Mars

we are nearly two hundred million kilometers from home.'

'Does that frighten you?'

'No, it just makes me feel alone. It’s strange. During the day we are busy and the dome feels crowded sometimes. But at night…'

'I know,' Jamie said. 'There’s either too many people leaning over your shoulder or you’re entirely alone. It’s a weird feeling.'

'You feel it too?'

He scowled in the darkness. 'Joanna, I am alone. I’m the outcast here.'

'No, that is not so.'

'That’s the way it looks to me. It’s not just this business of the cliff dwelling. I’m a substitute, a last-minute replacement. None of the others really accepts me as part of the team.'

He was surprised at himself for telling her so. For a long moment Joanna said nothing. In the shadowy lighting he could not even make out the expression on her face.

'I had thought,' Jamie heard himself say, speaking very low, almost whispering, 'that you wanted me on the mission because of what happened at McMurdo. Now I realize that you didn’t want me here as much as you wanted to get rid of Hoffman.'

'Jamie…'

'It’s okay,' he said quickly. 'I can understand how you felt. I know that Hoffman bothered you.'

She grabbed at the cuff of his sweatshirt and shook it slightly, like a schoolteacher trying to get the attention of a heedless student.

'Jamie, there were five other geologists that I could have recommended. They all had excellent qualifications. I asked my father to get you.'

'Because I helped you at McMurdo.'

'Because of you, yourself. Because you are a talented, stubborn, sensitive, lonely man. Because you were kind to me instead of resentful. Because when I ran away from you, you let me run without pursuing me.'

Suddenly Jamie felt confused. 'I let you run…'

'What happened between us at McMurdo should have worked against you, if I had any sense. We are not supposed to form attachments, relationships. You know that! But still I recommended you, despite the danger.'

'You feel danger?'

Joanna said, 'You are an extremely attractive man, James Waterman. Perhaps when this mission is over and we are safely back on Earth we can begin to behave toward each other as ordinary men and women do. For now, we must put aside such feelings.'

Jamie finally understood that her memory of McMurdo was his fumbling attempt to kiss her the evening after their first trek on the glacier. It meant a lot to her, he realized. And I thought it made her angry. She’s taking it for granted that I’m in love with her.

Am I? He thought of Edith, smiling blonde and Texas beautiful and millions of miles away. Christ, I’ve had her tape sitting in my cubicle for two days now and I haven’t even answered her. Joanna is completely different. Beautiful in a deeper way. Serious. Very serious.

Then he wondered, Does she know about Ilona? What would she think if she did?

Her hand was still clutching the cuff of his sweatshirt. Jamie covered it with his other hand.

'I guess you’re right, Joanna. You were right at McMurdo and you’re right now. We’re a long way from home. Maybe someday we’ll be able to face each other as normal people do and find out for ourselves what we really can mean to each other. But for now…' He ran out of words, finished with half a shrug that she probably could not see in the darkness.

'For now,' Joanna finished for him, her voice so low he could barely hear her, 'we can be friends. It will be good to have a friend, Jamie. Good for both of us.'

'Yeah. Sure.'

'It is the only way. We cannot form attachments now. Not here, not in this… fishbowl.'

He nodded, not caring if she could see it or not.

Joanna asked, 'Have you thought about what you will do when we return home?'

He almost blurted, This is my home. Here on Mars. Instead he replied softly, 'Not really. Have you?'

She made a sighing sound. 'My father has already been asked by the National Geographic Society to write an article about this expedition for their magazine. I suppose I will do most of the writing for him. I have been his ghostwriter for many years.'

'That shouldn’t take long.'

'Then lectures, I suppose. The two of us. All around the world. And a book, of course.'

'I guess I’ll pick a university and spend the next few years analyzing the samples we bring back. And the data we’re amassing.'

'That could be a lifetime career.'

'Maybe.'

She fell silent.

'What about the next expedition?' Jamie asked. 'Isn’t your father going to push for a follow-on mission?'

'He is already. As I understand it, though, the politicians want to sec what the results of this mission are before they commit themselves to another.'

Jamie leaned toward her, sudden urgency burning in his blood. 'Joanna, don’t you see that it’s important to go back to the canyon and check out those ruins? If we can go back with evidence that there was once a civilization on Mars, an intelligent species who built cliff dwellings… holy Christ, nobody could stop a second expedition. And a third, a tenth, a hundredth!'

He sensed her smiling in the darkness. 'Ahh, but suppose we find that your village is nothing more than a natural rock formation? What then?'

Her voice was sad. Jamie had no answer for her.

SOARING

Pete Connors felt relaxed for the first time since the expedition had left Earth orbit.

He leaned back in the cockpit seat and looked out at the pink and red landscape gliding by nearly ten miles below. The little soarplane was flying like a dream, as deftly responsive to his hands as a loving woman.

She was a tiny gossamer aircraft, as light as plastic ribs and Mylar skin could make her. The heaviest part of the soarplane was the miniature electric engine that drove her lazily purring propeller. The engine was powered by solar cells of plastic and silicon that hugged the curves of the soarplane’s broad long wings, converting the plentiful Martian sunlight into electricity steadily, noiselessly, as she flew through the clean, bright, thin atmosphere of Mars.

The soarplane’s official designation was RPV-1. There was an RPV-2 stowed in the cargo bay of one of the unmanned landers, wings folded, patiently waiting its turn to fly. Connors had his own name for the plane, however. He called it Little Beauty. And that is the way he thought of her.

To him, Little Beauty was a thing of delight. Connors luxuriated in the feel of her controls in his hands, the broad beautiful expansive views of the passing Martian landscape he could see in panorama all around him.

One section of the view suddenly went blank. The video screen there hinged upward and Paul Abell’s frog- eyed face appeared, high forehead wrinkled quizzically.

'Aren’t you coming out for lunch?' Abell asked his fellow astronaut.

Connors shook his head. 'Naw, I’m having too much fun with her. Could you make me a sandwich?'

Abell glanced at the control panel and the other video screens with their views of the distant Martian landscape. 'Okay. But I want a turn with her, too, you know.'

'Later,' Connors muttered. 'You can fly her on the leg back.'

Abell looked doubtful, but he lowered the screen back down into its place. Connors felt alone again, as if he were actually soaring over Chryse Planitia, the Plain of Gold, instead of sitting inside the dome of the base in the