Mars

'Hero?'

'Do you know how many years I have spent studying the Tharsis volcanoes? Not three. Not five. Not ten.' Patel was trembling with rage. 'Fifteen years! Since I was an undergraduate in Delhi! For fifteen years I have pored over photographs of those shields, studied the remote measurements made by spacecraft. And now that I am finally here, you have cut down my time to three miserable days.'

Jamie felt no anger. He knew exactly what Patel was going through. He remembered how he had felt when Vosnesensky cut short his examination of the canyon and the cliff dwellings because of Konoye’s death.

'You’re right, Rava,' he said slowly, his voice deep and calm and implacable. 'Only three days. I’ll do everything I can to help you learn as much as possible during our stay at Pavonis. But after three days we go back.'

'So you can ride out to the canyon.'

'Yes.'

'And look for your absurd cliff dwellings.'

'Look for life.'

'Bah! Nonsense! Absolute nonsense.'

'Rava, if I truly had my way we would stay here on Mars for a year or more. We would have new teams arriving. We would be exploring this planet on a rational scientific basis. But I don’t have my way. None of us does.'

'You have more of your way than I have of mine,' Patel grumbled.

Jamie acknowledged the point with a dip of his head. 'Yes, that’s so. But if you want to come back to Mars someday and spend as much time as you like studying these volcanoes, then we’ve got to bring the politicians something that they can’t ignore. They can’t ignore evidence of life, Rava. And the most likely place to find life — even evidence of extinct life-is at the bottom of Tithonium Chasma.'

'There are other places,' Naguib said, 'equally likely. Hellas, for example…'

'We can’t reach that far on this mission,' said Jamie. 'It’s halfway around the planet. The canyon is as far as we can get this time, and even that’s stretching things.'

'You can be perfectly rational, can’t you, when you are getting what you want,' Patel said.

'I’m not going to argue with you, Rava,' Jamie replied. 'I understand how you feel. I’d feel the same way if our positions were reversed.'

'Yes, of course.'

Jamie slid out from behind the narrow table and stood at his full height. Looking down at Patel he said, 'If my jaunt out to the canyon had been scrubbed in favor of extending your stay at the volcanoes, I’d be sore as hell. But I’d accept it and try to do my best to make your excursion a success.'

Patel turned away from him.

Mironov, his usual smile long disappeared, said quietly, 'I suggest that we drop this topic of conversation. The mission plan is firm. We spend the next three days at Pavonis Mons and then return to the base. No further arguments.'

Jamie nodded and headed up toward the cockpit. Naguib made a small shrug of acceptance. Patel grimaced and stared after Jamie, his dark eyes burning.

When Tony Reed tried to sleep he heard the night wind of Mars moaning outside the dome. The noise unsettled him. One little meteor hit, a bit of dust so small that they could find no trace of it afterward, had almost killed them all. Oh, it’s very well for Vosnesensky and the others to boast that all the safety systems worked and we were never in actual danger. My left foot! We could have all been asphyxiated. No, we wouldn’t have lasted that long. The blood and fluids in our bodies would have boiled. We would have popped like overcooked sausages, exploded like pricked balloons.

He shuddered beneath his light blanket.

I’m not a coward. Tony almost said it aloud. He pictured his father standing over his cot, glowering at him. I’m not a coward. It isn’t cowardly to fear real danger. We’re constantly on the edge of death here. Each breath we draw might be our last.

He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to force himself to sleep. Unbidden, the memory of his mother came to him: all the times she let him crawl into bed with her when a clap of thunder or some other noise had frightened him.

He wished his mother were here to comfort him now. Ilona had refused to come to his bed once they had landed on Mars. If he suggested it to Monique she would smile and pat his cheek and walk away, laughing softly to herself. He was certain of that.

Joanna. If only Joanna would come to him, comfort him. He needed her warmth here on this world of cold and danger. He longed to feel her arms enfold him in safety.

DOSSIER: ANTONY NORVILLE REED

Tony Reed was barely four years old, lying in a hospital bed feeling very small and very frightened. His father bustled in, bundled in a heavy dark overcoat and a muffler striped gray and red, his nose and cheeks pinkly glowing from the winter’s cold that frosted the hospital windows.

'And how are you, my little man?' his father asked, sitting on the edge of the bed.

Tony could not speak. He was in no pain, but his entire throat felt frozen, numb. His father was a big man, physically imposing, with a loud insistent voice and a constant air of urgency about him. His father frightened him more than a little. The two of them had never been close. Tony, an only child, was never allowed to have dinner with his parents when his father was at home. Only when his father was gone could he sit at the big dining room table with his mama.

'They tell me you were crying all night,' his father said sternly.

Tony could not answer, but tears sprang up in his eyes. They had left him alone in the strange hospital room, without Mama, without even his nanny.

'Now listen to me, Antony,' said his father. 'These people here in the hospital are my colleagues. They look up to me and respect me. It wouldn’t do for them to think that my son is a coward, now would it?'

Slowly, reluctantly, Tony shook his head.

'So we’ll have no more of this crying, eh? Chin up. Brave lad. Do what you’re told and don’t give the sisters any difficulty. Right?'

Tony nodded.

'Good! That’s the spirit. Now look what I’ve brought you.' His father pulled a small packet from his overcoat pocket. It was wrapped in bright gold paper.

'Open it up, go on.'

Tony pulled at the paper ineffectually. His father’s smile withered into an exasperated frown; he took the packet into his big, deft-fingered hands and swiftly removed the wrapping. Then he opened the slim box and showed Tony what was inside it.

A hand-sized telly! Tony goggled at it. Lifting it from the little box, he turned it over in his trembling fingers until he found the postage-stamp screen and the red power button. He pressed the button and the screen came to life instantly.

His father showed him how to pull the earphone from its all-but-invisible socket. Tony wormed it into his left ear.

The picture on the screen was of the red planet, Mars. The voice he heard was that of a young Brazilian scientist named Alberto Brumado, who was saying in a softly beguiling Latin accent, 'Someday human explorers will travel to Mars to unravel the mysteries of its red sands…'

His father tousled his hair roughly and then left Tony watching the tiny pictures of Mars.

Tony’s parents lived entirely separate lives under the single roof of their Chelsea home. As he grew up, Tony began to understand that his father kept a series of mistresses elsewhere in London. He changed them every year or so, like buying a new outfit of clothes for the spring. But he was never without a mistress for long.

His father paid Tony almost no attention whatever; the big gruff man always seemed preoccupied, busy, on