Above the discomfort was an overlay of envy and worry. The envy was a sin that he could purge himself of, whenever he could find someone to hear his confession — a venial sin at most, he thought, considering the manifest advantages Roger had over the other two. Worry was a worse sin, not against his God but against the success of the mission. It was too late to worry. Maybe it had been a mistake to set up the simulation of Roger’s wife to punch home urgent messages — at the time, he hadn’t known quite how complicated Roger’s feelings were about Dorrie. But it was too late to do anything about it.
Brad didn’t seem to have any worries. He was chuckling fondly over Roger’s performance. “Did you notice?” he was demanding. “Didn’t fall once! Perfect coordination. Normative match, bio and servo. I tell you, Don, we’ve got it knocked!”
“It’s a little early to tell,” Kayman said uneasily, but Brad went on. Kayman thought of turning off the voice in his suit helmet, but it was almost as easy to turn off his attention. He looked around him. They had landed near the sunrise terminator, but they had used more than half the Martian day in preexit check and in putting the jeep together. It was becoming late afternoon. They would have to be back before it was dark, he told himself. Roger would be able to navigate by starlight, but it would be chancier for Brad and him. Maybe some other time, after they had had the practice… He really wanted that very much, to stroll the ebony surface of a Barsoomian night, with the stars pinpoints of colored fire in a velvet black sky. But not yet.
They were on a great cratered plain. The size was hard to estimate at first. Looking around through his faceplate Kayman had trouble remembering how far away the mountains were. His mind knew, because he knew every grid-square of the Martian maps for two hundred kilometers around their impact point. But his senses were deceived by the absolutely transparent visibility. The mountains to the west, he was aware, were a hundred kilometers away and nearly ten kilometers high. They looked like nearby foothills.
He clutched the jeep down and stopped it; they were within a few meters of Roger. Brad fumbled himself free and slid clumsily out of the seat, lurching in an ungainly slow gait over toward Roger to study him. “Everything all right?” he said anxiously. “Of course it is; I can see that. How’s your balance? Close your eyes, will you — I mean, you know, shut off your vision.” He peered anxiously at the faceted hemispheres. “Did you? I can’t tell, you know.”
“I did,” said Roger through the radio in his head.
“Great! No sense of dizziness, eh? No trouble keeping your balance? Keeping your eyes closed,” he went on, circling Roger and staring at him from all angles, “swing your arms up and down a few times — fine! Now windmill them, opposite directions—” Kayman couldn’t see his face, but he could hear the broad grin in the tone of Brad’s voice. “Beautiful, Roger! Optimal all the way!”
“My congratulations to you both,” said Kayman, out of the vehicle and watching the performance. “Roger?”
The head turned toward him, and though there was nothing about the appearance of the eyes that changed, Kayman knew Roger was looking at him. “I only wanted to say,” he went on, not quite sure where the sentence was going to go, “that I’m — well, I’m sorry we sprang that bit about using Dorrie’s image to convey messages on you. I have a feeling we’ve given you too many surprises.”
“It’s all right, Don.” The trouble with Roger’s voice, Kayman reflected again, was that you couldn’t tell much from its tone.
“Having said that much,” he said, “I think I ought to tell you that we do have another surprise for you. A pleasant one, I think. Sulie Carpenter’s following us up here. Her ship should arrive in about five weeks.”
Silence, and no expression. “Why,” said Roger at last, “that’s very nice. She’s a fine person.”
“Yes.” But the conversation didn’t seem to have anywhere to go after that, and besides Brad was impatient to put Roger through a whole bending and stretching series. Kayman allowed himself the privileges of a tourist. He turned away, staring toward the distant mountains, squinted at the bright sun, which even the auto-darkening of his faceplate didn’t make quite comfortable, then looked around him. Clumsily he managed to kneel and to scoop up a clutch of pebbly dirt in his gloved hand. It would be his job next day to start the systematic collection of samples to return to Earth that was one minor task of the mission. Even after half a dozen manned landings and nearly forty instrumented missions, there was still an insatiable demand for samples of Martian soil in the laboratories of Earth. Right now, however, he was allowing himself to daydream. There was plenty of limonite in this sand, and the quartz pebbles were far from round; the edges were not sharp, but neither had they been milled to roundness. He scraped into the soil. A yellowish powder rested on top; underneath it the material was darker and coarser. There were shiny specks, almost like glass. Quartz? he wondered, and idly scooped around one.
He froze, his hands cupping an irregular rounded blob of crystal.
It had a stem. A stem that thrust down into the ground. That spread and divided into dark, rough-surfaced tendrils.
Roots.
Don Kayman jumped up, whirling on Roger and Brad. “Look!” he shouted, the object plucked free in his gauntleted hand. “Dear God in Heaven, look at this!”
And Roger, coming up out of a crouch, spun and leaped at him. One hand knocked the glittering crystal thing spinning fifty meters into the air, bending the metal of the gauntlet. Kayman felt a sharp, quick pain in that forearm and saw the other hand striking toward his faceplate like the claw of an angry Kodiak bear; and that was the last he saw.
Sixteen
On the Perception of Perils
Vern Scanyon parked his car any which way across the painted yellow lines that marked his own place, jumped out and held his thumb against the elevator button. He had been awake less than forty minutes, but he was not at all sleepy. What he was, was angry and apprehensive. The President’s appointments secretary had waked him out of a sound sleep with a phone call to say that the President had diverted his flight to stop at Tonka — “to discuss the problems of the perceptual system of Commander Torraway.” To kick ass, more accurately. Scanyon had not known anything about Roger’s sudden attack on Don Kayman until he was in his car, hastening to the project building to meet the President.
“Morning, Vern.” Jonny Freeling looked scared and angry, too. Scanyon brushed past him into his own office.
“Come on in,” he barked. “Now, in words of one syllable. What happened?”
Freeling said resentfully, “It’s not my responsibility to—”
“Freeling.”
“Roger’s systems overreacted a little. Apparently Kayman moved suddenly, and the simulations systems translated it into a threat; Roger defended himself and pushed Kayman away.”
Scanyon stared.
“Broke his arm,” Freeling amended. “It was only a simple fracture, General. No complications. It’s splinted, it’ll heal perfectly — he just has to get by with one functioning arm for a while. It’s a pity for Don Kayman, of course. He won’t be very comfortable—”