Vijay could see Jamie’s spirits rising as the landing craft screeched through the cloudless atmosphere of Mars toward the Tithonium Base site.
“There’s the domes,” he said, pointing at the display screen set into the bulkhead of the windowless passenger compartment. She saw three pinkish white circular structures huddled close together, connected by short hump-topped passageways.
He’s happier here, she thought. He’s in his element. He’s home.
The flight from Earth orbit to an orbit around Mars had taken only four days in the new-smelling torch ship. Powered by nuclear fusion, the vessel accelerated at almost one full g halfway to its destination, then decelerated at a slightly lower rate until it was orbiting around the red planet. Vijay remembered her first flight to Mars, nearly twenty years earlier, in an old-style ballistic rocket. It had taken more than six months, on a graceful, gradual elliptical trajectory that arced between the two worlds. With the fusion torch, their trajectory was almost a straight line.
Tithonium Base had sent the spindly-legged L/AV, a landing/ascent vehicle, to mate with the torch ship and take them aboard, together with several tons of supplies. Now the fragile-looking lander was descending to the surface of Mars like a spider gliding down an invisible silken thread to the ground.
His hand clutching hers, Jamie stared at the screen that displayed the outside camera views, eager as a little boy watching for Santa’s sleigh. Leaning close to him, Vijay couldn’t help feeling a tremble of trepidation as she watched the craggy cliffs of the valley sliding past. They seemed terribly near.
The lander’s retro rockets screeched once, twice in the thin air and kicked up a cloud of rust-colored dust that blotted out their view. They felt a gentle bump as the noise died away.
“We’re down,” Jamie whispered, still staring at the screen, still gripping Vijay’s hand.
“We’re on the ground,” announced the pilot astronaut, from up in the cockpit. “You can unbuckle your safety harnesses now.”
But the two of them still peered at the screen as the reddish dust wafted away on the gentle breeze. Vijay realized that the domes were much larger than the one she and Jamie had lived in, some twenty years ago. This close, she saw that their white tops were rusty looking, caked with years of Martian dust, although closer to the ground they were transparent. She could see vague figures of people moving around inside the dome closest to them. The farther dome’s insides looked lushly green: the hydroponics greenhouse, she knew. On the other side of the main dome stood the maintenance center and its garage where the big camper vehicles were housed.
Slowly they got to their feet, a little cautious in the light gravity. Jamie’s hair almost brushed the low overhead of the cramped compartment. The cockpit hatch opened and the pilot ducked through, smiling.
“Made it,” he said. “Piece of cake.”
“Good landing,” said Jamie.
“It’ll take a minute for the access tube to connect. Be careful of the low gravity.”
“The downside of getting here so fast,” Jamie said. But he was grinning about it.
Vijay had been to Mars twice before. Each time, the months-long flight had given her and the other passengers plenty of time to adapt to Mars’s gravity. Their big wheel-shaped spacecraft had started out spinning at a rate that gave a feeling of regular Earth gravity, then gradually slowed its spin until the wheel was simulating the one-third g of Mars. By the time they landed on the red planet they were fully acclimated to the lower gravity.
They stepped to the L/AV’s main hatch and peered through its tiny window, heads touching. The access tube was inching across the dusty ground like a giant segmented caterpillar, one end connected to the main airlock in Tithonium Base’s dome, the other blindly groping for the lander’s hatch. It too was coated with a fine powdering of red dust.
The lander’s hatch was part of the vessel’s own airlock, Vijay knew, but they could walk through the access tube in their shirtsleeves from the hatch into the dome. No need for airlocks or spacesuits.
“Just like getting off a plane back on Earth,” Vijay murmured.
Jamie nodded. “Almost.”
He went back to their seats and took their travel bags from the webbed overhead bin. Vijay reached for her bag, but Jamie grinned at her. “I can handle them both; they’re much lighter here.”
The access tube connected at last and the astronaut, after ducking quickly back into the cockpit to check his instrument readouts, came back and unlocked the hatch.
“Pressure’s in the green,” he said, pushing the hatch open and making a sweeping gesture. “Welcome back to Mars, folks.”
Jamie took Vijay’s wrist with his free hand and together they stepped through the slightly springy plastic tube toward the open hatch of Tithonium Base’s main dome.
There was a crowd on the other side of the hatch. Vijay saw the surprise on her husband’s face, then the slow, pleased, warm smile that spread across his features. The dome’s high ceiling was lost in shadows, but clear Martian sunshine poured through the transparent windows that circled the lower section. Beyond the heads of the people clustering around them she could see partitions for workshops, laboratories, and people’s living quarters. There was a large open space across the way with tables arranged in orderly rows: the cafeteria, she guessed.
A stone-faced Chinese gentleman in high-collared blue coveralls stepped forward and put out a chubby hand. Jamie had to let go of Vijay to take it in his own.
“Welcome to our humble abode,” said Chang Laodong.
“Thank you,” Jamie said. “It’s good to see you again, Dr, Chang.” He raised his voice and said to the crowd, “Thank you all.”
They applauded. They actually clapped their hands together in spontaneous applause. Vijay saw her husband’s coppery cheeks flush slightly with embarrassment. And pleasure. The crowd—scientists, engineers, astronauts, technicians—gathered around Jamie to shake his hand, pat his back, smile and tell him how glad they were to have him here among them.
Vijay stepped aside and let Jamie have his moment. Then she saw that Dr. Chang had also been shunted aside by the crowd’s press. He did not look happy at all.
* * * *
“May I ask,” said Dr. Chang, with exaggerated politeness, “why you have chosen to come here at this time?”
The mission director had invited Jamie and Vijay into his office for tea and a few moments of private conversation. Chang had apparently converted one of the sleeping rooms into an office, Jamie realized once he saw that the compartment had walls topped by a ceiling, rather than the usual two-meter-high partitions. He noticed a bookcase filled with precisely spaced specimens of rock behind the mission director’s metal desk. Jamie recognized samples of the Martian “blueberries” first discovered by an early robotic camper, and a slab of the layered sedimentary rock from the Condor Chasma region.
The three of them sat around a low lacquered table where a beautifully enameled teapot and tiny sipping cups had been arranged in careful symmetry. Off to one side of the table stood an incongruous, strictly utilitarian ceramic thermos of scalding hot water.
Jamie hesitated before answering. The old Navaho way, Vijay understood. Jamie seldom spoke without thinking first, even in casual conversation. She realized that this particular conversation was anything but casual. Although he was trying hard to conceal it, Chang seemed as tense as a drawn bowstring.
“We’re facing a crisis,” Jamie said at last.
Chang nodded solemnly and muttered, “The American government’s withdrawal of funds.”
“It’s more than that,” said Jamie. “There is a concerted effort to force us to shut down our work here. To force us to abandon Mars altogether.”
Chang lifted his pudgy chin a notch. “So I understand. But surely you could counter such a threat better on Earth than here.”
“Perhaps,” Jamie admitted.
“Then . . . ?”
Vijay understood the conflicts simmering beneath Jamie’s impassive expression. She waited for her husband to find the right words.
“I need to know how the men and women here feel about their situation,” he began slowly. “I need to know how
you
feel about all this, what steps you are prepared to take. You personally, not merely as director of the program here.”
Now it was Chang who fell silent before replying. Vijay suppressed an urge to giggle. Between them they could be monuments on Mount Rushmore, she thought. Two great stone faces.
“I personally? I do not understand.”
“Dr. Chang, would you be willing to spend another year here? After your regular term is finished?”
“Stay an additional year?”
“Yes.”
“Without returning home?”
Jamie nodded. “If we can get a significant number of people to agree to extend their stays on Mars, we could cut our transportation costs almost in half.”
“Transporting personnel is one thing. Transporting supplies is another matter altogether. Supplies will still be needed, no matter how long the staff agrees to stay without replacement.”
“I understand,” said Jamie. “I need to talk with the life-support team. I want to see if we can grow more of our food here, in situ. That would cut down on the resupply flights we need.”
Chang rocked back in his chair.
Before the mission director could say anything, Jamie added, “I want to determine how close to self-sufficiency we can make this base.”
“Self-sufficiency,” Chang echoed, in a near whisper.
“Selene is willing to lend us technical expertise,” Jamie added. Vijay felt her brows go up. That was a stretch. Stavenger hadn’t promised anything so definite.
“This is an extremely difficult matter,” said Chang, picking his words carefully. “It will require much thought, much investigation.”
“That’s why I’m here,” Jamie said, with a slow smile.
“I see. I understand.”
Shifting in his chair slightly, Jamie shifted the subject. “I’d also like to meet Dr. Carleton. He is here at the base, isn’t he?”
Chang nodded. “He was not among those who greeted you on your arrival.”
“No, he wasn’t.”
“He is most likely at his digging site. He spends much time there.”
“Of course.”
“He will undoubtedly want to meet you this evening, when he returns from his digging.”
“Good,” said Jamie.
But Vijay thought there was something beneath Chang’s bland words, something unspoken about Dr. Carter Carleton. She wondered what it might be.