"Hello," he said.
She whirled, startled, then relaxed and smiled. "Jamie. What are you doing up here?"
"Same as you, I guess."
"I thought this was my private hideaway." Ilona’s voice was a rich, throaty contralto.
With a rueful grin Jamie said, "Me too." He hesitated, then offered, "I can go back…"
"No, that’s all right." She smiled back at Jamie. "Perhaps I need someone to talk to more than I need solitude."
The only light in the area came from the faintly glowing guide strips on the floor. And the starlight. Barely enough to see her face, to catch the expression in her eyes. The electrical hum that pervaded the spacecraft seemed fainter here, muted.
"You heard about Hoffman?" Jamie asked.
"What has he done now?"
"He’s had a nervous breakdown."
Ilona arched an eyebrow. "Serves him right, the pig."
"That’s a hell of an attitude!"
"He was a womanizer. I imagine he’s the terror of the female undergraduates wherever he teaches."
Jamie blinked at her. He had never thought of Hoffman as anything but a geologist who stood between himself and Mars.
"He tried to seduce every woman he met during training."
"He hit on you?"
Ilona laughed. "He tried to. I hit him back. I told him that if he could not satisfy his wife why did he think he could satisfy me? He never spoke another word to me."
Jamie thought it less than funny. There was a fierceness in this woman that he had never suspected, an anger seething within her.
Then it occurred to him. "He must have hit on Joanna too."
"Yes. Certainly."
That’s why Joanna wanted him off the mission, Jamie said to himself. Not to get me aboard. Just to get rid of a man who bothered her.
He felt suddenly awkward. There was no place to sit except the chill metal floor, no one to turn to for support. He looked out the non-reflective window and saw nothing but the starry emptiness; the Mars 2 craft was out of sight, literally over their heads.
"Is Hoffman’s breakdown what brought you up here?" Ilona asked.
Jamie nodded. "And you?"
"I had to get away," she said, her voice lowering. "I am becoming depressed."
"Why? What’s wrong?"
"Mars is wrong. I am wrong. It was wrong to include a biochemist on this expedition. There is no life on Mars for me to study."
"We don’t know that for certain," Jamie said. "Not yet."
"Don’t we?" Ilona spoke the words with a weary sigh. Then she turned and stretched her arm toward a glowing ruddy point of light swinging past in the starry blackness.
"Look at the planet, Jamie. Think of all the rocks and soil samples and photographs we have studied. We get new photos and data every day from the orbiters they’ve put around the planet. Not a trace of life. Nothing. Mars is absolutely barren. Lifeless."
He turned from the red glow of Mars to focus on her sorrowing face once more. "But we’ve only had a few dozen samples. You’re talking about a whole world. There must be…"
She laid a long manicured finger on Jamie’s lips, silencing him. "You have heard of Gaia?" Ilona asked.
Jamie said, "The idea that the Earth is a living entity?"
Ilona gave him a scant smile. "That’s close. Not bad for a geologist."
He found himself grinning back at her. "All right, what about Gaia? And what’s it got to do with Mars?"
"The Gaia hypothesis states that all life on Earth works together as a self-regulating feedback system that maintains itself. No single species of life — not even the human race — lives in isolation. All species are part of the whole, part of the totally integrated living Gaia."
"I don’t see what that’s got to do with Mars," Jamie said.
"Life has spread itself all across the Earth," Ilona replied. "Down in the deepest ocean trenches there is life. The air teems with microorganisms, even up in the stratosphere there are yeast molds floating about. Even in the most barren Antarctic deserts there are rocks that hold colonies of lichens just below their surfaces."
"And Mars looks barren."
"Mars is barren. The probes have found nothing in the air. There is no liquid water. The soil is so loaded with superoxides it’s like an intense bleach; no living organism could survive in it."
"Some of the rocks bear organic chemicals," Jamie reminded her. — "But if life existed on Mars it would not be confined to one place!" Ilona’s husky voice was almost pleading now. "If there were a Martian equivalent of Gaia we would see life everywhere we looked, just as we do on Earth."
Stubbornly Jamie shook his head. "But Earth is warmer, Earth has liquid water everywhere you look, it’s easy for life to grow and spread on Earth. Mars isn’t that rich. Life would have a tougher time there."
Ilona shook her head too. "No, I don’t believe that’s the reason why Mars looks so bleak. The planet is truly barren. There is no life there and there probably never was. I have wasted the past three years of my life. Sending anyone involved in biology was a mistake."
She stood there framed by the oblong window, the slowly circling stars behind her. Ilona no longer looked haughty or regal. She looked depressed, disheartened.
Jamie shrugged and muttered, "I don’t think you can give up before you’ve even started. No matter what you believe you can’t really say anything definite until you’ve gotten there and looked for yourself. Mars probably has a few surprises in store for you. For all of us."
"Perhaps." Ilona sighed again. Then she wrapped her arms around herself and shivered. "It’s always so cold in here! I should have worn my thermal underwear."
"I’m sorry I don’t have a sweater or jacket…"
"It’s my own fault," she said. "I acted on impulse, coming here in just these coveralls."
Jamie grinned at her. "That’s against the rules. How many times has Vosnesensky drilled it into us: think ten times before you do anything."
"Vosnesensky." She growled the name, like a lioness snarling.
"What’s wrong with Mikhail?" Jamie asked. "He doesn’t seem like such a bad guy to me."
"He is a Russian."
"So what?"
"Half my family was murdered by Russians in nineteen fifty-six. My grandmother barely escaped the country. My grandfather was hanged. As if he were a criminal, the Russians hanged him."
"That wasn’t Vosnesensky’s fault. Russia’s changed a lot since then. So has Hungary. It all happened half a century ago."
"It’s easy for you Americans to forgive and forget. Not so easy for me and my people."
Jamie did not know what to say. There’s nothing I can say, he realized. For several moments they stood facing each other while the stars arced around them and the background buzz of electrical equipment hummed its faint note like a distant chorus of Tibetan lamas droning a mantra.
Ilona shuddered. "It is cold up here." She moved closer to Jamie, pressed against him.
"We could go back," Jamie said. Yet he slid one arm around her waist. It seemed the right thing to do.
"No, not yet. I have been worried about you," said Ilona. Her voice was low, sensuous. Her face so close to Jamie’s that he could smell the faint perfume in her honey-blonde hair.
"Worried about me?"
"You seem… withdrawn. Lonely."
He made half a shrug. "We’re a long way from home."
"You avoid us."
"Avoid you?" Jamie felt stupid repeating her words, but she was catching him unprepared.