NOON: SOL 63

“I SEE IT!” DEX YELPED.

They had just topped a low bluff, and the rover was nosing down the steep incline toward the broad low swale where the Pathfinder and its tiny wheeled Sojourner had been waiting silently for nearly thirty years.

Craig was driving. Both men were shaggy, bearded, their coveralls limp and sweat-stained. They were both grinning from ear to ear.

“Look!” Dex cried, rising halfway out of his seat and pointing at the rocks. “There’s the twin peaks! And Yogi!. And Barnacle Bill!”

Craig laughed. “You’re actin’ like you didn’t expect they’d be here.”

Dex plopped back in the chair, his insides fluttering. They’re all here. They’re really here. After all the years of looking at the pictures and watching the videos, it’s all real! It really all happened. They landed the spacecraft here back when they could barely fly a ton of payload to Mars.

This hardware’s worth billions! Dex told himself. A lot more than it cost in the first place. Like a painting by da Vinci or Van Gogh.

He wanted to drive the rover, wanted to stomp on the accelerator and race down there in a swirl of dust. But he knew that Wiley wouldn’t let him, and he realized it was probably a good thing. Christ on a crutch, Dex thought. I’m wound up like a little kid at Christmas.

“Maybe you oughtta call back to base and tell ’em we’re here,” Craig suggested.

“Right,” Dex agreed. “And make sure the cameras are getting all this. This is history, y’know!”

Craig chuckled.

They parked a five-minute walk away from the Pathfinder, so they could survey the area carefully and not disturb the site with their rover’s cleated wheel tracks.

The old spacecraft sat there, flat and square, with its shrivelled protective shroud pulled up around it like an old lady holding up her skirts. The machine looked strange, alien in the Martian landscape, an angular metal contrivance in the midst of weathered rocks and rust-red sand. Sojourner, so tiny it looked like a wheeled toy some child might have put together from a kit, was still nosed against the rock that had been dubbed Yogi.

Dex was trembling with anticipation as he and Craig got into their hard suits. Once outside, once actually on the ground and standing beside the old hardware, the excitement began to ebb away.

It’s all so small, Dex thought. Hell, I had a toy car bigger than Pathfinder when I was ten years old. And I could carry Sojourner under one arm, just about.

He turned a full circle, surveying the area with a geologist’s analytical eye. Water rushed through here, all right. A river, or maybe a big flood that broke through an ice dam. You can see the marks of flowing water all over the area.

“Come on,” Craig called, “let’s get to work.”

Carefully they photographed the area for comparison with the catalogue imagery from the Pathfinder itself three decades earner.

“Water came down from over there,” Craig said, pointing. “Busted right along here at a pretty good clip, I’d say.”

“Yeah, but where did it go?”

Craig pointed toward the ground. “Let’s see how deep it went.”

They went back to the rover and broke out the power drill and other tools. While Craig began digging to find the permafrost layer, Dex planted three beacons at the distance of ten-minute walks from the Pathfinder.

The sun was nearing the gently rolling horizon when Craig finally said, “Better roll our buggy up here now. I don’t wanta bust a gut carryin’ this rig any distance.”

“It weighs less than three hundred pounds in this gravity,” Dex pointed out.

But Craig was already on his way back to the rover. “And more’n two-fifty,” he countered. “The less distance we have to tote it, the better off we’ll be. You don’t want a hernia out here, do you?”

Dex laughed and started to put the cores that the drill had pulled up into insulated sample boxes. If Wiley had hit a permafrost layer it wasn’t obvious; the drilling had gone down to thirty meters without much change in the underlying rock’s consistency.

The rover came jinking and squeaking across the red sand like a giant metal caterpillar, its wheels clambering over the rocks scattered across the ground. Craig stopped it when the hatch to the center module was no more than five meters from the silent, squat Pathfinder.

Grunting, straining, together they hoisted the machine up off the ground and, with, “Watch out for the shroud,” and “Okay, I’ve got it,” they lugged it to the lip of the hatch and rested it there. Then Craig climbed awkwardly inside the module and, with him pulling and Dex pushing, they shoved it safely inside.

Sweat was stinging Dex’s eyes as he sank down to a sitting position and rested the back of his helmet against one of the rover’s metal wheels.

“You okay?” Craig asked, hopping down from the hatch. For the first time in weeks, Dex noticed that a man jumps slower in Mars’ light gravity than he would on Earth.

“I’m fine,” Dex answered. “Wish I could wipe my eyes, though.”

“You mean you don’t know how to wriggle your arm outta the sleeve and work a hand up past your neck ring?”

Dex blinked sweat away. “You mean you can?”

“Sure.”

“You really can?”

“Sure,” Craig said. “Only problem is it dislocates your shoulder doin’ it.” He burst into raucous laughter.

Dex made a sour face but it did no good, since Wiley couldn’t see it through the tinted visor.

“C’mon,” Craig said, offering a gloved hand to pull Dex up to his feet. “Let’s get the little fella and then call it a day.”

They trudged slowly over to the tiny Sojourner rover, still sitting faithfully with its proton X-ray spectrometer almost touching the bulbous rock named Yogi. It weighed less than twelve pounds on Mars, so Dex easily lifted it off the ground and turned to head back to the rover.

He saw Craig bend down, a laborious job in the hard suit.

“What’re you doing, Wiley?”

“Puttin’ a marker down, so’s people’ll be able to see where she sat.”

“Oh. You do that with the Pathfinder, too?”

“Yup.”

“What’d you use for a marker?”

“Silver dollars.”

Dex felt his eyes go wide. “Silver dollars? What the hell are you doing with silver dollars out here?”

He sensed Wiley trying to shrug inside the suit. “I always carry ’em. For luck. Brought seven of ’em.”

They were almost at the rover hatch. Dex looked at the spot where the Pathfinder had sat for nearly three decades. Sure enough, a bright new silver dollar rested there.

“Started carryin’ ’em when I was out on the oil rigs,” Craig explained. “Guys’d play cards off-shift and they didn’t use chips, lemme tell you. Hard cash or nothin’. So I started totin’ some silver dollars with me.”

Dex just shook his head.

“Jamie, I’m going to be sending you half a ton of documentation about how to make glass bricks out of in situ materials,” Pete Connors was saying.

Jamie grinned as he watched Connors’ image on his laptop screen. A glass igloo would be the answer they needed for the greenhouse. It didn’t even have to be an igloo, he thought as Connors chattered on. We could build a square enclosure around the greenhouse dome, Jamie said to himself, then take the dome down.

Or maybe not, he mused. The plastic dome can be polarized to make it opaque overnight. Keep the heat inside. Can’t polarize glass bricks.

He was about to split his screen and check on the technical data when Connors sighed wearily and his voice turned down a pitch.

“Jamie, old man Trumball is still pushing to get you out as mission director. It doesn’t matter that Dex and Possum got through the storm okay. He wants your scalp and he’s pushing damned hard to get it.”

Jamie almost smiled at Connors’ choice of words, then wondered in the back of his mind why he didn’t mind the black astronaut using Native American similes, but it riled him when Dex Trumball did.

Because you’re not competing with Pete, he answered himself. Because you’ve been through so much with him. Because he’s your friend.

Jamie listened to Connors’ tale of woe to the end. Trumball had called a special meeting of the ICU board. Li Chengdu had told the astronaut that funding for the next expedition was going to be decided at the meeting. The implication was clear, either they removed Jamie from command, or Trumball would turn off the money flow.

When at last Connors had finished, Jamie transmitted, “Thanks for the information, Pete, both the good news and the bad. I’ve sent the daily report to you on the data channel; nothing outstanding to report, except that Dex and Craig have picked up the Pathfinder hardware successfully. They’ll start on their way back here tomorrow morning.

“Oh, by the way, Craig prefers to be called Wiley instead of Possum. He’s a little touchy about that. Otherwise we’re all well and healthy here. That’s all for now.”

Jamie was still in the comm center when Fuchida came in, limping slightly, and asked him to come to the biology lab.

“As soon as Stacy comes back,” Jamie replied.

Fuchida nodded, almost bowed, and left.

Nearly half an hour later Jamie tapped lightly on the doorframe of the bio lab. Fuchida turned on his swivel stool and swiftly got to his feet.

“Sit, Mitsuo, sit down and take it easy,” Jamie said, pulling up the other stool to sit beside the biologist.

Fuchida sat, but his back remained rigid. He glanced at the open doorway, then reached across the lab bench and pulled his laptop computer toward him.

“What did you want to show me?” Jamie asked. “Any new species show up from the core samples?”

“This is not biology,” Fuchida said as he booted up the laptop.

“No?”

“No. Detective work.”

“Detective?”

Jamie saw on the laptop screen one of the photos he had taken of the damaged garden dome the morning after the storm.

“Do you notice two important things in this image?” Fuchida asked. His voice was low, almost a whisper.

Jamie shook his head.

“Observe,” the biologist said, pointing at the screen, “that the dome fabric is puckered outward.”

Nodding, Jamie said, “Yeah, it is, isn’t it?”

“You took this image from outside the dome,” Fuchida said.

“Right.”

“What does this outward-facing puckering suggest to you?”

Christ, Jamie thought, Mitsuo’s sounding like an imitation Sherlock Holmes.

“You tell me,” he said.

“The puncture was made from the inside, not from the outside.”

“No,” Jamie said slowly. “That can’t be. What could puncture the dome from the inside?”

Instead of answering, Fuchida said, “Observe the height of the puncture above the ground.”

Jamie peered at the image. “Two and a half, three feet, I’d say.”

“Sixty-two centimeters. I have measured it.”

“What are you driving at, Mitsuo?”

Lowering his voice until it was almost a hiss, Fuchida answered, “The storm did not damage the dome. The fabric was punctured from the inside. Deliberately!”

Jamie blinked at him. “Deliberately? You’re joking!”

“No joke. The puckering shows the puncture was made from inside the dome, not from outside. And the punctures are at the height a man’s hand would be if his arm were fully extended downward.”

It took Jamie several moments to realize that Fuchida was completely serious.

“Mitsuo, that can’t be. Nobody here would deliberately damage the dome.”

Fuchida pointed silently to the display screen.

Jamie said, “For one thing, the puckering makes it look like the damage was done from inside because air from inside the dome blew outward, through the puncture.”

The biologist’s brows knit. “That is a possibility, I suppose.”

“And the height of the punctures is just where the pebbles happened to hit the fabric.”

“Both at the same height?”

Jamie shrugged. “A coincidence.”

Fuchida looked totally unconvinced.

“Listen, Mitsuo, you can’t believe that one of us deliberately punctured the dome during the storm. That kind of behavior would be insane!”

Fuchida nodded. “That is exactly the conclusion I came to.”

It was Vijay’s turn for the cleanup detail, so while Stacy and Rodriguez went back to the comm center for a final evening’s systems check and Fuchida and Trudy went off to the bio lab, Jamie went to his quarters and ran through his incoming messages.

As he scanned the screen his mind wandered to Fuchida’s detective work. Mitsuo’s overreacting, he told himself. Who the hell would deliberately puncture the garden dome? Why? For what reason? It’s all nonsense.

Still, the possibility was there, lurking in his mind like a dark ominous cloud. A madman in our midst? Jamie shook his head, tried to clear his mind of the possibility.

He finished scrolling through his messages, saw that there was nothing that demanded immediate attention, then closed down the computer and went back to the galley.

Vijay was still there. The dome lights were turned down to their overnight level. The dishwasher was humming away; the table was glistening clean. She’s waiting for me, Jamie thought happily.

“Everybody else in bed?” he asked.

“Trudy and Rodriguez are,” she replied lightly. “Mitsuo’s still poking around out in the garden and Stacy hasn’t come out of the comm center.”

“Oh.”

She took a mug and a teabag, then went over to the hot water dispenser. Jamie pulled out a chair and sat in it. He knew it was silly, but he wanted to wait until all the others were in their quarters for the night before he took Vijay to his cubicle.

“Mitsuo thinks somebody deliberately sabotaged the dome,” he said, keeping his voice low.

“What?” She turned toward him, her eyes wide with surprise.

“He’s got what he thinks is evidence.”

“He’s daft.”

“I hope so,” Jamie said.

“I’ll talk to him about it,” she said, bringing her cup to the table and sitting next to him.

“No, wait. Let me see what else he comes up with first.”

Vijay gave him a sideways glance, unconvinced, but then nodded and said, “If that’s what you want.”

“Dex’s father wants to bump me,” he heard himself say. The words surprised him. He had convinced himself several times over not to burden her with his problem.

“I was wondering when you’d get around to talking about it,” she said.

He felt an instant of shock, then realized that there were no secrets in this hothouse they lived in.

“So everybody knows about it,” he said.

“Of course,” she said, sitting beside him. “We’ve been wondering what we can do to help. You know, send a petition to the ICU board, threaten a job action, whatever.”

“A job action?”

“Go on strike,” she said. “Sit down on our butts until Trumball stops harassing you.”

She took a sip of the steaming tea, waiting for him to respond. Looking into her lustrous black eyes Jamie realized again how beautiful she was.

“We’ve got this whole world to explore,” he said to her. “We can’t go on strike. That wouldn’t help anything.”

She replied, “Do you have any better ideas?”

“I’ve been thinking about it.”

“And?”

“Trumball’s threatening to hold up the funding for the next expedition.”

“Using it as a hostage, I know.”

“I can’t let him stop the next expedition, Vijay. That would be criminal.”

“How can you stop him, then?”

He leaned back and stared up into the darkness. For long moments there was no sound except the soft chugging of the life-support pumps, the faint whispered hum of electrical equipment. And the high, barely audible sighing of the night wind outside, the breath of a world calling to him.

Then he heard Vijay exhale and realized she had been holding her breath, waiting for him to answer.

“I could resign,” he said flatly.

“Resign?”

“Step down as mission director. After all, I’m here on Mars; he can’t call me back to Earth. I’m here for the duration of the expedition. What difference does it make if my title is mission director or bottle-washer?”

Vijay banged her cup on the table so hard that tea sloshed out of it.

“You can’t do that, Jamie! You can’t!”

“Why not? What does the title mean? It’s what we do here on Mars that’s important.”

“But he’ll put Dex in charge!”

“I don’t think so. I think the rest of you will get a chance to express your opinions. A vote, maybe.”

She shook her head vehemently. “That would tear us apart, Jamie. Some would vote for Dex and anyone who didn’t would be perceived as a vote against him.”

“Yeah,” he admitted. “Maybe so.”

“You can’t step down! That would ruin everything.”

“I don’t think—”

“You want to go out to the cliff dwelling, don’t you? Do you think Dex would approve that?”

“I don’t think Dex would be named director,” he repeated.

“And who would?”

“Stacy would be my choice.”

“She’s not a scientist.”

“Then Craig.”

“Wiley? Do you think he has the respect that you do? Can you see Fuchida following Wiley’s orders?”

“It’s not a matter of following orders,” he said.

“Of course it is! That’s what the mission director’s position is all about.”

Jamie shook his head. “Come on, Vijay, I don’t give orders to people. We all work together.”

She sat up rigidly and tapped the tabletop with one manicured fingernail. “You don’t give orders because you don’t have to. Everyone here respects you tremendously. Don’t you understand that? You lead by example. You’re a natural leader.”

“So is Dex, according to you.”

“Dex wants to be what you already are. He’s not there yet.”

“And if I give it up, resign,” Jamie could barely force the words out, “and Dex is named mission director … what will you do?”

She drew in her breath sharply, as if struck by a blow. For long, agonizing moments she was silent.

“What will I do?” Vijay echoed, her voice so low he could barely hear her.

“About us,” Jamie whispered.

She stared at him.

“I mean—”

“My god, Jamie,” she said, her voice trembling, “if you think I’m sleeping with you just because you’re the boss man here … if you think I’ll prance off to Dex’s bed if he’s named director …”

“I … but you said …”

“You’re an idiot!” she snapped. “A damned fool bloody idiot!”

She stamped off toward her own quarters, leaving the mug sitting on the table in a small puddle of tea. Jamie watched her go, telling himself that she was right: I’m an idiot.