Damned tough to see the ground inside the suit, Jamie grumbled silently. Hardly any flexibility at all. Whoever designed these aluminum cans wasn’t thinking about the work we have to do while we’re inside them.
Toshima was busily setting up a weather station about twenty meters from the dome, on the side away from the two landing vehicles. His peach-colored suit blended with the rust-red background much better than Jamie would have thought. He’s camouflaged. That could be a problem. The suit colors had been picked to stand out clearly against the Martian landscape. Who the hell okayed peach?
Ilona was scooping up the loose sandy soil with a small shovel and pouring it into a box. She, Joanna, and Monique were going to try to raise an assortment of beans, squash, peas, and cucumbers inside the dome, using as much of the native Martian resources as possible — including water, if they found any. One of the goals of their research was to see how the lighter Martian gravity would affect plant growth and size. They expected to bring their small agricultural test facility back to the orbiting spacecraft with them and continue the experiment on the return flight to Earth.
They’ll have to bake the oxides out of the soil first, Jamie knew. Otherwise it’ll be like planting seeds in bleach.
He turned his attention to the rocks. There was certainly no shortage of them. Big blocks more than a meter wide, plenty of smaller stuff down to the size of pebbles. Many of the rocks looked pitted, etched by weathering. Couldn’t be rain, Jamie thought. Hasn’t rained here in a billion years, I’d bet. There was frost on winter mornings, though. The rocks expanded in the day’s heat, such as it was, and contracted during the bitterly cold nights.
But that wouldn’t pit them, Jamie thought. They ought to crack laterally and flake, not get pitted like golf balls. If they were volcanic, then the pitting could be from gases trapped inside the rocks bubbling out and escaping. Could they have been thrown all the way out here from the volcanoes six or seven hundred kilometers away? Or had they been blasted out of the ground by ancient meteor strikes and thrown clear of the atmosphere, reentering afterward like ballistic missiles?
He filled the two sacks he had brought with him with rocks of varying sizes, then realized with a start that he had been out for more than three hours. The sun was almost directly overhead, a strangely tiny and pale imitation of the sun he had known, shining weakly out of the salmon-colored sky.
Turning, he could no longer see the dome, although the blunt cylindrical tops of the two landers were still visible. In the distance he saw one of the unmanned spacecraft, its big cargo hatch gaping open, empty.
The horizon is shorter here, he reminded himself. Turn around, get yourself oriented properly.
"Waterman, you are out of range of the monitor cameras." Vosnesensky’s voice sounded more annoyed than worried. "Can you hear me?"
"Yes, loud and clear."
"You are almost at the limit of safe walk-back distance. Come back toward the dome."
Jamie felt almost glad that he was being commanded to come back. It was one thing to be alone back home, in the mountains or desert scrubland. Out here, in this strange world without air to breathe or water to drink, Jamie had been almost frightened.
And yet — it felt good to be alone, away from the others. Solitude had been rare, nonexistent, over the past several years. Jamie stood as tall as his suit would allow and gazed out toward the beckoning horizon, his back to the dome and the others. Even inside the hard shell of his suit he strove to get a feeling for this Martian landscape, a sense of harmony with this strange new world.
Then he saw a patch of green.
TV SCRIPT
During initial excursion on Sol 3 pilot/astronaut P. Connors will demonstrate on camera the following:
1. Colors of Martian landscape. Pan camera to show ground color and color of sky.
2. A Martian rock. Pick up moderate-sized rock, show it to camera. Explain that red color is from oxidation of iron-based minerals.
3. Temperature. Place thermometer on ground, show temperature (approximately 60–70 degrees Fahrenheit). Lift thermometer to eye level, show mercury dropping to zero or below. Explain that this phenomenon is due to low heat-retention capacity of thin Martian atmosphere.
4. Low air pressure. Open flask of ordinary water and let camera see that it immediately boils, even at temperature of zero or below, because of extremely low air pressure. Explain that same would happen to blood in body if not protected by pressurized hard suit.
5. Low gravity. Drop rock hammer to show that it falls more slowly than similar object on Earth, although faster than on Moon. (Contrast with earlier videotape of Astronaut Connors dropping same rock hammer when on Moon.]
6. Moon of Mars. If visible against daylight sky, show inner moon, Phobos, as it rises in west and crosses Martian sky in four hours. (It is not necessary to show entire four-hour transit. Use telescopic lens to show Phobos changing phase from "new" to "quarter" to "full." Tape can be edited to fit time allowed for broadcast.)
SOL 3: NOON
Jamie’s first instinct was to blink and rub his eyes, but his gloved hands bumped into the transparent visor of his helmet.
He stared at the rock. It was roughly two feet long, flat-topped and oblong. Its sides looked smooth, not pitted like most of the other rocks. And on one side of it there was a distinct patch of green.
He walked slowly around it, stepping over other small rocks and around the larger ones that were strewn everywhere. There was no green anywhere else. If I’d come up on the other side of it I’d never have noticed the color, he realized.
One rock. With a little area of green on one of its flat sides. One rock out of thousands. One bit of color in a world of rusty reds.
"Waterman, I do not see you," Vosnesensky called.
"I’ve found something."
"Come back toward the dome."
"I’ve found some green," Jamie said, annoyed.
"What?"
"Green."
"Where are you?"
"What do you mean? What is it?"
Jamie scanned the area around him. "Can you see the big boulder with the cleft in its top?"
"No. Where…"
"I can!" Joanna’s voice, brimming with excitement. "Just to the west of the second lander. See it?"
"Ah, yes," said Monique.
"This way," Joanna called.
Within a minute seven hard-suited figures appeared over the horizon just to the right of the cleft boulder. Jamie waved to them and they waved back.
Then he turned to the rock, his rock. Sinking slowly to his knees in the awkward suit, he leaned as close to it as he dared. He almost expected to see ants or their Martian equivalent busily scurrying around the ground.
What he saw, instead, was nothing but the powdery red sand and the rust-colored rock with a streak of green running down its flattish side. Christ, it looks like a little vein of copper that’s been exposed to the air. But then Jamie remembered that there was precious little oxygen in the Martian air. Enough to turn a vein of copper green? How long had the vein been exposed to the air? Ten thousand years? Ten million?
He leaned back on his haunches, his back to the approaching scientists.
"Where is it?" Joanna asked breathlessly.
"You look as if you’re praying," said Naguib’s reedy nasal voice. "Has it made a believer of you?"
"Don’t get too worked up," Jamie told them, looking up as they surrounded him and the rock. "I think it’s just a streak of oxidized copper."