Then we all boarded our separate chariots and headed south in search of the Grand Canyon of Mars.
[348] The Chinese were awed by Blue Thunder, as who wouldn’t be? It dwarfed the Chinese rover, which looked a lot like the Apollo lunar rovers, but with bigger wire-weave tires. There were four seats, all occupied. They trusted their automatic systems to handle things while they were away, and I couldn’t argue with them. After all, the computer had landed their ship.
But we did have to pause a few times as the Chinese driver had to find a way around big rocks. Dak waited patiently for them, a smug smile on his face.
When we got there the Chinese geologist, Li Chong, leaped from the rover like an excited puppy and started banging on rocks with a hammer. He tried to be five places at once, dropping samples he was trying to stuff into plastic bags, picking up new ones. It must be incredible, I realized, to have an entire planet to study… and in this case, he was the first. The first rockhound on Mars.
As for the rest of us…
Never having been to the Grand Canyon in Arizona, or to any canyon, for that matter, I had nothing to compare it to. I saw incredible desolation. Incredible colors. Incredible immensity. I picked up a rock and hurled it out into space, and we all watched as it fell, and bounced, and fell some more, and bounced, until we lost it.
I noticed Chun Wang didn’t seem to have much to do. Kuang Mei-Ling and Li hopped about like excited sparrows, and even Captain Xu seemed to have some geological training, helping gather samples. I didn’t say anything about it, since we were all on the same suit channel. But later I mentioned it to Travis.
“Political officer,” he said. “Commissar, or whatever the Chinese call it. He’s a Party member, here to keep the others in line. Standard operating procedure on a Chinese vessel. Did you see how nobody talked to him much, at lunch?”
Now that he mentioned it, I had noticed that. Chun seemed to sit off to himself somehow, even at the crowded table. The other three had virtually ignored him.
“Some sort of social dynamic going on there. Mei-Ling is married to Captain Xu, and I figure that’s put a lot of strain on Chun and Li. And [349] Chun seems to be largely frozen out by the others. People problems, Manny. It was always in the cards that people problems would be at least as big a hurdle as engineering problems on a trip as long and as cramped as they’re on.”
GOOD MANNERS DICTATED that we invite the Chinese aboard for a meal, so Travis did. We arranged it for Day M3, our third day on Mars, the second day for the Chinese. I drew the short straw that day and watched through the ports of the cockpit deck as the two vehicles headed off for the Valles again a few hours after sunrise, feeling a bit lost and abandoned. They would be back around midafternoon, a time dictated by the capacity of the suit oxygen tanks, and our stamina.
“Let’s face it, friends,” Travis had told us. “The five of us are not going to be contributing a hell of a lot to our knowledge of Mars, unless we stumble over a dinosaur bone or an abandoned city or a giant face, or something. There’s no point in working sunup to sundown.”
I hadn’t given a lot of thought to what we’d do when we got to Mars. None of us had, we’d all been far too absorbed in the task of getting here at all.
But what the heck was I doing here, really? Why me, and not some infinitely more qualified scientist? I could walk right over some geological formation or group of rocks… or even cleverly camouflaged lichen or moss or some more alien form of life, blissfully unaware of its importance.
I had no business here. None of us did, except maybe Travis. Sure, we had worked our butts off, labored all summer to build the ship to get here, but the Chinese all held doctorates. Even Chun, the chief Commie, was an M.D. How bitterly ironic it must be to them for a group of barely educated kids to get here first.
Before long I’d worked myself into a blue funk. I prowled the kitchen, looking at the food we’d brought. Frozen pizza. Infantile! Would the Chinese eat pizza? That’s the kind of thought I occupied myself with as I waited eight hours until the tiny caravan reappeared from the south. I helped people out of their suits and we all gathered [350] in the common room, quite crowded with nine people in it, four of them on folding chairs.
It turned out pizza was okay.
“We have many Western rapid-food places in China now,” Xu explained. “Most of us have eaten at them at one time or another.”
Chun didn’t care for pizza, but smiled broadly when we showed him a Hungry Man Mexican dinner, with enchilada, tamale, and retried beans.
But the real hit of the day was Alicia’s food.
That’s what we’d been calling it, to bug her, but we’d all eaten our salads and fruit along with our frozen dinners. But the Chinese… you’d have thought they’d been stranded on a desert island for a year with nothing to eat but thistles and rats. Well, maybe that’s not a good example. For all I know Chinese may like thistles and rats, they seem to eat just about anything. But they almost drooled when they saw the fresh Florida oranges Alicia had brought by the bushel basket. And grapefruit, and tomatoes, lettuce, fresh broccoli, tons of other stuff.
Mai-Ling, Li, and Xu each ate a slice of pizza, I suspect just to be polite, and Chun ate half his dinner, then they attacked the fruits and vegetables. Their own supplies had been used up months ago and they were down to the basic rations for the rest of the trip: rice, noodles, canned or frozen vegetables and meats.
“They lost a lot of face yesterday, over dinner,” Travis told us later. He and Xu had developed a rapport quickly. Somehow Commissar Chun’s suit radio had developed a slight glitch, it wouldn’t receive channel four anymore… tsk, tsk, how unfortunate… so Travis and Xu had spent a lot of the day talking about things Chun shouldn’t hear.
“Of course, the whole nation lost face big-time when we beat them here, but the Harmony’s crew doesn’t feel too upset by that because it wasn’t their fault. But setting such a poor table… of that they were very ashamed.”
“I didn’t think it was so bad,” I said.
“I didn’t either,” Travis said. “Space rations, what did they think we expected, Peking duck? Go figure, huh? Anyway, Chinese culture is different.”
[351] “Must have lost heap big face today, eating them oranges,” Dak said.
“Yeah, but they didn’t mind it so much. Good work, Alicia.”
We were gathered in the common room at the end of the day. The others were all pleasantly exhausted from the day’s work. Me, I was wired as a two-dollar junkie, having done nothing all day but worry and fret. But it was good to sit with everyone and talk about the day’s events. The one we talked about the most concerned Commissar Chun.
After dinner, when it came time to reciprocate on the tour we’d been given of the Heavenly Harmony, Travis caused an international incident, of sorts.
“Captain Xu, are you a member of the Chinese armed forces?” Travis asked, knowing Xu wasn’t. He then turned to Chun. “Doctor Chun, you being the political officer of the Heavenly Harmony, I must respectfully decline to show you my ship above the level of this common room. There are things up there I must not allow the representative of a foreign power to see. I’m sure you understand.”
Xu started to smile, quickly concealed it, and translated for Chun.
Chun snapped off some choice comments which Xu did not translate, then told us he would wait for us outside. Travis also declined to let Chun off Red Thunder until we all went, pointing out that he didn’t want Chun getting a close look at the Squeezer drive, either. Chun nearly exploded. Again Xu didn’t translate, he didn’t really need to.