OVERNIGHT: SOL 7/8

“THIS IS THE TRICKY PART,” JAMIE WARNED DEZHUROVA.

After a whole day of driving, she was edging the rover up the steadily rising ground, skirting boulders the size of automobiles, gearing down as the grade steepened.

Off to their right the setting sun was almost touching the jagged horizon, its pale pinkish light slanting into the cockpit, throwing long shadows across the rocky ground. They were both in their tan coveralls. The last geology/meteorology beacon for the day had been planted almost two hours earlier. Now they were reaching the lip of the greatest canyon in the solar system.

“The edge comes up all of a sudden,” Jamie warned, in a near-whisper.

“I have flown the simulations,” Dezhurova said flatly, never taking her eyes off the ground trundling slowly by.

“Sorry,” Jamie muttered.

She flicked a quick glance at him. “Copilots are always backseat drivers,” she said, deadpan.

Jamie half rose in his seat. “I think …”

“Yes.”

“There it is!”

Dezhurova pressed the brake so gently that Jamie barely rocked forward. He sat there staring out at the immensity of the Grand Canyon. The breath gushed out of him.

There it was.

Stacy muttered, “Oora …” stretching out the word, her voice hollow with awe.

They were looking over the edge of the Grand Canyon, a gash in the world that spread the distance from New York to San Francisco, more than five kilometers deep, so wide that they could not see the other side.

The land just dropped away, abruptly, without warning. Far, far below, deeper than most ocean bottoms on Earth, was the Canyon floor, stretching out and beyond the horizon. Not a wisp of mist obscured their view; they could see it all in crisp detail, marred only by the incredible distances they gazed through.

“Come see this!” Dezhurova called back over her shoulder.

“We’re there?” Trudy Hall asked as she and Trumball pushed into the cockpit and crouched behind the seats to look out through the windshield.

“Marvelous,” Hall whispered.

Jamie glanced up at Trumball. For once in his life, Dex was speechless, staring, overwhelmed with wonder at the majesty of Tithonium Chasma.

Guide me to the right path, Grandfather, Jamie prayed silently. Lead me to the harmony that alone can bring peace to my heart. Let me find the truth of it all, and let me go in beauty.

Trumball found his voice at last. “I don’t see the landslide that you guys went down.”

“It’s off to the right a few klicks,” Jamie said, as certain as he was of his own name.

Kneeling behind Jamie’s seat, Trumball grunted. “Injun scout know-um territory, huh?”

Jamie looked up sharply at him. “You bet your ass I do.”

Dezhurova tapped a finger on the control panel’s electronic map display. “Jamie is right. Here is where we are, and here …” her fingertip edged to a blinking green spot on the map, “… is where we want to be.”

“Can we get there before dark?” Hall asked.

“No,” said Dezhurova, shaking her head. “The sun is on the horizon already.”

“We’ll still have a half-hour or so before it gets dark,” Trumball pointed out.

Dezhurova half-turned in her seat to face him. “Do you want to go feeling your way along this cliff edge in the dark? I do not.”

“It won’t be that dark, not right away. And you’ve got the headlights, for god’s sake.”

Dezhurova’s broad chin was set stubbornly. “This is not the Batmobile, and I am no shroomer.”

Trumball frowned with puzzlement. Jamie grinned inwardly. He’d been around the astronauts enough to know that “shroomer” was short for “mushroomer,” someone with the intellectual capacity of a fungus.

“I still think—”

Jamie cut Trumball short. “In any argument that concerns safety, Dex, the astronaut has the final say. That’s the rule.”

“And we always play by the rules, don’t we?” Trumball grumbled.

Hall tried to defuse the situation. “If we’re only a half-hour or so away, why not wait until morning? It won’t make that much difference, will it?”

Trumball grinned at, her, but it looked half-hearted. “Yeah, I suppose you’re right. What the hell.”

Trumball got up and headed back toward the midget galley in the module’s rear. Reluctantly, Jamie thought. “Might’s well start dinner,” he called over his shoulder.

Hall went back to join him in pulling packages of their prepared meals out of the freezer and sliding them into the microwave oven.

“I’m going to set up one of the beacons,” Jamie told Dezhurova, getting up from his seat.

“That means I will have to suit up, too,” she said, with a sigh.

“We can bend the rules a little. I’ll just be outside for a couple minutes.”

Her sapphire blue eyes flicked toward Trumball. “Bend the rules? How do you think he will feel about that?”

Before Jamie could answer, Dezhurova added, “Besides, I would like to get out of here for a little bit.”

So the two of them went back to the hard suits stored by the airlock and suited up while Trumball and Hall unfolded the table and started in on their meals.

“Wait for us before you begin dessert,” Dezhurova called cheerfully.

“Fine,” said Hall.

They checked each other’s suits, then Jamie took one of the beacons and entered the airlock. Once outside, by the time he had slid the rod to its full length and dug its pointed end into the ground, Dezhurova came through the outer hatch to join him.

“That damned UV circuit is still balky,” she complained.

Struggling with the pole, Jamie said, “Maybe we should trace it all the way from the console. Find the fault.”

“Yes, I suppose we will have to,” Dezhurova said. Then she added, “They should have put a motorized auger on the poles.”

Bending over, grunting with the effort of worming the pole into the ground, Jamie answered, “Muscle power’s cheaper.”

He straightened up and turned his suit fans higher. He felt sweat trickling down his ribs.

“I think that’ll do it,” he said.

Dezhurova replied, “You haven’t turned the light on.”

“Wait a minute. I want to see if …”

“The sun is down. We must get back inside.”

“In a minute.”

“What is it?”

Jamie turned his back to the faint pink glow where the sun had dropped behind the jagged horizon. The sky out to the east was black, empty.

“Let your eyes adjust to the darkness, Stacy,” he told Dezhurova.

“If you are trying to see Earth, it’s not—”

“No,” he whispered. “Wait.”

“For what?”

Jamie saw them. Shimmering bands of light, faint as ghosts, flickering across the sky in spectral pale pinks and whites.

“An aurora!” Dezhurova gasped.

“The sky dancers,” Jamie murmured, more to himself than her.

“There must be a solar flare … some kind of disturbance …”

“No,” Jamie heard himself say. “Mars’ magnetosphere is so weak that the solar wind hits the upper atmosphere all over the planet. We get the lights almost every night, right after sunset. They fade away pretty quickly, though.”

The Navaho side of his mind was saying, The sky dancers are here, Grandfather. I see them. I understand them. They bring your spirit to me, Grandfather. It’s good that you are here with me. It brings strength and beauty.