“Feel better?” Vijay asked.
“Yep.”
She started to open the car door again but he reached for her.
“Vijay…”
She melted into his arms, leaning over the transmission stick in the console between them.
“You’re really wonderful,” he said.
“I’m glad you noticed.”
“Are you trying to cheer me up?”
She shook her head. “Why would I have to do that?”
“Then how come…?”
“You’ve made up your mind, haven’t you, Jamie? You’re going back.”
There it was, out in the open.
“I didn’t know myself until halfway back to Albuquerque. But you knew before I did, didn’t you?”
“Once Dex told me how bad things are I knew what your reaction would be.”
In the shadows of the car’s interior he could still see the anticipation on her face, the glow in her eyes.
“Jamie, you’ve been moping around for more’n two years now,” Vijay said softly, “blaming yourself for what happened to Jimmy. Now they’ve hit you with this and—”
“And I’ve got to go back to Mars. I can’t let them close down the program.”
“Do you think your being on Mars will make any difference?”
“I don’t know. But I’ve got to go.”
“Of course,” she said. “And you do want me to go with you, don’t you?”
“You’re willing to go?”
He could hear the smile in her voice. “Hey, mate, we lived all alone on Mars for four months, di’n’t we? Time for a second honeymoon, don’t you think?”
“Are you sure?”
“Sure as taxes, love.”
For a long moment he couldn’t say a word. Then, “Do you think we can put Jimmy’s death behind us?”
“No,” she replied, her voice dropping lower. “We’ll never put Jimmy out of our minds. But we’ll move on, Jamie. We’ll move on.”
“To Mars.”
“To Mars,” she agreed.
In the shadows of the car he tried to look into those fathomless jet black eyes of hers; he felt all the wonder that always astonished him whenever he realized that this incredible woman actually loved him as much as he loved her.
“Okay,” he said. “On to Mars.”
“Fine,” said Vijay. “But right now let’s get to the restaurant. I’m starved.”
Tithonium Base: Celebration
They held an impromptu celebration—of sorts—the night that the personnel from Hellas Base returned to Tithonium. No one planned it, no one was really in a celebratory mood. It took three trips in one of the broad-winged rocketplanes to bring all twenty-three of the men and women with their personal effects back to Tithonium. They were downcast, subdued, dejected at the realization that they had to abruptly leave their work, cut short the studies they’d been undertaking at the vast impact crater of Hellas.
As soon as their leader, Yvonne Lorenz, set foot inside the base’s main dome, Chang bustled her into his office and closed the door firmly.
Seeing the dispirited expressions on the new arrivals, Kalman Torok said loudly, “What’s the matter? You don’t want to go back home?”
A few of them shot annoyed glances at the biologist. “Like packing up and leaving in the middle of a program is a good career move?” one of the women snapped.
Torok shrugged good-naturedly. “Come on and have a drink,” he said. “I’m buying.”
Officially there was nothing stronger on the base than fruit juice, but most of the men and women kept private stashes of some sort. One thing led to another, and soon most of the people in the base had gathered in the cafeteria section of the dome. Several had brought bottles or flasks from their private quarters and splashed the various liquors into the plastic cups of juice—with one eye on Chang’s closed door. The mission director enforced the rules with iron rigidity. Or tried to.
Carleton, in his makeshift workshop, heard the growing chatter and laughter across the dome. He looked up from the plaster cast he had lovingly made of the fossil vertebra.
“Sounds like a party,” he said to Doreen McManus, who was watching him work.
She got up from the spindly stool she’d been sitting on and slid the door open a crack.
“It is a party,” she said. “Looks like everybody who isn’t on duty is in the cafeteria.”
“Want to join them?” Carleton asked.
“Are you finished?”
He lifted the white plaster cast from the work table. “Isn’t she a beauty? A lot better than those stereo images the computer generates.”
He held it out to her and Doreen took it in her hands. “It is a beauty,” she agreed, with an approving smile.
“The first of many,” said Carleton as he took the actual ash-gray fossil and tucked it into a plastic specimen case he’d appropriated from the biology storeroom shelves. He closed its lid with a firm snap.
“Let’s show it off,” Doreen suggested.
Carleton grinned at her. “Why not?”
Soon the gathering that was spilling beyond the cafeteria’s neatly arranged rows of tables was toasting Carleton and his discovery. The crowd’s mood had lifted considerably since the drinking had started.
One of the astronauts who had ferried the team in from Hellas loudly insisted on calling the fossil “Carleton’s clavicle,” even when several of the others pointed out that it was actually a vertebra.
“Clavicle,” the buzz-cut astronaut shouted, in a voice that drowned out everyone else. “It rhymes better.”
Basking in the warmth of their approval, Carleton shook his head and laughed. He saw tall, gangling Saleem Hasdrubal stumbling through a tango with one of the women technicians. How can someone get drunk on fruit juice? he wondered. Sal’s a Muslim, he doesn’t drink liquor. Maybe Black Muslims don’t abstain from alcohol. Or maybe fruit juice is enough to set him off.
Downing the last of the drink in his hand, he realized that Doreen was no longer at his side. Looking around, Carleton saw that she was chatting with a tall, lean young man who was wearing a denim shirt and chinos. The Navaho kid, Carleton remembered, brows knitting: Billy Graycloud. A computer geek.
Suddenly seething with anger, the liquor’s warmth fueling him, Carleton marched through the crowd toward them.
“Goodbye, Raincloud,” he growled.
Doreen looked startled, the Navaho more so.
“Uh, it’s Graycloud, Dr. Carleton. Billy Graycloud, sir.”
“Whatever.” Carleton grasped Doreen’s wrist. “The A team has arrived. Go back to your tepee.”
And he towed Doreen away from the youngster. Graycloud stood there dumbfounded, his coppery cheeks flaming deep red.
“That was cruel,” Doreen said, barely loud enough over the noise of the ongoing party for him to hear it.
“Fuck him,” Carleton snapped.
“Is that what you were afraid I’d do?”
He turned on her angrily. “Now look, if you think—”
Just then Chang’s office door slid open and the mission director stepped out, with Yvonne Lorenz behind him. Carleton stopped in midsentence. All the laughter snapped off as if a switch had been clicked. Everyone froze where they stood. In the abrupt silence Carleton could hear the soft footfalls of Chang’s slippersocks against the plastic flooring.
Furtively trying to hide their liquor bottles and flasks, the crowd in the cafeteria melted away before him as Chang strode into their midst, arms stiffly at his sides, hands balled into round little fists.
“Carter Carleton, I too wish to congratulate you,” Chang said. “You have made an important discovery. You will be honored for it.”
Blinking with surprise, Carleton said, “Why, thank you, Dr. Chang. Er… would you like some juice?”