Mars

Waterman and Brumado working on the canyon floor.

Mironov’s usually cheerful face looked very serious.

'What is it?' Vosnesensky asked, also in Russian.

Pulling up one of the flimsy plastic chairs, the cosmonaut said, 'I don’t feel well. I feel sick.'

'Have you told Reed?'

'Not yet. I wanted to ask you if I should. It might not look right for one of us to be sick.'

Vosnesensky’s face contracted into a frown. 'Then obviously you don’t feel sick enough to see the doctor.'

Mironov looked very unhappy. 'I ache all over. I feel weak. It’s as if I’m coming down with the flu.'

'Let Reed examine you. We can’t afford to have an infectious disease spread through the whole group.'

'But what will they say back in Kaliningrad?'

Deliberately softening his voice, Vosnesensky said, 'If you are ill it’s not your fault. The worst that can happen is that Kaliningrad will order you to transfer to the orbiting ship while they send Ivshenko down here to replace you.'

Mironov groaned. 'That’s what I was afraid of.'

'If it must be done, it must be done. For the good of the mission.' Vosnesensky reached out and patted him on the shoulder, grinning. 'Besides, Dr. Yang has a much better bedside manner than the Englishman.'

'You think so?'

'Once during training we had a very interesting discussion of Sino-Soviet relations, horizontally. I can vouch for her sympathy and tender care.'

Mironov’s hangdog expression brightened considerably. 'Probably all I need is some aspirin, I suppose.'

'See what Reed recommends. I know you don’t want to leave the ground team, but if it has to be — well, there are some compensations.'

The cosmonaut pulled himself up from the chair with an obvious effort, sighed deeply, and went off toward the infirmary. Vosnesensky turned his attention back to the comm screen. He ran a finger along the inside of his collar, then called up the environmental control display on his screen. The numbers showed everything inside the dome was normal, except for one of the air circulation fans, which had been turned off for maintenance. The dome’s temperature stood just a hair below its usual twenty-one degrees Celsius. Strange, thought Vosnesensky. It felt warmer than normal.

Jamie felt totally exhausted. He sagged into the cockpit seat and reached for the communication switch.

'God, you look awful,' Connors said.

'I feel lousy. Just about had enough strength to get out of the hard suit.'

'You were outside too long.'

'Maybe.'

'A hot meal and a good night’s sleep are what you need.'

Jamie almost laughed. 'You sound like my mother.'

Grinning back at him, Connors said, 'Come to think of it, I sound like my mother.'

Jamie flicked on the comm system. Vosnesensky’s dour face filled the tiny screen on the control panel.

'Christ, Mikhail, don’t you ever take a break?'

The Russian grunted. 'On our way back home I will be able to rest for nine months.'

'You’ve got a point there,' Jamie admitted. Sucking in a deep breath, he continued, 'Okay, here’s our preliminary report from today’s EVA.'

'I am ready. The tape recorder is on.'

'We brought eight rocks aboard for testing. Dr. Malater and Dr. Brumado are sorting them out now in the lab section. Three of them have some sort of orange intrusions on them that we haven’t seen before. There are also similar orange streaks running along the cliff wall here and there. We took scrapings.'

Vosnesensky said, 'Schmitt found orange coloration on the moon. Some form of glass, if I remember correctly.'

'This isn’t glass,' Jamie said. 'I’m sure of that.'

'Then what is it?'

'I don’t know. Some sort of sulfur compound, maybe. We’ll have to put it through the analysis routine.'

Vosnesensky gestured with one hand to indicate to Jamie to go on with his report.

'I took four borings down to depths of ten meters. There doesn’t seem to be a permafrost layer here on the valley floor, or if there is one, it’s deeper than ten meters.'

'What about deeper borings?'

'We decided to do one deep boring on tomorrow’s EVA, after we move to the second site. A deep bore takes more time, what with the heavier equipment and all; we just didn’t have the time for it today. We won’t travel so far that the two sites aren’t geologically equivalent, so a single deep bore should do.'

The Russian blinked slowly and nodded.

'Ilona and Joanna will send you videos of the rock samples. We took soil samples too, of course. Plenty of sandy regolith out here, a deep layer, more than two meters at this location. I set up a remote sensing beacon. The preliminary data we’re getting from it show that the heat flow from below ground is significantly higher here on the canyon floor than it is up on the plain.'

'Higher heat flow? Why is that?'

'Don’t know. Not yet.' Jamie forgot his fatigue as he spoke. 'Everything we’ve seen so far indicates that Mars is cold inside; if it has a molten core the way the Earth does, it’s very small and very deep. The core must’ve been bigger and hotter at one time, of course. Those Tharsis volcanoes can’t be more than half a billion years old, at most. But the core seems to have cooled down almost completely. No evidence of continental drift… nothing that even looks like continents.'

'Yet there is heat coming up from the canyon floor?'

'More than anywhere else we’ve investigated,' Jamie confirmed. 'Something under this canyon is warm. That’s why there are mists and water vapor down here.'

'What else?'

'Air density and temperature are consistent with what the remote probes have found. This whole canyon complex seems to have its own microclimate, warmer and with higher air pressure than the rest of the planet. Maybe the Hellas depression exhibits the same phenomena. We’ll have to check that out.'

'Not on this mission!'

'I know that. We’ll need to come back. This is like exploring Africa, Mikhail. It’s going to take decades, maybe a century or more, before we’ve got it all down.'

Vosnesensky broke into one of his rare smiles. 'One thing you do not lack, Jamie, is ambition.'

Jamie felt startled. 'Ambition? Me?'

But Vosnesensky was already framing his next question. 'How do you feel? Do you want to speak with Tony? Is your health status good?'

Jamie hesitated. 'I’m tired but otherwise okay. Ilona’s under the weather a bit, but I don’t think anybody else has any complaints. I’ll ask each one individually; if there are any problems we’ll call back.'

'Be certain that you do.'

Jamie signed off and cut the connection. Odd that Mikhail should ask about our health. The damned guy must be telepathic. Then he realized that Ilona must have spoken with Tony while they were outside. And Mikhail saw that Joanna took the EVA with me instead of Ilona. He’s a suspicious cuss. Typical Russian.

MARS ORBIT

Li Chengdu frowned at the display screen. He was in the command module of the Mars 2 spacecraft, sitting at the monitoring station behind the two pilots’ seats. Tolbukhin and the American astronaut, Burt Klein, had turned their seats around to make a little conference circle.

Dr. Yang sat next to Li, pointing at the two lists displayed side by side on the screen.