Pete Connors, the American astronaut who copiloted the lander, sat at Vosnesensky’s side and monitored the construction robot and the sensors that were sampling the thin air outside. Only the four scientists were free to watch the machine erect the first human habitation on the surface of Mars.
"We should be getting into our backpacks," said Joanna Brumado.
"Plenty of time for that," Tony Reed said.
Ilona Malater gave a wicked little laugh. "You wouldn’t want him to become angry with us, would you, Tony?" She pointed upward, toward the cockpit level.
Reed cocked an eyebrow and smiled back at her. "I don’t suppose it would do to upset him on the very first day, would it?"
Jamie took his eyes from the hard-working robot, now fitting a second heavy metal airlock into the dome’s curving structure. Without a word he squeezed past the three others and reached for the backpack to his pressure suit, hanging on its rack against the far bulkhead. Like their suits, the backpacks were color coded: Jamie’s was sky-blue. He backed against it and felt the latches click into place against the back of his hard suit. The suit itself still felt stiff, like a new pair of Levis, only worse. It took real effort to move its shoulder joints.
In the jargon of the Mars Project their vehicle was called an L/AV: landing/ascent vehicle. It had been designed for efficiency, not comfort. It was large, but most of its space was given to capacious cargo bays housing equipment and supplies for the six explorers. Atop the cargo bays, on the airlock level, the hard suits and backpacks for outside work were stored. There were four fold-down seats in the airlock level, but the compartment felt terribly crowded to Jamie when he and the three other scientists were jammed into it, especially when they were bundled inside their cumbersome hard-shell suits. Above the airlock level sat the cockpit with the cosmonaut commander and astronaut second-in-command.
If they had to, the six men and women could live for days inside this landing vehicle. The mission plan called for them to set up their base in the inflated dome that the robot was building. But they could survive in the lander, if it came to that.
Maybe. Jamie thought that if they had to spend just a few more hours cooped up in this cramped claustrophobic compartment, somebody would commit murder. It had been bad enough during the nine-month flight from Earth in the much roomier modules of the parent spacecraft. This little descent vehicle would quickly turn into a lunatic asylum if they had to live in it for days on end.
They donned the backpacks using the buddy system, as they had been trained to do, one scientist helping the other to check out all the connections to the suit batteries, heater, and air regenerator. Then check it all again. The backpacks were designed to connect automatically to ports in the pressure suit, but one tiny misalignment could kill you out on the surface of Mars.
Then they began to check the suits themselves, from the heavy boots to the marvelously thin and flexible gloves. What passed for air outside was rarer than the highest stratosphere of Earth, an unbreathable mix of mainly carbon dioxide. An unprotected human would die in an explosive agony of ruptured lungs and blood that would literally boil at such low pressure.
"What! Not ready yet!"
Vosnesensky’s deep voice grated. The Russian tried to make it sound mildly humorous, but it was clear that he had no patience with his scientific underlings. He was fully encased in his blazing red suit, backpack riding like a hump behind his shoulders, ready to go, as he clumped down the ladder from the cockpit. Connors, right behind him, was also in his clean white hard suit and backpack. Jamie wondered which genius among the administrators and psychologists back home had assigned the black astronaut to a gleaming white suit.
Jamie had helped Tony Reed and now the Englishman turned away from him to face their flight commander.
"We’ll be ready in a few moments, Mikhail Andreivitch. Please be patient with us. We’re all a bit nervous, you know."
It was not until that exact moment that the enormity of it hit Jamie. They were about to step outside this metal canister and plant their booted feet on the red soil of Mars. They were about to fulfill a dream that had haunted humankind for all the ages of existence.
And I’m a part of it, Jamie said to himself. Maybe by accident, but still I’m here. On Mars!
"You want my honest opinion? It’s crazy."
Jamie and his grandfather Al were hiking along the crest of the wooded ridge that overlooked the freshly whitewashed mission church and the clustered adobe houses of the pueblo. The first snow had dusted the mountains and the Anglo tourists would soon be arriving for the ski season. Al wore his bulky old sheepskin coat and droop-brimmed hat with the silver coin band. Jamie felt so warm in the morning sun that he had already unzipped his dark-blue NASA-issue windbreaker.
Al Waterman looked like an ancient totem pole, tall and bone-limn, his craggy face the faded tan color of weathered wood. Jamie was shorter, more solidly built, his face broader, his skin tanned an almost coppery brown. The two men shared only one feature in common: eyes as black and deep as liquid jet.
"Why is it crazy?" Jamie asked.
Al puffed out a breath of steam and turned to squint at his grand-son, standing with his back to the sun.
"The Russians are runnin’ the show, right?"
"It’s an international mission, Al. The U.S., the Russians, Japanese, lots of other countries."
"Yeah, but the Russians are callin’ most of the shots. They been shootin’ at Mars for twenty years now. More."
"But they need our help."
"And the Japs."
Jamie nodded. "But I don’t see what that’s got to do with it."
"Well, it’s like this, son. Here in the good old U.S. of A. you can get on the first team because you’re an Indian now don’t got mad at mo, sonny. I know you’re a smart geologist and all that. But being a red man hasn’t hurt you with NASA and those other government whites, has it? Equal opportunity and all that."
Jamie found himself grinning at his grandfather. Al ran a trinket shop on the plaza in Santa Fe and milked the tourists shamelessly. He harbored no ill will for the Anglos, no hostility or even bitterness. He simply used his wits and his charm to get along in the world, the same as any Yankee trader or Florida real estate agent.
"Okay," Jamie admitted, "being a Native American hasn’t hurt. But I am the best damned geologist they’ve got." That wasn’t entirely true, he knew. But close enough. Especially for family.
"Sure you are," his grandfather agreed, straight-faced. "But those Russians aren’t going to take you all the way to Mars on their ship just because you’re a red man. They’ll pick one of their own people and you’ll have spent two-three years training for nothing."
Jamie unconsciously rubbed at his nose. "Well, maybe. That’s a possibility. There are plenty of good geologists from other countries applying for the mission."
"So why break your heart? Why give them years of your life when the chances are a hundred to one against you?"
Jamie looked out past the darkly green ponderosa pines toward the rugged, weather-seamed cliffs where his ancestors had built their dwellings a thousand years ago. Turning back to his grandfather he realized that Al’s face was weathered and lined just as those cliffs were. His skin was almost the same bleached tan color.
"Because it draws me," he said. His voice was low but as firm as the mountains themselves. "Mars is drawing me to it."
Al gave him a puzzled, almost troubled look.
"I mean," Jamie tried to explain, "who am I, Al? What am I? A scientist, a white man, a Navaho — I don’t really know who I am yet. I’m nearly thirty years old and I’m a nobody. Just another assistant professor digging up rocks. There’s a million guys just like me."