As Li began to introduce the astronauts and cosmonauts, Jamie wondered what would happen if a man made trouble and then refused to take the medication he was ordered to take. What can they do when we’re millions of miles out in space?
2
After the introductions the group broke up into smaller units. Jamie joined his fellow scientists and the two men who had been appointed their pilots and commanders. They were assembling along the curving wall at one end of the platform where Dr. Li remained.
The scientists moved cautiously across the loop-studded floor, like men and women in a dream, or drunks who were trying to maintain their dignity and self-control. Jamie saw the astronauts and cosmonauts casually pushing themselves off the walls or the floor itself to glide effortlessly toward the little knots of scientists gathering to talk with them. Insolent grace, Jamie thought. It was a line from a story he had read years ago, in freshman English. One of the Russians floated by overhead, grinning wolfishly as he looked down at the lurching, wobbling scientists. Insolent grace.
Jamie made an effort to reach Joanna. He came up to her side and touched her on the shoulder of her coveralls. She jerked with surprise, then paled noticeably and put a hand to her mouth.
'I’m sorry,' Jamie said in a low voice. 'I didn’t mean to startle you.'
Joanna swallowed hard, the hint of tears in her eyes. 'One moment… I will be all right…'
Jamie said, 'I just wanted to thank you for helping me to get here. I’m very grateful to you.'
Her face still pale, she replied, 'It was necessary to remove Professor Hoffman. He would have been impossible.'
'I’m very glad to be here,' Jamie repeated. 'For whatever part in this you played, muchas gracias.'
She smiled, faintly, and replied in Portuguese, 'Por que?'
Then she turned away from him and went to stand beside Ilona Malater, tall and regal-looking even in plain beige coveralls. The scientists attached their feet to the loops on the floor with the clumsy care of newcomers. The Russian cosmonaut and American astronaut, both dressed in tan slacks and pullovers, hovered effortlessly before them.
The four scientists — geologist, microbiologist, biochemist, and physician — finally got themselves settled in the foot restraints and focused their attention on the astronaut and cosmonaut who would be their team commanders.
'I am Mikhail Andreivitch Vosnesensky,' the cosmonaut introduced himself. 'I am command pilot of the first landing team.' He spoke English perfectly, without any trace of an accent, in a heavy voice almost in a bass register.
He looked to Jamie like Hollywood’s version of a Russian. Short, thick torso and heavy limbs, dark reddish- brown hair, beefy face with skin so fair it was almost pink. He reminded Jamie more of a stubby character actor than a hotshot rocket jockey. I’ll have to check his biography in the mission records, Jamie said to himself. While Vosnesensky’s eyes were the clear bright blue of a summer sky, innocent, almost childlike, the expression on his chunky face was dour and brooding.
'And I’m T. Peter Connors,' said the black American astronaut, with a good-natured grin. 'My official position is pilot, safety officer, and second-in-command.'
Connors’s smile was charming, but his red-rimmed eyes looked somehow sad, wary. Not more than a centimeter taller than the Russian, Connors was much slimmer, sleeker. It made him look almost lanky compared to Vosnesensky. Like a racing thoroughbred standing beside a plow horse. His voice was not as deep as the Russian’s, but richer, more resonant, like a singer’s.
'I want to make one thing clear at the outset,' Vosnesensky told the four scientists, almost growling. 'I am not here to be your friend. I will be in command of your group from the instant we enter the Mars 1 spacecraft here in Earth orbit until the instant we leave it, once safely back here in Earth orbit. Especially during the time we are on the surface of Mars my responsibility will be to see that all mission objectives are met and no one is hurt. I will expect my orders to be carried out without delay and without argument. Mars is not a university campus. We will maintain military discipline at all times. Is that clear?'
'Quite clear,' answered Tony Reed.
'Any questions?'
No one spoke. No one even moved as they stood anchored to the floor by the foot restraints.
'Good,' said Vosnesensky.
Connors added, 'If you have any problems, we can always talk them over. We’ll be in transit for more than nine months. That’s the time to go over the mission plan in as much detail as we can and hash over any changes you want to make.'
So they’re going to be good cop and bad cop, Jamie thought. I wonder if they’ve planned that out or if it’s just their natural dispositions?
The four scientists glanced uneasily at each other. Vosnesensky motioned to Connors and the two pilots glided off, heading toward the hatch.
'Well,' said Reed once they were out of earshot, 'it looks as if we got rid of Hoffman only to get the Russian version of a drill sergeant.'
3
Jamie was surprised at how difficult it was for him to make the mental transition. His body became accustomed to zero gravity in a couple of days. But he still had a hard time convincing himself that he was really going to Mars, actually part of the first team.
It did not help when all the Mars mission members began sneezing and coughing and blaming it on him.
'The rest of us have been confined together for more than two weeks at Star City,' Tony Reed explained, almost jovially. 'You’re the serpent in our garden; you’ve brought some new cold viruses with you that we haven’t grown accustomed to as yet.'
Jamie felt miserable, more from the accusing stares his bleary-eyed comrades gave him whenever they sneezed than from his own stuffed head and wheezing chest.
Like the first week of school, he told himself. Everybody catches everything. Yet it made him feel more the outsider than ever before. Even after the colds ran their course and everyone returned to good health Jamie still kept mostly to himself, alone and unhappy — until he remembered that he was going to Mars.
4
Space and time are two aspects of the same thing, dimensions of the universe. There was a keyhole in spacetime, or as the engineers of mission control phrased it, a window. The two Mars craft had to be launched out of Earth orbit through that keyhole, through that window, at a certain time and in a precise direction with exactly the proper velocity, if they were to reach the moving pinpoint of light that was their destination.
For twenty-three days the two dozen men and women of the Mars mission, plus their expedition commander, Dr. Li, checked and re-checked every piece of equipment stowed aboard the long sleek Mars spacecraft. While they did so, specialist teams of technicians and robots attached bulky ovoid tanks of propellants around the aft end of each craft. The spacecraft began to look like thin white pencils surrounded by clusters of matte-gray lozenges at their eraser end.
The propellants had been manufactured on the moon and catapulted from the airless lunar surface to
