Mars (66 page)

“But not now. I have not given up hope. You have not given up hope, have you?”

“Hell no,” he said, with a fervor that he did not truly feel.

“Then turn the transmitter on once again.”

Jamie did. Joanna took a breath, brushed her hands unconsciously through her tousled hair.

“I appreciate your offer,” she said calmly, with great dignity, “but my decision is that I want to be treated exactly like the others. I expect you to keep my father informed of our situation—and the newswoman with him. Thank you very much.”

She’s as sore about Edith as I am, Jamie saw. The realization gave him no comfort at all.

Dmitri Iosifovitch Ivshenko was at the controls of the backup rover, a crooked grin on his pinched face. He is happy to be on the ground doing something useful instead of sitting up in orbit, Vosnesensky thought.

Reed sat back on one of the midship benches. Vosnesensky wondered about the Englishman. He is here with us out of a sense of guilt; he wants to atone for the accident with the vitamins. Will he be a positive help to us or will he just get in our way? He doesn’t know how to drive the rover. He has no real experience in EVA. I doubt that he has been outside the dome more than a few hours, total, since we landed. What good will he be in an emergency?

The Russian turned in the cockpit seat and looked over his shoulder at Reed. The physician seemed lost in thought, dazed almost, as he leaned back on the bench, both hands gripping its edge.

Vosnesensky shook his head, then immediately regretted it. He still felt woozy and terribly weak. Having my own private physician aboard has done nothing to improve my health, he grumbled to himself.

Vosnesensky turned his attention back to Ivshenko. Studying the fellow, he realized for the first time that Ivshenko
looked decidedly un-Russian. He was as lean as a willow and his hair was a thick curly thatch of midnight black. His eyes were coal dark too. A thin aquiline nose and even thinner lips. His complexion was pale, bloodless white, although Vosnesensky thought that he would tan to a deep brown if he could get some sun on him.

He is younger than I am, Vosnesensky thought, envying the energy that radiated from the cosmonaut’s taut, wiry frame. Younger and healthier. Vosnesensky’s head thundered; his arms and legs ached miserably. If Reed is right, these vitamin doses ought to be helping, but I certainly don’t feel any better. Perhaps worse.

“Tell me, Dmitri Iosifovitch,” Vosnesensky said aloud, his voice sounding harsh and strained even in his own ears, “where did you get such good looks?”

The younger man glanced at him, almost startled, then quickly turned back to his driving.

“My mother is Armenian, if that’s what you mean,” Ivshenko replied.

“Ah, I wondered. I thought perhaps you had some Turkish blood in you.”

Ivshenko’s nostrils flared. “No. Armenian.”

“I see,” said Vosnesensky. “And how is your love life, up there in orbit?”

Ivshenko’s grin returned. “Adequate, comrade. Quite adequate. Especially when that German physicist gets bored with her work.”

“Diels? The blonde?”

“She is teaching me things about physics that I never knew before.”

“The quest for knowledge is never-ending,” Vosnesensky agreed.

“A worthwhile goal.”

Vosnesensky started to laugh, but it made his chest hurt. He ended up coughing.

“You are in pain, Mikhail Andreivitch?”

“It’s nothing. Just a little agony.”

“Do you want to turn back?”

“No!” Vosnesensky thundered. “We go onward. No matter what happens, we go onward.”

Hours passed. They stopped the rover briefly and changed seats so that Vosnesensky could drive. Ivshenko watched him
carefully, though. The younger cosmonaut had no great desire to allow his older comrade to get them both killed.

“At sundown you can take over again,” Vosnesensky said, feeling perspiration beading his face, trickling along his ribs, plastering the back of his coveralls against the seat.

“You will sleep then?”

“I will try.”

“The safety regulations forbid operating the rover unless a backup driver is awake and prepared to take over in case of an emergency. And operating at night …”

“I know the regulations quite thoroughly,” Vosnesensky snapped. “I helped to write them. This is an emergency situation; we will bend the rules a little.”

“A little,” Ivshenko murmured.

Jabbing a thumb over his shoulder, “If you get lonely while I sleep you can have our physician to keep you company.”

Ivshenko made a sour face.

Across the rubble-strewn plain they drove, south by east, the dwarf sun lowering toward the rugged horizon, throwing long blood-red shadows from every rock on the barren desert. To Vosnesensky the shadows looked like the lean claws of dead men’s hands reaching for him.

Back in the midsection of the command module Tony Reed felt every bump and dip of the rover as he sat gripping the edge of the bench with both hands. This is madness, he told himself. Why did I ever talk myself into coming out here? Penance? This is carrying expiation for one’s sins a bit too far, really.

But he stayed silent, uncomplaining, trying to hold down the fear that was building up inside him. We’re out in the middle of the empty Martian plain in this piddling little vehicle. If anything goes wrong, anything at all, we’re all dead men.

Up in the cockpit the comm unit buzzed. Ivshenko turned it on and Dr. Li’s long sallow face appeared on the screen. His mouth curved downward, his eyes looked weary, defeated.

“I have spent half the day arguing with Kaliningrad,” Li said, his voice hoarsely rasping. “The mission controllers are adamant.”

Vosnesensky grunted, but kept the rover moving forward.

“They insist that the crew in the dome must be evacuated to orbit, and only afterward can an attempt be made to rescue the team in the rover.”

“Have you told them that we are already on our way to the canyon?”

Li slowly shook his head. “No. I told them that we do not agree either with their assessment of the situation or their decision.”

“Yet they still insist?”

“Yes.”

“So what do you intend to do?”

The expedition commander tugged nervously at one end of his moustache. “It is my duty to command you to turn around and return to the dome so that you can carry out the orders from mission control.”

“Very well,” Vosnesensky said. “You have done your duty.” He reached across the control panel and turned off the communications unit. Then he slowed the rover to a halt.

Ivshenko was looking at him worriedly. “You’re going to turn around?”

Heaving a great pained sigh, Vosnesensky said, “Don’t be an idiot. You drive for the next two hours while I nap. If we go all night we could reach the canyon rim by midday tomorrow.”

Oliver Zieman stared at the comm screen.

He sat alone in the command section of the dome; most of the others were down sick. Dr. Yang was in the infirmary, running still more tests. Zieman scratched his head, thinking furiously. He had not expected a crisis of command.

Dr. Li’s image on the screen looked pained, tortured. He must be spending all his time right there in the command module, Zieman thought. He must be living there night and day. He looks almost as bad as the scurvy cases.

“We have a very difficult situation on our hands,” Li said to the astronaut, “and I want to be certain that you are fully aware of all the implications.”

“Yes, sir,” said Zieman, almost eagerly.

“Mission control has issued an order to abandon the dome and return the entire base crew here to orbit,” Li said.

“But the rover team …”

Li raised a long slim finger to silence the astronaut. He continued, “Kaliningrad reasons that we must think of the health and safety of the greatest number first. They are prepared to abandon the base and evacuate everyone in the dome.”

Zieman swiftly thought, That means I’ll have to pack them aboard the L/AVs myself. Eight of us, counting me. Can’t fit that many in a single L/AV. Who in hell’s going to pilot the second vehicle? Mironov and Abell are in no shape for it, and Dmitri’s off with Vosnesensky and Reed.

“After the contingent from the dome is safely in orbit,” Li was saying, “and we have all the astronauts and cosmonauts here, we can use the final landing/ascent vehicle to attempt to rescue the four in the rover.”

“Then you want Vosnesensky to turn back,” Zieman said.

“I have ordered him to do so. He has refused.”

Refused! A burning jet of fear shot through Zieman. A man can’t refuse to carry out orders! That’s crazy! The whole mission could fall apart if we don’t follow orders.

Li waited a moment for his words to register with Zieman. Then he said, “Vosnesensky has tied my hands. I cannot order the evacuation from the dome with only one healthy astronaut present there. I cannot send Tolbukhin and Klein down to you because that would use the last remaining lander. It would mean abandoning the team in the rover altogether.”

“Yeah. Right.” He still felt stunned that Vosnesensky had disobeyed orders. Of all the people on this mission! Vosnesensky, the straightest of the straight arrows.

“If Ivshenko were with you it would be possible to lift all personnel there in two of the vehicles,” Li said, stating the obvious. “Since he is off with Vosnesensky, I cannot order the dome evacuated.”

“Yessir. I understand,” said Zieman.

“That means you will be in charge of the personnel in the dome until Vosnesensky returns.”

Zieman nodded wordlessly, thinking, If he returns. If.

Just as he had expected—no, as he had
known
—there was a stairway cut into the sheer wall of the cliff, leading up to the city built in the giant cleft high above.

Jamie stood in the brightly warm sunlight of New Mexico even though the sky was a delicate Martian pink. He slid his helmet visor up, knowing he no longer needed his hard suit to protect him. He was coming home, his true home, where two worlds met and blended in the unity and balance that he had unconsciously sought since childhood. For the first time in his life Jamie felt in harmony with the world, with both his worlds, with all the worlds.

He climbed the stairs slowly, almost unwilling to end the happiness, the peacefulness of this moment. Yet he knew that at the top his people would be waiting to welcome him. Like an ancient priest of the Old Ones climbing the temple stairs in solemn dignity, Jamie moved his booted feet from one stone stair to the next. He saw that the steps had been cut into the living rock long ages ago; their stone surfaces had been worn smooth and saddle-backed by countless generations of climbing feet.

Piece by piece his protective hard suit disappeared as he climbed. His helmet vanished first, and he could drink in the clean cool air of the true world. Then his boots, the torso shell, the leggings. By the time he reached the top he was naked and possessed nothing except the bear fetish that his grandfather had given him hundreds of millions of kilometers ago.

Sweat trickled along his flanks, his legs, ran down his face. The air was cool but the sun warmed him, filled him with its life-giving energy.

He was nearing the top of the stairway. He could hear the breeze sighing, hear fully leafed trees up there calling to him. He looked down at the fetish in his hand and the bear smiled at him. Only a few steps more, my son, said his grandfather’s voice. Only a few steps more.

Jamie reached the top. The city was there, just as he had known it would be. Magnificent. Straight clean walls of fresh adobe brick. Tier upon tier of houses rising to the top of the cleft where the overhanging rock sheltered them like the protective arm of god.

“It is good,” Jamie said. “Ya’aa’tey.”

His grandfather appeared before him, young and strong and naked as Jamie himself. “It is good,” his grandfather said.

All the people poured out of their homes, thronging into the central plaza where Jamie stood with his grandfather, smiling, singing, carrying wreaths of flowers that they put over Jamie’s head. The women were beautiful, the men strong and handsome.

Yet Jamie turned to his grandfather. “I can’t stay. The others—they need me.”

“I know,” said the old man. “Go in beauty, my grandson.”

Jamie’s eyes snapped open.

The dream had been so vivid, so real. He dug his hand into the pocket of his coveralls and felt the fetish resting there, a warm comforting lump of stone. Only then did he allow himself to relax in his bunk and take stock of the new day.

His entire body ached with a dull sullen pain that sapped his strength. His head throbbed, pulse thumping in his ears like a drum slowly beating out the cadence of death. Next to him Connors moaned softly in his troubled sleep, his breath whistling slightly.

Quietly, Jamie slid out of his bunk. His legs were almost too weak to hold him up. For long minutes he gripped the edge of Joanna’s bunk, uncertain that he could squeeze past the bunks and make it to the lavatory. She was huddled in a fetal position. Ilona lay facedown, unmoving. For a moment Jamie feared she might be dead, but then he saw the slow rhythm of her breathing.

He pushed past the bunks, grabbing at the hand grips set
into the bulkheads to make his way to the lav. In the polished metal mirror above the tiny sink his face stared back at him, gaunt, unshaven, hollow eyed. Slowly, with the deliberate care of a drunk or an old, old man, Jamie washed his face and hands. When he brushed his teeth the brush came away bloody. The teeth even felt loose in his gums. He peeled off his night coveralls and pulled on his day pair. Not much between them, he realized. They were both wrinkled and smelly.

The others did not begin to awaken until he had mixed himself a glass of instant orange drink and a mug of steaming coffee. They got up slowly, looking as exhausted and pain wracked as Jamie himself felt. Gaunt faces, red eyes, hands trembling, legs almost too weak to hold them up.

They barely said a dozen words to one another. Mumbles. Grunts. Sighs that turned into gasping, labored breathing.

Jamie slid past them, the coffee mug in one hand, and forced himself to the cockpit. Sliding into the right-hand seat, he punched up the comm unit and put in a call to the dome.