Tony had been secretly frightened at the thought of going away to university, but he quickly found that campus life was unalloyed joy. It was ludicrously easy to become the center of everyone’s attention, the undisputed leader of his set. The other students seemed mostly dull, fit only to be the brunt of his practical jokes or the victims of his cruel wit. The more he humiliated them, the more they kowtowed to him, seeking his favor, turning themselves into lackeys to escape his annoyance.
It was something of a surprise to Tony that women fell for him so easily. They mistook his disguise of self-assurance and his utter self-interest for sophistication. Tony delighted in this reaffirmation that women could be manipulated more easily than men.
The only one in his class who did not bow to him was a stubborn, stolid son of a Manchester factory worker who ignored the campus’s social life and stuck to his books with the single-minded intensity of desperation. He seemed as unimaginative and cautious as a peasant, yet he never fell for any of Tony’s little schemes. He always detected the bucket of water balanced atop the half-opened door. He never fell for the compliant young ladies that Tony sent to tempt him. When he found his bed soaked in beer he patiently, uncomplainingly turned over the mattress and changed the linen and showed up in class the next morning as if nothing had happened.
Tony graduated second in his class. The peasant somehow took first honors. He infuriated Tony. Yet they had never exchanged more words than the common civilities in all the four years of college. Tony never saw him again after graduation, and he was glad of it.
"Travel to India?" His father was nearly apoplectic. "You’re going to medical school, young man! You’ve been accepted at my old college and, by damn, that’s where you are going and nowhere else!"
"But I don’t think I’m ready yet…"
"Bah! I know you, you schemer. You’re terrified that you might actually have to knuckle down and study. Frightened of hard work, that’s what you are. Do you good, a bit of hard work. It’s medical school for you, my boy. I won’t listen to another word."
Thus Tony went to medical school. His father had been right; he was filled with trepidation. Once there, however, Tony found it was even more of a lark than the university. There were crib books and test cassettes for sale almost openly. Yet after the first few months Tony found himself becoming genuinely fascinated with the study of the human body. To his utter surprise he found that he enjoyed learning. He actually began to work hard at his studies. He wanted to excel.
And there was always Mars — hovering in the background of his thoughts, hanging just over the horizon of his existence. He would forget about it for long months, for years even, and then suddenly a news broadcast would show another rocket lifting off in a roar of flame and steam to carry a robot landing vehicle to the red planet. Or a guest lecturer would speak on the problems of medicine in the microgravity environment of a space station and mention in passing the similar problems to be encountered on a mission to Mars. Or Alberto Brumado, gray now but still sparkling with youthful zeal, would host a telly special about the origin of life on Earth and ask wistfully if it were possible that life had arisen on Mars too.
His father was shocked and angered when Tony refused to step into the family practice.
Red-faced, portly with years and too much living, sputtering with rage, his father roared, "I’ve spent my entire life building up this practice! You must carry it on!"
Tony smiled coolly, trying to hide the terror that his father’s wrath always stirred inside him. "Father, there’s nothing for it. I am not going to follow in your sacred footsteps."
"What’s the matter with you?" his father roared. "Afraid of a little blood? Is that it? Surgery scares the liver out of you, eh? Damned sniveling coward!"
Tony stood his ground.
"By god, at your age I was sewing up wounded men on a hospital ship in the middle of the South Atlantic winter storms."
"You’ve told us of your glorious exploits in the Falklands War many times, Father."
"You’re a coward! A damned trembling, shaking little coward!" The old man turned on his wife. "You’ve raised a coward for a son."
Tony felt his blood turn to flame. "Don’t bully her!"
His father stared at him for a long moment, then with an exasperated grunt he stormed out of the room. Tony turned to his mother, sitting silently, patiently. They heard the front door open and then slam shut.
"You don’t think I’m a coward, do you?" Tony asked his mama.
"Of course not, dear."
Two days later Tony applied for a post in the British government’s space program. Within a fortnight he received notification that he had been tentatively accepted; he was to report to the training center for tests and evaluation. His father was not home when the letter came; there was no one in the house except Tony and his mother.
"They need physicians," he told her, still aching with wounded pride. "I may very well be selected for the Mars training team if Britain joins the program."
He had expected that she would be horrified, break into tears, beg him to reconsider. Instead his mother smiled and kissed him on the forehead and told him that whatever he wanted to do was what he should do.
In the end Tony was accepted by the Mars Project, a stranger bought the lucrative practice when his father retired, and his mother dragged the old man off to Nassau where he suffered an incapacitating stroke their first year in the sun, leaving him helpless and totally dependent on the loving care of his long-neglected wife.
Tony loved being part of the Mars Project. Most of the other trainees were either astronauts or scientists, dullard technicians or researchers so narrowly specialized that they knew practically nothing of the larger world of the arts and society. Tony enjoyed himself immensely, the sophisticated center of attraction and interest at all times. While others worried themselves into near hysteria over the selection process, Tony never doubted that he would be picked to go to Mars. If he feared the thought of riding millions of miles through space to an empty, harshly inhospitable world, he kept such apprehensions to himself. Only in his dreams did such terrors confront him, and then it was always in the shape of his father looming over him like a horrible devouring ogre, while his mother wept helplessly.
During his waking hours Tony made only one move that he would consider a mistake. He helped Joanna to get rid of Hoffman and bring the Navaho along with them to Mars. A blunder, Tony considered it in retrospect. The Navaho has become the center of everyone’s attention. Even Joanna’s. Especially Joanna’s.
SOL 24: NOON
Aleksander Mironov hummed softly as he checked Jamie’s backpack. The rover’s airlock was crowded with just the two of them in it: Mironov in his fire-engine red hard suit, Jamie in his sky-blue, with a gray spare helmet to replace his meteorite-gouged original.
Mironov’s visor was up, and Jamie could see that the Russian was smiling as he clomped back into his view. Mironov’s face looked chunky, almost compressed in his helmet, as if stuffed into a container a half size too small. It was a broad-cheeked, snub-nosed face, slightly ruddy, sprinkled lightly with freckles, with pale blue eyes and eyebrows so fair they were barely visible.
"Gloves?" Mironov asked.