he realized what he had to do.

Depew, Florida: Longstreet Middle School

“Hey, geek boy!”

Bucky Winters looked up. He’d been sitting on the bench by the batting cage, tying up the laces of the cleated baseball shoes he’d borrowed, hoping to get a tryout for the school’s team. But Lon Sanchez and a couple of the other older boys had descended on him.

“Whatcha doin’?” Sanchez asked, grinning. His two pals were just as big as he was, twice Bucky’s size.

“Trying out for the team,” said Bucky. He’d taken a double dose of allergy pills so he could get through this tryout with clear sinuses and dry eyes.

“No you ain’t.”

“Yes I am,” said Bucky, getting to his feet.

Sanchez bent down slightly so that his red, angry face was hardly an inch in front of Bucky’s. His two cohorts came up on either side; Bucky was surrounded.

“We don’t want any geek boys screwin’ up our team.”

“I know how to play!” Bucky insisted. “I’m better at shortstop than Ricky is.”

“The hell you are.”

“Give me a chance at a tryout and I’ll prove it.”

“No way, geek. Take off your cleats and go home.”

“Go back to Mars,” said the oaf on his left.

“Yeah, we don’t want any Mars boys on our team.”

“We heard about your big project.”

“Yeah. It’s a shame somebody mashed it flat,” Sanchez said, smirking.

Bucky’s temper flared. “You’re the one who busted up my model!”

Sanchez grabbed Bucky by the front of his shirt. “That’s right, Mars boy. And if you don’t get the fuck outta here we’re gonna bust you up, too.”

Bucky kicked Sanchez in the shins as hard as he could, making him yowl with pain, then punched him squarely in the nose. Blood spurted. The other two were stunned with surprise for a moment, but before Bucky could get away, they grabbed him and helped Sanchez beat him into unconsciousness.

When all four of them were brought before the school’s principal, Sanchez pointed to his bandaged nose and claimed that Bucky started the fight. Bucky’s head was bandaged, his ribs were encased in a plastic cast, his face was lumpy with bruises.

“You struck the first blow?” the principal demanded of Bucky.

Through swollen lips Bucky admitted, “Yes, ma’am.”

The principal shook her gray head. “First this Mars business and now you’ve started a brawl. You’d better be very careful, young man. You’re in a downward spiral.”

Boston: Trumball Trust Headquarters

Dex Trumball tried to hide the mistrust he felt. Why has this priest flown here all the way from Rome? he wondered silently. What does he want?

Monsignor DiNardo was smiling patiently at him as he sat in the bottle green leather armchair before Dex’s wide, curved desk of Danish teak and brushed aluminum. The priest wore a plain black business suit, with his clerical collar and its touch of purple. DiNardo looked burly, with bulging shoulders and a barrel chest, his scalp shaved but the dark shadow of a beard stubbling his jaw, yet he still seemed somewhat dwarfed in the capacious armchair. Dex resisted the urge to get up and see if the priest’s feet reached the carpeted floor.

“It was good of you to see me on such short notice,” DiNardo said in English, a hint of soft Italian vowels at the ends of his words.

Dex made a hospitable smile. “Not at all, Fa… uh, Monsignor. Would you like something to drink? Coffee? Something stronger?”

DiNardo shook his head. “Thank you, no. The rocket flight brought me here in half an hour, but my insides are still on Vatican time.”

“I see.”

An uneasy hush fell over them. DiNardo seemed to be fishing for the words he wanted while Dex fiddled impatiently with his fingers, waiting for the priest to start talking. Does he know about my negotiations with Kinnear? Dex wondered nervously. No, he can’t. Rollie can keep his mouth shut. I haven’t even mentioned it to the Navaho president yet.

At last Dex broke the silence. “I saw the video show you did with Orlando Ventura.”

“That abomination!” DiNardo spat.

“You held up your end pretty well,” said Dex.

“They had no interest in the importance of the Martian fossil. They belittled the greatest find since Lucy.”

“They’re not interested in science, that’s for sure.”

“No, they want to deny it all.”

Dex nodded agreement. Then, “We’re working to put together a documentary about the fossil. A real documentary, not a circus.”

“I would be glad to participate in it, if you feel I could be of help.”

“Certainly. Will the Vatican…?”

DiNardo caught Dex’s implication. “The Holy See will have no objection. Not everyone who believes in God is blindly antiscience.”

“I’m glad to hear that. We’re up to our eyeballs in fundamentalists.”

“There are factions within the Vatican, to be sure,” DiNardo admitted easily. “But they have not affected the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, I assure you.”

Not yet, Dex thought. Aloud, he mused, “You could be a very important voice in our documentary. You could show that there’s no real conflict between science and religion.”

DiNardo hesitated, then said merely, “I will be glad to do what I can.

“Great. I’ll tell the people producing the show to count you in.”

“Buono,” said DiNardo. Then he went on, “Now, I must ask a favor of you.”

Here it comes, Dex said to himself. “A favor?”

“I wish to go to Mars.”

Dex blinked at the priest. “Go to Mars? You?”

With a self-deprecating little smile, DiNardo said, “I am a I rained geologist. I was selected to be the lead geologist on the First Expedition, if you remember.”

“I know. But that was more than twenty years ago.”

“I am not quite an invalid. In fact, I am in very good health.”

“But you’re… what, fifty-five, sixty?”

“Fifty-seven. Jamie Waterman is almost fifty. Carter Carleton is sixty-three. I won’t be the oldest fossil on Mars.”

Dex acknowledged the priest’s little joke with a forced smile.

“I will undergo the most rigorous physical examinations your program can subject me to,” DiNardo said before Dex could think of anything to say. “Of course, with the fusion torch ships the trip to Mars is much easier than it was twenty-some years ago.”

“Yes, but why…?”

DiNardo lifted his round chin and let out a sigh. “I want to help. I believe that having a priest go to Mars might help to counter the voices speaking against the program.”

“You know that we might have to shut down the whole shebang and bring everybody home.”

“I am aware of that. I believe that my going to Mars could help you gain more donors to keep the program funded.”

Dex couldn’t help grinning. “You want to be the Mars poster boy?”

Perfectly serious, DiNardo replied, “If it will help.”

Tithonium Base: Jamie’s Office

Jamie’s little cubicle was crowded with both Carleton and Chang in it. Jamie could feel the tension crackling between the two men. Not good, he told himself. These two have to work together if we’re going to get anywhere.

Dr. Chang sat in the stiff plastic chair in front of Jamie’s fold-up desk. Carleton had dragged in a rolling chair made of bungee cords from the adjoining cubicle. It filled the entrance to Jamie’s office; there was no room to get it farther into the cramped workspace.

“I have considered your request of staying past my regular term of service,” Chang was saying, his stubby arms crossed on his chest, his back to Carleton.

Jamie waited for the other shoe.

“I will remain here as long as necessary, as mission director.”

Carleton said, “I thought you had family that you wanted to get back to.”

“I have a wife and son in Beijing,” Chang replied, without turning to look at the anthropologist. “However, my duty is plainly here.”

“I’m glad you’ve decided,” Jamie said, with a slow smile. “I know Dr. Carleton intends to remain, too.”

“Damned right,” said Carleton.

“I will remain mission director,” Chang repeated. It was a demand, not a question.

“Yes, certainly,” answered Jamie. “Your experience will be very valuable to all of us.”

Carleton said nothing.

“I’ve talked with almost everyone here,” Jamie said. “Most of them are willing to extend their stays.”

“Several wish to leave,” Chang said.

Nodding, Jamie replied, “That’s all right. We need some interchange of personnel. We can’t expect to freeze everyone in their places.”

“We need geologists,” Chang said. “We should send an excursion team to the south pole—”

“We won’t be able to do that,” Jamie interrupted. “We just don’t have the resources.”

Undeterred, Chang went on, “The south pole is a conundrum. It is shrinking. Millions of tons of frozen carbon dioxide go into gaseous state each year. Gaseous carbon dioxide produces a greenhouse effect in atmosphere.”

Carleton grunted. “Some greenhouse. Temperatures are still below freezing.”

“But getting warmer,” Chang countered. “Yet humidity in the atmosphere is decreasing. Warmer atmosphere should support higher humidity level, not lower. A conundrum.”

“I agree it’s an important problem,” Jamie said. “But we just don’t have the resources to send a team to the south pole.”

“Then there is an ancient riverbed in the valley here,” Chang said. “Mapping the course of the riverbed is important.”

“The satellites are doing that with deep radar,” said Carleton. “What we really need are more grunts to help excavate the village.”

Chang insisted, “There must be other villages along the course of the riverbed.”

Carleton smiled easily and rolled his chair slightly to Chang’s right, so he could see the mission director’s face.

“Isn’t there an old Chinese proverb to the effect that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush?”

Chang inched away from him.

Carleton went on, “We have a village to excavate. As I understand it, the Foundation people in Boston are putting together a video documentary about it, which they hope to use to raise more funds for us. I think all our efforts should be put into digging out this village.”

Chang tried to hide his scowl, failed. “There is more to be done than your one village.”

Before Carleton could reply, Jamie jumped in. “You’re both right. There’s an enormous number of things that we’ve got to do. But the village is very important. The question we have to settle is how much of our resources we should put into the village, and how much elsewhere.”

“Tracing the riverbed course,” said Chang. “Studying water geysers and underground heat flow. Melting at the south pole—”

“My village will bring new money into our program,” Carleton insisted. “You’ll never get to the south pole without an influx of new funding.”

“The village is important,” Chang conceded. “But it is not the only thing we must consider.”

“Right,” Jamie agreed. “Personally, I’d like to see more effort put into decoding the writing up in the cliff dwellings.”

“They weren’t dwellings,” Carleton said. “A religious center, more likely.”

“I’d still like to know what those symbols mean.”

With a shake of his head, Carleton argued, “Forget about it.”

“Forget it?”

“It’s a forlorn hope, Jamie. The best philologists in the world have cracked their skulls on those symbols. It’s useless.”

“But—”

“I know, I know. People have deciphered ancient languages: Sumerian, Cretan linear B, Sanskrit.”

“Proto-Chinese,” Chang added.

“Yes, but in every case they found a Rosetta Stone of one kind or another, a relic where the unknown language was written down side by side with a known one, so the philologists could translate from the known language to the unknown.”

Chang nodded reluctantly.

“There’s no Rosetta Stone on Mars. The Martian writings are completely alien. There’s no known language that we can translate from. We’ll never understand their writing.”

“Never is a long time,” Jamie muttered.

“Don’t waste time or effort on it,” Carleton insisted. “Don’t waste the limited resources we have on bringing more philologists here. They can study the imagery back in their offices on Earth.”

“I suppose so,” said Jamie.

“We’ll never understand their writing, I’m afraid. It’s just not possible.”

A sly smile crept slowly across Chang’s fleshy face. “August Comte,” he murmured.

“Ohgoost what?” Jamie asked.

“Comte,” said Chang. “Nineteenth-century French philosopher. Founder of positivism.”

“What’s he got to do with Martian writing?” Carleton wondered.

“Comte said it would forever be impossible to learn the chemical composition of stars. Yet within a few years astronomers started to use spectroscopy to do precisely that.”

Jamie grinned. “With spectral analysis you can determine the chemical composition of anything that glows. And a lot more.”

Chang finally turned in his chair to face the anthropologist. “There is another old Chinese proverb, Dr. Carleton: Never say never.”

London: Rock Rats Music, Inc.

Rafael Goodbar was not his real name, of course, but then music producers seldom used their true names anymore. The Reverend Caleb Mordecai hadn’t used his baptismal name in many years either: Willie Barcum just sounded too wimpy for a man who was rising in the eyes of the Lord.

Names aside, Rev. Mordecai had a mission to accomplish here, and Rafael Goodbar wasn’t making it easy for him.

Goodbar was obviously Jewish, thought Reverend Mordecai. He had the heavy-featured, fleshy face and hooded eyes of a Son of Israel. He was wearing a luridly flashy short-sleeved shirt that exposed his flabby, hairy forearms. Mordecai half expected to see tattoos, but none were evident.

“Let me understand you,” said Goodbar, smiling. Rev. Mordecai thought the smile looked forced, oily, devious. “You want to put me out of business.”

“Not at all,” the minister replied. “We merely request—request, mind you—that you allow our editorial board to review the lyrics of your songs before they are recorded.”

“Editorial board,” Goodbar said heavily. “You mean, censors.”

“Heavens no!” Mordecai exclaimed. “We do not censor. That would be illegal, or so the secular courts have maintained.”

“So what does your editorial board do?”

“We make suggestions. Recommendations, actually. When we find lyrics in a song that are offensive, we recommend that they be altered.”

“And if I don’t make the alterations?”

“We suggest to the Faithful that they boycott the song.”

“Just the one song?”

It was Mordecai’s turn to smile. “That would be impractical, at best. No, we recommend that our followers boycott everything that the producing company puts on the market.”

“Which would put the producer out of business.”

Mordecai glanced heavenward, then leveled his mild blue eyes at Goodbar. “If you are disseminating lyrics that harm impressionable young listeners, you are doing the devil’s work, Mr. Goodbar. You don’t deserve to remain in business.”

Goodbar countered, “But this is all a matter of opinion, isn’t it? What you think is harmful, other people enjoy listening to.”

“They enjoyed marijuana and other drugs before we put a stop to the narcotics traffic!” Mordecai snapped.

“Oh, the drug business has been stopped? I hadn’t noticed.”

The man is an unrepentant sinner, Mordecai said to himself.

Leaning his hairy forearms on his desktop, Goodbar added, “You’re trying to censor songwriters, which would never hold up in the courts and you know it. We still have a few rights remaining, Reverend.”

Icily, Mordecai replied, “And the godfearing people of this nation have the right to boycott the kinds of unmitigated trash that you and your kind spew into the ears of impressionable young people!”

Goodbar spread his hands in a gesture that Mordecai found distinctly and repulsively Semitic. “Look,” said the producer, “you know and I know that this isn’t about religion or morality. You just don’t want the kids to hear anything that challenges their authority figures. You don’t want anything that doesn’t toe your line.”

“We will not tolerate any challenges to the Word of the Lord.”

“Bloody nonsense,” Goodbar said amiably.

Mordecai flinched.

“So go ahead and boycott,” Goodbar said. “See how much good it does you. The kids’ll just want to hear the songs even more once they know the Holy Disciples is against them. It’ll be good publicity for me.”

“You think so? We’ll see.” Mordecai rose to his feet. Goodbar remained seated behind his desk.

The minister went to the office door, hesitated, then turned back toward the producer.

“You’re either on God’s side or you’re doing the work of the devil,” Mordecai warned.

“You can go to hell,” Goodbar said cheerfully.

“No,” Mordecai retorted. “Hell is where you’re heading. And soon.”

Rafael Goodbar—whose birth name was Raymond Herschfield—was shot to death at a Dog Dirt concert three months later. His killer surrendered easily to the police, smilingly explaining that he was doing God’s work.

Tithonium Chasma: Excursion Team

Hasdrubal and Rosenberg were arguing again as they drove in the springy-wheeled camper along the floor of the Tithonium valley.

“I say she’s a lesbian,” Hasdrubal insisted.

“So what if she is? Shirley’s a virgin, I’m rather certain, but she’s as heterosexual as you or I.”

Hasdrubal looked down at his partner, sitting in the cockpit seat beside him. The seat’s pseudoleather padding was worn smooth, cracked in places, he noticed. Rosenberg was driving, both hands gripping the little steering wheel, his eyes focused on the bumpy, rock-strewn landscape before them. Rugged red cliffs towered over them on their left.

“She’s always hanging out with other women,” Hasdrubal said, ticking points off on his long, slim fingers. “Far’s I know she hasn’t come on to any of the guys—”

“You mean she hasn’t come on to you.”

Raising a third finger, “And when a guy gets near her she runs in the other direction.”

Rosenberg broke into a grin. “Aha! She ran away from you. Can’t blame her, actually: you must have frightened her.”

“Me?”

“You can appear rather fearsome, you know. Like some Watusi warrior in coveralls.”

“Bullshit,” Hasdrubal grumbled.

Still smiling, Rosenberg murmured, “When at a loss for le mot juste, lapse into profanity.”

“Double bullshit,” Hasdrubal said. He slid out of the right-hand seat and got to his feet like a jointed ladder unfolding, stooping to keep his head clear of the bulbous glassteel canopy that curved above. He used both hands to steady himself against the folded-up bunks as the camper swayed and jounced over the rough ground.

“Extraordinary,” Rosenberg muttered as the biologist headed back toward the lavatory. Shirley’s no lesbian, he told himself. At least she didn’t indicate it on her personnel file. The personnel files were strictly confidential, of course, but any member of the exploration team who had even a limited knowledge of computer hacking could sneak a peek at them. Rosenberg ran a hand through his tightly curled thatch of strawberry hair. Perhaps Shirley’s clever enough to know that the files aren’t actually all that secure, he thought. Perhaps she put herself down as hetero because she doesn’t want anyone to know her true orientation.

The camper rocked sharply as it trundled across a shallow crater.

“Hey, watch it!” Hasdrubal’s voice boomed from the lavatory. Rosenberg quickly put his free hand back on the steering wheel. Hasdrubal came back past the bunks and bent over Rosenberg’s scat. “You need a break?” he asked.

Glancing at the digital clock on the control panel, Rosenberg said, “In another fifteen minutes.”

“We’ll be there by then.”

“Right. We can stop and have a bite of lunch before we go outside.”

“Good enough,” Hasdrubal muttered, sliding back into the right-hand seat. “Just try to avoid the major potholes, will ya?”

Rosenberg frowned at his partner.

Ground truth, Hasdrubal said to himself. That’s why Chang’s sent us out this time, to determine if the deep radar imagery from the satellites has really spotted the outlines of another buried ancient village. The sensors can provide us with all sorts of data, but until somebody digs up hard, palpable evidence, the kind you can hold in your hand, the sensor data is suspect. It’s not enough, never enough. You need ground truth before you can actually believe it.

Well, it’s okay with me. Gives me an excuse to dig up soil samples from another spot. Might find some bugs if we bore down deeper than the damned superoxide layer covering the surface.

He tapped the map display on the control panel. “Coming up on the coordinates.”

“So I see,” said Rosenberg. “Why don’t we set up camp by that large boulder there, at two o’clock.”

Hasdrubal glanced at the house-sized boulder, then looked down at the map display again. “Okay. That’s damn near spang on top of the village.”

“If it’s actually there.”

“It’s there,” Hasdrubal said firmly. “The big job is to prove it.”

“Rather.” Rosenberg braked the camper slowly to a full stop. “But let’s have a spot of lunch first.”

Two hours later the two of them stood panting with exertion beside the probe they had set up where the radar imagery indicated the village’s gridwork pattern of streets was laid out thirty-some meters below the valley floor. Their nanosuits were spattered with red dust up to their knees; their gloves and forearms were also coated with rust.

The probe stood vertically, one end stuck into the ground, the other pointing skyward, a flimsy-looking quartet of slanting legs supporting it. Rosenberg thought it looked like a minimalist’s model of the Eiffel Tower. A thick power cable ran back to the external outlets on the curving side of the camper.

“How deep is it now?” Hasdrubal asked, straightening up from his kneeling position. Placing both hands on his hips, he arched backward slightly, trying to ease the strain on his spine.

Rosenberg read from the meter on the probe’s cluster of instruments. “Seventeen meters. We still have quite a ways to go.”

“Ready to pop the laser again?”

“One tick.” Rosenberg ran a gloved finger down the indicator lights on the miniaturized box of the instrument panel. “All right. The laser’s recharged and primed to go.”

Stepping back from the probe, Hasdrubal said, “Okay, hit it.”

A puff of gritty, grayish gas spurted out of the hole and wafted away slowly in the calm air.

“Down another two meters,” said Rosenberg.

“Good. But we’re not going to be deep enough before the sun sets.”

“No. We’ll finish tomorrow.”

“Why don’t we knock off now,” Hasdrubal said. It was more I ban a suggestion. “My back’s killing me.”

Rosenberg nodded inside the inflated bubble of his helmet. “I’m with you. Too bad someone can’t develop nanomachines to do the digging for us.”

Hasdrubal grinned at his partner. “Too expensive. We’re a lot cheaper.”

“Slave labor.”

“Damned near.”

They shut down the probe for the night and trudged wearily back toward the camper, two thoroughly tired men alone in the rocky cold wilderness of Mars. The massive cliffs loomed over them, glowing russet and pink in the slanting light of the setting sun. Their camper sat like a fat metal caterpillar, sunlight glinting off its curved bug-eye canopy.

Hasdrubal reached the airlock hatch and popped it open. “Well, tomorrow we’ll have to guide the supply rocket down.”

Rosenberg grunted. “I don’t really trust those automated hoppers. Some of them have been in service for nearly twenty years.”

“That’s why we take over their final guidance,” Hasdrubal said, climbing into the airlock.

Rosenberg looked unconvinced.

“Don’t worry. I’ll put ’er down nice and easy. No sweat.”

Rosenberg still looked unconvinced.

Tithonium Base: Infirmary

In the few days she had been at the base, Vijay had come to recognize that Nari Quintana ruled the infirmary with a stainless steel fist. The daughter of a Venezuelan oil millionaire and his Japanese wife, Dr. Quintana was serving her second term of duty on Mars. Small, spare, with straight dull hair, she reminded Vijay of a little brown sparrow hopping from bed to bed, making her morning rounds. But everyone warned that this little sparrow had the ferocity of an eagle whenever anyone stirred her wrath.

“Her first name means thunderclap in Japanese,” one of the medical technicians had told Vijay when she’d first come into the infirmary, uninvited, to see what she could do to help. “It’s very appropriate.”

So far, Vijay and the formidable Dr. Quintana had gotten along tolerably well. Quintana was obviously suspicious that the wife of Jamie Waterman would try to usurp her authority. But Vijay smiled as she explained that she only wanted to help in any way she could.

Now she sat before Dr. Quintana’s desk. The woman’s office wasn’t much larger than a phone booth, Vijay thought, and it was as austere and undecorated as Quintana herself.

“I’d like to make more of a contribution than I have so far,” Vijay said, as sweetly as she could manage. “I mean, there must be something more that I could do, besides checking the supply stocks for hitchhiking insects and running routine physicals on the staff.”

Quintana’s sharp eyes flickered. “You’ve had enough of the nitpicking, eh?”

Smiling, Vijay replied, “I know someone has to make certain that the packages in storage don’t harbor bugs, but I do have a degree in psychology, if that could be of use to you.”

“Yes, I know,” was as much as Quintana would unbend.

For several moments, Quintana said nothing. Then, abruptly, she stood up.

“Come with me,” she said peremptorily as she headed for the door of her office.

Vijay jumped to her feet and followed the doctor.

“Morning rounds,” Quintana said over her shoulder as she led Vijay to the infirmary’s row of eight beds. Four of them were empty. Vijay understood that most of Quintana’s patients were suffering from rather minor accidents rather than disease. The exploration team were mostly young and never left Earth until their health had been thoroughly checked. And Martian microbes were enough different from terrestrial biology that there was nothing on Mars that could infect humans. At least, that’s what the biologists concluded.

This morning, though, a young maintenance technician was lying asleep in one of the beds, an intravenous drip tube in his arm.

“Gastric ulcer,” Quintana said, eying the computer display screen over the head of the bed.

“He seems awfully young to have an ulcer,” Vijay said, also peering at the display screen.

“Allergic to aspirin. He took aspirin every morning to protect his heart,” Quintana explained to Vijay. “But it attacked his stomach, instead.”

“Some people are allergic to aspirin and don’t know it,” Vijay murmured as they moved to the next bed, a woman who had twisted her ankle when she slipped on a wet tile in the cafeteria.

“Until a stomach ulcer explodes and they lose half their blood supply in a few minutes.”

Vijay said, “An allergy like that wouldn’t show up on a routine screening, either.”

“Yes, true. Everyone here has been thoroughly screened before being accepted for the Mars program, but the screening can’t possibly catch everything.” Quintana spoke in flat midwestern American English.

Physical screening is easier than psychological, Vijay thought, remembering Trudy Hall. She had been thoroughly screened for the Second Expedition, yet she had cracked up emotionally and nearly killed the entire team. Psychological testing could only go so deep, she knew. Mars tests each of us in its own way.

“They seem a healthy enough lot,” Vijay replied as she walked along the row of beds beside Quintana. “Of course, they’re mostly pretty young. That helps, doesn’t it?”

Quintana almost smiled. “Chang, Carleton and your husband are the oldest here.”

“And me,” Vijay pointed out. “I’m forty-two.”

The chief physician actually did smile. “I am thirty-nine.”

“Are you married?” Vijay asked.

“Divorced.”

“Oh. I’m so sorry.”

“Twice.”

Vijay had the sense to shut her mouth.

The three accident cases were minor injuries, except for one of Carleton’s digging crew who had jumped into the excavation pit thinking that Mars’s light gravity would make the thirty-meter drop easy. He had broken both his ankles, and learned that although weight is only one-third of normal on Mars, mass—the amount of matter in a body—doesn’t change because of the lower gravity. His bones had broken just as they would have on Earth.

“The major causes of human pain and suffering,” Quintana pronounced as they left the man’s bed: “pride and stupidity. They often go together.”

Vijay thought that maybe the young man—who was a meteorologist who’d volunteered to help Carleton—was trying to show off for some of the women at the dig. Testosterone is the most dangerous drug of all, she thought.

“What are you doing for him?” Vijay asked.

Quintana glanced back at the young man lying in his bed. “We’ve harvested stem cells from his bone marrow and now we’re cultivating them. In a few days we can reinject them and rebuild the bones good as new.”

Vijay nodded. Stem cell therapy was once considered miraculous; now it was routine.

“He doesn’t deserve it,” Quintana added. “Stupidity like his needs a stronger lesson.”

Tough love, Vijay thought. Quintana’s a hard case, all right.

As they started back toward Quintana’s office, Vijay asked, “Would it be possible for me to set up shop as the resident psychologist? Would that be helpful to you?”

“We do psych tests regularly,” Quintana said quickly. “The program office beams questionnaires up from Earth. Everyone is required to participate.”

“I see,” Vijay said. “I just thought I might offer a kind of counseling service… if anyone needs it.”

Quintana said nothing until they reached her office again. Sliding its door shut, she went around her desk and sat once more in the wobbly little chair behind it. Vijay took the only other chair.

“I am the chief physician here,” Quintana began. “I am also the only physician here. That is, until you arrived.”

“There are the medical technicians, though,” said Vijay.

“Of course. Five of them. Usually they outnumber our patients.”

“What you’re saying is that you don’t need me.”

Quintana shook her head hard enough to make her mousy hair flutter. “You are here because you are Jamie Waterman’s wife and you want to be with your husband. You are also a trained physician with a background in psychology. It would be foolish not to use your talents in some manner.”

“Yes, but how?”

Pursing her lips, Quintana said, “You tell me. You’ve seen the infirmary and the kinds of cases we get here. What can you do to help?”

Vijay hesitated, thinking, She’s batted the ball back into my side of the court.

“I don’t require an answer this minute,” Quintana said. “Take your time. Think about it.”

“I know what I’d like to do,” Vijay said.

“Yes?”

“I’d like to run a psych profile on the people here. Not the kind of multiple-choice tests they beam up from Earth, but real, personal, in-depth interviews with as many of the personnel as will sit down with me.”

“You plan to write a paper for a psychology journal?”

Nodding, Vijay said, “That would be appropriate, don’t you think? A psychological profile of the men and women on Mars. You and I could be coauthors.”

“I am not a psychologist.”

“No, but you’re the chief physician here. Your input and insights would be very important to the study. Either way, I’ll be available to help you with your patients in any way I can, whenever you need me.”

Quintana tapped her desk top absently. Vijay noted that her fingernails were unpolished and clipped very short. Yet the nails on her right hand were longer and well-shaped.

“You play the guitar?” she asked.

Quintana blinked with surprise. “My father taught me when I was a little girl. I brought two of them to Mars with me.”

“How wonderful. I can play piano a little.”

“No piano here.” Quintana’s suspicion and anxiety eased somewhat. “But I can teach you the guitar, if you like.”

Tithonium Chasma: Excursion Team

“I have good news and bad news,” said Izzy Rosenberg.

Puffing from exertion, Hasdrubal looked up from the tubular probe sticking out of the rust-colored sand. “Is this a joke?”

Rosenberg was inside the camper, checking the data from the miniature sensors down at the business end of the probe.

“I wish it were,” he said. His voice sounded worried in Hasdrubal’s headphone.

Looking toward the camper, parked twenty-some meters from the probe, Hasdrubal said guardedly, “Tell me the good news first, then.”

“The GC/MS has picked up a whiff of carbon.”

“Carbon?” Hasdrubal stood up straighter. He could feel his eyes go wide. The gas chromatograph/mass spectrometer analyzed the gases boiled out of the rock by the laser pulses.

“Where? How deep?”

“At the thirty-meter level, rather where the foundations of the village should be.”

“Carbon?” Hasdrubal repeated. “Like, from something organic?”

“It could be,” said Rosenberg, his voice curiously flat, unexcited. “Fossilized wood, perhaps. Construction material.”

“Or the remains of a body!”

“Whatever. It’s definitely not the rock we’ve been drilling through above that level. It must be part of the village. Building foundations, perhaps.”

“Yow!” Hasdrubal leaped into the air and flung his arms over his head joyfully.

“You haven’t heard the bad news, Sal.”

“Bad news?”

“The laser’s drained our battery power almost completely.”

“That’s not so bad. We’ll recharge ’em from the solar cells.”

“Not enough sunlight left in the day. Besides, the resupply hopper is due in fifteen minutes. By the time we set it down and transfer the supplies to the camper the sun will be on the horizon.”

“Recharge ’em tomorrow, then, first light.” Hasdrubal started walking toward the camper.

“Yes, I suppose so.”

“The fuel cells’re okay, aren’t they?”

“So far.”

Frowning inside his collapsible bubble helmet, Hasdrubal snapped, “What th’hell’s that supposed to mean?”

Rosenberg answered, “I don’t like going through the night without the batteries to back up the fuel cells.”

Yanking open the airlock’s outer hatch, Hasdrubal smiled as he said, “Don’t be chicken, Izzy. We got plenty of power.”

“I suppose so.”

“You’re a worrywart, Izzy,” said Hasdrubal, climbing into the coffin-sized airlock. He sealed the outer hatch and touched the keypad that started the pumps chugging. “You oughtta relax, enjoy life, like me.”

“Extraordinary.” In Hasdrubal’s headset, Rosenberg’s voice sounded halfway between astonishment and disgust. “We’re two days’ ride from the safety of the base, alone out here in a glorified omnibus without a working backup power system, the temperature outside is already twenty-nine below zero, and there’s nothing between us and this near-vacuum that’s pretending to be an atmosphere except a few millimeters of metal, and you say I should relax. Extraordinary. Simply extraordinary.”

The airlock panel cycled from red light through amber and into green. Hasdrubal chuckled as he popped the inner hatch. Izzy’s twitchy today. Wonder what’s really bothering him?

He pulled his nanofabric bubble helmet off his head and unsealed the torso of the suit.

“What’s itchin’ you, buddy? Your shorts twisted or something?”

From up in the cockpit Rosenberg answered, “The supply rocket’s due in eleven minutes. I just got a confirmation from the base.

“Okay,” said Hasdrubal as he stepped past the folded-up bunks and slipped into the cockpit’s right-hand seat. “I’ll bring her in, no sweat.”

Rosenberg wasn’t perspiring, but he looked decidedly edgy.

“Relax, pal.” Hasdrubal tapped at the control panel’s keyboard, changing the touchscreen displays from their usual configuration to the setup for guiding the resupply hopper down to a soft landing.

“Base says the hopper’s oxygen tank pressure is low.”

Hasdrubal peered at the displays that sprang up on the panel. “Yeah, so I see. A smidge. Nothing to worry about.”

“It’s dropping,” Rosenberg said, pointing to the graph curves with a shaky finger.

“Yeah, yeah. Still plenty good enough. Damn tank’s prob’ly sprung a pinhole leak. We’ll have to fix it once she’s down.”

“In the dark?”

“Tomorrow. Stop worrying.”

Rosenberg got up from the driver’s seat and headed back toward the lavatory. Hasdrubal studied the displays. Everything nominal except for the oxy tank pressure, and that wasn’t anything to really worry about.

By the time Rosenberg returned to the cockpit the hopper’s radio beacon was sending a strong beeping signal. Hasdrubal leaned back in his seat.

“She’s comin’ right down the pipe,” he said to Rosenberg, as Izzy slipped into the left-hand seat. “I won’t even hafta touch a button.”

Still, he reached for the tiny T-shaped joystick that was tucked into a slot on the control panel and balanced it on his left knee.

“There it is!” Rosenberg shouted, rising halfway out of his seat.

They saw a black dot against the darkening saffron of the Martian sky. As the two men watched, the dot grew and took form: a boxy, octagonal shape with four spindly legs jutting out from corners of its structure and a rocket nozzle hanging from its underside. Adapted from the lander/ascent vehicles of the first Mars missions, the hoppers were now used to ferry supplies and equipment from Tithonium Base to teams in the field.

His eyes flicking from the descending hopper to the displays on the control panel, Hasdrubal touched the joystick with a fingertip.

“Just a smidge closer…”

The rocket nozzle flared bright hot gas for a flash of a second. From inside the camper’s cockpit they heard it as a thin shriek. The hopper seemed to hesitate in midair, then slowly descended, like an old man settling into an invisible chair. Smaller methane gas jets puffed from around the edges of the octagon and then the hopper touched down, its insect-thin legs bending slightly.

“There y’are,” said Hasdrubal grandly as he shut down the controls. “Easy as pie.”

Rosenberg grinned weakly at his partner.

“I told you—”

The hopper blew up in a bright explosion of white-hot flame billowing into the thin air. The shock wave rocked the camper.

“Holy shit!” yelled Hasdrubal.

Rosenberg closed his gaping mouth with an audible click, then tried to speak, but found his throat was too parched and constricted to get out any words.

Tithonium Base: The Garden

Jamie was in the greenhouse dome with Kalman Torok, kneeling in the reddish sandy strip between rows of string bean and pea plants. Most of the dome was devoted to long hydroponics trays, where soybeans, cereal grains and fruits were being grown without soil. But this little patch of a garden was Torok’s work. Sunlight poured through the transparent wall of the dome; it felt pleasantly warm inside.

“You should have seen the look on Chang’s face when I asked him for a shipment of beetle grubs and earthworms,” Torok was saying, his round face split into a happy grin. “The old sourpuss looked as if I’d suddenly grown horns.”

Jamie smiled back. “But it’s worked. You’ve turned this sterile ground into productive soil.”

Digging his fingers into the faintly pinkish dirt, Torok corrected, “It wasn’t sterile, not completely. Damned little organic material in it, but there was some. We had to bake all the oxides out, of course.”

He held a palmful of dirt up to Jamie’s face. “Smell it. Go ahead, take a whiff.”

Jamie sniffed. “It… it almost smells like dirt back home.”

“Almost,” said Torok, still smiling. “It’s taken two years of work, but we’ve almost got a plot of terrestrial soil here on Mars.”

Jerking with surprise, Jamie saw a tiny black beetle push its way out of the dirt and crawl feebly across the clump in Torok’s hand.

The biologist laughed. “One of my assistants.”

Jamie grinned back at him as Torok gently deposited the handful of dirt back on the ground and patted it smooth. Both men straightened to their feet.

“The next resupply mission will include a shipment of genetically engineered bacteria that can fix nitrogen for cereal grains,” Torok said. “If that works we’ll be able to grow our own wheat!”

Looking over the tiny garden, Jamie asked, “Do you think you could grow enough food to feed the whole team here?”

Torok’s smile faded. “It’s not worth the effort. The hydroponics system is cheaper.”

“Really? I thought—”

“Hydroponics takes a lot of water and nutrients, yes. But we recycle the water, and to turn Martian ground into productive soil you’d need to start by baking the oxides out, then bring in earthworms and beetles and such to aerate the dirt, and pump in nutrients by the ton to make up for the lack of organics, and—”

“We can build solar energy farms to provide electricity for baking out the oxides,” Jamie interrupted. “And power the lamps, as well,” he added, glancing up at the rows of full-spectrum lights hanging from the dome’s superstructure. “That’s what they do at Selene.”

“You’d also have to seal the entire area, lay a concrete slab under it with a bioguard sheet to prevent back contamination into the Martian environment, surround it with more concrete and bioshields.”

“That adds to the expense.”

“And how,” Torok said. “In time, though, I suppose you could make a garden big enough to be self-sufficient, recycling organic wastes the way they grow crops at Selene.”

“So what’s the problem?”

Raising his heavy dark eyebrows, Torok said, “Well, as I said, the big problem is back contamination. You don’t want terrestrial organisms getting loose out in the Martian environment.”

Jamie looked through the dome’s transparent wall at the frigid, barren desert outside. “Earth plants couldn’t survive for five minutes out there.”

“Plants, no,” said Torok. “But the microorganisms that live on them and in them—maybe yes. Those microbes are tough, and a lot of them are anaerobic. They don’t need oxygen to survive.”

Jamie nodded. “You’re afraid they’d infect the Martian environment.”

“It’s a long shot, I admit. But we’ve got to protect the local environment against back contamination. Remember, it wasn’t gunpowder and cavalry that destroyed the Native Americans; it was the microbes the Europeans brought with them that killed off men, beasts and plants.”

Jamie nodded, thinking, We’re aliens here. Visitors. We’re not Martians and we never will be, no matter how much we want to be. If we’re not careful we could wipe out what’s left of Mars’s native species, just like the whites decimated the Native Americans.

“But if we could protect the environment from contamination?” Jamie asked. “What then?”

With a shrug, Torok replied, “Building farms big enough to feed the whole crew here will take a lot of time. And money. In the beginning you’ll have to bring in the nutrients and aerators and every gram of everything else you need from Earth. That’s expensive.”

“It’s a project worth doing, if we’re going to stay on Mars.”

Torok’s smile returned, but it was melancholy now. “If, Dr. Waterman. If.”

“Can you do it?” Jamie asked.

“It can be done, I suppose. But I won’t be here to carry it through.”

“You’re leaving?”

“My term ended two months ago. I’ve told Chang I’ll leave on the next resupply flight.”

Jamie stared at the biologist for a silent moment, then spread his arms. “But all this… you’d leave this behind you?”

With a dejected shake of his head, Torok replied, “My wife is suing for divorce back in Budapest. If I don’t get back she’ll win custody of my children.”

“Oh,” was all that Jamie could think to say. But then he heard himself suggesting, “Maybe she could come here to be with you…

“Two sons, ages four and six. And she won’t leave Hungary, let alone travel to Mars.”

“But what about this farm? What’s going to happen to your work?”

Torok’s brows contracted almost into a solid line. “I’ve asked several of my colleagues to look after it. That black giant, the American with the odd name, he showed some interest.”

“Hasdrubal,” Jamie said.

“Yes, Hasdrubal. He said he’d tend my garden—when he’s not busy with other responsibilities.”

Jamie realized there was nothing he could do. Torok was leaving, and his experiment would die of neglect without him.

His pocket phone buzzed. Jamie was glad of the interruption.

“Dr. Waterman, you have an incoming message from Mr. Trumball in Boston.”

Looking at Torok’s glum face, Jamie said, “I’ve got to get back to my office.”

He hurried to the tube that connected the greenhouse dome to the main structure of the base.

Dex Trumball was excited, Jamie could see even on the small wall screen.

“It’s a coup,” he was saying, grinning happily. “A gift. From the Vatican, no less.”

Jamie leaned back in his little chair and watched Dex pacing across his office, gesturing with both hands as he spoke. The distance between Mars and Earth defeated any chance of holding a true conversation. Dex talked and Jamie listened.

“He’s a priest, Jamie. A Jesuit! We can get plenty of media time with him before he goes. He can counter those pious sonsofbitches who’re trying to slit our throats. He can tell the people what we’re doing, show them that there’s no conflict between religion and science. It’s a godsend, I tell you!”

As Jamie listened to Dex chattering on enthusiastically for almost half an hour, he was thinking, DiNardo’s older than I am. He must be older than Carleton, even. Will it be safe for him to come here? The fusion ships make the flight fast and easy, but how will DiNardo handle the low gravity here? The whole environment? What will Chang think of having DiNardo here? Will he think I’m trying to subvert his authority? First Carleton horns in on the operation here, then I pop in, and now the priest who was originally picked to lead the geology team on the First Expedition. Chang’s a geologist, for god’s sake. He’s not going to like this.

Dex was actually feeling slightly out of breath when he finally wound down and ran out of words. He was on his feet, in the corner of his office where the big windows met. Out there it was a sparkling blue New England afternoon. He could see planes landing and taking off at Logan Aerospaceport and sailboats cutting through the whitecaps of the bay and even the masts of Old Ironsides at its pier in Charlestown, across the harbor.

It’ll take Jamie at least fifteen-twenty minutes to get back to me, Dex thought, even if he picked up my message as soon as it arrived at Mars. I ought to get back to work.

He returned to his desk and sat down, but couldn’t concentrate on the tasks before him. Wheedling contributions out of increasingly reluctant donors. Dealing with half a dozen government agencies that want to stick their fat asses into our program so they can slow us down even more. Budgeting. That was the most depressing thing of all. How to stretch the funding they had without endangering the people working on Mars. Dex leaned back in his customized leather chair and stared at the ceiling.

But if I can swing the Navaho president onto this tourist idea, and start quietly soliciting funding from a couple of friendly bankers, then maybe… just maybe, we can put this program on a sound financial basis. Maybe even make a few bucks of profit. The Navahos would like that.

But how to get Jamie to agree to it? He’s as stubborn as a jackass. Thinks Mars is his private preserve. No, worse. Jamie thinks it’s his sacred duty to protect Mars. Keep it pristine. No visitors, except for scientists.

The chime of his phone broke into Dex’s thoughts. “Dr. Waterman, from Tithonium Base,” said the synthesized voice of his second wife.

Dex snapped to an upright posture and said crisply, “Open message.”

Jamie looked wary. Not suspicious or unreceptive, really: just guarded, cautious. He was smiling, but it was the smile that Dex knew he used when he was trying to cover his true feelings.

“Dex, that’s great news about Father DiNardo,” Jamie began.

Monsignor DiNardo, Dex corrected silently.

“But I’m worried about a couple of things. First, he’s kind of old for Mars, don’t you think? What kind of physical condition is he in? And what’s made him decide to come out here all of a sudden? If we take him, we’ll have to make sure he’s checked out very carefully. We’ll need the best doctors we can find to give him a very thorough physical.”

“No problem,” Dex muttered, knowing that Jamie couldn’t hear him.

“Second, if he comes here it’ll probably disturb Dr. Chang. I mean, he’s the mission director and a geologist. DiNardo’s a geologist, too, and he’s older and he was originally picked to head the geology team for the First Expedition. Chang’s going to feel like DiNardo’s breathing down his neck. That wouldn’t be fair to him.”

Jamie’s smile turned warmer. “On the other hand, I agree that having a priest from the Vatican join us here could be a great public relations move. The fundamentalists have been working against us, and Father DiNardo can show that a deeply religious person can still be a scientist who wants to learn about Mars and the Martians.”

Dex found himself nodding vigorously.

“So let’s proceed carefully,” Jamie went on. “It would certainly be great to have Father DiNardo here. I like the man and he’s a good geologist. His presence here will create problems with Chang, but I’ll try to smooth that out. Above all else, though, we’ve got to make sure that DiNardo’s in top physical condition. So don’t start beating the publicity drums until he’s passed all the exams. Okay?”

“Okay,” Dex replied immediately. “I’ll have him checked out sixteen ways from Tuesday. And then we’ll have something to stuff under the noses of those psalm-singing bastards!”

Tithonium Chasma: Excursion Team

Itzak Rosenberg stared at the fireball billowing up from the hopper. It quickly dissipated into the thin Martian atmosphere. He felt as if all the air had been sucked out of his lungs.

“Our supplies,” he said weakly.

“Blown to hell,” Hasdrubal muttered.

“What could have caused it?”

Hasdrubal was already on the comm link. “Base, this is Excursion Three. We got troubles.”

The excursion controller was one of the astronauts. Her slim lace, framed with short dark hair, looked puzzled. “The readouts here look screwy,” she said.

“Damned hopper blew up!” Hasdrubal snapped.

“Blew up?”

“Exploded! There’s nothin’ left out there except some smokin’ wreckage.”

“That’s why the readouts cut off,” said the controller. In the tiny screen on the control panel she looked almost relieved.

“What the hell happened?” Hasdrubal demanded.

“Are you two okay?”

“Yeah. No damage to the camper.”

“None that we can see from inside the cockpit,” Rosenberg corrected.

Hasdrubal shot a glare at him.

“You’ll have to go outside and look your vehicle over for possible damage,” the controller instructed.

Nodding, Hasdrubal muttered, “Guess so.”

“It’s going to be dark in another hour,” said Rosenberg.

The controller nodded back. “Then you’ll have to make your damage inspection right away.”

“Okay, we’ll go out right away. But what the hell happened? Why’d that bird blow up?”

“We’ll have to go over the diagnostics and get back to you on that. Meanwhile, you check out all your systems and do the exterior inspection.”

“Right,” Hasdrubal agreed.

“Keep this link open,” said Rosenberg, with some urgency.

“Will do,” promised the controller.

Rosenberg blurted, “Did the seismometers record the blast?” It was an idiotic question and he knew it but it just popped out of his mouth.

“I’ll ask the monitors,” the controller said. “Call me back when you complete your inspection.”

“Don’t shut down this link,” Rosenberg repeated.

“Right. I’ll keep it open.”

Hasdrubal got up from his seat and headed back toward the airlock. Over his shoulder he called, “C’mon, get into your suit.”

“I’m staying inside,” Rosenberg said, his voice quavering slightly. “I’ll check all our systems while you do a visual inspection outside.”

Hasdrubal stopped at the narrow closet where their nanosuits hung. For a moment he said nothing. Then, “Go faster if the two of us look her over.”

“I… I’ll stay inside,” Rosenberg said. “I need to, Sal.” He felt as if he were glued to the cockpit seat. He thought he couldn’t get up even if he wanted to. His legs were too weak to support him. He couldn’t even turn around to look at his partner.

“Okay,” Hasdrubal said, his voice sounding strange, suspicious, almost accusing. “You stay in.”

Jamie was poring over the latest communications from Selene, reports on their underground farms and the amount of electrical power they needed to keep the crops growing. We’ll have to devote a lot of acreage to solar panels, he thought. The maintenance is going to be tough, keeping them clean of dust. Maybe we can automate that, something like windshield wipers. Then he thought about the monstrous dust storms that swept across the planet. He remembered the storm that nearly buried the camper on his first excursion to Tithonium Chasma. With a shake of his head Jamie realized that maintaining a solar-energy farm was going to be a lot more difficult on Mars than on the airless, weatherless Moon.

“Uh, Dr. Waterman?” A soft voice interrupted his musing.

Looking up, Jamie saw that it was Billy Graycloud standing at the entrance to his cubbyhole of an office.

“Come in, Billy,” he said.

The youngster didn’t move. “There’s been an accident.”

“Accident?” Jamie shot up from his chair.

“Nobody hurt,” Graycloud said quickly. “It’s the excursion team, you know, the two guys tracing the old riverbed. Their resupply rocket blew up.”

Jamie could see a small crowd gathered around the entrance to the communications center halfway across the dome.

“They’re okay?” he asked, coming around his makeshift desk.

“Seem to be,” Graycloud replied. Then he added, “So far.”

Hasdrubal was holding a blackened chunk of metal in his hands as he sank his lanky frame into the padded cockpit seat. Rosenberg stared at it.

“Found this in the ground about a meter and a half from our left front wheels.”

“What is it?”

Turning the scorched fragment in his hands, Hasdrubal answered, “What it was was a piece of a storage container. I think. Hard to tell.”

“A meter and a half?”

“Give or take a skosh.”

“If it had hit us…”

“Would’ve gone through the skin of this bus like an antitank missile.”

Rosenberg shuddered visibly.

“Everything okay in here?” Hasdrubal asked.

“All the systems are on line. No internal damage.”

“Are you okay?” Hasdrubal stared at his partner.

Rosenberg took a deep, deliberate breath. “I’m… rather shaken, you know.”

“I can see that.”

“Control says the hopper’s oxygen line must have been leaking. It touched off the methane. That’s what caused the explosion.”

“They think.”

“That’s what the diagnostics indicate.” Rosenberg felt somewhat better, stronger, as he talked about the impersonal data from the controller’s monitoring systems. Yet he still saw in his mind’s eye that white-hot explosion. We could have been killed, his inner voice kept repeating. We came within a meter and a half of death.

“Dripped oxy on the hot methane pump, prob’ly,” Hasdrubal was saying.

Rosenberg nodded. “Yes, that’s their explanation.”

“How old was that hopper? Some of ’em date back to the first expeditions, don’t they?”

“I believe so.”

Holding the fragment of debris in one hand, Hasdrubal pointed to the comm screen, which was a blank gray. “Comm link still open?”

“It should be.”

“Okay. I’ll show this to the geniuses back at base. You go back and heat up some dinner.”

Rosenberg hesitated. “Why don’t we start back to the base?”

“Now? It’ll be dark in another few minutes.” The biologist jerked a thumb toward the scenery outside. The pale shrunken sun was almost touching the jagged horizon. The sky was already turning deep violet.

“I know, but… we’ll have to head back before we run out of supplies.”

“Tomorrow, after the sun comes up.”

“We can run at night.”

“And run down the fuel cells? No way. We’re not goin’ anyplace until the sun comes up,” Hasdrubal insisted. “That’s final.”

Tithonium Chasma: Night

Hasdrubal and Rosenberg ate a warmed-up prepackaged meal in tense silence, broken only by the controller calling from the base to ask about their condition.

Rosenberg went to the cockpit and spoke to the controller. The thermal shutters covered the bug-eye windows up there, preventing the camper’s internal warmth from leaking out into the bitter Martian night. When Rosenberg returned he slid into the folded-out bunk that now served as a bench. Across the narrow table sat Hasdrubal, his dark face watching Rosenberg thoughtfully.

“You’re scared, huh?”

“It’s… I’m not frightened, really.”

“Not much.”

“It’s just that… it’s unsettling. Hoppers shouldn’t blow up. We shouldn’t be stranded out here without supplies. It’s not right!”

A slow, patient smile eased across Hasdrubal’s face. “Now look, Izzy. We’re not stranded. We got plenty of food and water for the trip back to base. We’ll be fine.”

“The batteries are down.”

“We’ll recharge ’em tomorrow soon’s the sun comes up.”

“Hurry sunrise,” Rosenberg muttered.

They finished their meal, scraped the crumbs into the recycler and placed their plates and cups into the microwave for cleaning. Hasdrubal put a fingertip on the power button, then thought better of it. Save it for daytime, he told himself. Rosenberg folded the table and slid it into its place beneath his bunk.

“I’ll hit the John,” Hasdrubal said.

“If you don’t mind…” Rosenberg pushed past him and hurried into the lavatory.

Poor bastard’s scared shitless, Hasdrubal thought. Then he amended, But his bladder’s full.

Once they had peeled down to their skivvies and arranged the blankets over their bunks, Rosenberg said, “I’ve never liked the cold. That’s what’s bothering me, actually. The night and the dark and cold.”

“We’ll get through it.”

They climbed into their bunks and clicked off the lights. The camper’s interior was completely dark except for the faint ghostly greenish glow from the instrument panel up in the cockpit.

Rosenberg murmured into the darkness, “When I was a child in Cambridge, once my sister was born I had to sleep up in the attic. It was always cold up there. Even in the summertime. And drafty. I could feel the wind coming through chinks in the window frames. I could never get warm up there. Never.”

“Hey, you wanna talk about cold, you oughtta live in Chicago. Wind that can knock you off your friggin’ feet. And cold! Freeze your balls off.”

Rosenberg said nothing.

Chuckling, Hasdrubal said, “I remember one winter we had so much snow the whole friggin’ city stopped. Nothin’ was moving. Took two days before the damn snowplows cleared the streets in our neighborhood. Left snowbanks higher’n my head.”

“Higher than your head? Really?”

“I was just a kid then. A lot shorter.”

“Oh.”

“We’ll be okay. Get some sleep. You’ll feel better when the sun comes up.”

“Yes, I suppose so,” Rosenberg said. He closed his eyes. And heard the thin moan of the wind outside. He touched the curving skin of the camper. It felt ice cold. Just a few millimeters of metal between us and death, he thought. It’s down to a hundred below zero out there.

He shuddered beneath his two blankets.

Jamie heard the wind sighing, too. He lay next to Vijay, warm and sweaty after making love. She seemed to be drowsing now, but Jamie wasn’t ready for sleep yet. He listened to the wind and remembered his first night on Mars, when the soft wind seemed to he stroking the dome they had just erected, touching it with questioning fingers, wondering at this alien construct on the lonely plains of the red world.

Mars is a gentle world, he told himself, listening to the wind. It means us no harm. They’ll be all right buttoned up in their camper. There’s nothing to worry about, really.

Yet he thought of the two men more than a hundred kilometers from the safety of the base. And he heard Dr. Chang’s flat refusal ringing in his memory.

“No. I will not permit it,” Chang had said.

Jamie had rushed to the mission director’s office as soon as he’d heard of the hopper’s explosion and volunteered to drive a camper out to the excursion team.

Chang sat stubbornly behind his desk, his face set in a determined scowl.

“I could carry supplies to them,” Jamie had said, “so they could continue their excursion instead of coming back here.”

“No,” Chang repeated.

“But—”

Chang seemed to puff up, like a toad that feels threatened. “Dr. Waterman,” he said slowly, stiffly. “You are the scientific director of the program. I am the mission director. My authority rules over everyone on this base. You may remove me, send me back to China, but you cannot overrule my decisions here. Is that understood?”

Jamie replied softly, “I only wanted to be of help.”

“The excursion team does not need your help. Or anyone else’s. There are protocols in place, procedures to follow. They will return to the base tomorrow under their own power. They do not need to be rescued.”

Jamie started to answer back, thought better of it and merely nodded.

Holding up one stubby finger, Chang went on, “Your presence here creates some difficulties in lines of authority. Many personnel here look to you for leadership and not to me.”

That’s what this is all about, Jamie said to himself. I should have been sensitive to it.

Chang added, “Everyone is well aware how you took control of First Expedition from Dr. Li Chengdu when you were nothing more than a substitute geologist.”

“I’m not trying to take control of this operation from you, Dr. Chang,” Jamie said, with real conviction. “I’m only trying to help you.”

As if he hadn’t heard a word Jamie said, Chang closed his eyes and murmured, “If you desire to take command I will offer my resignation at once.”

“That’s not necessary. Not at all.”

Chang’s dark eyes slowly opened. Jamie saw that they were bloodshot. “Very well. Please do not interfere with my responsibilities.”

“I’m sorry,” Jamie said, getting to his feet. “Please excuse me.”

Chang made a single, curt nod.

Now Jamie lay awake in his bed, wondering what he could do without setting off Chang’s sensitivities, how to tell him that DiNardo was coming to the base. The man’s planted a minefield around himself, Jamie realized. Sooner or later something’s going to explode.

Boston: Lahey Clinic

“Your priest’s in fine condition, Dex. No physical reason why he can’t make the flight to Mars.”

Dr. Paul Nickerson was walking with Dex Trumball along the crowded corridor that ran from the CAT scan laboratory back to the Lahey Clinic’s suites of offices for senior medical staff.

“He’s okay to go, then,” Dex said.

“Physically, there’s no problem,” said Nickerson. He was slightly shorter than Dex, lean and loose-limbed. Even in his white lab coat he coasted along like an ice skater. Nickerson’s face was thin and long-jawed, his walnut brown hair cropped so close to his scalp it looked like fuzz.

Dex was in his usual dark blue three-piece suit. “That’s the second time you said ‘physically,’ Paul. Is there a mental problem? Emotional, I mean.”

Nickerson didn’t reply for several paces. Patients shuffled past, many of them in the pathetic bile-green paper gowns that the staff made them wear. Just to humiliate them, Dex had always thought. A hefty black nurse hurried past, looking stern and determined.

“Well?” Dex prodded.

Nickerson opened a door and gestured. “Come on in here, Dex.”

It was a small conference room, Dex saw. Oval table, eight padded chairs, smart screens on the walls, all of them blank gray.

“So?” he asked as Nickerson shut the door and leaned against it.

Raising his brows, the physician replied, “This might be my prejudice more than anything else, but… well, haven’t you wondered why a man pushing sixty would want to travel out to Mars?”

Dex sat one hip on the edge of the mahogany table and relaxed, grinning. “He’s a geologist. He was selected for the First Expedition but had a gall bladder attack.”

“And he’s waited twenty-some years to get what he lost?”

“He wants to help us. He’s going to do a video documentary for us to counter all that New Morality crap about the Martians being a fake.”

Nickerson shook his head. “I think there’s an emotional problem here.”

“You’re wrong. He’s passed all the psych exams with no sweat.”

“Still…”

“Look, Paul, I’ve been to Mars. I wouldn’t want to go back but I know what’s going through DiNardo’s mind. He’s a scientist, for chrissake! Mars is like a golden carrot. He wants to get there before he dies.”

Nickerson aimed a finger at Dex like a pistol. “Ahah! Before he dies.”

Frowning, Dex said, “You want him to take more psych exams?”

“It wouldn’t hurt. We have some very good people here at the clinic. At the very least, they should have a few conversations with him.”

Dex grumbled, “You’re just trying to run up the bill.”

Monsignor DiNardo listened to Dex’s halting explanation in the examination room as he put on his street clothes.

“They want me to undergo a mental examination?” he asked, his voice soft as always, but with a hint of genuine displeasure behind it.

“He’s a flatlander,” Dex said, waggling one hand horizontally. “He thinks anybody who wants to go into space must be nuts.”

DiNardo chuckled appreciatively as he pulled on his trousers. “Sometimes I myself wonder.”

“He just wants you to talk to one of their staff psychiatrists.”

“You know,” the priest said, “one could make the case that all scientists are slightly insane. Monomaniacal.”

“Come on, now…”

“No. Really,” DiNardo said. “Most scientists could make much more money in other professions. But they are fixated on science, on learning, on discovering.” He shook his head in wonderment.

Dex asked impatiently, “Will you talk to the shrink? We’ve got to put this thing to bed.”

“Of course,” said DiNardo. He wormed his arms into his black jacket, then felt for the bottle of pills in the left pocket. Still there. No one had disturbed them. No one knew about them. The medication had not shown up in the blood tests the doctors had performed. Good.

Atlanta: New Morality, Inc. Headquarters

The executive committee of The New Morality, Inc. had just convened an emergency meeting. At the head of the long glossy conference table sat the newly ordained Archbishop Overmire, the signet ring on his right index finger symbolizing his accession to the leadership of the movement and presidency of the corporation.

Overmire glowed with success. Twenty-five years younger than the recently deceased archbishop, he looked tanned and energetic, broad shouldered and barrel chested, his midsection taut beneath his custom-fitted dark clerical jacket. The archbishop’s face was youthful, his cool brown eyes bright, his sandy hair long enough to just touch his collar. His smile seemed genuine.

“I must admit with all humility,” he said to the other corporate officers and ministers arrayed around the long table, “that I’m somewhat nervous chairing this meeting for the first time. Please forgive me if I make any errors.”

A murmur of assurances went around the table. Eighteen men were seated there, half of them in clerical garb, the others in business suits that were almost as dark. Four women were among them, all in conservatively cut skirted suits except for the one female minister, placed at the bishop’s left hand.

Down at the foot of the table sat Shelby Ivers, who had flown to Atlanta from New York for this special meeting. He stared up the length of the table at Archbishop Overmire, trying to tell himself that what he felt was admiration, not envy. Still, Ivers couldn’t help thinking that one day he himself might rise to the leadership of the New Morality. If he prayed and worked hard. If he played his cards right. If Overmire didn’t live as long as the previous archbishop. At least, he thought with a sigh, Overmire’s on record as rejecting rejuvenation treatments. But so did the old archbishop, until he needed a replacement heart.

Looking back clown the long table at Ivers, Archbishop Overmire shrank his smile a little and said, “I’m sure you have all been informed about the problem that Reverend Ivers has uncovered.”

Nods and murmurs of agreement from the others.

The archbishop went on, “Despite the Vatican’s assurances that the Roman Church will work with us in all respects, this priest is preparing to fly to Mars.”

“He’s some sort of scientist, isn’t he?” asked one of the businessmen halfway down the table.

“A geologist,” said the woman minister, almost hissing the words.

“How can a priest be a scientist?”

Archbishop Overmire’s smile turned charitable. “No man can serve two masters,” he murmured.

Ivers spoke up, “He not only is preparing to join the other scientists on Mars, he’s working with the Mars Foundation to produce a video documentary.”

“About Mars?”

Nodding vigorously, Ivers answered, “And the alleged Martians.”

“We can’t allow that!”

“We’ll organize a boycott—”

Overmire silenced the committee members by raising his hands, palms outward, in a gesture of calm.

“This is not the time for an outward show of power,” he said mildly.

The others exchanged puzzled glances.

“We have worked long and hard,” the archbishop explained, “to attain our rightful influence over the government. We control many individual states. We have a majority in the House of Representatives. In November we will drive the secularists out of the United States Senate and two years from now we will put our chosen man into the White House.”

“Then why shouldn’t we—”

“This is not the time to make a public issue over the secularists on Mars. Things are flowing our way; we don’t want to do anything that might interrupt that flow.”

“But with all respect, Archbishop,” said one of the businessmen, “we can’t allow this priest to confuse the public with his blasphemous claims.”

“Up until now,” Overmire said, softly, “we have treated the Mars exploration with what one might call benign neglect. We have not actively refuted them—”

“There’s plenty of conspiracy theorists claiming it’s all a hoax,” muttered one of the older men.

“Yes, true enough,” said the archbishop. “But our policy has been merely to work behind the scenes and discourage the media from giving undue publicity to the scientists on Mars. Isn’t that so, Reverend Ivers?”

“That’s been our policy, yes, Archbishop.”

“I think that policy has worked well enough. Our polls show that the general population’s interest in Mars ranks quite low in their priorities. Climate change and the associated economic and family displacements are at the top of the list, along with crime and child abuse, followed by personal fulfillment and health issues.”

“If I may interrupt, Archbishop,” Ivers said, in an attempt to impress the committee without alienating its chairman, “this Father DiNardo could be a serious challenge to our policy.”

“How so?” the archbishop asked, his smile turning brittle.

“He is ostensibly a man of God: a Catholic priest who serves in the Vatican. He is also a scientist, a geologist of international reputation. That flies in the face of our position that secularists cannot be good Christians.”

“And he is preparing to star in a video documentary,” the archbishop added.

“I’ve tried to discourage the networks, but they’re actually bidding for the rights to broadcast the documentary! They want to air it! They think it will gain a significant audience.”

The archbishop folded his hands on the tabletop. “We can deal with the networks at the highest level.”

One of the women murmured, “Can you be sure …?”

Overmire gave her his saintly smile. “True power doesn’t need In show itself. The networks respect our power, believe me. A few words in the right places and none of them will air the documentary, I promise you.”

Ivers objected, “But then the Mars Foundation will simply post the documentary on the Internet. Anyone will be able to see it.”

“There’s nothing we can do about that,” said one of the businessmen.

“Isn’t there?” the archbishop said, one brow cocked slightly.

“What do you suggest?”

“The success of an Internet posting depends on the publicity it generates. There are millions of postings every day. The size of one posting’s audience depends critically on publicity, on the ‘buzz’ that the posting generates.”

Everyone nodded, even Ivers, impressed with the archbishop’s depth of knowledge.

“We can see to it that publicity for this Mars show is minimal. We have enough clout with the media to bury the Mars posting.”

Ivers started to object, thought better of it, then said merely, “But once the documentary is on the Net, word of mouth might generate a big audience. It could grow and grow.”

“It could,” the archbishop admitted. “But it won’t. We have almost every church in the land on our side. We’ll arrange a… ah, a studied neglect. Not an openly announced boycott, something more subtle. No big announcements, no fanfare. No fuss. Not enough noise to make people curious. We’ll simply have our people delete the documentary from their files. Pastors will quietly ask their flocks to see to it that their children do not watch the documentary. Schools will be similarly enlightened. After all, the documentary is all secularist heresies, isn’t it?”

“But the Catholics…”

His smile warming, Archbishop Overmire said, “The Catholics will stand at our side over this issue. We’ll make the parallel with Galileo.”

“Galileo? That was five centuries ago!”

“And the Church formally admitted they were wrong about him, eventually,” one of the clerics said.

With a pitying little shake of his head Archbishop Overmire pointed out, “There are still people high in the Roman church’s councils who disapprove of the Papal admission of error.”

“But they were wrong,” Ivers blurted. “They forced Galileo to admit that the Sun goes around the Earth. That isn’t the way it is.”

Overmire replied, “No, the Church was not wrong. Galileo was put on trial not for his astronomical discoveries, as the secularist scientists would have you think. He was put on trial for disobeying the authority of the Church. And he was manifestly guilty of that, I assure you.”

Ivers fell speechless.

The archbishop went on, “We will not try to stop this renegade priest from spewing his heresy. We will simply make certain that his views are ignored by the public.”

Everyone around the gleaming table nodded agreement.

“True power,” said the archbishop, “can accomplish wonders. In two years’ time, when we have put our own man into the White House, then we can take off the gloves, so to speak. Then we can show everyone how much power we have to wield. Everyone, including the secularist scientists.”

Tithonium Chasma: Morning

From up in the cockpit Hasdrubal heard water running in the lavatory. Turning, he saw Rosenberg shuffling through the narrow gap between their two bunks.

”Lookin’ kinda bleary this morning,” he said cheerfully.

Still in his skivvies, Rosenberg plopped into the right-hand cockpit seat. And winced. “It’s cold,” he said.

“Put on your coveralls, you’ll warm up.”

Rosenberg nodded glumly. “Had breakfast?”

“Nope. I been waitin’ for you.”

“I’ll boil some water.” Rosenberg got up from the seat, the bare skin of his legs making a soft sucking sound against the pseudoleather.

“The solar cells are recharging the batteries,” Hasdrubal called back to the galley.

“Good,” said Rosenberg.

“Thought you’d wanna know. Make you feel better.”

“Thanks.”

While Rosenberg dressed, Hasdrubal checked in with the controller back at base. Once he started smelling the instant coffee, Hasdrubal ended his call and, turning, saw that Rosenberg had pulled up the table between their bunks. He got up and went to his bunk as Rosenberg put down two bowls of boiled oatmeal and a pair of steaming mugs of coffee.

“When do we start back?” Rosenberg asked, sliding onto his bunk.

“Base wants us to bring back some of the hopper’s wreckage.”

“For diagnosis.”

“Yeah.”

Looking forward through the camper’s cockpit windows, Rosenberg said, “There isn’t that much to retrieve.”

“Accident investigation people back Earthside want as much as we can show ’em. Help them nail down the cause of the explosion.”

“But we already know that, don’t we?”

“Not officially.”

Rosenberg frowned and muttered something too low for Hasdrubal to hear.

“I’ll do it,” the biologist said. “You don’t have to go out.”

“I’ll go with you.”

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

“I want to. I shouldn’t let this get to me the way it did last night.”

“Hey, we all get the spooks, one time or another.”

“You didn’t.”

“I got my troubles, man.”

“Such as?”

Hasdrubal grimaced. “Don’t tell anybody.”

Rosenberg looked up at him. “Of course not.”

“Promise?”

“Yes, certainly. What is it?”

“I’m scared of spiders.”

“Spiders?”

“Saw some dumb-ass video when I was a kid, about giant spiders eatin’ people. Scared the shit out of me. Still does.”

Rosenberg broke into a gentle smile. “Well, in that case, my friend, I suggest you stay on Mars. The nearest spider is millions of kilometers away.”

Carter Carleton felt nervous in the flimsy nanosuit. He had to admit that it was lighter and much more flexible than the hard-shell he usually wore to go outside the dome, but still—there was nothing between him and the near-vacuum of the Martian atmosphere except a layer of nanofabric no more than a few molecules thick. He knew it was his imagination, but he could feel the hard radiation from deep space slashing through the transparent fabric and tearing apart the DNA in his body’s cells.

Walking beside him, Doreen McManus asked, “Isn’t this better than that clunky old hard suit?”

“I suppose,” Carleton said, without his heart in it. The things a man will do just to get laid, he told himself. Not that Doreen’s made an issue of it. She’s damned persistent, though.

They had spent the day at the dig, as usual, Carleton wearing his hard suit. But once they came back inside at the end of the long hours and vacuumed off the dust they’d picked up, Doreen had quickly peeled off her nanosuit and started to help Carleton with his more cumbersome outfit.

“It’s like a knight’s armor,” Doreen said as she helped Carleton lift the torso up over his head.

“That’s one of the things I like about these old suits,” Carleton rejoined. “The romance of it all.”

She laughed. “You’re just a fuddy-duddy.”

“I’m glad you didn’t say an old fuddy-duddy.”

Once they had tucked the various pieces of his suit into its locker, Carleton started toward the cafeteria.

But Doreen reached for his arm. “Carter, wait.”

“You’re not hungry?”

“No. Not now.”

“I’m starving. How can you spend all day out in the field and not work up an appetite?”

Suddenly she looked pained. “Carter… we’ve got to talk.”

A twitch of alarm flashed through him.

“Talk?” That means trouble, he knew. Always.

Doreen said, “Let’s go outside.”

“Outside? Again? We just got back—”

“Please. Just for a few minutes. You can wear a nanosuit; it won’t take you more than a minute or two to get into it.”

“I don’t understand.”

“For me, Carter. Please?”

He stood there gazing into her big gray-green eyes. They were troubled, he saw, even though she was trying to smile for him.

“All right,” he said, wondering if this was just a ploy to get him to try the damned nanosuit.

Now they stood a dozen paces outside the main airlock, Carleton feeling decidedly edgy in the flimsy suit, with the ridiculous inflated balloon of a helmet over his head. Doreen stood in moody silence beside him. It was nearly sunset. Temperature must be down to fifty below, Carleton groused to himself. Still, he had to admit, it’s comfortable enough inside this glorified raincoat. Except for the radiation. The thought made his skin crawl.

To their left rose the towering cliffs of the canyon, the slanting rays of the setting sun casting shadows that brought out every seam and wrinkle in the ancient rocks. The glowing disk of the sun hung above the horizon on their right, small and wan, reminding Carleton that they were a long, long way from home.

“All right,” he said, with a cheerfulness he didn’t really feel, “I’m wearing the suit. Are you satisfied?”

“Carter, we have to talk.”

That again.

Doreen reached into the pouch on her right thigh and pulled out a hair-thin wire. Plugging it into a hardly visible socket on the collar ring of her suit, she held the other end out to Carleton. He stepped closer and let her plug the wire into his suit’s receptacle.

“There, now we can talk without using the radios.”

So no one can overhear us, Carleton realized. Her voice sounded different over the wire, edgier, brittle.

Trying to hide his growing irritation, Carleton asked, “What’s this all about, Dorrie?”

“There’s going to be a resupply mission arriving in another six weeks,” she said.

“Yes. It’s supposed to bring that priest from the Vatican with it.”

“And take a dozen people who want to leave Mars.”

At last he understood. “You’re not leaving?”

“Yes I am, Carter.” Her voice was so low he barely could hear it.

“But why? Where are you going?”

“Back to Selene,” said Doreen. “That’s my home. It’s time for me to go back.”

“But why?” he repeated, thoroughly astonished. “I thought you and l—”

“Carter, it’s been good between us. For a while there I thought I really loved you.”

“You thought…?” He felt bewildered, betrayed.

For long moments Doreen didn’t answer. Finally she said, “You don’t love me, Carter. I’m just a convenience for you, a body to warm your bed and stroke your ego.”

“That’s nonsense,” he snapped. “What’s your real reason? Is it somebody else? That Indian kid?”

“Of course not!” she said, genuinely shocked. “It’s you. You don’t care about me, not really. You don’t even care about my ideas, my work.”

“That nanomachine business? You want to terraform Mars with nanomachines?”

“Part of it, yes. So people can come here and live and work safely—in comfort.”

“Nanocrap,” he snarled. “It’s nonsense and you know it.”

Her face deadly serious, Doreen replied, “I’m not going to argue with you about it. I’m leaving when the resupply flight comes in.”

“And what about me?”

“What about you, Carter?” Her voice sounded almost sorrowful. “How do you feel about me? Do you feel anything at all except your own needs?”

Puzzled and slightly angry, he replied, “For god’s sake, Doreen, we’re living together aren’t we? We share our lives, our work, our bodies, everything.”

She fell silent again.

“Isn’t that enough?” he demanded.

Very softly, she said, “You’ve never said you love me.”

So that’s it, he thought. The same old ploy. They always want to hear you plight your troth.

“Doreen, love is a big word.…”

“It’s a four-letter word. The same as fuck.”

Carleton shook his head inside the inflated helmet. I’ll never understand them, he told himself. Never. Trying to control his growing irritation, he grasped Doreen by the wrist and started back to the airlock.

“You’re not leaving, Doreen,” he said, almost in a growl. “I want you here. I need you here.”

She didn’t reply as she let him lead her back to the dome. She simply pulled the wire from his suit collar and let it trail in the dust behind her.

And Carleton remembered a line from Hamlet: Where the offense is, let the great axe fall.

Tithonium Base: Sunset

As Jamie and Vijay stepped out of the airlock they saw another couple striding forcefully toward the hatch, one of them trailing a hair-thin wire from the collar rim of her suit. Once they got close enough to recognize their faces, Jamie said hello to Doreen McManus and Carter Carleton.

Neither of them replied. They walked past Jamie and Vijay without a word, without a nod.

Turning to his wife, Jamie said, “Carter looks pissed.”

Vijay watched them step into the airlock and close its outer hatch. “You mean angry.”

Jamie nodded.

“In Oz pissed means drunk.”

“He’s not drunk,” Jamie said. “He’s sore as a guy who fell into a clump of cactus.”

Vijay snickered. “In Australia we’d say he’s mad as a frilled lizard.”

“Colloquialisms,” said Jamie.

“That’s a ten-dollar word,” she said. “I’m impressed.”

“Come on,” he said, tugging at her wrist. “Let’s see the sunset.”

They walked hand in gloved hand away from the airlock hatch, out onto the rock-strewn floor of the valley. The sun was just touching the uneven horizon; the cloudless sky was a deep butterscotch color, although behind them it had already darkened so much that the first stars were visible.

“Dr. Waterman,” Jamie heard in his headset, “please remember to stay within camera range.”

Jamie nodded inside his inflated bubble helmet. “We’re not going that far,” he replied to the safety monitor.

Vijay looked down at the dusty ground, stamped with boot prints and the tracks of wheeled vehicles.

“Not like the old days anymore,” she said. “I remember when you could actually step where no one had stood before.”

Jamie replied, “You still can, but you’ve got to go a lot farther.”

“We’ve never been to the other side of the valley, have we?” she asked.

“Not yet.”

“D’you intend to go there?”

“Sooner or later,” he said. “Right now we’re concentrating on tracing the fossil river that ran along the valley floor.”

“Think you’ll find more villages?”

“That’s the hope.” Then Jamie added, “Chang wants to send a team to the south pole and study its melting firsthand.”

“That’s a long ways off,” said Vijay.

Nodding, Jamie went on, “The ice cap has lots of frozen carbon dioxide in it. The cee-oh-two doesn’t melt, it sublimes—goes straight from solid to gaseous carbon dioxide.”

“Isn’t that a greenhouse gas?”

“Right. Mars is undergoing global warming, just like Earth.”

Vijay laughed. “Maybe the temperature’ll get above freezing one of these days.”

Looking across the broad, barren valley floor, Jamie said, “Maybe it’ll get warm enough to melt the permafrost. Maybe this desert will bloom again, eventually.”

“In a million years.”

“More like ten million, I’d guess.”

Vijay fell silent for a few moments as they walked slowly away from the dome. Then she asked, “Will we be able to stay? I mean, from what Dex says about finances…” Her voice trailed off.

“We’ll have to stretch the available money. We certainly can’t afford to send a team to the south pole. Or even the other side of the valley. We’ve got to make this base as self-sufficient as we can and cut down on the number of resupply trips.”

“Will that be enough, Jamie?”

Grimly, he answered, “It’ll have to be.”

They walked a few paces farther, then Jamie stopped and slipped his arm around Vijay’s waist. The sun was halfway down the horizon, the sky already a deep violet.

“Couldn’t cuddle in the hard suits,” Vijay murmured.

With a chuckle, Jamie replied, “True, but you could squeeze Iwo people into one of the larger sizes.”

“Really?”

“So I’ve been told.”

Vijay thought about it for a moment. “Criminy, that’d be worse than doing it in an airliner’s lavatory, woul’n’t it.”

“Romance at its most poetic.”

“There goes the sun.”

The last spot of brightness winked out. There was only a moment of twilight, then the sky turned inky dark, spattered with brilliant stars.

“And if we’re lucky…” Jamie held his breath.

Vijay leaned closer to him as they watched the stars, bright, solemn, hardly twinkling at all.

“There it is!” she cried.

Jamie felt the breath gush out of him. Overhead the sky shimmered with delicate sheets of pale green, pink, ghostly white, curtains of the aurora that flickered like candlelight high above them.

“The Sky Dancers,” Jamie whispered.

For several minutes the two of them stood transfixed on the arid, dusty floor of the tremendous valley, staring up at the aurora that weaved and coiled above them. Jamie knew that with almost every sunset on Mars the aurora flared as high-energy subatomic particles from the solar wind impinged on the inert neon, xenon and other noble gases in the Martian atmosphere. But the Navaho part of his mind recalled the Sky Dancers on Earth, in the desert scrubland of New Mexico, the night that Grandfather Al died. They’re watching over us, he thought. We’re not alone.

“It’s fading,” Vijay sighed.

“It only lasts while we’re in darkness and the high atmosphere is still in sunlight,” Jamie said, knowing that the Sky Dancers had other places to go, other eyes to delight, other omens to warn of.

“Look!”

A meteor trail streaked across the deep violet sky like a fiery finger tracing a path through the heavens.

“Wow!” Jamie managed to say before the meteor’s blazing track winked out. “That was a big one.”

“Should we make a wish?”

“Yeah. Wish that we don’t get hit by a meteor shower,” Jamie said, remembering the shower that peppered the dome of the First Expedition. One of the tiny stones had even hit his helmet. Remembering how close he’d come to death, Jamie suddenly felt very vulnerable in the flimsy nanosuit.

“We’d better get inside,” he said to Vijay.

The safety monitor reinforced the notion. “Dr. Waterman, temperature’s dropping rapidly.”

“Right,” he said crisply. “We’re coming in.”

As they trudged back toward the lights of the dome and the airlock hatch, Vijay said, “That was spectacular, Jamie.”

He looked at her, but it was already too dark to make out her beautiful face. Smiling ruefully, Jamie said, “Mars is a beautiful world. But it can be dangerous.”

“You don’t want to leave, do you?”

“Hell no,” said Jamie.

Boston: Video Studio

Monsignor DiNardo sat in the barber’s chair while the makeup specialist smoothed a creamy lotion over his stubborn shadow of a beard.

“Italians,” the young woman muttered, more to herself than the priest. “All that testosterone.”

She was blond and blowsy. It was hard for DiNardo to tell her age, what with the cosmetic and rejuvenation treatments available.

DiNardo looked at the big wall mirror in front of him. His chin and jaw looked baby pink, although his shaved scalp still showed a face of stubble. “All my life my beard has given me difficulty,” he said. “I’m sorry if it’s making you work too hard.”

“Oh, that’s all right, Father,” she said, suddenly embarrassed. “It’s my job, after all.”

“You are Catholic?”

“Born to it,” she said, turning to the rows of bottles and jars on the counter.

“Irish?” he guessed.

“Nope. Italian, just like you.”

“Ah! Que paese?”

“Huh?”

“What part of Italy do you come from?”

“Oh, my family’s been here for a hundred years. More. I went to Italy once, though. To Rome and Florence.”

“Did you enjoy it?”

She broke into a major grin. “I never had it so good. Guys were after me everywhere I went.”

Of course. Blond and buxom, DiNardo thought.

“Boy, did I have impure thoughts on that trip!”

DiNardo laughed. “I could hear your confession, if you wish.”

She laughed, too. “I go every week at my parish church, Father.”

“Good.”

She studied his face for several moments. “I think we’re finished. You look fine.”

Glancing into the mirror again, DiNardo thought he looked much as he always looked. His jaw was smooth and pinkish, but his eyes still drooped and had those bags beneath them.

He started to get out of the chair, but the makeup woman put a hand on his shoulder. “Father, could I ask you something?”

“Certainly,” he said.

Her brows knit slightly. “I been watching them filming you in the studio. What you said about the Martians, is that real?”

“Of course.”

“There really were living people on Mars, just like us?”

DiNardo nodded. “We don’t know what they looked like, as yet. But they left buildings. They had a form of writing. They existed millions of years ago.”

“But I saw this show on TV, the guy there says it’s all a fake. He wrote a book about it and he said that the scientists have faked the whole thing just to get more money out of us.”

“I am a scientist,” he said gently.

The woman looked stricken. “Oh, I didn’t mean you, Father! Those other scientists. The secular ones. The ones who’re atheists and hate religion. They’d do anything to tear down our beliefs.”

“I don’t believe so,” DiNardo said. “I know many of them and they are as honest as you and I.”

“You really think so?”

“They are trying to understand how things work. On Mars, they are trying to puzzle out how the Martians lived. And how they died.”

“But they’re always changing their minds. They’re always putting up some theory about this or that. And their theories always attack religion and God.”

DiNardo forced a smile. “God isn’t worried about what the scientists are doing. In reality, the scientists are trying to learn how God created the world and how He makes it run.”

“You think?”

“They may not know it,” DiNardo said, his smile becoming genuine, “but even the most stubborn atheist among them is working lo uncover God’s ways.”

She looked unconvinced, but she murmured, “I never thought about it that way.”

DiNardo got up from the chair and thanked her. He half expected her to ask him for his blessing, but she simply smiled, her fleshy face dimpling prettily.

DiNardo headed for the studio, where they would be recording the final sequence on the documentary about Mars.

She didn’t ask the difficult question, DiNardo said to himself as he stepped through the doorway into the big, barnlike studio. She didn’t ask how a loving and merciful God could create those intelligent Martians and then callously wipe them out, kill them all, with just a flick of His celestial finger.

That was the question that haunted Monsignor DiNardo: How could God be so cruel?