HOUSTON: THE FIRST MEETING
JAMIE HAD MET THE EXPEDITION’S SCIENCE TEAM FOR THE FIRST time in a tight little windowless conference room in NASA’s Johnson Space Center, near Houston. The two women and three men had been chosen out of thousands of candidates, their names announced weeks earlier. Jamie himself had been selected to be their leader only two days ago.
“I know what you’re going through,” Jamie said to the five of them.
This was the first time he had met the four scientists and the expedition’s physician face-to-face. Over the months of their training and Jamie’s own struggle to be included in the Second Mars Expedition, he had communicated with each of them by electronic mail and talked with them by Picturephone, but he had never been in the same room with them before.
Now he stood, a little uneasily, at the head of the narrow conference table, feeling like an instructor facing a very talented quintet of students: younger, more certain of themselves, even more highly qualified than he himself. The four scientists were seated along the rickety oblong table, their eyes on him. The physician/psychologist sat at the table’s end, an exotic-looking Hindu woman with dark chocolate skin and midnight-black hair pulled straight back from her face.
They were all in mission coveralls, coral pink, with name tags pinned above the breast pocket. The physician, V. J. Shektar, had tied a colorful scarf around her throat. She was watching Jamie with big, coal-black, almond-shaped eyes.
None of the others had added to their standard uniform, except C. Dexter Trumball, who had sewn patches on both his shoulders: one bore the microscope-and-telescope logo of the International Consortium of Universities, the other the flying T symbol of Trumball Industries.
“We’re going to be living together for more than three years,” Jamie continued, “counting the rest of your training and the mission itself. I thought it’s high time we got to know each other.”
Jamie had fought hard to be accepted for the second expedition. He would have been happy to be included as a mission scientist. Instead, the only way he could get aboard was to accept the responsibilities of mission director.
“You said our training,” the geophysicist, Dexter Trumball, interrupted. “Aren’t you training for the mission, too?”
Trumball was handsome, with dashing film-star looks, dark curly hair and lively bright eyes the blue-green color of the ocean. As he sat back comfortably in his padded chair, he wore a crooked little grin that hovered between self-confidence and cockiness. He was no taller than Jamie, but quite a bit slimmer: a nimble, graceful dancer’s body compared to Jamie’s thicker, more solid build. He was also ten years younger than Jamie, and the son of the man who had spearheaded the funding for the expedition.
“Of course I’m training, too,” Jamie answered quickly. “But a good deal of what you’re going through—the Antarctic duty, for example—I did for the first expedition.”
“Oh,” said Trumball. “Been there, done that, eh?”
Jamie nodded tightly. “Something like that.”
“But that was more than six years ago,” said Mitsuo Fuchida. The biologist was as slim as a sword blade, his face a sculpture of angles and planes.
“If you were a computer,” he added, with the slightest of smiles cracking his hatchet-sharp features, “you would be an entire generation behind.”
Jamie forced a returning smile. “I’m being upgraded. I’m requalifying on all the physical tests,” Jamie assured them, “and putting all the latest programming into my long-term memory. I won’t crash or succumb to bytelock, don’t worry.”
The others laughed politely.
Fuchida dipped his chin in acknowledgment. “Only joking,” he said, a bit sheepishly.
“Nothing to it,” Jamie said, smiling genuinely now.
“Well, I don’t know about the rest of y’all,” said the stubby, sad-faced geochemist that Jamie knew as Peter J. Craig, “but I’m damned glad we got an experienced man to come along with us.”
Craig had a bulbous nose and heavy jowls dark with stubble.
“Lemme tell you,” he went on, pronouncing you as yew, “I been out in the field a lotta years and there’s nothin’ that can replace real experience. We’re lucky to have Dr. Waterman headin’ up this rodeo.”
Before anyone could say anything more, Jamie spread his hands and told them, “Look, I didn’t come here this afternoon to talk about me. I just wanted to meet you all in person and sort of say hello. We’ll be talking to each other individually and in smaller groups over the next few weeks.”
They all nodded.
“You people are the best of the best,” Jamie went on. “You’ve been picked over thousands of other applicants. The research proposals you’ve presented are very impressive; I’ve studied them all and I like what I’ve seen, very much.”
“What about the cooperative studies?” Trumball asked.
While on Mars, each of the four scientists would carry out dozens of experiments and measurements under direction from researchers back on Earth. That was the only way to get the full cooperation—and funding help—from the major universities.
Jamie said, “I know they’re going to cut into the time you have for your own work, but they’re part of the mission plan and we’ll all have to pitch in on them.”
“You too?”
“Certainly me too. I’m not going to spend all my time on Mars at a desk.”
They grinned at that.
“And listen: If you run into problems with scheduling, or the demands from Earthside get to be troublesome, tell me about it. That’s what I’m here for. It’s my job to iron out conflicts.”
“Who gets priority?” Craig asked. “I mean, if it comes down to either doin’ my own stuff or doin’ what some department head from Cowflop U. wants, which way do we go?”
Jamie looked at him for a silent moment, thinking. This is a test, he realized. They’re sizing me up.
“We’ll have to take each case on its own merits,” he told Craig. “But my personal feeling is that in case of a tie, the guy on Mars gets the priority.”
Craig nodded agreement, acceptance.
Jamie looked around the table. Neither of the two women had said a word. Shektar was the medic, so he wasn’t surprised that she had nothing to say. But Trudy Hall was a cellular biologist and should contribute to the discussion.
Hall looked to Jamie like a slight little English sparrow. She was tiny, her thick curly brown hair clipped short, her coral coveralls undecorated except for her name tag. Alert gray-blue eyes, Jamie saw. She had the spare, lean figure of a marathon runner and the kind of perfect chiselled nose that other women pay plastic surgeons to obtain.
“Any questions?” Jamie said, looking directly at her.
Hall seemed to draw in a breath, then she said, “Yes, one.”
“What is it?” Jamie asked.
She glanced around at the others, then hunched forward slightly as she asked in a soft Yorkshire burr, “What’s it like on Mars? I mean, what’s it really like to be there?”
The others all edged forward in their seats, too, even Trumball, and Jamie knew that they would get along fine together. He spent the next two hours telling them about Mars.