Vosnesensky was reporting that everything was proceeding normally. The traverse was going according to schedule; Waterman’s team should reach the lip of the canyon before sundown tomorrow. Patel and Naguib were analyzing the lava flow samples that they had brought back from Pavonis Mons. Monique Bonnet was testing other rock samples from Pavonis for evidence of life. She had found some interesting microscopic formations in the samples, but no organisms, not even organic chemicals.
Toshima was fretting about a series of dust storms up north, almost at the edge of the melting polar cap. The Japanese meteorologist insisted that such storm activity at this time of the year was unusual and bore careful watching. Especially with a traverse team out in the open. Li Chengdu nodded absently. He agreed totally. The storms bore watching. But there was little else that could be done about them.
Finally Vosnesensky looked up from the notes he had been reading and said, 'That completes my report.'
Li said to the image on the screen, 'Everyone is in good health?'
With a grunt and a nod the Russian answered, 'Yes, it seems so. I can have Dr. Reed give you the data from his weekly examinations.'
'That information is transmitted to our computer, is it not?'
'Yes. Automatically.'
'Then I can access it if necessary without troubling Dr. Reed.' Li hesitated a heartbeat. 'Tell me, how is everyone emotionally? How do you assess the psychological aspects of your group members?'
Vosnesensky’s beefy face showed surprise, then pulled into a thoughtful frown. 'They all seem normal enough to me,' he said after several moments. 'There was considerable excitement just before the excursion team left, but everything has settled back to normal routine now.'
That was precisely what Li wanted to hear. 'Good,' he said. 'I am glad that they are happy in their work.'
Mikhail Vosnesensky nodded glumly at Dr. Li’s image on the comm screen. The expedition commander made a few more polite remarks, then bade the cosmonaut a good night.
Vosnesensky continued to stare at the display screen for long moments after it had gone dead gray. He had not lied to the expedition commander, not exactly. He had merely put the best face on the answer he gave to Li’s question about morale. True enough, everyone seemed to be happy in their work. Yet that was not the entire truth.
There was something subtly wrong, Vosnesensky thought. He felt a tension in the air that had not been there a few weeks earlier. Nothing he could put his finger on, no obvious clashes or animosities. Nothing so blatant as Ilona Malater’s malicious baiting or Patel’s unhappy bleating about the schedule rearrangements.
But something was going on. Something.
Most of the group have lost weight. It’s been especially noticeable over the past week or so. Reed says that’s to be expected, though. And all that physiological data goes straight back to the medical experts on Earth. If it alarmed them they would have let us know by now, wouldn’t they?
Or would they be afraid of frightening us, ruining our efficiency? After all, we only have a little over three more weeks to go.
Perhaps I should discuss it with Reed, he said to himself as he got up from the communications console. He’s our doctor. And psychologist. Perhaps he can throw some light on the problem.
With a shrug of his heavy shoulders Vosnesensky decided to try to get a good night’s sleep, instead. I can talk to Reed tomorrow if I still feel worried. Tomorrow will be soon enough.
SOL 35: EVENING
'Who would have thought,' complained Ilona, 'that one could get so tired merely sitting down all day?'
Long, darkly red shadows were stretching across the sandy barren landscape. Jamie saw that the sun would be setting in an hour or so.
'Doing nothing can be more exhausting than hard physical labor,' Joanna agreed.
All day long the two women had been either sitting on the folded benches or standing behind the men in their cockpit seats as the rover trundled across the boulder-strewn wilderness toward Tithonium Chasma. Jamie had taken turns at driving with Pete Connors. His head ached from the unrelieved tension; even when he was in the right-hand seat he hunched forward in strained concentration, watching anxiously for rocks too big to clamber over or craters too steep to traverse.
The land they were traveling across was rough, uneven rust-red formations of low, flat-topped hills, with a rugged wall of mountains in the distance lining the horizon. Just like the Chinle Formation in Arizona, Jamie said to himself, shaking his head in wonder at the similarities between the two worlds. They had found dinosaur bones in those red rocks back home, he remembered.
'Anything wrong?' Connors asked.
Almost startled, Jamie pulled himself out of his reverie. The astronaut was grinning at him good- naturedly.
'You were frowning as if your shoes are too tight,' Connors said.
'Just thinking about geology,' said Jamie.
'Does it hurt?'
Jamie laughed and shook his head.
A few minutes later, Jamie asked, 'Pete, what does the ‘T’ stand for? Why don’t you use your first name?'
Connors’s long face sank into a frown. 'Tyrone,' he muttered.
'Tyrone?'
'Don’t toll anybody.'
'Why not? It’s a fine old Irish name.'
Connors’s grin returned, but somehow it looked almost sad. 'The white kids in Nebraska didn’t think so. Got me into a helluva lot of fights. Didn’t look right for the minister’s son to have skinned knuckles all the time. ‘Pete’ is a lot easier to live with.'
I wonder how many extra battles he had to fight in the Air Force, Jamie thought. And the space agency.
They kept on driving as the distant, pale sun sank toward the red horizon. Connors was muttering into the microphone of the comm set clipped over his short-cropped hair. Jamie did not have his earphones on, but he knew that the astronaut was checking their position on the satellite-generated photo map and calling in to Vosnesensky at home base.
According to the display screen in the middle of the cockpit control panel they were less than five kilometers from the canyon. Jamie checked his wristwatch; about fifteen minutes of daylight remained.
Connors slewed the segmented rover almost ninety degrees off its course and eased it to a stop. The electric generator that powered the wheel motors hummed to a lower pitch.
'Okay, that’s it for today,' he said.
Before Jamie could ask why he had turned off course Connors called over his shoulder to the women, 'Come on up and watch the sunset!'
They crowded into the cockpit and watched in silence as the strangely small sun sunk below a line of bluffs. The sky turned from pink to burning red, then went utterly black. Jamie strained his eyes for a glimpse of the aurora, but either it was too delicate to be seen through the tinted canopy or there was none. Maybe it’s only there when the sun’s active, he guessed.
None of them moved. No one said a word. Jamie felt the cold of the Martian night seeping through the plastic bubble of the cockpit. Slowly, as their eyes adjusted, a few of the brightest stars gleamed through the bulbous tinted plastic.
'That must be the Earth,' Ilona said in her breathy sultry voice.
'Nope. It’s Sirius,' Connors corrected. 'According to the ephemeris Earth is already below the horizon.'
'We cannot see it at all?' Joanna asked.
