'And you say that all four of you are in the same condition?' Reed asked.
'Pretty much,' replied Connors. 'Ilona seems the worst off. Jamie’s in the best shape — or at least he’s not complaining as much.'
The stoical Indian. He’d probably refuse to utter a peep even if he were being roasted at the stake.
'Any loss of appetite?' he asked aloud.
Connors frowned with thought. Then, 'Doesn’t seem to be. But we’re all so damned tired, it’s hard to tell.'
'Hm, yes.' Reed chewed his bottom lip momentarily. 'And you’re taking your vitamin supplements?'
'Yessir. I see that they all take the pills every morning.'
'You’ve only been out two days,' Reed muttered, 'so it shouldn’t be any dietary deficiency…'
'It feels like we’re all coming down with the flu or something,' Connors volunteered.
'I see.' Reed scratched his chin, fingered his pencil-thin moustache, ran a smoothing hand over his sandy hair. The same symptoms were showing up in the dome.
'It’s difficult for me to do much for you remotely,' he said to Connors. 'I’m afraid it would be best if you started back before things get any worse.'
'But we just got here! We’re scheduled to be in the canyon for a week…'
'Not if you’re all sick.' Vosnesensky would have to see the necessity of it, Reed told himself. After all, as medical officer here I have the authority to order them back to base. Even if the Russian objects.
'Maybe if we all took a good shot of antibiotics?'
'I doubt that it would help.'
'Give us another day, at least. We’re not going anywhere today if that storm hits. Let’s see what develops over the next twenty-four hours.'
Reed considered the astronaut’s earnest, anxious face. Connors was pleading with him. I am the team’s physician. I should know what to do. I ought to be able to deal with this. If I order them back now Vosnesensky will be furious. He’ll think it’s a reflection on him, most likely.
'I’ve got to report this to Vosnesensky, you realize,' he said.
'Yeah, I know.'
'This transmission is automatically monitored by the orbiter. And Kaliningrad.'
Connors nodded glumly.
Pursing his lips as though deep in careful thought, Reed at last offered, 'I will recommend to Mikhail Andreivitch that you stay where you are for the next twenty-four hours. A dose of wide-spectrum antibiotic won’t hurt you; I’ll send specific written instructions over the computer link. Then we’ll see how you feel tomorrow morning.'
'Okay! Great!' The astronaut was as grateful as a puppy.
Reed terminated the conversation, then turned to his medical computer file and tapped out a prescription for the antibiotic. He pushed himself up from the chair slowly, reluctantly. I must face Vosnesensky, he told himself. Nothing for it but to beard him in his own den. Still, he dreaded the confrontation.
The Russian was in the wardroom, huddled over a mug of steaming tea, talking in low earnest tones with Mironov in their native language. They both looked sick to Reed’s professional eye. Haggard, sallow complexions. Even their coveralls looked baggy and rumpled, not at all the neat aspect that they had presented only a few days earlier. Whatever it is, they’ve got it. And all the others, too. All except me. And possibly Toshima.
Reed felt absurdly normal: healthy and strong. Clear-headed and alert. He had even cut down on his morning amphetamine cocktail, to check whether or not his seeming good health was a chemically induced artifact.
The two Russians both looked up as Tony pulled out a chair and joined them.
'The team in the rover is down with it,' Reed told them quietly, 'whatever it is.'
'Fatigue,' Vosnesensky said immediately. 'Psychological fatigue. I have seen it on long-duration missions in orbit.'
'After only thirty-seven days?' Reed almost sneered.
'We have been in space for almost a year.'
'Ah yes,' Reed admitted. 'True enough.'
'The stresses of this environment…' Mironov started, but his voice trailed off weakly.
'Mars is no more stressful than the moon or an orbiting space station,' Reed said. 'Rather less stressful, actually, I should think.'
'Then what is it?' Vosnesensky growled. 'What is happening to us?'
Reed shook his head. 'Whatever it is, it’s affecting everyone here with the same symptoms: weakness, pains in the limbs, headaches.'
'It is the flu,' Mironov said.
Cocking an eyebrow at him, Reed said, 'How could we all come down with the flu nearly a year after leaving Earth? Influenza viruses don’t lie dormant for that long. If it were the flu we would have seen it long before this.' Unless it’s a slow virus, Tony suddenly thought. Like Legionnaires’ disease, or some such.
Mironov looked stubbornly unconvinced.
'But no one in orbit has it,' Reed pointed out, arguing as much with himself as with the cosmonaut.
'The Martian flu,' Vosnesensky half joked.
'It is patently impossible to contract a disease from a planet that is without any life of its own,' Reed snapped, almost angrily. 'There are no viruses here to infect us. Even if there were Martian microbes, they would not be adapted to our cells. Mars could be covered with all sorts of bugs, but they wouldn’t bother us at all. Couldn’t, actually.'
'That is the theory of the doctors,' Mironov mumbled gloomily.
'Perhaps this is not a disease at all,' Vosnesensky said.
'Not a disease?'
'Coal miners get black lung,' Vosnesensky said, 'not from germs but from breathing in coal dust.'
Reed stared at him. This cosmonaut actually has a brain inside that thick skull!
'Perhaps there is something in the Martian dust that is affecting us,' Vosnesensky said.
'But we take great care to keep the dust out of our suits and out of our living habitat,' Reed pointed out.
'The dust is very fine. Perhaps we do not take great enough care.'
'I hadn’t thought of that,' said Reed.
Mironov said, 'We could check the air in here, see how much dust is suspended in it.'
'Yes,' said Vosnesensky. 'We must do that.'
Reed was about to reply when Toshima came rushing up to the table. He was wide-eyed with excitement. If the 'Martian flu' had hit him, he showed no evidence of it.
'The dust storm!' Toshima fairly shouted. 'It has started!'
SOL 37: AFTERNOON
Grounded.
Jamie felt like an errant teenager being punished by his parents. The rover was in perfectly good shape, and even though he felt weak and headachy, he saw no reason why he should not be moving onward, closer to the 'village' he had seen.
That’s where we’ve got to go, he kept telling himself. Maybe I can even climb up there, once we get to the base of the cliffs where that cleft is. I’ll bet there’s even a natural path up the cliff face to that cleft and the formation inside it. Or maybe they carved steps out of the rock.
The day outside seemed perfectly clear, despite Toshima’s insistence that a dust storm was howling down the length of the canyon and would soon engulf them.
There had even been the mists out there earlier in the morning, thin gray tendrils of haze that hovered in
