Chapter 6
Professor Elias Guttieriz had finished teaching for the day. It had been difficult to concentrate on ancient Phoenician dialects and their effect on the speech patterns of North Africa when he had so much else on his mind. Still, Guttieriz had only lost his place once while wading through the prepared lecture. He considered that an accomplishment. He was halfway to his office when he was overtaken by an excited student aide from administration.
“Sir, the chancellor wants to see you in his office right away!” the breathless student exclaimed.
Guttieriz, who had been expecting the summons, merely nodded. He gestured for the student to lead the way and both of them moved off in the gliding motion that is the most efficient means of locomotion on Luna. Guttieriz was a small man with black hair, a neatly trimmed mustache, and an incipient paunch. He knew his looks were far from impressive. It was enough that several influential papers on the fundamental structure of human language had earned him his reputation as the Solar System’s preeminent linguist.
“Ah, Eli!” the chancellor exclaimed as Guttieriz entered his office. “Come in and sit. Drink?”
Guttieriz moved to the chancellor’s couch. “Whiskey if you’ve got it, Hal.”
The chancellor poured amber liquid into two long stemmed, low gravity glasses and handed one to Guttieriz. He then sat on the opposite end of the couch.
“Have you made your decision, yet?”
“Not yet.”
“Time is getting short.”
“How can I make a decision when I haven’t even been tendered a formal invitation?”
“You’ve been asked if you would consent.”
“That isn’t the same as actually being invited.”
The chancellor removed a message flimsy from his pocket. “You’ll have your invitation this afternoon. I just received this from Jorgensen. He says that the board has reviewed the qualifications of several eminent linguists and has decided that you are most qualified to go out to meet these aliens.”
“I could have told them that.”
“What will be your answer?”
Elias shrugged. The hunching of the shoulders imitated the motion by which one climbs out of a moonsuit. To a Lunarian, that particular gesture represented a desire to escape the suffocating feeling that comes from a dilemma with no easy solution.
“To tell you the truth, Hal, I dislike being the subject of this … this … cattle show! If they want me, why didn’t they just ask me? I will not present myself like some prize pig down in the farm tunnels. Frankly, I have half a mind to turn them down.”
“You mustn’t!”
“Why not? Because the President won’t like it?”
“Precisely.”
“Then the President can step out the nearest airlock without a suit.”
The chancellor sighed. Not for nothing did Eli Guttieriz have a reputation for being difficult. Still, the man was a genius in his field. “Look here, Eli. This alien business is important for the whole human race. These beings have crossed twelve light years of space. Think of what they know that we do not.”
“I have thought about it.”
“Have you really? What industries will their knowledge make obsolete? Who will gain power from their arrival, who will lose it? What will be the effect on those of us here in Luna?”
“What the hell do I care? I’m a scholar.”
“Let us not be coy, Eli. We both know that you have a soft spot in your heart for your adopted world.”
“A soft spot in my head, you mean. I like it here because the people are not quite as rude as at home in Liverpool. Although, I do miss the English rains.”
“The Martians have already snapped up two berths, and the terrestrials have a man in command of the expedition. You are Luna’s last hope. If you turn it down, then the offer goes to Hayward Wilson.”
Guttieriz, who had been enjoying his position of power, was suddenly scandalized. “That poor excuse for a scholar? You can’t be serious, Hal!”
The chancellor shrugged. “He scored rather highly on the board’s health evaluation.”
“Especially the muscle between his ears, I imagine.”
The chancellor’s expression clouded. “I need your answer, Professor Guttieriz. Will you accept or reject the offer?”
“You are asking me to ignore the humiliation to which I have been subjected and do it for good old Luna?”
“Screw the humiliation! Think of what this will do for your reputation. It won’t harm the reputation of this university, either.”
Guttieriz drained his whiskey and set the glass down on the end table. “If the invitation comes this afternoon, I will communicate my acceptance by early evening.”
“Excellent.” the chancellor said. “I’ll get to work arranging transportation. Thank you, Eli. I was afraid we were going to have to draft you into the navy and order you to go.”
Eli laughed. He could just see himself sent out to do battle armed with a copy of Hamad’s Encyclopedia of Phonemes.
* * *
“So what did you think of our ship?” Van Zandt asked Kit Claridge. He, Kit, and Tory were seated in Phobos’s premier (and only) drinking establishment. The work crews had finished mounting the corvette atop the Starhopper booster that afternoon and the three of them had toured their future home.
“Impressive,” the doctor replied.
“What about you, Tory? Just another day at the office?”
“Any day that gets me away from my terminal is a good day.” Tory sat sideways in a booth while her two shipmates shared the opposite side. She’d put in a particularly long shift the day before and was feeling lethargic. She had been yawning throughout the tour of the ship.
“What word on our fourth?” Kit asked.
“The board finally stopped frittering. They selected Elias Guttieriz to join our little band.”
“Has he accepted?”
Garth nodded. “He should be here late next week. We’ll start full crew training the day after.”
“Is it certain they aren’t going to add a fifth slot?” Tory asked.
“I convinced them that it wasn’t wise. I know the calculations say we can get away with another crewmember, but damn it, you do not go out on something like this without a margin of safety. I’d hate to run out of food a month before we return.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Kit said lazily. “That never bothered the Donner party.”
“Who?”
“Never mind. It was a bad joke.”
Tory, who had let her eyes fall to half-staff while listening to the by-play, idly keyed the reference into her implant. That brought a history of the Colorado Administrative District of the North American Directorate, and the history of Donner Pass. Kit was right. It was a very bad joke. She sat up, drained her drinking bulb with a quiet slurping noise, and said, “Well, see you!”
“Where are you going?”
“Back to work. Lots to do!”
“Like what?”
Tory listed the subroutines she was debugging.
“I thought Vance Newburgh had already checked those out.”
“He did. I’m running an independent analysis.”
“Do you have reason to suspect the quality of his work?” Garth asked, his manner suddenly serious.
“No, of course not. Vance is one of the best we’ve got.”
“Have you found any errors?”
“Not so far.”
“Then why double check Newburgh’s results?”
“Because I’m the one getting in that ship, not Vance.”
Garth gestured for her to sit. “Let’s talk. You listen to this too, Kit. We need to get a few things straight.”
Tory sat. She felt like she was a little girl again, about to be lectured by her father. This was evidently one of those times when Van Zandt felt the need to play captain.
“Look, people, we’ve all been working hard to get ready for launch. That is good. It is not good if we wear ourselves out doing it. Tory, how much sleep did you get last night?”
Tory told him.
He swore softly. “You will not go back to the office tonight. I want you to go home and get eight hours of uninterrupted sleep. Doc, can you give her something?”
Kit reached into her medical pouch and withdrew a small white pill. “Here, take this when you get home. It will relax you.”
She pouched it, but not before giving Van Zandt a dirty look.
He continued without pause. If he saw the look, he chose to ignore it. “Let’s say you find a mistake in Newburgh’s work and fix it. What is the probability that you have taken a perfectly good piece of software and ruined it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Eighty percent, according to the studies on fatigue we’ve done in the Navy. That is why I want you fresh when you are working. It could mean the difference between a successful mission and blowing up.”
“All right, I’ll get a good night’s sleep.”
“You’ll do more than that. When was the last time you saw your family?”
“I don’t know. Last year sometime.”
“Anyone who is about to embark on a three year mission has to have time to get their life in order. If you don’t, you will be worried about things at home and not concentrating on your job. I want you headed down to Mars within the next seventy-two hours. I don’t care what you do, but you are to avoid thinking about that damned booster and its software. Report back here on the 22nd. Guttieriz arrives that day. I want you bright eyed and alert, and ready to work your butt off.”
“What about all the things I have backed up on my desk?”
“Turn over your duties to Newburgh and the programmers, then forget us.”
“But…”
“That’s an order, Chief Engineer.”
“Aye aye, Captain.”
“Good. Now sit still while I order another drink. We are here to celebrate getting Austria mounted. Kit, ready for another?”
“Aye aye, sir,” the older woman mimicked.
Soon the three of them were chuckling at one of Van Zandt’s stories and already Tory could feel the weight begin to lift from her shoulders. Maybe the Old Man … did they really call the captain the Old Man anymore? … knew what he was doing.
* * *
Tory felt her pulse pounding in her ears as she trudged up the sloped side of the mountain. Besides her own ragged breathing, the whir of a ventilation fan on high was loud in her ears. Pea-size globules of perspiration beaded on her forehead before breaking loose to run down into her eyebrows, only to be captured by the headband of her helmet. Without that necessary accessory, she would be blind.
She trudged the last few meters to the flat spot she had been aiming at for more than an hour. As she reached it, she turned to look down slope to where Ben Tallen was towing the equipment sledge behind him. Her eyes followed the snakelike track of their ascent in the ocher dust to the vanishing point, and then beyond to the rented Mars rover they had left parked at the base of the mountain. The big vehicle looked like a child’s toy from her vantage point.
“How’s this, skinker?”
“High enough for me, frump!” came back the gasping reply.
She waited for Ben to climb to her level before taking the towrope from him and hauling the sledge onto the flat area that had been carved by the thin Martian wind. By silent consent, the two plopped down on the large bundle secured atop the sledge to catch their breaths. Tory gazed out across the spectacular panorama as she rested.
Due east, its base invisible below the steeply curved horizon, was Olympus Mons. The upper third of the volcano’s shield was in view, silhouetted against the nearly black sky. The mountain on which Tory sat was a small volcano at the edge of the Plain of Amazons. They were some twenty kilometers lower than Olympus’s peak, making it impossible to see the caldera, but by squinting hard, it was just possible to make out the threadlike vertical form of The Aerie.
Below and all around them was the red surface of the high Martian desert. It was local summer, which meant that winds were light and blowing dust was at a minimum. Visibility in the thin atmosphere was nearly as good as on Luna, with only a minute softening of detail with distance, and none of the bluing that is characteristic of Earth’s atmosphere.
“We’d best move if we don’t want our legs to cramp up,” Ben said after they had rested for five minutes.
“Right,” she replied without enthusiasm. As her joints creaked inside her suit, she reminded herself that this trek into the wilderness had been her idea.
They worked as a team to drag the pressure tent off the sledge and unfold it. After several attempts, they got it spread out so that there were no folds in the heavy underlining. Working in opposite directions, Tory and Ben anchored the tent every twenty degrees around its circumference, driving stakes deep into the crumbly ground. Finally, Ben hooked up the environmental unit and pressed a control. The tent began to slowly inflate.
Ten minutes later, it was a silver igloo straining at its moorings. Ben set up the reinforcing rods that maintained the shape of the small tubular airlock while Tory unloaded the case of food and other supplies from the sledge. She piled the boxes inside the airlock, crawled in after, and then sealed the outer flap behind her before cracking the valve that let air in from the main section of the tent. She pushed the supplies inside and crawled in after.
Once inside, Tory struggled out of her suit, pushing it to one side when she finished with it. She resealed the inner airlock flap and signaled Ben that he could enter. He retrieved the chemical toilet from the sledge and repeated Tory’s performance with the airlock. She unsealed the inner flap and pulled the toilet inside, moving it to its place behind the privacy curtain. She then turned to help Ben off with his suit. It was hard work with the two of them and all their supplies in the tent. It took another twenty minutes to arrange things so that most of the clutter was out of the way. Ben busied himself unrolling the electrically heated sleeping bags while Tory plugged two prepackaged dinners into their power unit.
“Well, was it worth the climb?” Ben asked ten minutes later as he munched on pressed chicken loaf covered in something that was advertised to be brown gravy.
“Don’t you think so? Where else can you find a view this spectacular?” she asked as she gestured toward where the sun was setting. She had dialed the tent to full transparency so they could see out. Because of the dust in the air, Martian sunsets were always spectacular.
He smiled. “Too much red if you ask me.”
“I suppose I would think the same about blue and green if I ever went to Earth.”
“Care to make a bet on that?” he asked. It was an argument they had had before. Ben maintained that love of trees and water was imbedded in humanity’s genes, while Tory thought it an acquired taste. “How was your visit home?”
“Not what I’d hoped for,” Tory said. Her parents had been happy enough to see her, but it had not been twenty minutes before her father was grilling her about where she was going for three long years. She had given him the cover story that she had accepted a three-year contract from an asteroid mining company, to begin immediately after Starhopper launched. Her father had called her inconsiderate for not telling them earlier, while her mother and sister had made a fuss over her.
She had stayed with her parents for three days, then called Ben and asked him if he wanted to go camping. It had taken two more days to arrange transportation and rent the equipment. “Camping” on Mars bore only the faintest resemblance to the same activity on Earth.
The two of them lay propped up on one elbow, facing one another after dinner. Ben regarded her with serious eyes.
“What?” she asked when she noticed him looking at her.
“You’re beautiful when you’re red.”
She laughed, glancing down at herself. Martian dust was the same consistency as talcum powder. It covered the suits and the interior of the tent with a fine ocher layer, and despite their best efforts, had covered both of them from head to toe as well.
“Do you think so?” she asked.
“I do. Also, I’ve been noticing how much you’ve changed since college.”
“How so?” she asked, wondering what he was getting at.
“You’re more mature. You seem to care less about what other people think than you did.”
“Hah!” she said. “I’m still crushed whenever anyone makes even the tiniest critical comment about my work.”
“Well, you show it less. I remember a time when you had to dress precisely right and go to all of the functions everyone else was going to.”
“You should talk,” she said. “Who was it that had to have that new nanowave pulser because Bill Ames had bought one?”
“Not the same thing,” he said with a grin. “That was simple envy on my part. I didn’t care what Ames thought about me, I just didn’t want him to have one better than mine.”
“I stand corrected.”
Although spectacular, because of the thin atmosphere, the Martian sunsets are over quickly. When it was nearly too dark to see one another, Ben got to his knees and activated the overhead glowlamp. At the same time, Tory dialed the surface back to silver. They had to be careful about heat loss at night. In their scrambling, they met in the middle of the tent where Ben folded her into his arms and kissed her.
When their lips parted, Tory asked, “Who’s Gloria?”
Tallen blinked and was quiet for a long moment. “Where did you hear about her?”
“Do you remember Hideki Sato from school?”
Ben nodded.
“The project hired him as a programmer last week. We were talking about the software changes when I mentioned that you were back on Mars. He told me to say hi for him and then asked me how you were getting along with Gloria. Who’s Gloria?”
“Someone I met on Earth. Her father is on the Board of Directors of Tramton Corp.”
“Oh, she’s rich!”
He shrugged. “She isn’t hurting for credit.”
“Is it serious between you two?”
“We’ve talked marriage, but haven’t agreed to anything yet. Lately, I’ve been wondering if that would be such a good idea.”
“Oh?” Tory asked.
“I’ve recently come to realize that I may still be in love with someone else.”
“How recently?”
“Very,” he said as he leaned forward to kiss her again.
She pulled back this time. “Are you suggesting that we take up where we left off?”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m about to ship a zillion kilometers out into space.”
“That’s a problem, but not an insurmountable one. Truly, I didn’t realize how much I miss you.”
“Are you sure you aren’t just suffering from proximity syndrome? I’m here and Gloria isn’t.”
He sighed and released her. “So young to be so cynical.”
“You still haven’t told me how we are going to carry on a romance while I’m out at the light sail and you’re back on Earth.”
“We could write each other long love letters.”
“Who’s going to deliver them?”
“They’ll go out as official comm traffic. You may be interested to know that Underminister Sadibayan has assigned me to be liaison to the project technical staff.”
“Really? I suppose congratulations are in order.”
“They are indeed. It is my job to assemble the threat team. That is one reason I am still here. I’m going to ask Vance Newburgh to join once he finishes modifying the software for launch.”
“Threat team?”
“A poor title. It is more an adverse impact evaluation group. Each datum you people send back will be analyzed for adverse effects on our military capability, economy, and social institutions. There will be another team to evaluate positive impacts, and several groups of specialists to study any alien technology you tell us about.”
“It’s nice to know we’ll be able to get our questions answered when we call home.”
“You’re more likely to get a long list of questions that need answering,” he replied. “But don’t change the subject, which if I remember correctly, was you and me.”
She regarded him for long seconds before answering. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”
“Damned serious.”
“What about Gloria?”
“That’s something I need to work out.”
Tory nodded. “I need to work some things out as well. Can we talk about this later?”
“Sure. How about we get this dust cleaned off and get some sleep? I’ll use the electrostat on you, if you use it on me.”
“That sounds like a come on, Mr. Tallen.”
Somehow, his look of innocence did not ring true as he reached for the dust attractor and Tory wriggled out of her undersuit.