“I love it,” she said. And, to her own surprise, she did. She had started working with Feroz simply as a way to get some exobiology publications on her resume, but she found that she liked being back in a laboratory. It was painstaking, and ten seconds of inattention could ruin ten hours of work, but she found that she liked the challenge.
“Good. I’m sure you do. But all that’s not worth a hill of beans, really, is it?”
Obviously, he wanted some response from her here, and she didn’t know what it was. Play it cool. “I’m not quite sure what you mean.”
“What matters here is just one thing. Can you handle the public?”
“Yes, I think so. In my application, I have listed—”
“I don’t care what’s in your file. Everybody has a great file.” He flipped the file of papers away from him, and it skidded across the table. “I’ve read two hundred great files. What I care about is, can you handle the public?”
Time to be firm. “Yes, sir, I can.”
“Well, good. I hope you can.” He looked at his watch and then stood up. Was the interview over? Tana hastily stood up as well.
He walked toward the door at the far end of the conference room, and then turned back to look at her. Perhaps there was a slight smile on his face; if there was, it was the first trace of any emotion she’d seen him express. She wished she could remember his name. He had introduced himself to her when the interview had started, but she hadn’t been able to place the name.
“As you may know, on Tuesday afternoons we invite elementary school classes to tour the center. Today we’ve got a class of fifth graders on a field trip all the way from Tulsa, Oklahoma. We’ve promised them a special lecture. You’re it.” He looked at his watch. “You’re going to tell them about Mars.”
He opened the door. It led to a main lecture hall, with every seat occupied by fidgeting, talking, wrestling, gum-chewing, airplane-throwing, shouting, sleeping, bored children. “They’ve been waiting about five minutes now, they’re probably getting a little restless. There’s about two hundred of them, I’d say.”
Yikes.
He turned to her, and this time it was quite clear, he was smiling. “You said that you’re good with the public, did you now? Well, here you have a chance to demonstrate. Don’t let’s keep them waiting, shall we?”
Now she really had to pee. She ignored it, took a deep breath, and walked out. Get their attention now, she thought, or else lose it.
She found the microphone and tapped it. For a moment, just a moment, the din of conversation in the room let up. “Hi,” she said, and smiled. “I’m Tanisha Jackson. I’m a biologist here at NASA Johnson, and I’m here to tell you all those things about space biology that you haven’t quite had the nerve to ask yet. Like, for example, how you go to the bathroom in space.”
There was a giggle, first just one, then a bunch all at once, and then outright laughter, and she knew she’d caught their attention.
“But, first, maybe you’d like to hear me tell you a little bit about Mars.”
12
Pause in the Descent
Captain Radkowski stopped briefly at the slot cave—it was, in fact, a convenient ledge to pause on—but did not unhook from the superfiber to join Tana and Ryan at the back wall of the cave marveling over the wonders of salt. From the radio reports, he knew that they had determined that the slot in the side of the canyon wall extended back about a hundred feet and then came to an end.
“It’s completely smooth,” Ryan’s voice said. “Seems almost polished. A blank white wall.”
“I wonder how far the salt layer continues?” Tana.
“Don’t think we can tell without a drill.” Ryan. “A long way, I bet.”
“Hundreds of miles?”
It was not of great interest to him. Radkowski was more worried about getting the crew down the cliff to the rockhopper, and making sure it was secure for the long traverse to the bottom of the canyon.
He thought about reprimanding Ryan Martin for slowing down the expedition by stopping to explore the cave, but decided that it was understandable. They had, after all, come to Mars to explore. He would talk to Ryan privately later, caution him that regardless of what they found, getting north as fast as possible had to remain their first priority.
Before descending from the cave level, he checked his rappelling line and safety line attachments again. Both good. He pulled at the superfiber. “On belay,” he said.
His anchor points, for both the rappelling line and the safety line, were still up at the top. From his radio, Trevor’s voice said, “On belay.”
He looked down—it was a long drop, still most of a vertical mile of drop—and then stepped backward off the edge. The superfiber held him, and then, without warning, it gave, and he was in freefall.
Shit. “Falling,” he called. “Tension!”
The safety line caught, and he swung out from the cliff, twisted around awkwardly.
And then the safety line broke.
He started to tumble, and instinctively he assumed the skydiver’s position, arms spread, legs in a V. “Tension,” he shouted, but he knew that it wasn’t going to do him any good. The line had snapped, and there was nothing between him and the ground but two thousand feet of thin Martian air.
It took him a long time to fall.
13
On Station
Tana Jackson’s selection for the medical position on the Mars mission pushed her to the top of the priority list for assignment to the space station. Her name would not be publicly announced for the Mars billet until after she had been tested in orbit. None of the crew had been announced yet. They wanted to see how she worked out in microgravity, how well she got along with the station crew when she was confined in a tin can, with no new faces to see, with nowhere to go to get away. Her nomination to fly on the Mars mission was a recommendation, not a right; at any time she could be reassigned if they decided she might not work out.
The orders for her to start training for a ninety-day shift on the space station arrived the next day. At the same time, she was directed to take refresher courses in epidemiology, most importantly to memorize the medical details of the reports of the three independent review panels that had evaluated the Agamemnon disaster. She was also expected to become an expert on the hypothetical biology of Martian life. And, in addition to all of this, she was to appear cheerful and knowledgeable whenever the press needed a warm body to interview.
She began to train with the microgravity emergency medical kit, until she could unerringly find each piece upside-down and blindfolded: tracheotomy tubes, laryngoscope, oxygen mask, miniature oxygen tank, compresses, syringes, dressings, adhesives, scalpel, stethoscope, blood oximeter.
She had never worked harder in her life. The launch to the space station, when it came, seemed almost like a vacation. She was so excited that she barely noticed the launch, and only when she saw her notepad floating out of her pocket did she realize, I’m really here; I’m in zero gravity. I made it.
Tana’s billet was to be the blue-shift medical officer, and in her spare time, a biology research technician and an experimental subject. The bio labs always needed both technicians and subjects.
She liked being on space station. Ft was crowded and noisy and confusing. It was remarkably easy to get confused, and even—despite its small size—momentarily lost. The familiar route from one module to another that you’ve memorized as a left turn would, if you happen to be flipped, mutate into a right turn, or even an up or down turn. Compartments that she thought she knew completely suddenly became completely unfamiliar when she came in with a different orientation, and the floor had become the ceiling. In a way, it was as if the space station were far larger on the inside than its mere volume, when every floor was also a wall and a ceiling.