"I don’t believe that. It took a lot of courage. A coward would have stayed in here no matter how Mikhail threatened."
"You were practically here," Reed said. "You collapsed less than a couple of hundred meters from the rover. We couldn’t sit here and let you die. That would have killed the other three in your group, as well, wouldn’t it?"
"But still…"
Vosnesensky scowled down at Jamie. "After what you did, in your condition, our physician’s little journey is insignificant."
Jamie smiled back at him. "Except for one small detail — without that little journey everything I did would have meant nothing at all."
Reed suddenly looked terribly uncomfortable. Vosnesensky shrugged and slowly pulled himself to his feet, leaning heavily on the metal supports of the upper bunk.
"You should try to sleep," Vosnesensky said.
"Yes," Reed agreed swiftly. "Rest. You’ve earned it."
"Dmitri is in contact with Connors and the women. Once the sun comes up I will ride the cable to their vehicle and help them into their suits. Then we will winch them across to us."
Jamie nodded, his eyes already closing.
"Good," he said. "Good."
His last conscious thought was that Reed seemed a reluctant hero. God knows what Mikhail threatened him with. But Tony came through. That’s the important thing. Tony came through when it counted.
The chief controller sat behind his desk, alone in his Kaliningrad office except for the head of the British contingent. Outside the room’s one window a cold, dreary rain was spattering, the first taste of autumn and grim winter.
The display screen built into the paneled wall had just turned off. For the past fifteen minutes the two men had watched and listened to the tape of the latest report from Dr. Li. The expedition commander had read from a prepared script and kept his face an immobile mask that revealed no emotion whatever.
Now the screen had gone blank. Li’s tape was finished. The snow outside blanketed the usual noises from the street. The office was absolutely silent.
The chief controller tugged absently at his ragged Vandyke. "Well," he said in English, "what do you think?"
The head of the British team for the Mars Project was a Scottish engineer who had risen through the technical ranks to become an administrator. He was a slightly built man with graying dark hair and a crafty look in his eyes even when he was relaxing socially.
"It’s a serious blow," he said. "The physician should have caught the symptoms earlier and taken steps to avert the problem."
"He found the answer, finally," said the chief controller.
"Aye, but he came close to killing them all."
The chief controller muttered, "How can we keep the media from finding out about this?"
"You cannot," the Scot said flatly. "Not with Brumado talking to all those reporters in Houston."
"Then we will have to keep this information from Brumado."
"Are you prepared to keep the entire team incommunicado for the rest of the mission? Be reasonable, man. It cannot be done."
The chief controller shook his head. "We’d have to keep them all quiet for the rest of their lives, wouldn’t we?" He tangled his fingers in the abused Vandyke again.
"I know what you’re thinking. It’s one thing if the politicians learn of this in private. We can explain it to them reasonably and make them see that it was an unavoidable accident. But if the media get hold of it and ballyhoo it, the politicians will have to react to what the media is saying, not what we tell them."
"Exactly. That will mean the end of the Mars Project. There will be no return mission."
" ’Tis a thorny problem."
The chief controller stared out the window at the falling snow. "It’s too bad we can’t keep them all on Mars permanently."
The Scotsman smiled grimly.
By the time Jamie awoke it was fully light. Ivshenko was up in the cockpit; Vosnesensky had already suited up and gone through the airlock to winch himself across the treacherous lake of sand to the mired rover. It was the grating buzz of the winch motor that had pulled Jamie up from his sleep.
Once he realized Jamie was awake, Reed brought him a tray of hot breakfast with six gelatinous capsules resting beside a plastic cup filled with orange juice.
"Reed’s recipe for recovering your health," the Englishman said when Jamie looked up at him questioningly. "Enough vitamins to lift a horse into orbit."
Jamie still felt weak and aching, but better than the day before. He realized that it was not his physical symptoms that had eased; rather, the terrible fear he had kept bottled up within him was gone. The body will heal, he knew, once the mind has been convinced that healing is possible. The real agony is in the mind, always.
He took a deep breath. The pain in his chest was gone. The turmoil in his mind had cleared away, too. Everything looked different, clearer than he had ever seen it before. As if he had looked at the world through a veil. Until now.
For the first time in his life Jamie felt an inner serenity, a certainty. He felt as sure and solid as the ancient mountains. This is what Grandfather Al told me about. I’ve found my balance, my place in the scheme of things. I know who I am now. I know where I belong. What I went through out there in the darkness has changed everything. Once you accept death nothing else can harm you. I can face anything now. Anything. He smiled inwardly. Not this time, Life Taker. Not yet.
"I want to thank you again, Tony…"
Reed’s brows knit together. "There’s been enough of that. I’d prefer that you drop the subject, if you don’t mind."
Jamie sat up and accepted the tray from Reed’s hands. "Where’s Mikhail?" he asked.
"Off to help your stranded comrades."
"By himself? Is he strong enough?"
"He got seven solid hours of sleep," said Reed. "He feels much better this morning. The vitamins are taking effect in him."
Ivshenko called back to them from the cockpit, "Mikhail has made it to their rover. He is helping Connors into his suit."
"I’d better get into mine," Reed muttered. "I’m assigned to greeting our guests at the airlock hatch."
"I’ll help," said Jamie.
"You rest," Reed said firmly. "You’ve done enough. We can handle the remainder."
Reed went back to the airlock. Jamie gulped down his reconstituted eggs and lemon-laced tea, then made his way forward. Ivshenko grinned at him as he ducked into the cockpit. The cosmonaut’s left leg was encased in a rigid plastic cast that stuck out awkwardly. Jamie was careful not to bang it as he slipped into the left-hand seat.
Through the bulbous canopy Jamie could see the winch line stretching tautly to the mired rover, on the far side of the dust-drowned crater.
"Connors is fully suited up," Ivshenko said.
"What about Joanna and Ilona?" Jamie asked as he clamped on a headphone set.
"Dr. Malater is apparently too sick to get out of her bunk without help. Dr. Brumado seems somewhat better than that, but not much."
"Maybe I ought to go back there and help them."
"You stay here," Ivshenko said firmly. "Mikhail Andreivitch gave strict orders. He will get the job done."
Jamie felt his body tense with something between frustration and guilt. He wanted to be helping, to be active, not sitting like a spectator. But a part of his mind told him, You’re in no shape to go outside again. You’ve done your share. You can’t do it all. Let the others help. The tension eased away.
Reluctantly, he accepted the situation and sat there in the cockpit, listening to the chatter among the people in the other rover. Joanna refused to go without her sample cases, the boxes that contained the precious specimens of Martian lichen. Jamie listened to their argument over the intercom radio link. Joanna’s voice was weak, exhausted, breathless. Yet her will was stronger than the toughest steel. She absolutely refused to leave the rover without the sample cases.