The lander touched down with a gentle kiss of its pads on the packed rusty surface, concrete made from Martian sand and dust. With a noiseless whistle, Chetwynd lifted gloved hands from the control panels and let out a comical sigh of relief. “Okay, chaps, my work is all done.”
Sitting in the lander’s VIP seat, Keefer took over and spoke into the voice pickup. “Touchdown on schedule, on target, thank you very much. Lowell Base, go ahead and send the rover vehicle for us.”
While Chetwynd went through the twenty-minute-long shutdown and arrival procedure, scratching his bristly reddish hair with one hand, the other eleven people on board fitted each other into environment suits. The passengers double-checked every fastening and seal, though this gentler Mars would actually let them live a few minutes if their suits were breached.
Tam Smith helped Keefer mount his air-regenerator backpack and snap his helmet into place, and he did the same for her. “We’re on Mars,” he said with an astonished smile. “We’re really here.”
She laughed and flipped down his faceplate for him. “Better close your helmet, if you’re going to keep grinning like a little kid.”
“Hey, I’m the commissioner,” he said through the speakerpatch, “I’m supposed to be enthusiastic about our work here. Just doing my job.”
All prepped, he flexed his fingers in the thin gloves. Implanted heater wires kept the suit warm throughout, in preparation for the biting perpetual cold of Mars. The suit seemed so flimsy, so lightweight, so comfortable compared with the constant-pressure suits he had worn during some of the early training exercises. He wanted to run and jump and play on this new world he had helped make.
Maybe when nobody was looking. …
Glancing out the tiny viewport, trying to keep out of Chetwynd’s way, Keefer could see how the red soil around the base had been churned and packed by the many rover tracks and construction activities. The loose, microfine debris had been blown away by landings and lift-offs from various vehicles. Humans had been true strangers on Mars little more than a decade ago, but now the fifty base inhabitants had turned the area into a pioneer town.
“Company coming,” he said as he noticed the billows of red dust stirred up by the approaching rover. “Everybody get ready. Please remember all the precautions.”
Ogawa and Shen nodded gravely. The others simply mumbled unintelligibly through their faceplates. “Thanks, Dad,” Tam said.
After Chetwynd finished the shutdown procedures and mothballed the equipment, he donned his own environment suit. Then, with a silent puff of wind that made the slick suits balloon in the suddenly lowered pressure, he exhausted the lander’s contained air before popping the hatch. The ship would remain vacant here on the pad for more than two weeks before Commissioner Dycek and the other old-timers climbed aboard for their return trip to Earth.
Below, a suited figure gestured them toward the waiting rover vehicle, which looked like a motor home that had run over a giant porcupine. The undertreads of articulated legs let the vehicle scuttle over rough terrain, adjusting to the uneven landscape like a souped-up sea urchin. The rover had plenty of computer equipment on board, a mobile encampment—much different from the stripped-down buggy the first Mars explorers had driven. Keefer doubted the big rovers were as much fun, though.
In pairs, the dozen passengers descended to the surface. Keefer waited as Chetwynd and Tam stood on the hydraulic lift platform that lowered them with agonizing slowness. When his turn came Keefer was tempted to jump down and raise some dust in the one-third gravity, but he supposed he had to set a good example for his people.
Like a regiment, they marched across the hard red concrete to the waiting rover, standing in line once more as they entered the vehicle through the sphincter airlock, working their way through the self-sealing membrane, again in pairs. Finally, when the entire group stood with barely contained excitement inside the pressurized rover, they clicked up their faceplates. Keefer smelled the bitter metallic tang of air contaminated with iron oxide dust, so strong that it made the back of his tongue taste flat.
Their driver turned around to show a chubby face of honey-brown skin and huge beetling eyebrows. His dark hair was streaked with wiry white strands, like lines in black scratchboard. “Welcome, my friends. I am Dr. Beludi al-Somak, one of the meteorologists at Lowell Base.”
Before saying anything else, al-Somak turned the rover in a wide circle and trundled toward the black rocks of a steep ridge. The sea-urchin legs made the floor of the rover vibrate with an odd miniature-stampede sensation. Al-Somak headed for a cluster of dusty metal balloons snuggled up against the fractured ridge, in the lee of the prevailing winds.
“I hope you had a fine trip down,” al-Somak said. “We will have a busy week as we give you tours and establish a new working routine. As always, there is too much work, and we are delighted to have fresh helpers. You each have colleagues here, coworkers to take you under their wing.” He heaved a huge sigh. “Unfortunately I see by your dossiers that none of you has studied meteorology, so Dr. Evrani and I will have no rest. Pity.”
Keefer leaned forward in the seat as the rover continued toward the modules. “Tell me, Dr. al-Somak, will Commissioner Dycek be waiting to greet us at the base? I tried to raise her several times from the orbiter, but I never managed to get through.”
Al-Somak gave a troubled sigh. “I believe she will be there, but beyond that I cannot tell you. She is upset about your arrival, Commissioner Keefer. She does not wish to return to Earth, and you are here to take her place.”
Keefer nodded, feeling his stomach knot. He had feared something like this might be the case. “Thank you for being so candid with me. I’m sorry to hear that, but I didn’t make the decision. Dr. Dycek has been here for ten years. The regulations—”
Al-Somak raised a wide hand. “You do not need to make excuses to me, Commisioner Keefer. It is Rachel who needs to be convinced that you will not bury her work.”
In truth, Keefer had little interest in Dycek’s dva project. It had been shocking in its time, yes, but ultimately just a sidelight on the transformation of Mars. Keefer was an expert in extraterrestrial geology and terraforming processes. He had analyzed the paths of the long-term plan, tweaking, exploring possibilities as new data came available. The original scheme was based on some very broad assumptions, some of which proved too conservative, some too optimistic.
Keefer struggled to assemble a quick reply. “Well, perhaps we can straighten this out quickly.”
Al-Somak blinked his deep black eyes. “I doubt it. Dr. Dycek has been convincing herself of it for too long.”
Al-Somak brightened the tone of his voice as he changed the conversation, looking at some of the other passengers. “Ms. Smith,” he said, turning to Tam with a solicitous smile, “you are scheduled to begin work in the greenhouse dome tomorrow. Several of you others have a tour set up with Dr. Vickery to see the solar arrays we have mounted up on the Spine, including you, Commissioner Keefer. No rest for anybody, I’m afraid.”
Keefer, his mind still whirling from what al-Somak had told him about Dr. Dycek, tried to sound compassionate. “Shouldn’t we try to get acclimated a little bit before jumping right into the routine? Give our team a chance to stretch our legs. We’ve been cooped up for four months on the flight over here—”
“The tour cannot wait, Commissioner,” al-Somak said. “In fact, had you been a day or so later we would not have allowed you to land. Seasonal dust storms, spring and fall, you see. The weather satellites show a large storm approaching our latitude in the next day or so. The type of thing that makes a meteorologist go into absolute ecstasy.” He smiled. “But I fear it would not be wise to have anybody wandering around in it.”
Al-Somak keyed instructions to the rover’s AI pilot program and brought them into a cavelike shelter hollowed out of the cliff, where refueling and recharging pumps stood waiting to connect to the long-range