"Yet they still insist?"
"Yes."
"So what do you intend to do?"
The expedition commander tugged nervously at one end of his moustache. "It is my duty to command you to turn around and return to the dome so that you can carry out the orders from mission control."
"Very well," Vosnesensky said. "You have done your duty." He reached across the control panel and turned off the communications unit. Then he slowed the rover to a halt.
Ivshenko was looking at him worriedly. "You’re going to turn around?"
Heaving a great pained sigh, Vosnesensky said, "Don’t be an idiot. You drive for the next two hours while I nap. If we go all night we could reach the canyon rim by midday tomorrow."
Oliver Zieman stared at the comm screen.
He sat alone in the command section of the dome; most of the others were down sick. Dr. Yang was in the infirmary, running still more tests. Zieman scratched his head, thinking furiously. He had not expected a crisis of command.
Dr. Li’s image on the screen looked pained, tortured. He must be spending all his time right there in the command module, Zieman thought. He must be living there night and day. He looks almost as bad as the scurvy cases.
"We have a very difficult situation on our hands," Li said to the astronaut, "and I want to be certain that you are fully aware of all the implications."
"Yes, sir," said Zieman, almost eagerly.
"Mission control has issued an order to abandon the dome and return the entire base crew here to orbit," Li said.
"But the rover team…"
Li raised a long slim finger to silence the astronaut. He continued, "Kaliningrad reasons that we must think of the health and safety of the greatest number first. They are prepared to abandon the base and evacuate everyone in the dome."
Zieman swiftly thought, That means I’ll have to pack them aboard the L/AVs myself. Eight of us, counting me. Can’t fit that many in a single L/AV. Who in hell’s going to pilot the second vehicle? Mironov and Abell are in no shape for it, and Dmitri’s off with Vosnesensky and Reed.
"After the contingent from the dome is safely in orbit," Li was saying, "and we have all the astronauts and cosmonauts here, we can use the final landing/ascent vehicle to attempt to rescue the four in the rover."
"Then you want Vosnesensky to turn back," Zieman said.
"I have ordered him to do so. He has refused."
Refused! A burning jet of fear shot through Zieman. A man can’t refuse to carry out orders! That’s crazy! The whole mission could fall apart if we don’t follow orders.
Li waited a moment for his words to register with Zieman. Then he said, "Vosnesensky has tied my hands. I cannot order the evacuation from the dome with only one healthy astronaut present there. I cannot send Tolbukhin and Klein down to you because that would use the last remaining lander. It would mean abandoning the team in the rover altogether."
"Yeah. Right." He still felt stunned that Vosnesensky had disobeyed orders. Of all the people on this mission! Vosnesensky, the straightest of the straight arrows.
"If Ivshenko were with you it would be possible to lift all personnel there in two of the vehicles," Li said, stating the obvious. "Since he is off with Vosnesensky, I cannot order the dome evacuated."
"Yessir. I understand," said Zieman.
"That means you will be in charge of the personnel in the dome until Vosnesensky returns."
Zieman nodded wordlessly, thinking, If he returns. If.
SOL 40: MORNING
Just as he had expected — no, as he had known — there was a stairway cut into the sheer wall of the cliff, leading up to the city built in the giant cleft high above.
Jamie stood in the brightly warm sunlight of New Mexico even though the sky was a delicate Martian pink. He slid his helmet visor up, knowing he no longer needed his hard suit to protect him. He was coming home, his true home, where two worlds met and blended in the unity and balance that he had unconsciously sought since childhood. For the first time in his life Jamie felt in harmony with the world, with both his worlds, with all the worlds.
He climbed the stairs slowly, almost unwilling to end the happiness, the peacefulness of this moment. Yet he knew that at the top his people would be waiting to welcome him. Like an ancient priest of the Old Ones climbing the temple stairs in solemn dignity, Jamie moved his booted feet from one stone stair to the next. He saw that the steps had been cut into the living rock long ages ago; their stone surfaces had been worn smooth and saddle-backed by countless generations of climbing feet.
Piece by piece his protective hard suit disappeared as he climbed. His helmet vanished first, and he could drink in the clean cool air of the true world. Then his boots, the torso shell, the leggings. By the time he reached the top he was naked and possessed nothing except the bear fetish that his grandfather had given him hundreds of millions of kilometers ago.
Sweat trickled along his flanks, his legs, ran down his face. The air was cool but the sun warmed him, filled him with its life-giving energy.
He was nearing the top of the stairway. He could hear the breeze sighing, hear fully leafed trees up there calling to him. He looked down at the fetish in his hand and the bear smiled at him. Only a few steps more, my son, said his grandfather’s voice. Only a few steps more.
Jamie reached the top. The city was there, just as he had known it would be. Magnificent. Straight clean walls of fresh adobe brick. Tier upon tier of houses rising to the top of the cleft where the overhanging rock sheltered them like the protective arm of god.
"It is good," Jamie said. "Ya’aa’tey."
His grandfather appeared before him, young and strong and naked as Jamie himself. "It is good," his grandfather said.
All the people poured out of their homes, thronging into the central plaza where Jamie stood with his grandfather, smiling, singing, carrying wreaths of flowers that they put over Jamie’s head. The women were beautiful, the men strong and handsome.
Yet Jamie turned to his grandfather. "I can’t stay. The others — they need me."
"I know," said the old man. "Go in beauty, my grandson."
Jamie’s eyes snapped open.
The dream had been so vivid, so real. He dug his hand into the pocket of his coveralls and felt the fetish resting there, a warm comforting lump of stone. Only then did he allow himself to relax in his bunk and take stock of the new day.
His entire body ached with a dull sullen pain that sapped his strength. His head throbbed, pulse thumping in his ears like a drum slowly beating out the cadence of death. Next to him Connors moaned softly in his troubled sleep, his breath whistling slightly.
Quietly, Jamie slid out of his bunk. His legs were almost too weak to hold him up. For long minutes he gripped the edge of Joanna’s bunk, uncertain that he could squeeze past the bunks and make it to the lavatory. She was huddled in a fetal position. Ilona lay facedown, unmoving. For a moment Jamie feared she might be dead, but then he saw the slow rhythm of her breathing.
He pushed past the bunks, grabbing at the hand grips set into the bulkheads to make his way to the lav. In the polished metal mirror above the tiny sink his face stared back at him, gaunt, unshaven, hollow eyed. Slowly, with the deliberate care of a drunk or an old, old man, Jamie washed his face and hands. When he brushed his teeth the brush came away bloody. The teeth even felt loose in his gums. He peeled off his night coveralls and pulled on his day pair. Not much between them, he realized. They were both wrinkled and smelly.
The others did not begin to awaken until he had mixed himself a glass of instant orange drink and a mug of steaming coffee. They got up slowly, looking as exhausted and pain wracked as Jamie himself felt. Gaunt faces, red eyes, hands trembling, legs almost too weak to hold them up.