Mars (55 page)

He did not understand why he was worried. The rover was in no danger from the weather. The four men and women were prepared to face overnight lows of a hundred and fifty below zero. Why was a drop of thirty degrees worrisome?

Toshima felt an inner trembling take hold of him, almost like a sexual urge. There was something in the data before his eyes, something important that he did not recognize. He knew it. He could feel it within him. His subconscious mind was trying to tell him something, awaken him to a revelation, an important discovery. He bit his lips and squeezed his eyes shut, concentrating furiously. In vain.

His head pulsated with a dull pain. Again he kneaded his temples, then the back of his neck.

Opening his eyes again he took a deep breath, trying to calm the tension cording the tendons in his neck and cramping his shoulders. Turning slowly on his creaking stool he studied each of the display screens, one by one. The information is here, before my eyes, he knew. Yet he could not consciously grasp what his inner mind was trying to tell him.

Relax, said the long-forgotten voice of the monk who had guided him in childhood. Do not attempt to force your spirit,
it will resist your efforts and cause you nothing but pain. Relax and empty your mind of all wants, all needs. Meditation is the key to understanding, the bridge to the great cosmic all.

Toshima closed his eyes once again, this time gently, without strain. He folded his arms across his chest, and let his chin droop to his chest. To a casual passerby it would look as if the Japanese meteorologist were taking a nap.

He tried to clear his mind by drawing up a picture Of the divine Fujiyama, its exquisitely proportioned cone covered with snow against a clear blue winter sky. His thoughts drifted, slowly, languorously, from one past vision to another. He recalled the first time he had been in the U.S.A., in Boston, how cold the winter wind was at the airport, blowing in off the frigid water of the harbor. How cutting the wind was even in the city, at the hotel where the world meteorology congress was meeting.

The towers of Boston’s Prudential Center created an inadvertent wind tunnel, he had been told. All the meteorologists marveled at the phenomenon. Even when the winds were calm elsewhere in the city, at the Prudential Center they screeched between the buildings so fiercely that they stirred whitecaps in the decorative ponds and fountains.

Toshima’s eyes snapped open. Wind tunnel!

He rolled his little chair to the keyboard in front of his master map and began pecking furiously, headache forgotten. What will be the effect of a strong pressure gradient on the long narrow corridor of the Valles Marineris? How will the approaching cold front affect the winds in Tithonium Chasma?

It took a good part of the night, but finally Toshima had his answer. He checked it, then checked it again. Yes, the result was certain.

Again he trembled, this time with the exultation of victory. And the knowledge of fear. He had made a great discovery. It told him that Waterman and the others were in grave danger.

As the first light of dawn filtered into the dome, Toshima rose in bleary-eyed anxiety to awaken Vosnesensky.

“The people in the rover must be warned of this,” he muttered to himself. “There is no time to waste.”

The blue world was far luckier than its red companion. Closer to Father Sun, bigger, it held its deep oceans of water and protective mantle of air. Life flourished.

Not without interruption, however. Not without calamities. Great creatures took command of the seas, the land, even the air, only to die away completely into utter extinction. At times the hand of death swept the blue world so thoroughly that it was almost emptied of life completely.

Yet each time life struggled back, repopulating the blue world with new and different creatures.

Great sheets of ice marched outward from the poles; massive glaciers came grinding down from the mountains to cover the land with layers of ice miles thick. So much of the oceans’ waters was turned into ice that the level of the sea sank. The blue world turned white and glittering under the pale sun of winters that lasted a hundred thousand years or more.

The cold reached the red world, too.

The red world had not yet fully recovered from that great cataclysm of long ago. Yet a broad new sea had arisen, gleaming water that covered almost half the planet. Enormous volcanoes reared their mighty peaks toward the stars and spread hot lava and steaming gases over the land. There was still energy deep, beneath the red world’s crust, the molten energy to build the tallest mountains of all time.

As always when there is water and energy, there was the
chance for life to begin. Water and energy and time: those are all that life needs.

But then the cold began to do its deadly work. The great hemispherical sea froze and vanished into the ground. The volcanoes stilled. The red world began a long, long winter that has lasted to this very day.

Jamie stood naked under the hot sun of Mars, sweat trickling down his ribs and legs as the gods gathered around him. His groin ached with the pleasurable anguish of yearning. His empty hands reached out longingly.

The land was as red as blood, the sky a blue so bright that it hurt his eyes to look upward. Across the sandy desert the gods were descending in their fiery chariots, one after another. Wherever they touched down, Martian rocks instantly changed into brilliant blooms of flowers. Soon the entire desert was carpeted with color, and even the craggy cliffs in the far distance shifted and melted into cities of adobe and wood. Jamie could see plumes of smoke rising from their chimneys.

The gods wore feathers and glittering beads. Their faces were those of totems: fox, eagle, dog, snake. Their bodies were magnificent, straight and tall as lofty pine trees, beautifully muscled and gleaming like burnished copper.

They gathered around Jamie solemnly, silently, encircling him until he felt like a small child in their superb presence. Jamie fingered the totem his grandfather had given him; the bear was his protector and guide.

“I have returned to you,” Jamie said to the gods. “I have come back to your domain.”

The gods said nothing. They stared wordlessly down at Jamie while the soft winds of Mars sang their morning song.

“From a great distance I have come,” Jamie explained, pointing toward a single star that shone even in the daytime sky. “All the way from Earth.”

The gods drew closer, looming over Jamie, making him
feel small, weak, afraid. His knees trembled. He was sweating hard.

“You have brought all the white man’s ills with you,” said the voice of the gods. “You have brought death to our abode.”

“No!” Jamie protested. “I bring life to you!”

“You bring death.”

They raised their hands against Jamie. Each carried a mighty implement in his hand. For some it was a rattle fashioned from a giant gourd and painted in gaudy colors. For others it was a war club, daubed black and heavy with menace. They brandished the clubs, rattled the gourds. And vanished.

The gods disappeared, faded into oblivion, and the world around them lost all its life. The flowers, the blossoms, the beautiful adobe cities melted away and vanished, leaving only the empty desolation of Mars stretching as far as the eye could see.

The buzzing sound of the gourd remained, though—threatening, insistent, inescapable.

Jamie realized that it was the buzzer of the comm console. He opened his eyes, making the transition from dream to reality with the reluctance of a man leaving a warm fire to face a winter storm.

He was in the rover. Eighteen inches above his head stretched the gray bottom of Joanna’s bunk. Even closer, to his left, Connors lay sprawled and entwined in his blanket. The astronaut’s face was bathed in a sheen of sweat. His sleeping features looked drawn and pained.

The damned comm unit up in the cockpit was buzzing like a hive of hornets. Nobody else seemed to hear it. Jamie crawled carefully out of his bunk and padded in his stockinged feet to the cockpit. He shivered. His coveralls were soaked with cold sweat. His head thundered as if from a hangover.

Slumping into the right-hand seat, Jamie leaned a finger against the button that activated the communicator. With his other hand he started to wind the little wheel that pulled the thermal shroud off the canopy. It was still dark outside on the canyon floor. The only light in the cockpit came from the telltales on the instrument panel.

Seiji Toshima’s round face appeared on the small screen. He looked as baggy-eyed and bleary as Jamie felt.

“I am sorry to awaken you so early,” the meteorologist said, without preamble, “but I must warn you of a dust storm that may strike your region this morning.”

“Dust storm?” Jamie muttered. “What?”

“Dust storm! Wind speeds of two hundred knots. Visibility reduced to near zero. Density of particles in air high enough to damage unprotected equipment! You must prepare!”

“Wait …” Jamie’s head was buzzing. “Slow down. What are you talking about?”

“The canyon system acts as a wind tunnel,” Toshima said rapidly. “The approaching cold front will send a wave of energy down the canyon and create a dust storm of great severity. You must be prepared for this! Unprotected equipment could be damaged. People out in the open could become disoriented. The dust could be thick enough to reduce vision severely. Even radio communications might be affected.”

“But I thought the storms didn’t come this far south at this time of the year,” Jamie said as the impact of Toshima’s warning began to sink in.

The meteorologist slowed down and explained his belief that the entire canyon complex could become a giant wind tunnel filled with blowing dust.

“I can keep you updated on an hourly basis,” he said. “I have asked Ulanov and Diels in the orbiter to focus all instrumentation on the canyon area this morning. Fortunately, the spacecraft hovers over this hemisphere constantly.”

Jamie could hear the sounds of the others getting out of their bunks behind him.

“I would advise against any EVA today that is farther than a few minutes’ walk from your vehicle,” Toshima said. “With wind speeds of two hundred knots a storm could be upon you before you know it.”

“Shit,” Jamie groused. “Suppose we move the rover farther west? We were going to anyway, and then dig a deep borehole and instrument it.”

Toshima hiked his eyebrows. “The storm will overtake you no matter what your position.”

“If the storm actually happens,” Jamie said.

The Japanese meteorologist closed his eyes briefly. “Yes,” he hissed. “If my forecast is correct.”

Jamie leaned back in the seat, feeling exhausted already. “Okay. Thanks for the warning. Give us an hour to talk it over and have breakfast. Then we’ll call you back.”

Toshima looked away from the screen, then was pushed aside by Vosnesensky. The Russian looked grimmer than usual.

“Jamie, we have checked the situation with Dr. Li. Toshima’s prediction is tentative, but serious enough to take … well, seriously.”

“Yep. I understand.”

“There is to be no EVA and no moving of the rover without checking with me first,” Vosnesensky said.

Jamie nodded.

“Let me talk with Connors now.”

It took an effort for Jamie to turn his head and look back toward the rear of the module. “He’s in the John,” Jamie said to the screen. “I’ll tell him to check in with you when he comes out.”

“Yes. As soon as he comes out.”

It took nearly half an hour before all four of them were washed and dressed in their daytime coveralls. Jamie already felt too tired even to consider shaving. One advantage of Indian blood, he said to himself as he peered blearily into the mirror. Not much of a beard. When he came out of the lavatory he noticed that Connors had not shaved either. His beard was grizzled with gray; it made him look older.

They folded up the bunks in silence and sat on the benches, four steaming meals on the table between them, together with the usual bottle of vitamin supplement pills.

“Mikhail doesn’t want us to move until they see if a sandstorm is actually developing,” Connors said, picking at his reconstituted eggs and soy bacon.

“It’s just as well,” said Ilona. “I don’t think we’re in condition to do very much.”

“You still feel that bad?” Jamie asked.

“Terrible. What about you?”

“Pretty punk. But I think we could at least go outside and do some more sampling. What about you, Joanna?”

She looked miserable: pale and red eyed. There were dark
rings under her eyes. Ilona looked worse: gaunt, hollow cheeked. Jamie knew that his own face was sunken, bleary.

Connors said, “No way around it. We’re gonna have to tell Reed about this.”

Jamie nodded reluctantly. “What about drilling a deep core while we’re stuck here?”

“No sense starting to unpack the power drill if we’ll have; to break it down and stow it away again when the storm hits. We’re in no great shape for heavy work anyway.”

“But if there’s no storm we’ll have wasted the whole damned day.” Jamie realized he was starting to sound like Patel. For the same reason: precious time was being stolen from him, time he needed to do his work.

“We ought to know if the storm’s going to happen in an hour or two,” Connors said.

“Maybe,” said Jamie. “And maybe Toshima’s just going off the deep end.”

“Want me to ask Mikhail?”

Jamie knew that Vosnesensky would simply repeat what he had already said: Stay safely inside the rover and take no risks.

Joanna was doggedly finishing her breakfast, spooning up the last of the frozen fruit dessert. “I can at least spend the day examining the rocks and soil samples we brought in yesterday,” she said.

Ilona murmured, “I will assist you. I think I can manage that. The ones with the bright orange intrusions look interesting.”

“Like Jamie’s green rock?” Joanna forced a smile.

Ilona smiled back. “These are orange.”

Jamie said, “I’d appreciate it if you’d analyze the core samples first.”

“Not the rocks?”

He started to shake his head but the motion brought fresh pain. “There’s heat coming up from below the surface and water in some form that makes up the morning mists. I think the core samples have more to tell us than colored rocks.”