AFTERNOON: SOL 48
“SO HOW DOES IT FEEL TO HAVE ALL THREE OF US TO YOURSELF?” Vijay asked.
Jamie and the three women had just sat down for a late lunch. Rodriguez and Fuchida would be landing at Olympus Mons in less than an hour. Trumball and Possum Craig had reported a few minutes earlier that they were trundling along toward Xanthe with no problems.
Vijay grinned devilishly as she said it. Jamie felt his brows knit slightly in a frown.
“Yes,” added Trudy Hall. “You’ve very cleverly removed all the other men, haven’t you?”
To cover his embarrassment, Jamie turned to Dezhurova. “Don’t you have anything to add to this, Stacy?”
She was already munching on a hastily-built sandwich. Stacy chewed thoughtfully, swallowed, then said, “What is the American word for it? Kinky?”
All three of the women laughed; Jamie forced a smile, then turned his attention to his plate of microwaved pasta and tofu herb salad.
He was thankful when the women began to talk among themselves about the food, the taste of the recycled water, the way the washer/dryer was fading their clothes. They all wore the standard-issue coveralls, but Jamie noticed that they each had individualized their clothing: Dezhurova had stylish Russian logos from her days as a government astronaut sewn above her breast pockets; Hall always clipped bits of glittery costume jewelry to hers; Shektar added a bright scarf at her throat or a colorful sash around her waist.
“We should try the clothes-cleaning system they use at Moonbase,” Dezhurova said. “It is much easier on the fabric.”
“I’ve heard about that,” Trudy said. “They just put the clothes out in the open, do they?”
Stacy nodded vigorously. “Yes. In vacuum on the lunar surface the dirt flakes completely off the fabric. And the unfiltered ultraviolet light from the sun sterilizes everything.”
Vijay pointed out, “We don’t have a vacuum outside.”
“Very damned close,” Dezhurova countered.
“Plenty of UV,” said Trudy.
“What do you think, Vijay?” Dezhurova prompted. “Worth a try, no?”
“We’ll need some sort of container, won’t we? You don’t just hang the clothes on a line.”
“I suppose we could,” said Trudy.
“At Moonbase they put clothes in a big mesh basket and run it up and down a track set into the ground,” Stacy explained. “The basket rotates, like the tumbling action in a washing machine.”
“We don’t have anything like that here.”
“I could rig one up,” Dezhurova said confidently. “It should be simple enough.”
“Do you think you could?”
She nodded solemnly. “Possum is not the only one here who is good with his hands.”
“What do you think, Jamie?” Shektar asked.
Grateful that they were no longer teasing him, he replied, “What about the dust? It would get onto the clothes, wouldn’t it?”
“There’s dust on the Moon, too,” Trudy said.
“But no wind.”
“Oh. Yes.”
Dezhurova said, “We could put the basket track on poles, off the ground.”
“I suppose,” said Jamie.
“Otherwise our clothes will keep on fading and fraying.”
“They’ll fall apart completely, sooner or later,” said Trudy.
Vijay’s evil grin returned. “Jamie wouldn’t mind that, would you, Jamie?”
He tried to stare her down, but instead pushed himself away from the table. “Tomas should be calling in in five minutes or so.”
As he got to his feet and fled to the comm center, Jamie was certain he heard them giggling behind him.
Rodriguez was a happy man. The plane was responding to his touch like a beautiful woman, gentle and sweet.
They were purring along at—he glanced at the altimeter—twenty-eight thousand and six meters. Let’s see, he mused. Something like three point two feet in a meter, that makes it eighty-nine, almost ninety thousand feet. Not bad. Not bad at all.
He knew the world altitude record for a solar-powered plane was above one hundred thousand feet. But that was a UAV, an unmanned aerial vehicle. No pilot’s flown this high in a solar-powered plane, he knew. Behind his helmet visor he smiled at the big six-bladed propeller as it spun lazily before his eyes.
Beside him, Fuchida was absolutely silent and unmoving. He might as well be dead inside his suit, I’d never know the difference, Rodriguez thought. He’s scared, just plain scared. He doesn’t trust me. He’s scared of flying with me. Probably wanted Stacy to fly him, not me.
Well, my silent Japanese buddy, I’m the guy you’re stuck with, whether you like it or not. So go ahead and sit there like a fuckin’ statue, I don’t give a damn.
Mitsuo Fuchida felt an unaccustomed tendril of fear worming its way through his innards. This puzzled him, since he had known for almost two years now that he would be flying to the top of Olympus Mons. He had flown simulations hundreds of times. This whole excursion had been his idea; he had worked hard to get the plan incorporated into the expedition schedule.
He had first learned to fly while an undergraduate biology student, and had been elected president of the university’s flying club. With the single-minded intensity of a competitor who knew he had to beat the best of the best to win a berth on the Second Mars Expedition, Fuchida had taken the time to qualify as a pilot of ultralight aircraft over the inland mountains of his native Kyushu and then went on to pilot soarplanes across the jagged peaks of Sinkiang.
He had never felt any fear of flying. Just the opposite: he had always felt relaxed and happy in the air, free of all the pressures and cares of life.
Yet now, as the sun sank toward the rocky horizon, casting eerie red light across the barren landscape, Fuchida knew that he was afraid. What if the engine fails? What if Rodriguez cracks up the plane when we land on the mountain? One of the unmanned soarplanes had crashed while it was flying over the mountain on a reconnaissance flight; what if the same thing happens to us?
Even in rugged Sinkiang there was a reasonable chance of surviving an emergency landing. You could breathe the air and walk to a village, even if the trek took many days. Not so here on Mars.
What if Rodriguez gets hurt while we’re out there? I have only flown this plane in the simulator; I don’t know if I could fly it in reality.
Rodriguez seemed perfectly at ease, happily excited to be flying. He shames me, Fuchida thought. Yet … is he truly capable? How will he react in an emergency? Fuchida hoped he would not have to find out.
They passed Pavonis Mons on their left, one of the three giant shield volcanoes that lined up in a row on the eastern side of the Tharsis bulge. It was so big that it stretched out to the horizon and beyond, a massive hump of solid stone that had once oozed red-hot lava across an area the size of Japan. Quiet now. Cold and dead. For how long?
There was a whole line of smaller volcanoes stretching off to the horizon and, beyond them, the hugely massive Olympus Mons. What happened here to create a thousand-kilometer-long chain of volcanoes? Fuchida tried to meditate on that question, but his mind kept coming back to the risks he was undertaking.
And to Elizabeth.