MORNING: SOL: 376
JAMIE HAD NEVER SEEN PETE CONNORS LOOK SO GRAVE. “It’s a total mess, all right,” the mission controller was saying. “You guys are lucky to be alive. They’re calling a special meeting of the ICU committee. I’m sure they’ll want to call this an accident and cook up a cover story. Nobody wants to tell the public that one of your people was a psycho.”
Jamie nodded as he watched the screen. Outside the comm center the others were going through the motions of breakfast.
“Talk about timing,” Connors went on. “The resupply mission went through their transfer orbit insertion burn just eleven minutes before your message came through. They’re on their way to Mars. Be there on sol five twenty-two, five months from now. They think they’re gonna have a few weeks with you guys to get set up, get oriented. Now they’ll have to land and work on their own.”
Connors talked on and on, more to have something to say, to feel that he was doing something, than for any other reason, Jamie thought. This disaster’s hit him almost as hard as it’s hit us.
“You’ll have to figure out which one of them did it, which one’s the wacko. We’ll keep it quiet, don’t worry about that. Nobody here wants to admit that one of our own people sabotaged the expedition. But we’ll have to know, have to check into the psych profile and background. For future reference, to make certain that type doesn’t get included in future missions.”
Future missions? Jamie thought. Will there be future missions? They won’t be able to keep this out of the news media. Sooner or later somebody will leak the story. He could picture the headlines: Scientist goes crazy on Mars, tries to wipe out expedition.
“For what it’s worth,” Connors continued, “I think it was Hall. I can’t believe an astronaut, a flier, would crack up like that. It wasn’t Rodriguez; I’d bet money on it.”
Jamie nodded silent agreement.
After Connors signed off, Jamie got up and walked slowly to the greenhouse hatch. If anyone noticed that he had left the comm center unattended, no one said a word.
He pushed the inner hatch open and stepped into the greenhouse. Nothing had changed. The plants were all gone, their trays nothing but twisted, buckled metal frames. The glass bricks of the ceiling and one wall were charred black, the floor littered with burned debris. It smelled acrid, faintly musty, an odor Jamie had not smelled since he’d been a boy, hiding in the unused fireplace of his parents’ house. Nothing was wet. Nothing dripped. There was no sound at all inside the greenhouse, it was as silent as death. A mess. A terrible wasteful mess.
When he finally came out of the greenhouse and made his dismal way to the galley, the three other men were still sitting glumly at the table. Jamie still smelled a faint burnt odor in the air. Imagination, he told himself. Maybe not.
“Stacy’s in the infirmary, helping Vijay change Trudy’s dressings,” Dex said, without being asked.
“How’re they doing?” Jamie asked.
Craig waggled a hand in the air. “Trudy’s got second-degree burns over the upper half of her body. She’s a mess.”
“Her face, too?”
“Yep.”
“And Tomas?”
“Hands and arms, mostly. Shoulders. Looks like he was trying to drag Trudy out of there when the smoke got him.”
“Serves him right for sleeping on the job,” Dex muttered.
“Tomas? Sleeping?”
“He was snoozing at the console around three this morning,” Dex said angrily. “I saw him.”
“Not him,” Fuchida said, shaking his head.
“I saw him.”
“Then she must have drugged him,” the biologist insisted. “I know Tom. He would not sleep on duty.”
“Then it was Trudy who set the fire?” Jamie asked rhetorically.
“And punctured the garden dome during the storm,” Fuchida said firmly. “And the other ‘accidents,’ too.”
Jamie started to go to the food locker for some breakfast, but realized that he had no appetite.
Turning back to the others, he said, “Come on, let’s get the video cameras and document the damage. Tarawa’s going to need the imagery.”
Craig and Fuchida got up from the table and headed off. Dex rose to his feet, too, but remained as the other two left.
“What is it, Dex?” Jamie asked.
“We’re packing it in?”
Jamie nodded. “As soon as we do a damage assessment, we’ll go back to Dome One and take off for Earth.”
“Heading home, with our tails between our legs.”
“Not much else we can do,” Jamie said. Two people badly injured, one of them a psycho. This expedition is a bust.”
Dex looked as grim as Connors had. Grimmer.
“The thing is,” he said slowly, “if we leave, that tears up the Navaho claim to this territory.”
A flash of fear raced along Jamie’s nerves. “What do you mean?”
Very gently, like a doctor breaking the news of a loved one’s death, Dex said, “You’ve got to be on the ground to maintain a legal claim to the utilization rights. Once we leave, anybody can claim this territory.”
Jamie felt his insides go hollow. “But we’re being forced to leave. An accident—”
“Cuts no ice,” Dex said. “I’ve studied the law, the treaties and all the international agreements. If you abandon this territory, your legal claim goes down the chute.”
Jamie sank down onto the nearest chair.
“I’m sorry,” Dex said softly.
“But your father won’t be,” Jamie muttered.
“No, dammit. He’ll be overjoyed.”
Trudy Hall’s hands, arms, face, her entire upper body was wrapped in spray-on antiseptic bandaging. Her eyes were covered, a breathing tube was inserted into her nostrils. There was a small slit where her mouth should be. What was left of her hair looked like the singed pinfeathers of a badly seared chicken.
The medical monitors on one side of the cramped infirmary cubicle were all humming peacefully, however. Blood pressure, heart rate, and most of the other indicators were steady. Her breathing was ragged, but that was to be expected from the fire-heated air she had inhaled.
“Has she regained consciousness at all?” Jamie asked, in a whisper.
Vijay stood on the other side of the bed, replacing a bag of saline solution for the TV drip.
“Only briefly,” she answered, her voice somewhat louder than his. “I’ve been sedating her rather heavily, you know. She’d be in considerable pain otherwise.”
“I need to talk to her,” he said.
“Not for a while, mate.”
“And Tomas?”
“He’s in much better shape,” Vijay said, allowing herself a tiny smile. “You can talk to him all you want.”
Rodriguez lay in his bunk on his stomach, head and shoulders propped up by a small mountain of cushions. Jamie recognized them: they were mattresses from one of the rovers, rolled tightly and strapped with duct tape.
“I just couldn’t keep my eyes open,” he was telling Jamie, his face showing guilt and puzzlement. “Never happened to me before, I just couldn’t keep my eyes open.”
“Trudy put sleeping pills in your coffee,” Jamie said. He had pulled the cubicle’s desk chair up to the edge of the bunk. “Vijay told me she’d been taking pills—”
“I never saw her take any,” Rodriguez blurted.
Jamie shrugged. “She must’ve been saving them to use on you.”
“I still can’t believe that she’d do that.”
“She’s emotionally sick,” Jamie said. “She must be.”
“Yeah, guess so.”
“The smoke alarm woke you up?”
Rodriguez nodded, winced. His back must be painful, Jamie realized.
“Yeah. Y’know, I felt like I’d been drugged. Couldn’t move fast at first, everything seemed slow, dopey.”
“Trudy wasn’t in the comm center?”
“No. I saw the smoke coming from the greenhouse hatch. She wasn’t anywhere in sight, so I went in to see if she’d been caught inside the greenhouse. And there she was.”
There she was, Jamie thought. A poor scared little sparrow who went over the edge. Why? What happened in her mind to make her snap like this?
Another voice in his head sneered, What difference does it make? She’s destroyed this expedition and turned Mars over to Trumball and his world-wreckers.