CHRISTMAS

“CERTAINLY WE CELEBRATE CHRISTMAS IN JAPAN,” SAID Mitsuo Fuchida.

He sat on one of the bunks, squeezed between Stacy Dezhurova and Dex Trumball. Jamie sat on the opposite bunk with Trudy Hall beside him. On the narrow table separating them was the remains of their holiday dinners, now little more than crumbs and bones.

The special Christmas dinners had been almost as good as advertised. Real turkey, drumsticks as well as white breast meat, with sweet potatoes, green beans and cranberry sauce. Indestructible fruitcake for dessert. There was even a small ration of white wine in plastic containers for each of them. Dex made extra-strong coffee to soften the fruitcake.

“Is Christianity that big in Japan now?” Trudy asked.

Fuchida shook his head. “Not so much. But we celebrate Christmas exactly the way you do—as a major retail sales event.”

Everyone laughed. They were in the rover that Dezhurova had driven. A mangy tree made of aluminum strips stood lopsidedly by the airlock hatch, lit by tiny winking bulbs from the electronics spares supply. They had no gifts to exchange except the warmth of their own company.

It was enough.

Jamie lounged back against the bulkhead as they chattered and bantered back and forth. Tomorrow Dezhurova would drive the old rover back to the dome while the four scientists lived in this one and started the work of thoroughly investigating the dwelling site, under the direction of DiNardo’s committee.

It’s going to be tedious work, Jamie thought. Painstaking. With a half-hour lag between our asking a question and their answer.

But that’s tomorrow, he told himself. Tonight it’s Christmas. He felt pleasantly buzzed by the little portion of wine he’d drunk with his dinner. Everyone else seemed to be equally relaxed, equally happy.

Jamie looked across the table at Dex, grinning as he needled Fuchida about the religious significance of a shopping spree. A sudden thought popped into Jamie’s mind.

He slid out from behind the table, muttering an “Excuse me,” and started toward the cockpit.

“Hey, Jamie!” Dex called. “The pissoir’s down the other direction.”

He turned and made a smile for them. “I can whiz out the window.” Ducking his head, he slipped into the cockpit’s right-hand seat.

The four of them were making enough noise, talking, joking, laughing, so that Jamie didn’t feel he needed to put on the headset. Still, he plugged it in and held its pin mike close to his lips as he addressed his message to C. Dairyl Trumball.

“Mr. Trumball, I don’t know where you are and I haven’t checked on what the time might be in the Boston area right now, so please excuse me if I’m interrupting your Christmas celebration. I just thought it would be a reasonable present for your son if you called Dex to wish him a merry Christmas.”

Glancing at his wristwatch, Jamie continued, “We’ve got a little less than three hours of Christmas remaining here, so if you’re going to call, it ought to be pretty soon. I know Dex would appreciate it. Thanks.”

He rejoined the group as they began singing Christmas carols. Trudy had brought a CD with her, and no less than the Westminster Abbey Choir filled the rover with sonorous noels. The five explorers sang along, at the tops of their lungs.

Jamie kept glancing at the control panel up in the cockpit, to see if the message light was blinking. It remained dark. Dex seemed oblivious to what he was trying to do, singing and laughing as hard as any of the others. Harder, perhaps.

By midnight there was still no call from Earth. But if any Martians were roaming across that bitterly cold, almost airless plain by the edge of the Grand Canyon, wafting on the thin night air they would have heard strange, alien voices singing raggedly: