"Looks like a major dust storm blowing from northwest to southeast. Front’s at least three-four hundred klicks wide." He checked his navigation screen, to his right on the control panel. "Location about longitude sixty, latitude thirty, thirty-one. Speed of advance must be fifty to a hundred kilometers per hour." Then he grinned and added, "Tether the camels."
In addition to its usual complement of sensing instruments, RPV-1 carried beneath its belly a special payload, a tiny oblong aluminum box. Inside was a stainless steel plaque, small enough to fit into the palm of a man’s hand. On it was inscribed:
Connors had never met Thomas A. Mutch. The NASA scientist had been killed in a mountain-climbing accident only a few years after the first automated lander had set down on the surface of Mars, in 1976. That primitive lander, known originally as Viking 1, had been renamed the Thomas A. Mutch Memorial Station shortly afterward. The plaque had been made then, when Connors was still a kid just starting to buzz the farms of Cheyenne County, Nebraska.
Now he guided the remotely piloted Little Beauty to longitude 47°97’, latitude 22°49’ north, the location where the faithful old Viking still stood on its spraddling legs after more than thirty years. Connors was to land the little plane there and detach the box with the plaque inside it, then wait until morning to take off and return to home base.
There was one further line etched into the stainless steel plaque. It read: "Emplaced," with the space following it left blank. The date was to be filled in when human explorers finally reached the Viking lander, a feat that was not in the schedule for this first exploration mission.
Connors’s face clouded slightly. He wished he were truly flying this plane, actually on board at its controls, really there so he could land her and bolt that plaque to the old spacecraft and scratch in the date.
SOL 14: MORNING
There’s no such thing as a private communication here, Jamie thought as he sat at the comm console. Vosnesensky was at his side, Tony Reed, Patel, Naguib, and Monique Bonnet standing behind him.
On the display screen in the center of all the communications equipment was the neatly bearded face of Alberto Brumado, his hair slightly tousled as usual, his smile just a little desperate.
For most of the day they had reviewed the arguments for and against returning to Tithonium Chasma to investigate Jamie’s "village." Like all the others, Brumado had been against it.
"All the available evidence," he had said in his mild, fatherly way, "points toward its being a natural phenomenon. We cannot upset the mission schedule with another unplanned excursion."
That word another rankled Jamie. If it hadn’t been for my insisting on going out to the canyon in the first place we would never have seen the village at all.
Then Brumado had surprised them all by saying, "I would like to speak with Dr. Waterman in private, if I may."
Jamie felt the others stir behind him. He glanced at Vosnesensky, who pursed his lips, his face glowering with suspicion.
But he said, "Of course," as if Brumado could hear him without waiting another dozen minutes. Turning to Jamie, the cosmonaut said, "You can speak with Dr. Brumado in your own quarters. I will see that no one else uses this frequency."
"Thanks, Mikhail." Jamie hurried back to his cubicle, thinking of how many hours of useful work had already been ruined in debate.
He pulled his laptop computer from the tiny desk and stretched out with it on his bunk. There was no way to scramble a conversation; if anyone wanted to eavesdrop all they had to do was turn on their own unit to the same frequency. But the other scientists were heading for their various duties, already behind schedule, and Vosnesensky would guard the main comm console with the single-minded fervor of a Cossack protecting his tsar.
So Jamie hoped.
Brumado’s face took form on the laptop’s small screen. For an instant Jamie felt almost ridiculous. Alone at last, he wanted to say.
Instead, "You can go ahead now, Dr. Brumado. No one else is on this frequency."
Then the minutes ticked by. It took more than ten minutes now for a transmission to span the widening gulf between the two planets; twenty-some minutes of lag in each two-way conversation. Jamie watched Brumado carefully; the man merely sat there looking into the screen, waiting with the patience of a true Indian. Maybe he’s using his screen to display other data while he’s waiting for my transmission to reach him, Jamie thought. But Brumado’s eyes did not scan back and forth as they would if he were reading.
Jamie got up from the bunk, found the earphone attachment in his desk drawer and plugged it into the laptop. At least nobody could eavesdrop on Brumado’s end of their conversation, he thought as he settled back on the bunk again.
I ought to answer Edith’s message, he remembered. And send something to Mom and Dad. He had not expected his parents to try to contact him; they would expect him to call them, he knew. It always worked that way. Why should Mars be any different? And Al. What can I say to him that will mean anything? Having a wonderful time, wish you were here? Jamie grinned to himself. Al would play the tape in his store; the only shop on the plaza that gets messages from Mars.
At last Brumado came to life with a slow smile. "Thank you, Jamie. You don’t mind if I call you Jamie, do you? Joanna told me that is the name you prefer."
"Sure, that’s fine."
Again the wait. Jamie put Brumado’s image into a small window in one corner of the little computer’s screen and called up the mission schedule. He spent the time studying the schedule, looking for tasks that might be delayed or deleted altogether to make room for another traverse to the Grand Canyon.
"I must speak to you about politics," Brumado said at last. "Because of the long transmission lag, please bear with me and hear what I have to say. When I am finished you can tell me how my proposal strikes you."
Jamie nodded and muttered, "Okay," even though Brumado did not wait for a reply.
"I have spoken directly with your Vice-President," Brumado went on, "and several times more with her senior aides. She is willing to make a major commitment to the continued exploration of Mars — if you will make a statement supporting her candidacy for the White House in next year’s election,"
Jamie felt his eyebrows crawling toward his scalp. Me? Make a statement supporting her? Why me? Why do they think anything I have to say would be important?
"What she wants is a written statement from you," Brumado went on, "which she will hold until your expedition returns to Earth. At that time, when you are safely back home, she will expect you to make your statement public. In the meantime she will go on record as supporting further expeditions to Mars. I have suggested that she make a speech on the fiftieth anniversary of the first American satellite launch. I believe she will agree to that."
Jamie felt confused. All this because of the Navaho words I spoke when we landed? How in hell could this kind of maneuvering come out of three words?
Brumado had stopped talking. He was watching the screen expectantly.
Jamie took a deep breath. "I don’t understand what’s going on, or how things got to be this way. I sure want to see further expeditions come to Mars, but I don’t see what my political support has to do with it."