Jamie sipped at the wine gratefully. He had put his helmet on the table in front of him. Its curving back held a long thin gouge, blackened as if a miniature incendiary bullet had grazed it. If it had been a little bigger, a little more energetic, it would have blown my head off, he knew. Jamie stared at the damaged helmet, his insides hollow. Just a little bigger…
"You are a fortunate fellow, Jamie," Vosnesensky called from the other end of the table. "A very lucky fellow."
Pete Connors said, "Well, the suits are built to take small meteorite hits. Jamie was in no real danger."
Not much, Jamie said to himself.
Vosnesensky made a rare grin. "I did not mean he is lucky to have survived. I know the suits can protect against such things. He is lucky to have been hit! Do you know the odds against being struck by a meteorite? Fantastic! Astronomical! I salute you, Jamie."
And the Russian raised his plastic glass again, while the others chuckled tolerantly.
"Perhaps you should place a bet on the next Irish Sweepstakes," Reed suggested.
Jamie shook his head. "No thanks. One stroke of luck like this is enough for me."
"To think of the odds," Vosnesensky kept muttering.
Mironov said, "Even long shots pay off, sometimes. What would you say were the odds against the only elephant in the Leningrad zoo being killed by the first cannon shell the Nazis fired into the city during the Great Patriotic War? Yet that is exactly what happened."
"They killed the elephant?" Monique asked.
"Exactly."
"No!"
"It is an historical fact."
"How long will we have to breathe pure oxygen?" Naguib asked. "I think it is giving me a headache. My sinuses hurt."
"A day or two," Vosnesensky said. "Virtually all of our nitrogen escaped. We must wait until the pumps accumulate enough nitrogen from outside to return the air mixture to normal."
"Let me take a look at you," Reed suggested.
Suddenly Naguib seemed reluctant, wary. "Oh no, it’s nothing. Just a bit of a headache. Tension, most likely."
"Still," Reed said, "if you wake up with it tomorrow I’d better examine you."
Jamie fingered the gouge on the back of his helmet. It was not deep, nowhere near serious enough to threaten the helmet’s integrity. He could wear it again if he had to. But he would use one of the spares instead. Katrin Diels had demanded that it be put aside so that she could examine it on the trip back to Earth. So had the mission controllers, once they learned of it. The hard-suit manufacturers would want to study the damage, to see how well the helmet had protected its wearer.
You’ll be famous, Jamie said to the helmet. They’ll put you in the Smithsonian. He thought of what the inside of the helmet would have looked like if the meteorite had gone all the way through. And shuddered.
"But I’m much too valuable to risk outside," Tony Reed was saying.
Looking up, Jamie realized that Ilona was teasing the Englishman.
"You haven’t been outside the dome since our second day here, Tony," she said, smiling slyly at him. "One would almost think you’re afraid to go outside."
"Nonsense!" Reed spat. "I am the team physician. I’m needed here, in my infirmary."
"Safely barricaded behind your pills and instruments," Ilona needled him. "And you even spilled all the pills, didn’t you?"
"Only one bottle," Reed answered stiffly.
"Five hundred vitamin capsules, all over the floor."
"Only a few hit the floor! Most of them stayed on my desktop, which is clean enough to eat from, I assure you."
"Yes," said Ilona mockingly. "Certainly it is. Just be certain that you don’t feed us the dirty ones."
The others were grinning, Jamie saw. Enjoying the entertainment. Usually Tony’s the one who does the needling. He’s damned uncomfortable when he’s the victim instead of the attacker.
Joanna pushed her chair back and got to her feet. "I believe I will lie down for a while."
Grateful for a way to escape Ilona’s scalpel, Reed asked swiftly, "Don’t you feel well?"
"Oh, I’m just tired," Joanna replied. "I think I’ll try to sleep."
"Without dinner?" Vosnesensky asked from down the table.
"I don’t believe I could eat anything right now. Perhaps later."
The Russian glanced at Reed but said nothing more.
As Joanna left the table, Reed turned toward Jamie. "I think we should name this meteor swarm after Jamie, here. After all, it seems to be attracted to him. The James F. Waterman Meteor Swarm."
Rava Patel said seriously, "Dr. Diels and Dr. Li are attempting to plot out its orbit. The swarm is obviously the remains of an ancient comet."
"Obviously," said Reed.
"It will be quite difficult, however," Patel went on, "to plot its orbit with so little data. The swarm is so small that it does not return radar signals very well."
Reed’s old smirk returned. "Perhaps we can stand Jamie outside again. The meteors seem to like him. Perhaps they’ll come back if he’s standing out in the open like a lightning rod."
"Or you could go out," Ilona said.
"Oh no, not me," said Reed. "Let Jamie do it. It would be the American Indians’ first contribution to the science of astronomy, you see."
"Not the first," Jamie said.
"Oh? Really?"
"The Aztecs and Incas were fine astronomers. They built observatories…"
"I don’t mean them," Reed interrupted. "They were civilized, somewhat. I meant your people, Jamie. The savages of North America."
All eyes had turned to him, Jamie realized. Tony’s got the needle out of his hide by sinking it into me.
"My ancestors watched the stars," he said, measuring his words carefully.
Reed said, "Of course they did. In the desert where they lived, what else was there to do once the sun went down? But what did they accomplish, outside of some tribal mumbo-jumbo?"
Jamie hesitated a heartbeat’s span, then answered, "They recorded the great supernova of 1054, for one thing. Carved the data into petroglyphs. Even decorated pottery bowls with accurate drawings of where and when the supernova appeared."
"Really?"
"Really." Jamie turned to the others. "The supernova of 1054 is the one that created the Crab Nebula; you can see it in a telescope today. The only other astronomers to observe the supernova were in China."
"Japan also," said Toshima.
Jamie nodded at him gravely. "Japan also. Nobody in Europe paid any attention, apparently."
"It was probably too cloudy that night," Reed said.
"The supernova was visible to the naked eye for twenty-three days," Jamie countered. "The Chinese records show that. So do the drawings my ancestors made. Even in England the sky must have been clear for part of that time, but nobody there bothered to look up. Either that, or they were too ignorant of the stars to notice a new one blazing away each night."
Ilona made a low whistle. Naguib chuckled softly. The others grinned and nodded.
Tony Reed got slowly to his feet and made a slight bow in Jamie’s direction. "Touchй," he said. "And now, if no one objects, I think I’ll make myself a spot of dinner."
One by one the others got up and began to prepare their evening meals. Jamie sat alone at the table, staring at his damaged helmet, wondering why human beings had to inflict pain on one another to gain respect.
MARS ARRIVAL
For all the months that they had coasted across the dark emptiness between worlds, the members of the expedition had watched Mars steadily grow from a bright red star to a ruddy disc to a fully three-dimensional globe that hung before their eyes like a gigantic prize waiting to be seized.