"They are safe," he said, the three most wonderful words he had ever spoken. "Dr. Waterman carried the cable line to the second rover and cosmonaut Vosnesensky has brought the others to their vehicle. They have started on their way back to the dome."
He could not see the pack of reporters beyond the glare of the TV lights, but he heard them sigh audibly, then break into spontaneous applause. Brumado felt surprised at that; then he wondered if they were applauding the good news or his own performance. The good news, of course. Joanna is safe. She will live. He stood up on weak, trembling legs and raised both his hands.
"If you will excuse me, I would like to take a break now. The public-information people at Johnson can take over, if you would be kind enough to go there."
They applauded again, startling him anew. This time he realized it was for him. Alberto Brumado smiled boyishly and realized he needed to go to the toilet very badly.
Edith, standing off to one side of the dais, knew that Brumado would immediately want to speak to his daughter. She intended to be there when he did. It would be her chance to see Jamie.
He’s safe, Edith said to herself. And a hero. She felt proud of him. And of Alberto, who had turned this near disaster into a global media triumph.
It was only then, after more than twelve nonstop hours, that Edith began to think about how this event could be used to further her own career.
SOL 45: MORNING
Everyone feels so damned happy to be leaving, Jamie thought. Why don’t I?
They had packed their specimens and computer disks aboard the ascent modules of the L/AVs. All the lab equipment and what remained of their supplies had been carefully covered and sealed, to be left inside the dome with the furniture and life-support equipment, ready to be used by the next explorers — if there was to be a second Mars expedition.
Jamie felt as if he were leaving a home he had lived in all his life. He remembered the hollow, almost frightened feeling in the pit of his stomach the day he and his parents had left Santa Fe for their new home in Berkeley. He had been five years old then. Funny the things you remember, he thought.
The dome echoed now with emptiness. He felt sad, despondent about it.
"Message coming in for you," Ollie Zieman told him, startling Jamie out of his reverie. The astronaut was manning the communications console until the last L/AV was ready to lift off.
Jamie followed him to the comm center and sat in front of the main console. He was surprised to see Edith’s face on the screen.
She looked very tired, as if she had not slept for days. But happy.
"Jamie, I’ve been trying to get through to you for five days now. The project people have finally let me send a personal message to y’all. We — Alberto and me — we’ve been on the air almost nonstop, trying to do what you guys call damage control for the project. Alberto gave them a blow-by-blow account of your rescue, and I saw to it that his version of what happened to y’all got out on the air before anybody else had a chance to say diddly-squat."
Jamie grinned at her image. No matter what she was doing with her private life, Edith had become part of the Mars team.
"Now, they only gave me a minute of their precious transmission time, so all I got time to say is — I’ll be waiting for you in Washington when you got back. I’ll be the full-time regular space correspondent for Cable News, and I expect to get a private and exclusive interview with you. Don’t matter who else you been talking to, if you get what I mean. I want to interview you. Understand me?"
She looked out from the screen expectantly. Jamie glanced over his shoulder at Zieman, who busily pretended not to have been eavesdropping.
"Okay," Jamie said, knowing it would take more than twelve minutes for his words to reach Edith. "A complete and exclusive interview. Like the one we did in Galveston when I found out that I’d been selected for the landing team. Maybe you can arrange to meet us at the space station. Zero gravity can be a lot of fun."
He sensed another person standing behind him. Turning in the chair, he saw it was Joanna, looking at him with a strange, quizzical smile playing on her lips. She held up the fingers of both hands to him. Nine fingers. We’ll be in transit for nine months, Jamie translated her silent message.
Joanna walked away, still smiling. And Jamie realized that she was telling him that the trip back home was going to be very different from the voyage outward.
"It is time to suit up," Vosnesensky said.
For the last time, Jamie said to himself. One final hour or so in the hard suits and then we’ll be aboard the spacecraft and ready to start for home. Everyone headed for the airlock and the racks of hard suits waiting for them.
Zieman and Dr. Yang went with Tony Reed, the diminutive Chinese physician walking in front of the Englishman, the husky astronaut behind him. Like a prisoner under house arrest, Jamie thought. They’re already blaming him for the scurvy outbreak. They’ll want a scapegoat back on Earth and they’ve decided it’s going to be Tony.
Reed looked pale and withdrawn, but when he saw Jamie coming up beside him his old crooked little smile returned. "My god, James, you look positively morose. Don’t you want to go home?"
"Sure I do." But Jamie knew it was only partially true.
"You want to continue exploring Mars, don’t you?" Reed said.
"Don’t you?"
"No thanks," Reed said fervently. "I’ve had enough of this dust bowl. I’m looking forward to England and rain and flower gardens."
Jamie thought of the desert where his Navaho ancestors lived. How much like Mars it is; yet how different.
"If you’re feeling so melancholy," Reed jibed, "then perhaps you ought to stay here."
"I wish I could," Jamie admitted.
Reed hiked an eyebrow.
"How are you doing, Tony?" Jamie asked.
"I’m fine. Don’t worry about me."
Jamie said, "I’m going to have a long talk with Dr. Li, once we get back into orbit. And with the mission controllers."
"On my behalf?"
"Right."
"Don’t bother."
"I damned well will bother," Jamie said, with quiet intensity. "I’ll take it all the way up to the project directors, if I have to."
"Don’t be silly," said Reed. "And don’t give me that ‘you saved my life’ business again."
"But they’re going to make you the scapegoat for everything that went wrong with the mission!"
Reed’s smile turned bitter. "What of it? The mission needs a sacrificial lamb, doesn’t it? One man killed in orbit. The entire ground team nearly killed by a stupid mistake. You can be the mission’s hero, James. I’ll be the goat."
"That’s not right. It’s not fair."
Reed’s smile turned sour. "Perhaps you’d better stay, then, my heroic friend. That’s the only way you’re going to get to explore more of this miserable ball of rust. Once we get back home and they start dissecting all the mistakes we’ve made, there will never be another expedition to Mars. Never."
Jamie saw that the others had gathered around them, faces questioning. Even Vosnesensky looked doubtful, scowling worriedly. They had reached the row of lockers where their dust-spattered hard suits waited like the battered armor of knights who had sought the Holy Grail.
Jamie turned around to face Reed. Calmly, quietly, he said, "There will be no scapegoats among us. Not among us. We’re a team. Even when we get back to Earth we’re still a team. Without heroes and without goats."
"I wish that could be true, Jamie," said Reed, with real yearning in his voice.
"It will be."