Mars

Brumado brushed his upper lip with a fingertip, a throwback to his youth when he had sported a luxuriant moustache.

"The sixteen includes Hoffman himself. Did he vote?"

Joanna laughed. "No. Of course not. We did not ask him."

"Why?" her father asked. "What is the reason for this?"

She made a small sigh. "None of us really likes Hoffman. He is a very difficult personality. We feel that it will be impossible to work with him under the very close conditions of the mission."

"But why wait until now? Why didn’t you say something sooner?"

"We thought that Father DiNardo could keep Hoffman under control. Hoffman admired DiNardo, looked up to him. But the thought of having Hoffman without Father DiNardo — having him as the prime geologist for the mission — we realized we could not stand that. He would be insufferable. Unbearable."

Brumado said nothing, thinking: I’m not going into space with them. I’m not going to be cooped up inside a spacecraft for nearly two years with someone I can’t stand.

"Besides," his daughter went on, "Hoffman was chosen mainly for political reasons. You know that."

"He is an excellent geologist," Brumado replied absently, thinking now about the difficulties he was asking his daughter to face. Two years in space. The stresses. The dangers.

"There are other geologists who have gone through training with us." Joanna said, leaning slightly closer to her father. "O’Hara is from Australia. He can move up. And there is that Navaho mestizo, Waterman."

Brumado’s attention suddenly focused on his daughter’s eyes. "The man who stayed on at McMurdo to help your group through your Antarctic training."

"And the following groups. Yes, him."

"And O’Hara."

"Waterman has done extensive work on meteor impacts. He even found a Martian meteorite in Antarctica, although Hoffman took the credit for it."

"Is he the man you want?"

She pulled back again. "I think he is the best-qualified person, isn’t he? And everyone seemed to get along with him very well."

"But he’s an American," Brumado muttered. "The politicians don’t want more Americans than Russians. Or vice versa."

"He’s an American Indian, Papa. It’s not really the same thing. And O’Hara will make the Australians happy."

"The politicians wanted Hoffman to help represent Europe."

"We already have a Greek, a Pole, and a German to represent Europe. As well as an Englishman. If Hoffman goes on the mission there will be trouble," Joanna said firmly. "His psychological profile is awful! We have tried to work with him, Papa. He is simply unbearable!"

"So you took a vote."

"Yes. We have decided. If Hoffman is chosen there are at least eleven of us who will resign from the program immediately."

Again Brumado fell silent. He did not know what to say, how to handle this situation.

"Ask Antony Reed," Joanna suggested. "He has had more training in psychology than any of the others selected for the mission. It was his idea to take the vote."

"Was it?"

"Yes! I didn’t do all this by myself, Papa. Most of the others cannot stand Hoffman."

Brumado got up slowly and went to the desk. Picking up the telephone, he asked the man who answered to find Dr. Reed. The Englishman opened the office door before Brumado could return to the conference table. My god, he thought, they must all be sitting in the outer office. I wonder if Hoffman is there too.

Reed seemed faintly amused by it all.

"None of us can get along with Hoffman," he said, smiling slightly as he sat relaxed in a chair across the table from Brumado and his daughter. "Frankly, I think bringing him along to Mars would be a disaster. Always have."

"But he passed all the psychological tests."

Reed arched an eyebrow. "So would a properly motivated chimpanzee. But you wouldn’t want to live in the same cage with him, would you?"

"You’ve all been filling out cross-evaluation reports for the past two years!" Brumado heard his own voice rising with more than a hint of anger in it. He forced it down. "I admit that the reports written about Professor Hoffman have not been glowing, but there has been no hint that he was so disliked."

"I can tell you about those evaluation reports," Reed said, almost smirking. "No one ever expressed their true feelings in the reports. Not in writing. There is enormous psychological pressure to put a good face on everything. Every one of us realized straight from the outset that those reports would be a reflection on the person who wrote them as much as on the person they were writing about."

Brumado thought, We should have realized that from the beginning. These are very bright men and women, bright enough to see all the possibilities.

Reed continued, "To borrow a phrase from Scotland Yard, we understood that anything we wrote in those evaluation forms might be taken down in evidence and used against us."

With a shake of his head, Brumado said, "I still can’t understand why you waited until this very last moment to bring your opposition out into the open."

"Two reasons, actually," said Reed. "First, we all expected that DiNardo could keep Hoffman under control. Our good priest seemed to have a calming effect on the Austrian, rather like old Hindenburg had on Hitler."

Joanna barely suppressed a giggle.

"Second, I suppose that none of us actually faced up to the awful possibility of spending nearly two years living cheek-by-jowl with Hoffman until this very weekend. With the final decisions made and DiNardo packing off to hospital — well, I suppose it suddenly dawned on us that Hoffman simply wouldn’t do."

"How do I tell this to Professor Hoffman?" Brumado asked softly.

"Oh, I’d be willing to tackle that chore," Reed said at once. "I’d be almost happy to do it."

Brumado shook his head sadly. "No. It is not your responsibility."

He dismissed Reed and asked Dr. Li to come back into the office.

With Joanna still sitting beside him, Brumado said wearily, "I suppose there is no way around it. Professor Hoffman will have to be told."

Li seemed to have calmed down considerably. His mask of impassivity was in place once more.

"It is my duty to inform him," Li said.

"If you like, I will explain it to him," said Brumado.

With a quick glance at Joanna, Li murmured, "As you wish."

Hoffman looked as tense as a stalking leopard when he entered the office. He stood a moment at the door, eyeing Li, Brumado, and Joanna with unconcealed suspicion. Short, round-shouldered, his round pie face pale with tension. He was wearing a powder-blue cardigan sweater buttoned neatly over a shirt and tie striped yellow and red. His slacks were dark blue, almost black.

"Please," called Brumado from the conference table, "come in and sit down."

Li was standing at the end of the table, as far from the door as possible. Joanna still sat next to her father, turned toward Hoffman so that Brumado could not see her face.

As if stepping through a minefield Hoffman walked across the carpeted floor and pulled out the chair at the head of the table. He sat down.

"We have run into a difficulty," said Brumado, trying to smile disarmingly and not quite making it.

"They are all against me. I know that."

Brumado felt his eyebrows rise. "We must think of the good of the mission. That is our paramount duty."

Hoffman’s face twisted. "I was chosen by the selection board. I demand that their choice be upheld!"