MORNING: SOL 49

FOLLOWING HIS ASTRONAUT TEAMMATE, MITSUO FUCHIDA clambered stiffly down the ladder from the plane’s cockpit and set foot on the top of the tallest mountain in the solar system.

In the pale light of the rising sun, it did not look like the top of a mountain to him. He had done a considerable amount of climbing in Japan and Canada and this was nothing like the jagged, snow-capped slabs of granite where the wind whistled like a hurled knife and the clouds scudded by below you.

Here he seemed to be on nothing more dramatic than a wide, fairly flat plain of bare basalt. Pebbles and larger rocks were scattered here and there, but not as thickly as they were back at the base dome. The craters that they had seen from the air were not visible here; at least, he saw nothing that looked like a crater.

But when he looked up he realized how high they were. The sky was a deep blue, instead of its usual butterscotch hue. The dust particles that reddened the sky of Mars were far below them. At this altitude on Earth they would be high up in the stratosphere.

Fuchida wondered if he could see any stars through his visor, maybe find Earth. He turned, trying to orient himself with the rising sun.

“Watch your step,” Rodriguez’s voice warned in his earphones. “It’s—”

Fuchida’s boot slid out from under him and he thumped painfully on his rear.

“… slippery,” Rodriguez finished lamely.

The astronaut shuffled carefully to Fuchida’s side, moving like a man crossing an ice rink in street shoes. He extended a hand to help the biologist up to his feet.

Stiff and aching from a night of sitting in the cockpit, Fuchida now felt a throbbing pain in his backside. I’ll have a nasty bruise there, he told himself. Lucky I didn’t land on the backpack and break the life-support rig.

“Feels like ice underfoot,” Rodriguez said.

“It couldn’t be frost, we’re up too high for water ice to form.”

“Dry ice?”

“Ah.” Fuchida nodded inside his helmet. “Dry ice. Carbon dioxide from the atmosphere condenses out on the cold rock.”

“Yep.”

“But dry ice isn’t slippery …”

“This stuff is.”

Fuchida thought quickly. “Perhaps the pressure of our boots on the dry ice causes a thin layer to vaporize.”

“So we get a layer of carbon dioxide gas under our boots.” Rodriguez immediately grasped the situation.

“Exactly. We skid along on a film of gas, like gas-lubricated ball bearings.”

“That’s gonna make it damned difficult to move around.”

Fuchida wanted to rub his butt, although he knew it was impossible inside the hard suit. “The sun will get rid of the ice.”

“I don’t think it’ll get warm enough up here to vaporize it.”

“It sublimes at seventy-eight point five degrees below zero, Celsius,” Fuchida said.

“At normal pressure,” Rodriguez pointed out.

Fuchida looked at the thermometer on his right cuff. “It’s already up to forty-two below,” he said, feeling cheerful for the first time. “Besides, the lower the pressure, the lower the boiling point.”

“Yeah. That’s right.”

“That patch must have been shaded by the plane’s wing,” Fuchida pointed out. “The rest of the ground seems clear.”

“Then let’s go to the beach and get a suntan,” Rodriguez said humorlessly.

“No, let’s go to the caldera, as planned.”

“You think it’s safe to walk around?”

Nodding inside his helmet, Fuchida took a tentative step. The ground felt smooth, but not slick. Another step, then another.

“Maybe we should’ve brought football cleats.”

“Not necessary. The ground’s okay now.”

Rodriguez grunted. “Be careful, anyway.”

“Yes, I will.”

While Rodriguez relayed his morning report from his suit radio through the more powerful transmitter in the plane, Fuchida unlatched the cargo bay hatch and slid their equipment skid to the ground. Again he marvelled that this plane of plastic and gossamer could carry them and their gear. It seemed quite impossible, yet it was true.

“Are you ready?” he asked Rodriguez, feeling eager now to get going.

“Yep. Lemme check the gyrocompass …”

Fuchida did not wait for the astronaut’s check. He knew the direction to the caldera as if its coordinates were printed on his heart.

Jamie woke up and found that he was alone. His eyes felt gummy, and he wanted nothing more than another hour or two of sleep. But the clock’s red digital display said 6:58, and seven A.M. was the official start of the working day.

He sat up and smiled. The bunk smelled of sex. It had been great: rushed and eager at first, demanding, and then more languid, gentler, more loving. They had talked, whispered to each other, between the risings of passion. Jamie learned a little of what a dark-skinned woman had to overcome in a male-dominated world: family, school, even in her profession Vijay had not had an easy time of it. Being so damned attractive worked against her as much as for her.

He blinked, then rubbed at his eyes, trying to remember how much he had told her about himself. He recalled mentioning Al and the hidden streak of Navaho mysticism that his grandfather revealed now and then. He told her about the sky dancers, and promised to show them to her tonight.

Tonight. Jamie’s smile faded into a troubled uncertainty. Was last night a one-time fling, or is this the start of something serious? He did not know. The last time he got involved with a woman, it had started on Mars and ended in divorce.

With a troubled sigh he got to his feet and began to face the day.

Pale morning sun slanted through the rover’s curved windshield as Dex drove steadily across the rolling, rock-strewn plain. Each pebble and gully cast long early morning shadows. The sunlight looks different here, Dex thought. Weaker, pinker … something.

He and Craig had been underway for nearly an hour when Dex saw a red light suddenly glare up from the control panel.

“Hey, Wiley,” he called over his shoulder. “We’ve got a problem here.”

Craig shuffled into the cockpit and sat in the right seat, muttering, “What’s this ‘we,’ white man?”

Dex jabbed a finger at the telltale.

“Uh-oh,” said Craig.

“That doesn’t sound so good, Wiley.”

“Fuel cells’re discharging. They shouldn’t oughtta do that.”

“We don’t have to stop, do we?”

“Naw,” said Craig. “I’ll take a look.”

He headed for the rear of the rover module. The fuel cells were the backup electrical system, to be used if the solar panels outside were unable to charge up the batteries that ran the rover’s systems at night. The fuel cells on this old rover were powered by hydrogen and oxygen, which meant that their “waste” product was drinkable water. The fuel cells on the newer rovers ran on methane and oxygen generated from permafrost water and the Martian atmosphere.

Trumball drove on across the monotonous landscape. “Miles and miles of nothing but miles and miles,” he murmured to himself. He knew he should be studying the land with a geologist’s curious eye, categorizing the rock formations, watching how the sand dunes built up, checking the density of the rocks scattered everywhere, looking for craters. Instead he simply felt bored.

Precisely at the one-hour mark the timer on the panel chimed.

Dex called back to Craig, “Time to stop and plant a beacon, Wiley.”

“Keep goin’,” Craig said. “I’ll suit up; gotta go outside anyway to check out the damned fuel cells.”

Dex kept the rover trundling along while Craig struggled into his hard suit on his own. Once Craig announced he was ready, Dex stopped the vehicle and went back to check the older man’s suit and backpack.

“Looks good, Wiley,” he said.

“Okay,” came Craig’s voice, muffled by the sealed helmet. “Gimme one of the beacons.”

Dex did that, and then started to tug on his own suit. Stupid flathead safety regs, he said to himself as Craig cycled through the airlock and went outside. I’ve gotta stand here in this tin can like some deadhead just because Wiley’s outside. If anything goes wrong, he’ll pop back into the airlock; he won’t need me to come out and rescue him.

While Dex grumbled to himself he thought briefly about the safety regulation that required a second person to check out his suit. How the hell can you do that when the second man is already outside? he complained silently. He had no intention of going outside anyway, not unless Craig got into some unimaginable difficulty. The morphs who wrote these regulations must be the kind of guys who wear suspenders and a belt, he told himself. Old farts like Jamie.

Dex clomped back to the cockpit and sat awkwardly in the left seat. All the lights on the board were green, except the one for the fuel cells.

“How’s it going, Wiley?” he called on the intercom.

“Checkin’ these drat-damn fuel cells. Gimme a few minutes.”

“Take your time,” said Dex.

Sitting there idly, Dex scanned the horizon. Nothing. Dead as Beethoven. Deader. Nothing but rocks and sand and every shade of red the human eye could register. Not a thing moving out there—

He snapped bolt upright, not an easy thing to do in the hard suit. Something was moving out there! Just a flicker, off on the horizon, and then it was gone.

Dex went back to the equipment lockers beneath the bunks in the module’s midsection. Bending over in the suit was awkward, he had to lower himself to his knees to reach the latches that opened the lockers. Cursing the suit and its gloves, he fumbled through the neatly ordered sets of tools until he found the electronically boosted binoculars. Then he hurried back to the cockpit, like some old movie monster trying to gallop.

His helmet visor was up, so Dex could put the binoculars against his eyes to scan the horizon. Nothing. Whatever it was had disappeared, gone away.

Wait! A flicker …

Dex adjusted the focus and it came into crisp view. A dust devil. A swirling little eddy of dust, red as a real devil. It would have been called a pillar of fire in the Old Testament, Dex thought, except that this one is on Mars, not Israel or Egypt. It occurred to him that there was a region on Mars called Sinai, south of the Grand Canyon.

“You ought to be down there, pal,” he murmured while he watched the minicyclone twist and dance across the distant horizon.

As he put the binoculars down Dex remembered that giant dust storms sometimes blanketed Mars almost from pole to pole. Usually during the spring season. He shook his head inside his helmet. It’s too late in the season now; we timed the landing so the storms would be over. Besides, there weren’t any this year.

Not yet, warned a tiny voice in his head. Spring lasts six months on Mars.

Jamie felt decidedly awkward at breakfast. Usually the team members took their morning meal when they chose to; there was no set time when everyone gathered at the galley each morning. It just happened that when Jamie came out of his quarters, the three women were already sitting at the table, heads together, chatting busily.

When they saw Jamie approaching their chat stopped. He said “Good morning” to them and got a chorus of the same in return. Then watchful silence as he picked a breakfast package from the freezer. He could feel their eyes on him.

“The strawberries ought to be ready for picking in another few days,” he announced to no one in particular.

“Yes, and the tomatoes, too,” answered Trudy Hall.

Jamie sat at the head of the table, with Trudy and Stacy on his left and Vijay at the other end, facing him. She smiled at him and he made a self-conscious smile back at her.

“Sleep well?” Trudy asked, her face the picture of innocent curiosity.

Jamie nodded and turned his attention to the bowl of instant cereal in front of him.

Conversation was a strain. No matter what Hall or Dezhurova said, it sounded to Jamie like arch references to sex. Vijay seemed perfectly relaxed, though. She’s enjoying this banter, Jamie thought.

He went through his meal as quickly as he could and then headed for the comm center.

“I’ve got to check in with the others,” he said to them.

“I already talked with both teams,” Stacy called to his retreating back. “Possum has a cranky fuel cell, but otherwise everything is okay.”

Jamie stopped and turned back toward her. “And Tomas?”

“They are heading off for the big caldera, on schedule.”

“Good,” said Jamie. Then he kept on walking toward the comm center.

A few minutes after he had spoken with Fuchida, Vijay slipped into the cubicle and sat beside him.

“It isn’t a crime, you know,” she said, a slight smile curving her lips.

“I know.”

“Consenting adults and all that.”

“I know,” he repeated.

“Did you think the others’d be jealous?”

“Aw, come on, Vijay …”

She laughed lightly. “That’s better. Lord, you were uptight back there!”

“Do they know?”

“I didn’t say anything, but the way you were behaving they must have guessed it.”

“Damn.”

“It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

“I know, but—”

“It happened, Jamie. Now forget about it. Get on with the program. I’m not trying to force a commitment out of you. I don’t want that.”

He felt relieved and disappointed at the same time. “Vijay, I … look, this kind of complicates everything.”

She shook her head. “No worries, mate. No complications. It happened and it was very nice. Maybe it’ll happen again, when the moon is right. Maybe not. Don’t give it another thought.”

“How the hell can I not give it another thought?”

Her smile returned. “That’s what I wanted to hear from you, Jamie. That’s all I wanted to hear.”