With Vosnesensky following a few paces behind, Jamie walked slowly around the dome’s curving flank, out to the side where he could not see the landing vehicles and the litter of equipment and instruments surrounding them. This was his favorite vista, empty desert as far as the disturbingly close horizon, a wrinkled red line of cliffs out in the distance.
He blinked his eyes once and the view he saw was New Mexico, with scraggly thorn bushes and patches of scrub grass scattered across the sand and rocks. Another blink and it was Mars again, barren and cold.
Were you alive once? Jamie asked the world on which he stood. Will we find the spirits of your dead in the canyon? Are we the first to cross the gulf between us, or did your ancestors reach our world eons ago? Am I returning home?
The softly keening wind gave Jamie no answer. The spirits of Mars, if there were any, kept their secrets to themselves.
Jamie gave a heartfelt sigh. All right, then. I’ll have to go out and find you. I’ll have to see for myself what the truth is.
Finally he turned and smiled at the fire-engine red suit of Vosnesensky, even though he knew the Russian could not see his face through the tinted visor.
“All right, Mikhail. Let’s go back inside.”
“That is all you want?”
“You were right. There’s a lot to do. We’d better go to work now.”
Jamie could sense the Russian trying to shrug inside his hard suit. As they plodded back toward the airlock Jamie tried to remember the details of his dream. Something about school, something that bothered him. He put it down to anxiety and forgot about it.
Tony Reed had dreamed, too.
The English physician had gone straight from his sleeping cubicle to his infirmary, padding along the hard plastic flooring in a pair of woolen socks and nothing else except a frayed terrycloth robe of royal blue with the seal of his father’s club sewn on its left breast.
Reed could not recall his dream, merely the fact that he had awakened in a cold sweat, thankful that the visions that had haunted his sleep had winked out like the picture on a television tube the instant his eyes had snapped open. He carefully shut the accordion-fold door of the infirmary and began preparing his morning pick-me-up.
“I love coffee, I love tea,” he sang tunelessly to himself in a sub-vocalized whisper. “But I love you best of all.”
The perfect morning drink. Enough amphetamine to start the day brightly, but not so much that it’s harmful. Or noticeable. A touch of this and a touch of that. Just the thing to start another day on Mars. Blasted Mars. Dangerous Mars. Dull, bleak, dead Mars.
Reed held the small plastic beaker up to the light, made certain that the liquid in it was exactly at the level it should be, then quaffed it down with relish.
There! Now, by the time I finish my morning ablutions my hands will be steady enough for shaving.
He was the last to enter the wardroom that morning. No one remained there except Monique and Ilona.
“All the bees out being busy, I see,” Reed said brightly as he headed for the freezer.
“I must go too,” Ilona said, dabbing her lips as she got up from the table.
She took her tray to the recycling slot while Reed slid his into the microwave oven.
“Will you miss me?” he asked Ilona, low enough so that Monique could not hear.
Ilona looked almost surprised. “I will see you every day, when we make our medical report.”
“That’s not quite the same as being together, is it?”
She gave him a haughty smile. “We haven’t been together like that since we landed here.”
“Yes. A pity, too.”
“Do you miss me?”
“Certainly.”
“But I thought it was Joanna you were interested in.”
Reed looked into her tawny eyes. “Ah, that was merely a pastime. A game.”
“A game that you lost.”
“The game isn’t over yet,” Reed said, miffed.
Ilona laughed. “If you can get her to bed with you after she comes back from being with our red man for ten solid days…”