Mars (45 page)

DiNardo longed for the quiet of the Vatican. Even with tourists streaming through St. Peter’s, it would be quieter and more orderly than this near riot. But then, most of these men and women had interrupted their usual work to hurry to the Eternal City. DiNardo wondered how composed he would be if he had been suddenly called to an urgent meeting and had to spend nine or ten hours on an airplane and then more hours of sweaty rigor getting his baggage through customs.

He groaned inwardly as a florid-faced man, whose lapel
badge identified him as a geologist from Canada, tried to outshout an intense young astronomer from Chile who had interrupted him.

Alberto Brumado, standing at the center of the long table that had been placed on the stage at the front of the auditorium, suddenly banged his fist on the table so hard that the six men and women flanking him on either side jumped with shock.

“You will both sit down,” Brumado shouted into the microphone before him. “Sit down. Now!”

The room suddenly fell silent. The Chilean astronomer sank down into his chair. The florid geologist glared at him for a moment, then he sat down also.

Brumado ran a hand through his disheveled hair. “Our tempers are overcoming our good sense,” he said, in a more normal tone. “We will take a fifteen-minute break. When we return, I suggest that we each try to remember that we are men and women of science, not politicians or street hawkers. I will expect a rational discussion, with the normal rules of order and politeness to be strictly obeyed.”

Like sullen, guilty students the scientists filed out of the big auditorium. Leaders of their fields, all of them, DiNardo knew. World-class researchers. There were at least four Nobel Prize-winners in the group, by the priest’s informal count. The best of the best.

He headed for the men’s room, one flight down. He had to push his way past the crowd at the refreshment table, noting absently which nationalities were lining up for coffee, which for tea. The Americans went mostly for soft drinks, of course. With ice.

Sure enough, Valentin Grechko was already at one of the urinals. The Russian physicist had a reputation for drinking tea constantly and then racing for the toilet. DiNardo pretended to be finished as Grechko turned toward the sinks, zipping the fly of his dark blue trousers.

Grechko smiled with tea-stained teeth when he saw DiNardo. The two men bent over to wash their hands side by side. The priest saw in the mirror above his sink that he should have shaved before coming to this meeting. His jaw and skull were dark with stubble. Then he glanced at Grechko’s face.

Director of the Russian Space Research Institute,
Grechko was well into his sixties, his sparse hair totally gray. The jacket of his dark suit seemed to hang on him, as if he had recently lost weight. Is he ill? DiNardo wondered. The quizzical little smile that Grechko always wore was still in place; he seemed to be bemused by the world constantly. Yet he had clawed his way to the top of the Russian scientific hierarchy, a member of their academy and head of the institute that directed their space efforts.

As they shouldered their way out of the men’s room Grechko asked, “You have recovered fully from your surgery?”

“Oh yes,” said DiNardo, unconsciously running a hand across his side. “As long as I am careful with my diet I am in fine condition.”

The Russian nodded. DiNardo noticed that their suits were almost the same shade. Except for my collar we might have gotten our outfits at the same place, he thought.

“Meetings like this give me an ulcer,” Grechko muttered, getting into the tea line. “Not even Brumado can keep order.”

“We have an enormous decision to make, whether to allow another excursion to the Grand Canyon or not. If we do, it will cut short all the other traverses.”

“Or eliminate them altogether.”

DiNardo asked, “How do you feel about it?”

“I have no strong opinion, scientifically speaking,” said the physicist. He lowered his voice to the point where DiNardo had to lean close to hear him over the buzz of the crowd. “But I can tell you that our mission directors have already convinced the politicians to let the American go back to Tithonium.”

“Really?”

Grechko nodded, his ever-present smile temporarily replaced by something close to a scowl.

DiNardo mused, “I wonder how the Americans feel about it?”

“There is Brownstein, we can ask him.”

Murray Brownstein was taller than the Italian priest and the Russian physicist by several inches, yet his back was so stooped that he looked almost small, slight, in his gray jacket and off-white chino slacks. His face was California tan, his once-golden hair now graying and so thin that he combed it
forward to cover as much of his high forehead as possible. Where DiNardo looked like a swarthy overaged wrestler and Grechko resembled a pleasantly puzzled old man, Brownstein had an air of intense dissatisfaction about him, as if the world never quite managed to please him.

He saw Grechko and DiNardo coming toward him and immediately flicked his eyes toward an empty corner down the corridor. Without a word the three men fell into step and walked away from the crowd at the refreshment table: Grechko with a glass of tea in his hand, Brownstein holding a can of diet cola, DiNardo empty-handed.

“What do you think of all this?” Brownstein spoke first as they reached the corner. His voice was low, tight, like a conspirator who was afraid of being overheard.

DiNardo made an Italian gesture. “Brumado has given our colleagues a chance to vent their anger, but now even he is growing short-tempered.”

Brownstein said bitterly, “It’s all a frigging waste of time. Our government’s already made its decision.”

“You are not pleased?” asked Grechko.

“I don’t like scientific decisions being made in Washington and then rammed down my throat.”

DiNardo said, “But perhaps the decision is a good one. After all, the canyon is an extremely interesting environment. If I had been allowed my own way, the teams would have been landed on the canyon floor.”

“Much too risky for the first mission,” Grechko said flatly.

“I disagreed then, and I disagree now,” DiNardo said, without a trace of rancor.

“The science may be okay,” Brownstein said. “It’s the politics that rankles me. If we allow the politicians to override our decisions …”

DiNardo interrupted, “But that is why this meeting was called. So that we scientists could make our decision and then inform the politicians of it.”

“Doesn’t matter what we decide. That damned Indian is going to Tithonium whether we like it or not.”

“You mean Dr. Waterman, not Dr. Patel.”

“Yeah, right. Waterman.”

“But if the sense of this meeting is opposed to changing the mission plan,” Grechko said, “that will force the politicians to reconsider.”

“No it won’t. The Japs are going along with the new plan.”

“They are?”

Brownstein nodded grimly. “Tanaka was in the same plane with me. He happened to be at CalTech when this meeting was called. He told me Tokyo has agreed with Washington to okay the Tithonium diversion.”

“Without consulting their own scientists or mission directors?” Grechko seemed shocked.

“It’s a done deal,” Brownstein said. “All we’re doing here is jerking off.”

DiNardo raised his eyebrows slightly.

“Unless,” Brownstein added, “we decide to make a fight of it.”

“No,” said the priest.

The two other men stared at him. Brownstein almost snarled, “You’re willing to let some ignorant bunch of politicians tell us what to do?”

“In this case, yes.”

Brownstein shook his head, more in anger than in sorrow. Grechko tasked, “Why?”

“There are at least two very powerful reasons not to oppose this decision.”

“Damned if I see even one,” Brownstein said. “If we let the politicians win this one, next thing you know they’ll be telling us how to tie our fucking shoes!”

“As a geologist,” DiNardo said, with hardly a wince at the American’s language, “I agree with Waterman. The canyon is the best place to go, considering the limitations of time, equipment, and supplies of this mission.”

“And skip the volcanoes entirely?” Grechko asked. His little smile seemed to irritate Brownstein.

“If we are forced to make an either-or choice, I would say, yes, skip the volcanoes altogether. However, I believe we can at least make a preliminary reconnaissance of Pavonis Mons. A few days, at least.”

“That’s your professional opinion, is it?” Brownstein asked.

“Yes. As a geologist I agree with the politicians.”

“You said there were two reasons,” Grechko prodded.

“The second reason is political. Actually,” the priest said,
making himself smile at Brownstein, “a mixture of science and politics.”

He hesitated until Brownstein asked impatiently, “Well, what is it?”

“I don’t believe it is wise, to try to fight the politicians when they have made a decision that is reasonably sound, scientifically.”

Before either of the other two could say a word, DiNardo went on, “Besides, the most likely place for our team to find traces of life is in the canyon. I am willing to take the chance that they will find something there. Something that will force the politicians to agree to further missions.”

Brownstein started to shake his head, but Grechko mused, “Certainly it would seem that the canyon is a better environment for life than the volcanoes. It’s like comparing the jungles of Brazil to the mountains of Tibet, isn’t it?”

“The Martian equivalent, yes,” DiNardo agreed.

“I still don’t like it,” Brownstein muttered. “If we give in to the politicians on this one, we’re opening a can of worms that’ll ruin everything in the long run.”

“Then we must not appear to be giving in to the politicians,” said DiNardo. “We must convince our colleagues to insist on the excursion to Tithonium—while keeping as much of the earlier mission plan as possible.”

Brownstein grimaced. “That’s a tall order.”

“It can be done,” DiNardo said quietly. “I am certain that Brumado will be in favor.”

Grechko’s smile widened perceptibly. “Then you can get up on your feet and try to convince the rest of them.”

DiNardo smiled back. “Oh no. I will convince Brumado. Then he will convince all the others.”

“Spoken like a true Jesuit,” said Grechko.

Brownstein snorted, but said nothing.

The crowd was beginning to stream back upstairs. The three men started back to the auditorium.

God grant me the strength to succeed, DiNardo said to himself. Then he thought, And God grant James Waterman good hunting on Mars.

Ravavishnu Patel stared at the broad, regal cone of Pavonis Mons. The volcano filled the horizon like a reclining Buddha, like a slumbering Shiva, destroyer of worlds—and their restorer.

“It’s a shame Toshima is not with us.” Abdul al-Naguib’s soft voice broke Patel’s nearly hypnotic spell.

The two men were leaning over the empty seats in the cockpit of the rover. Jamie and the cosmonaut Mironov were outside, placing geology/meteorology beacons on the rock-strewn ground.

“Toshima?” asked Patel, feeling slightly puzzled.

Naguib smiled. “It would remind him of Fujiyama, don’t you think?”

“Oh. Yes, perhaps. Although this volcano is very much larger. And there is no snow at its top. And the slope is quite different.”

“Different gravity field,” Naguib said, as if that explained everything.

“Yes. Of course.”

After a full day’s travel, a night’s stop out in the open plain, and a morning of jouncing over the roughening terrain, the rover was still more than a hundred kilometers from the base of Pavonis Mons. It was too big to be seen in its entirety close up. Only from this distance could they view the entire structure.

Like the volcanoes that formed the Hawaiian Islands, the giants of the Tharsis region are shield volcanoes, lofty cones surrounded by wide bases of solidified lava. Pavonis Mons was the central of three such volcanoes, and the closest to the explorers’ domed base. The two others sat far over the curving
horizon. Farther still beyond them was the most massive—and tallest—volcano in the entire solar system: Olympus Mons.

Pavonis Mons is a middleweight in comparison to mighty Mount Olympus. Pavonis’s base is scarcely four hundred kilometers across, about the width of Ohio. Its peak is hardly ten miles above the uplifted plain on which the rover sat. At its top is a crater, a caldera, barely wide enough to swallow Delhi or Calcutta.

For all its size, though, its slope looked deceptively gentle. Not like the steep rugged peaks of the Himalayas; Pavonis Mons’s flanks rose at a five-degree angle. Patel thought a man might walk to the summit easily, given a few days, and peer down into that yawning caldera. Was it truly dead? Or would he see fumaroles venting steam or wisps of other gases, preparing for the next eruption? The sky looked clear, cloudless. But what would he find if he could get to the top?

Patel shook his head, almost in tears, and said to Naguib, “To think that we will have only three days to spend there. Three little days! It would take months merely to make a preliminary survey.”

This excursion to Pavonis Mons had been the first casualty of Jamie’s insistence on returning to the Grand Canyon. The original mission schedule had called for a week’s stay at Pavonis. That had been cut to three days.

Naguib gave him a fatherly pat on the back. “Even three years would not be enough. A man could spend his entire life studying this beast.”

“It isn’t fair!” Patel burst out, banging a fist on the back of the empty pilot’s seat. “The entire reason for my coming to Mars was to study the Tharsis shields and now this … this … upstart …”

“Calm yourself, my friend,” said Naguib. “Calm yourself. Accept what cannot be changed.”

Patel pulled away and walked down the rover module as far as the airlock hatch. Then he turned back toward the Egyptian. The two men stood silently, facing each other along the narrow length of the module: the slim, liquid-eyed Hindu, his dark face shining as if sheened in sweat; the older, stockier geophysicist, graying at the temples, lines etched at the corners of his eyes and mouth.