AFTERNOON: SOL 342
“A THING OF BEAUTY IS A JOY FOREVER,” SAID WILEY CRAIG, with genuine appreciation in his voice.
The garden enclosure by the new dome was finished at last, a squared-off structure of glass bricks built entirely of materials from the Martian sand. Craig and Rodriguez stood by the big parabolic dish of the solar mirror that had provided the heat for their kiln, admiring their handiwork.
Rodriguez nodded inside his helmet. “We finished it in record time, too.”
Craig laughed. “Wasn’t much of a record we had to beat, Tom. And it helped that nobody got hurt while we were building it.”
Flexing his scarred hand inside its glove, Rodriguez murmured, “Yeah, that’s right.”
The new dome—with its garden greenhouse—sat by the edge of the Canyon cliff. Four Buckyball cables ran down past the niche where the ancient building stood and extended all the way down to the Canyon floor.
Hall and Fuchida were down there, studying the lichen in the rocks, while a new drill chugged away, bringing up deep-dwelling bacteria from below the permafrost level.
The new dome had come on the unmanned resupply mission from Earth with a flexible access tunnel that could be linked to the airlock hatch of a rover by remote control, either from inside the dome itself or from inside the rover. The explorers could now go from the rover to the dome or vice versa in their shirtsleeves.
The replenishment lander had also carried a similar tunnel for the old dome, still sitting at its original site on Lunae Planum. Stacy and Fuchida were attaching it to the airlock hatch.
Over the past six months the explorers had mapped out the extent of the lichen across the entire face of Mars. Fuchida had returned to Olympus Mons to gather more samples of the Ares olympicus bacteria, then—with a delight bordering on delirium—discovered similar strains of rock-eating bacteria in two of the other Tharsis shield volcanoes.
Stacy had piloted only one of those flights with Fuchida, despite her ardent desire to fly. The responsibilities of being mission director weighed heavily upon her, but she could not entirely overcome her love of flying. “Rank has some privileges,” she said firmly when she announced her decision to pilot the rocketplane.
Fuchida handled all the excursions to the volcanoes. Trudy Hall was scheduled for half of them, but the two biologists announced that Trudy would prefer to work on the lichen at the Canyon floor and let Fuchida deal with the volcanoes.
When Dex teased Trudy about being afraid to fly, Rodriguez jumped to her defense. “You think riding that cable up and down four kilometers isn’t scary? Man, I feel a lot safer riding in something that’s at least got wings on it.”
Stacy worked out a meticulous schedule for all eight of them, a schedule that kept Jamie at the new dome by the Canyon while Stacy herself remained most of the time at the old base on Lunae Planum. Jamie marvelled at how she managed to keep Vijay away when he and Dex were both in the same place. He saw Vijay when Dex was gone, and he knew she saw Dex when he wasn’t around.
Jamie had not slept with Vijay since he’d stepped down as mission director. He kept telling himself that she wasn’t sleeping with Dex, either. He tried hard to believe that, and most of the time he succeeded. But there were moments, when Dex would return from a trip to the old dome with a sly grin on his face that made Jamie’s insides bum.
Yet he and Dex were getting along well together. Without Vijay around, they worked and ate side by side. They speculated about the Martian building and the Martians themselves. And they worried about the day when Dex’s father would arrive to start his commercial operations.
“Why don’t we get the ICU to claim this area?” Dex suggested one night, as the two of them huddled over mugs of coffee in the new dome’s galley.
Jamie went through Connors to Dr. Li, and via Li to the chairman of the ICU board.
Walter Laurence’s normally imperturbable face looked troubled when he finally replied to Jamie’s pleading messages. Jamie waited until late at night to open Laurence’s message; the dome was quiet, lights turned down, most of the others already asleep.
Even in the display screen of Jamie’s laptop, the executive director of the International Consortium of Universities seemed upset, unhappy.
“Dr. Waterman,” he began, stiffly, his earth-brown eyes focused slightly low, at his own display screen instead of the camera atop it, “the entire ICU board of directors has given your request a great deal of thought.”
Jamie watched in silence as Laurence wormed through a long, torturous array of excuses. The man constantly ran one hand through his thick mane of silver hair, as though he were in distress.
“So the long and the short of it is,” Laurence concluded at last, “that the board feels it would be improper for the ICU to claim utilization of any part of Mars—or any other body in the solar system, for that matter. We are dedicated to scientific research, not real estate development.”
When Jamie went over to Dex’s cubicle, the younger man was already heading Jamie’s way.
“You saw Laurence’s answer?” Jamie asked needlessly.
“He’s got as much backbone as a slime mold,” Dex muttered. “Him and his whole frigging board.”
“They’re not going to risk getting your father sore at them.”
“No,” Dex agreed. “Money talks, loud and clear.”
“We’ve only got thirty days before the backup mission launches.”
“With dear old Dad aboard.”
They walked together through the shadowy dome to the galley. “Your father’s really coming?”
“He passed all the physicals. Sent me a video of him in a hard suit, practicing emergency procedures in the big water tank down at Huntsville.”
“Money talks, all right,” Jamie grumbled.
All through the past six months, Fuchida had been buttonholing Jamie whenever he could to try to convince him that one of the explorers was deliberately sabotaging their equipment.
The burned-out wheel bearing from the rover that Stacy had driven became a bone of contention. Fuchida examined it and claimed he saw evidence of tampering.
“See these scratches, here along the seal that failed?” the biologist pointed out. “Deliberate! Someone purposely pried open the seal enough to allow dust to get in and seize up the bearing.”
Jamie looked hard at the bearing in Fuchida’s hand. He saw the scratches but had to tell the biologist that there was no way of knowing if they were deliberately made.
“How else?” Fuchida demanded.
“Dust particles,” Jamie suggested. “Pebbles kicked up by the wheel, maybe.”
The biologist shook his head stubbornly.
“I could ask Wiley to take a look,” Jamie said. “Get his opinion.”
“Useless, if he is the saboteur,” Fuchida replied dejectedly.
Every equipment failure, every minor accident, every time one of the explorers tripped or got nicked in any way, Fuchida added it to the list of “evidence” he was amassing. He called Jamie at least weekly, usually late at night, when everyone else was asleep—and even then Fuchida looked furtive, distrustful, suspicious.
Finally Jamie had to tell him, “Mitsuo, you’re getting paranoid about this.”
Surprisingly, the biologist agreed. “I know,” he said, his voice low and tight. “I am beginning to wonder if I am going mad. Why am I the only one who sees what is happening?”
Jamie tried to make light of it. “Maybe you’re brighter than the rest of us.”
“Or crazier,” Fuchida admitted.
There is that, Jamie thought.
DIARY ENTRY
Nothing works right. Whatever I do, they ignore it. I know they’re watching me, but they won’t admit it. They won’t step up to me, face to face, and have it out. Behind my back, of course, they’re talking about me. Whispering, really. I can hear them whispering when they think I’m not listening, not watching. I’m going to have to take drastic steps. The poor deluded fools! Can’t they see that I’m trying to save their lives? The longer we stay here on Mars the likelier we’ll all be killed. Better to kill one or two of them and save the rest. We’ve got to get away! Back to Earth, where it’s safe. Better to sacrifice a few and save the others.
