Return to Mars (35 page)

“What the hell’s Trumball pissed off about?” Connors demanded, forgetting his usual respect for the man who had been the mission director of the first expedition.

“That is not completely clear to me.”

“Then what can we do about it?”

“I do not know yet. However, I thought that since you are Waterman’s friend, you might want to apprise him of this situation. Prepare him, so to speak.”

“Give him the bad news, you mean.”

“No, no! His removal is not certain. In fact, I believe that most of the ICU committee favors keeping him in charge. I simply thought he should know what is happening here.”

Connors nodded. “Right. I understand.”

“Thank you,” said Li. Then the connection went dead.

Connors sat there on the sand for a long while, thinking. The committee might want to keep Jamie, but if old Trumball makes enough of a rumpus, they’ll dump Jamie just to keep the old bastard happy. If it comes down to a choice between Jamie and the money for the next expedition, they’ll go for the money. They’ll have to.

JAMIE SUITED UP AND WENT OUTSIDE TO WATCH THE SOARPLANE’S RETURN.

No problems with the weather, he thought. Despite the dust storm spreading across the southern hemisphere, the sky here was clean and bright, perhaps a shade darker than its usual orange-tan hue, but clear and utterly cloudless. Not even a wisp of cirrus marred the soft tawny bowl overhead.

I should be inside analyzing the data from the beacons that Dex and Possum are setting up along their route, he told himself. Or finishing up the stratigraphy survey of the area around the base. The survey Dex was supposed to do.

A major inconsistency was growing out of their geological data, a problem that increasingly worried and annoyed the planetary scientists back on Earth. They all agreed that at one time Mars had been warmer and wetter than it was today. Once there had been an ocean girdling much of the northern hemisphere, or at least a broad shallow sea. But that had been hundreds of millions years ago, perhaps even billions of years in the past.

Yet the data that the explorers were producing clouded this picture. The geo/met beacons, the core samples that the drills brought up, the data from the drifting balloons all indicated that Mars today was warmer below its bleak surface sands than it had been thought to be. There was more heat flowing from the planet’s interior than the geologists had expected. Considerably more.

Mars had been warm less than a hundred million years ago, relatively recently in geological terms. That broad shallow sea had flowed here much longer than anyone had thought possible, if their data were to be believed.

Scientists do not like to change their opinions any more than theologians or truckdrivers do, yet when the facts contradict their convictions they cannot hide from the facts or conveniently ignore them. The facts seemed to be telling them that Mars was warmer and wetter for much longer than they had thought possible. Much longer. It made no sense. It contradicted their carefully constructed theories about the red planet’s past. Yet that is what the data from Mars indicated.

When in doubt, when the data and the theories do not agree, search for more data. The planetary scientists on Earth peppered the explorers with requests for more data, more tacts, and more information about Mars’ history. Before they would even think about discarding their cherished theories about the red planet, they wanted, needed, demanded more data.

Jamie knew he should be bending every effort to fulfill the demands from Earth. The inconsistencies in the geological picture disturbed him as much as any scientist back on the blue world. Yet he was doing nothing, standing outside the dome straining his eyes for the first glimpse of the returning soarplane. And thinking about the cliff dwelling. I can’t start out for the Canyon until Dex and Possum return, he told himself. I can’t leave my responsibilities here and go chasing off on a search that isn’t even in the mission schedule.

But he felt the call of that niche high up in the Canyon wall. He felt as if his ancestors were calling to him. Like the first time his grandfather had taken him to the abandoned village of the Old Ones, up at Mesa Verde.

“Your ancestors built their homes here a long time ago, Jamie,” Grandfather Al had said.

“They weren’t our ancestors,” Jamie had replied, with all the righteous certainty of a twelve-year-old. “We’re Navaho, they were Anasazi.”

“They sure were our ancestors,” Al had insisted. “Anasazi means the Old Ones.”

Young Jamie had shaken his head stubbornly. “Our people came here after they were gone, Grandpop. I read it in one of the books you gave me.”

Al had laughed gently and muttered, “Ahh, book writers. What do they know?”

Maybe Al’s right, Jamie thought. Maybe we’re all related, all of us, even here on Mars.

Then a flash of movement in the darkening sky caught his eye. A glint of sunlight, nothing more. Jamie searched the coppery bowl overhead, saw nothing.

Another flash, and this time his eye held it. The plane took form as it circled lazily high up in the sky. Jamie did not take his eyes off it, for fear of losing sight of it again. Automatically he touched the keypad on his wrist to tune in on the communications frequency.

“Setting up for the approach leg,” Rodriguez’s voice was saying, calm, professional.

“Approach leg, copy,” said Stacy Dezhurova, equally flat and businesslike.

Jamie listened and watched the plane take shape high in the butterscotch sky while, far off in the back of his mind, he thrilled at the wonder of standing on Mars as two explorers returned to their base after a mission to the tallest mountain in the solar system.

Rodriguez insisted that everyone stay clear of them as he and Fuchida got out of their suits.

“I don’t want any stink jokes,” the astronaut insisted.

Jamie had allowed them to go directly into the dome without unloading the plane, the biologist leaning heavily on Rodriguez, using him as a crutch. Stacy Dezhurova came out to help Jamie carry Fuchida’s sample cases back to the dome’s airlock while the two men took off their hard suits and headed straight to the showers. Only afterward would Fuchida permit Vijay to examine his ankle.

The first thing Jamie and Dezhurova did was to tie the plane down properly. Although the Martian atmosphere was so thin that even a stiff breeze would not lift the gossamer sailplane, with a mammoth dust storm growing bigger every day they took no chances and made certain the plane was anchored properly.

After carrying Fuchida’s sample cases to the dome’s airlock, Stacy said, “I should check out the plane, make certain all its systems are shut down properly.”

“Okay,” said Jamie. “I’ll take Mitsuo’s cases inside.”

Trudy Hall was waiting eagerly for Fuchida’s samples just inside the airlock hatch. She hustled them back to the biology lab while Jamie began to take off his hard suit.

Vijay came to the locker area as Jamie lifted off his helmet.

“How’s Mitsuo’s ankle?” he asked.

“Badly sprained, but there’s no fracture, not even a hairline.”

“Good,” Jamie said, pulling off his gloves.

She watched him in silence for a moment, then her lips curled into an impish little smile. “Need help undressing?” she asked.

Jamie felt his brows knit. She had a way of embarrassing him that was, well… embarrassing.

“I’m not going to attack you, Jamie,” she said softly as she helped him lift the hard shell of the suit’s torso over his head.

“Too bad,” he heard himself mutter.

“You’re actually developing a sense of humor!”

“With a little help from my friends.”

“There’s hope for you yet, mate.”

He sat on the bench and leaned over to unfasten his boots. Vijay started to kneel at his feet to help, but he waved her off.

“Too provocative,” he said. “I’d never get these leggings off.”

Her eyes went wide for a moment, then she burst into laughter. Jamie grinned back at her, then began to laugh himself.

“It’s definitely a different species!” Trudy Hall was bubbling with happiness. Even Fuchida had allowed a wide toothy grin to split his usual deadpan.

“Ares olympicus,” he said. “That’s what we’ve decided to name them.”

The six explorers were sitting around the galley table over their dinner trays. As soon as they had come out of the biology lab, Fuchida and Hall had announced that Mitsuo’s rock samples from Olympus Mons contained colonies of bacteria similar to, but significantly different from, the bacteria that Craig’s deep drill had pulled up from just outside their dome.

“Why not name it after the discoverer?” Stacy Dezhurova asked. “Isn’t that the usual thing?”

Fuchida bowed his head slightly. Hall explained, “Brumado and Malater set the precedent with Ares marineris, the lichen they discovered at the Canyon floor.”

“Yeah, but the Canyon’s named after the Mariner spacecraft that discovered it,” Rodriguez pointed out.

“Tommy’s disappointed that we didn’t name the lichen after him,” Hall teased.

Rodriguez’s swarthy face went a little darker.

“Seriously, though,” the English biologist went on, “I think it’s a good idea to name the new species we find after the locations where they were discovered, rather than the names of the discoverers.”

“Especially since you didn’t make the discovery,” Vijay teased.

Hall hissed at her.

After dinner Jamie went to his quarters and, as usual, booted up his computer to scan the incoming mail. Mostly the usual stuff, including another query from the chair of the geology committee for the stratigraphy analysis Dex had been scheduled to do. There was also a personal message from Pete Connors.

Wondering what the ex-astronaut wanted, Jamie went through the routine stuff, then pulled up Connors’ dark, melancholy face on his laptop screen.

“Got some unsettling news for you, buddy,” Connors said, without preamble. “According to Dr. Li, old man Trumball’s on the warpath, trying to get rid of you as mission director. Li’s afraid the funding for the next expedition will be jeopardized if the ICU doesn’t do what he wants. Not much you can do about this, I know, but Li thought you ought to know, and I agree with him. Sorry to lay this load of shit on you, Jamie, but I think it’s better that you know about it than have it hit you as a surprise.”

Jamie sat back in his squeaking little desk chair and for a long time did nothing but stare at Connors’ image, frozen on the laptop screen. Pete doesn’t look worried, he thought. More angry than anything else.

What do I feel? Jamie asked himself. Numb, was the answer. Not angry, not worried, not even resentful. Nothing. No emotional reaction at all. It was all so far away, a hundred million kilometers from anything he could touch or taste or smell. More than a hundred million kilometers.

So the elder Trumball’s dissatisfied with me. Most likely it’s over letting Dex go out on his excursion. If they get caught in a dust storm, the old man will go ballistic.

So what? Jamie thought. So he takes my title away from me. What difference will that make? He’s thinking like a white man, thinking that my title is what makes me tick. He hasn’t the faintest idea of how things work out here. The title isn’t important; it means almost nothing. We’re working like a family now, a band of brothers and sisters out in the wilderness, depending on each other, not some job description somebody wrote in an office back on Earth.

He shut down the computer, then pulled himself to his feet and headed out toward the galley. A good cup of coffee and then a good night’s sleep.

Maybe I should check in with Dex and Possum before I turn in. He decided against it. Their evening report had shown nothing to worry about. The fuel cells were still flat but that was nothing new. The rover was trundling along well enough; they were making good time, in fact.

As long as the storm stays below the equator they’ll be okay.

Vijay and Trudy Hall were sitting at the dining table, heads together as if they were sharing some secret—or gossip. Their conversation stopped abruptly when they noticed Jamie approaching.

The coffee urn was almost empty. Jamie got half a cup of lukewarm decaf out of it, then the red warning light started blinking.

“The rule is,” Vijay reminded him from her seat at the table, “that whoever gets the last cup has to clean the urn.”

“I know,” Jamie said ruefully. “I’ve gotten stuck with it often enough.”

Trudy excused herself and left for her quarters. Vijay got up and came alongside Jamie as he rinsed the stainless steel urn in the sink and then opened the dishwasher. It was still filled with the dinnerware.

“I’ll empty it,” Vijay volunteered. “You drink your Java before it cools off.”

“It’s not all that hot to start with,” Jamie muttered.

As she pulled plastic plates from the dishwasher, Vijay asked casually, “So how’s it going, mate?”

”Oh, fine. Old man Trumball wants to fire me, but otherwise everything is swell.”

“What?”

He told her about the news from Earth. Vijay’s usual jaunty expression darkened as he explained what the elder Trumball was doing.

“He can’t do that,” she said when he finished.

“Maybe he can.”

“We won’t let him. We won’t accept it.”

Jamie bent down to scoop the forks and spoons out of their rack. Straightening, he said, “It really doesn’t matter.”

“Doesn’t matter? Don’t you want—”

He touched a fingertip to her lips, silencing her. “I don’t care what my title is, Vijay. We’re here and we’re doing what we came for. Old man Trumball can rearrange the organization charts all he wants to, it won’t make any difference here.”

“But he’ll want to put Dex in charge!”

“So what?”