the brightness. How much of my life have I spent in television studios? he asked himself. It must be years, many years, if you add up all the minutes and hours.
For the first time in his memory, though, he felt nervous about the impending interview. Not because it was American network television. Not because he would have to face a trio of experienced senior interrogators from the most prestigious newspaper, news magazine, and television network news department in the United States. He had fenced with such before.
The anxiety that rippled through his heart was that the interviewers smelled blood. The death of Dr. Konoye had brought the sharks out, circling, circling what they perceived as a wounded and bleeding Mars Project. There would be no gentility about this interview, no kid gloves. Brumado knew that he was in for a rough ordeal.
The technical crew had been uniformly kind, as usual. The matronly makeup woman smiled and chatted with him as she patted pancake on Brumado’s browned face. While he was still in the barber-type chair, the harried-looking producer had come in. Standing behind him and speaking to Brumado’s reflection in the big wall mirror, she assured him that all he had to do was to be natural, be himself, and the audience 'will love you up.' The young assistant producer, younger than his own daughter, had done everything she could to put Brumado at ease. Accustomed to smilingly evasive politicians and brash entertainment stars who hid their anxieties behind banalities, she offered Brumado coffee, soft drinks, even a Bloody Mary. Smiling tensely, he refused everything except water.
Now he was in the studio with the crew hiding behind their cameras and the electrician pinning the cordless microphone to his necktie just under his chin.
The show’s moderator walked onto the brightly lit set, up the carpeted two stops to the chair next to Brumado’s.
Extending a hand, he said, 'Please don’t get up, Dr. Brumado. It was good of you to come on such short notice.'
'I want to dispel any doubts that may be in the public’s mind about this unfortunate tragedy,' Brumado replied as the moderator sat down. His microphone was already in place, hardly visible against his dark blue tie. He also wore a minuscule flesh-toned earphone like a hearing aid.
'Good, good,' said the moderator absently, his eyes focused on the notes scrolling across the small display screen cleverly built into the coffee table in front of them so that it could not be seen by the cameras.
The three inquisitors arrived in a group, smiling, chatting among themselves. Two men and a woman whose ebony hair glowed like a steel helmet. Handshakes all around. Brumado thought of a prizefight. Now go to your corners and come out punching.
The floor director scurried in and out of the shadows among the cameras. The big clock beneath the monitor screen clicked down the final seconds, its second hand stopping discernibly at each notch on the dial.
The floor director pointed to the moderator.
'Good morning, and welcome to Face the People. This morning we are fortunate to have with us Dr. Alberto Brumado…'
Brumado could feel his pulse quickening as the moderator introduced the three 'distinguished journalists' who would be questioning him.
'At the outset,' the moderator said, turning to face Brumado, 'I’d like to ask this basic question: What does the death of Dr. Konoye mean for the Mars Project?'
Brumado slid into his fatherly smile as he always did at interviews. 'It will have only a slight effect on the exploration of Mars. The mission was planned from the outset with the knowledge that exploring a distant planet can be dangerous. That is why there are backup members of the team for each scientist and astronaut. The team will be able to continue the exploration of Mars, of course, and even the work on Deimos and Phobos that Dr. Konoye was supposed to do…'
'Are you saying that a man’s death doesn’t matter to you?' the newspaperman interjected, frowning like a gargoyle.
'Of course it matters to me,' Brumado replied. 'It matters to all of us, especially to Dr. Konoye’s wife and children. But it will not stop the exploration of Mars and its moons.'
'What went wrong, Dr. Brumado?' asked the woman. She was the TV reporter, dressed in a sleekly stylish red skirt and mannish white blouse.
'Nothing went wrong. Dr. Konoye suffered a stroke. It could have happened in his office in Osaka, I suppose. Or in his home.'
'But it happened on Mars.'
'It happened during an EVA,' observed the magazine man. 'Did that contribute to the cerebral hemorrhage? Was being weightless a factor?'
Brumado shook his head. 'Weightlessness should have had nothing to do with it. If anything, microgravity is beneficial to the cardiovascular system.'
'How could it be that he was accepted for this hazardous work when he had a cardiovascular problem?'
'He had no cardiovascular problem.'
'The man died of a stroke!'
'But there was no history of a medical problem. He was thoroughly examined and tested, just as all the other mission crew were. He went through years of training and medical examinations without the slightest hint of a problem. He was only forty-two years old. Even his family medical records show no evidence of cardiovascular disease.'
'Then how do you explain the stroke?'
'No one can explain it. It happened. It is unfortunate. Very sad.'
'But you won’t stop the mission or change its operation in any way?'
Brumado smiled again, this time to hide his growing anger. 'To begin with, I have no official capacity in the Mars Project. I am merely an advisor.'
'Come on now! You’re known all over the world as the soul of the Mars Project.'
'I am not involved in the day-to-day operation of the project. Nor do I have any official position. My influence ended, really, when the spacecraft left for Mars.'
'Do you mean to tell us that if you went to the mission controllers in Houston…'
'Kaliningrad,' Brumado corrected.
'Wherever — if you went to them and advised them to shut down the project and get those people back home to safety, they wouldn’t listen to you?'
'I would hope not. If I gave them that kind of advice, I would hope that they would be wise enough to ignore it.'
'You’re not concerned about the safety of those men and women on Mars?'
Brumado hesitated just a fraction of a second, enough to remind himself not to let them lead him into statements he did not wish to make.
'You must remember that what has happened was not an accident, not a failure of a piece of equipment or even a shortcoming of our planning. The man suffered a stroke. He was a hundred million kilometers from Earth when it happened, but it would have been the same if it had happened in his bed.'
Turning to look squarely into the camera that had its red light lit, Brumado went on, 'Should we stop the exploration of Mars because a man has died? Did Americans stop expanding westward because people died on the frontier? Did the exploration of the world stop because some ships were sunk? If we stopped reaching outward for fear of danger we would still be squatting in caves, groveling every time it thunders outside.'
The moderator gave a big smile and said, 'We’ll continue right after this important message.'
The overhead lights dimmed. Brumado reached for the glass of water on the coffee table.
'Good timing. It’s going very well,' said the moderator. 'Keep it up.'
The second segment of the show was much like the first: the interviewers almost accusative, Brumado defending the Mars Project against their unsubtle insinuations of insensitivity or outright incompetence.
'And despite what’s happened,' hammered the newspaper gargoyle, 'you really don’t accept the idea that it’s too dangerous out there for human beings?'
Brumado played his trump card. 'One of those human beings is my daughter. If I thought she was in an unacceptably dangerous situation, I would do everything in my power to bring all the exploration team back to safety, believe me.'
