Red Thunder (47 page)

Travis then asked Captain Xu if we could send some short messages to
our families back on Earth, since our own long-range radios were no
longer working. Xu said he'd be happy to, but as we approached the
television transmission desk one of the crew, Chun Wang, seemed to
object. A few intense words were exchanged as we Americans busied
ourselves looking around, not wanting to witness a family squabble. Xu
won, though we weren't exactly sure what it
was
he won, and we all broadcast simple messages; we're safe, we're happy except we miss you... and
we were the first!

Then we all boarded our separate chariots and headed south in search of the Grand Canyon of Mars.

The Chinese were awed by
Blue Thunder,
as who wouldn't be?
It dwarfed the Chinese rover, which looked a lot like the Apollo lunar
rovers, but with bigger wire-weave tires. There were four seats, all
occupied. They trusted their automatic systems to handle things while
they were away, and I couldn't argue with them. After all, the computer
had landed their ship.

But we did have to pause a few times as the Chinese driver had to
find a way around big rocks. Dak waited patiently for them, a smug
smile on his face.

When we got there the Chinese geologist, Li Chong, leaped from the
rover like an excited puppy and started banging on rocks with a hammer.
He tried to be five places at once, dropping samples he was trying to
stuff into plastic bags, picking up new ones. It must be incredible, I
realized, to have an entire planet to study... and in this case,
he
was the first. The first rockhound on Mars.

As for the rest of us...

Never having been to the Grand Canyon in Arizona, or to any canyon,
for that matter, I had nothing to compare it to. I saw incredible
desolation. Incredible colors. Incredible immensity. I picked up a rock
and hurled it out into space, and we all watched as it fell, and
bounced, and fell some more, and bounced, until we lost it.

I noticed Chun Wang didn't seem to have much to do. Kuang Mei-Ling
and Li hopped about like excited sparrows, and even Captain Xu seemed
to have some geological training, helping gather samples. I didn't say
anything about it, since we were all on the same suit channel. But
later I mentioned it to Travis.

"Political officer," he said. "Commissar, or whatever the Chinese
call it. He's a Party member, here to keep the others in line. Standard
operating procedure on a Chinese vessel. Did you see how nobody talked
to him much, at lunch?"

Now that he mentioned it, I had noticed that. Chun seemed to sit off
to himself somehow, even at the crowded table. The other three had
virtually ignored him.

"Some sort of social dynamic going on there. Mei-Ling is married to
Captain Xu, and I figure that's put a lot of strain on Chun and Li. And
Chun seems to be largely frozen out by the others. People problems,
Manny. It was always in the cards that people problems would be at
least
as big a hurdle as engineering problems on a trip as long and as cramped as they're on."

GOOD MANNERS DICTATED that we invite the Chinese
aboard for a meal, so Travis did. We arranged it for Day M3, our third
day on Mars, the second day for the Chinese. I drew the short straw
that day and watched through the ports of the cockpit deck as the two
vehicles headed off for the Valles again a few hours after sunrise,
feeling a bit lost and abandoned. They would be back around
midafternoon, a time dictated by the capacity of the suit oxygen tanks,
and our stamina.

"Let's face it, friends," Travis had told us. "The five of us are
not going to be contributing a hell of a lot to our knowledge of Mars,
unless we stumble over a dinosaur bone or an abandoned city or a giant
face, or something. There's no point in working sunup to sundown."

I hadn't given a lot of thought to what we'd do when we got to Mars.
None of us had, we'd all been far too absorbed in the task of getting
here at all.

But what the heck was I doing here, really? Why me, and not some
infinitely more qualified scientist? I could walk right over some
geological formation or group of rocks... or even cleverly camouflaged
lichen or moss or some more alien form of life, blissfully unaware of
its importance.

I had no business here. None of us did, except maybe Travis. Sure,
we had worked our butts off, labored all summer to build the ship to
get here, but the Chinese all held doctorates. Even Chun, the chief
Commie, was an M.D. How bitterly ironic it must be to them for a group
of barely educated kids to get here first.

Before long I'd worked myself into a blue funk. I prowled the
kitchen, looking at the food we'd brought. Frozen pizza. Infantile!
Would the Chinese eat pizza? That's the kind of thought I occupied
myself with as I waited eight hours until the tiny caravan reappeared
from the south. I helped people out of their suits and we all gathered
in the common room, quite crowded with nine people in it, four of them
on folding chairs.

It turned out pizza was okay.

"We have many Western rapid-food places in China now," Xu explained. "Most of us have eaten at them at one time or another."

Chun didn't care for pizza, but smiled broadly when we showed him a
Hungry Man Mexican dinner, with enchilada, tamale, and refried beans.

But the real hit of the day was Alicia's food.

That's what we'd been calling it, to bug her, but we'd all eaten our
salads and fruit along with our frozen dinners. But the Chinese...
you'd have thought they'd been stranded on a desert island for a year
with nothing to eat but thistles and rats. Well, maybe that's not a
good example. For all I know Chinese may
like
thistles and
rats, they seem to eat just about anything. But they almost drooled
when they saw the fresh Florida oranges Alicia had brought by the
bushel basket. And grapefruit, and tomatoes, lettuce, fresh broccoli,
tons of other stuff.

Mai-Ling, Li, and Xu each ate a slice of pizza, I suspect just to be
polite, and Chun ate half his dinner, then they attacked the fruits and
vegetables. Their own supplies had been used up months ago and they
were down to the basic rations for the rest of the trip: rice, noodles,
canned or frozen vegetables and meats.

"They lost a lot of face yesterday, over dinner," Travis told us
later. He and Xu had developed a rapport quickly. Somehow Commissar
Chun's suit radio had developed a slight glitch, it wouldn't receive
channel four anymore... tsk, tsk, how unfortunate... so Travis and Xu
had spent a lot of the day talking about things Chun shouldn't hear.

"Of course, the whole nation lost face big-time when we beat them here, but the
Harmony's
crew doesn't feel too upset by that because it wasn't their fault. But
setting such a poor table... of that they were very ashamed."

"I didn't think it was so bad," I said.

"I didn't either," Travis said. "Space rations, what did they think
we expected, Peking duck? Go figure, huh? Anyway, Chinese culture is
different."

"Must have lost heap big face today, eating them oranges," Dak said.

"Yeah, but they didn't mind it so much. Good work, Alicia."

We were gathered in the common room at the end of the day. The
others were all pleasantly exhausted from the day's work. Me, I was
wired as a two-dollar junkie, having done nothing all day but worry and
fret. But it was good to sit with everyone and talk about the day's
events. The one we talked about the most concerned Commissar Chun.

After dinner, when it came time to reciprocate on the tour we'd been given of the
Heavenly Harmony,
Travis caused an international incident, of sorts.

"Captain Xu, are you a member of the Chinese armed forces?" Travis
asked, knowing Xu wasn't. He then turned to Chun. "Doctor Chun, you
being the political officer of the
Heavenly Harmony,
I must
respectfully decline to show you my ship above the level of this common
room. There are things up there I must not allow the representative of
a foreign power to see. I'm sure you understand."

Xu started to smile, quickly concealed it, and translated for Chun.

Chun snapped off some choice comments which Xu did not translate,
then told us he would wait for us outside. Travis also declined to let
Chun off
Red Thunder
until we all went, pointing out that he
didn't want Chun getting a close look at the Squeezer drive, either.
Chun nearly exploded. Again Xu didn't translate, he didn't really need
to.

"Manny, would you keep Doctor Chun company for a while?" Travis asked.

"Sure." Damn Travis. What was I supposed to do if Chun objected?
Wrestle with him? Hit him over the head? I was ready for anything as
the others went up the ladder to the control deck, but Chun just sat
down in his chair. He looked at me, smiled vaguely, then began moving
bits of orange peel around on the table in front of him. I'd never seen
a man so tired, so depressed, in my life.

I almost felt sorry for him. I mean, I'd been getting the shivers a few hours ago just being alone on good old, homey
Red Thunder,
with my friends only a few miles away, and Alicia said she'd felt the
same way on her first watch. Chun's nearest friend, assuming commissars
have friends, was over
one hundred million
miles away.

And it was all baloney, anyway. Secrets? Rubbish. There were no big secrets in the controls of
Red Thunder.

"I couldn't resist needling him," Travis admitted that evening. "Did
you see how he tried to walk under the ship, get a close look at the
drive? Oh so casually, like strolling in the park... well, I casually
just happened to get in his way."

"Might have been crueler, you
let
him see the drive," Dak said. "What's he gonna make of it, anyway?"

"You've got a devious mind, Dak," Travis laughed.

Later I bought up what I'd spent part of the day thinking about, our lack of qualifications for exploring Mars.

"What can I say, Manny?" Travis asked. "You're right. None of us can
say we 'earned' the right to be here, to be the first. But that's just
the luck of the draw. If we were going to be the
only
ones here, I'd say this was nothing but a publicity stunt. It
is
a
publicity stunt, remember. But it's in a good cause, and believe this:
In a year, hundreds of geologists are going to be crawling all over
this big ball of rock, and we led the way. Jubal made it all possible,
and we did it. If you're worried about what they're going say about you
in the history books, just remember that."

THE NEXT DAY, Day M4 for us, we rendezvoused at the
canyon edge and then took off to the east, stopping every quarter mile
or so for Dr. Li Chong to take more samples. This time I got to ride
shotgun, it being Kelly's turn to mind the shop while the rest of us
were out joyriding. Alicia and I both warned her of the loneliness, and
how it could sneak up on you and make you feel panicky.

"Don't worry, I'll just smoke a little more weed," she said, and for
a moment I thought she was serious. Then she shoved us both toward the
air lock, swearing she'd be just fine, she could take care of herself.

We came to a part of the Valles that didn't look that different from
any other part, at least to me, and Li had Captain Xu stop. Dak pulled
up next to them, and we watched Li go to the edge and stand there,
hands on hips, looking down.

"What's he want?" Dak asked.

"The... the striations, the layering," Xu told us. "He was looking
for a formation like this, but it is too far down, too steep. He is
frustrated because of this."

We all got out and looked down to where Xu was pointing.

The previous night I couldn't sleep, so I went to the commons and
cranked up the DVD reader. We'd brought along a pretty respectable
reference library. I found some encyclopedia articles about the Grand
Canyon in Arizona, and read and looked at pictures until I finally
began to yawn.

It was easy to see that the Grand Canyon and the Valles Marineris
didn't have a lot in common other than both being deep and wide. The
book said the rocks near the bottom of the Grand Canyon were about two
billion years old. You could see the layering, like a million-layer
birthday cake, from different stuff that settled out during different
epochs. Then the land got shoved upward by the movements of the crustal
plates, and erosion had begun.

Had Valles Marineris been formed like that? Nobody knew for sure. If
it did, where did all the water go? Boiled off into space? Sunk into
the ground? How much water? Enough to be useful if humans decided to
come here in large numbers?

Most geologists—or areologists, as some preferred to be
called—believed the Valles had been eroded by running water, just
like the Grand Canyon.

That was about as far as I got. So I knew what Dr. Li was talking
about, in general terms. The layering here was different. But it all
boiled down to... or more probably,
froze
down to... water. So far Li had not found moisture-bearing rocks or soils, which was what he wanted to find.

"Down there at the bottom, you see it?" Li said, translated by Xu.
"Layering, which was caused by a very ancient sea of water. Then...
farther up, several more areas of layering, suggesting that seas once
again covered this area, at very long... intervals. The water returned.
The water must still be here... somewhere."

We could see the layering he was talking about a long way down the slope, which was about sixty degrees.

"One theory... which Li likes very much, is that water is still
present about two hundred meters down. Pressure might keep it from
freezing at that depth. As the pressure builds up, water might be
forced... what is the word? ...laterally along rock strata. Then, at a
place like this, that layer has been eroded away. The water is forced
into the air, where it freezes. A plug forms. When the pressure is
sufficient, the plug blows out, and a slurry of rock, ice, and some
water sprays outward, forming an apron of debris much like what we see
spreading away from that layer below us, about two hundred meters down.
Li wishes he could take samples from that area."