The chief controller sat behind his desk, alone in his Kaliningrad office except for the head of the British contingent. Outside the room’s one window a cold, dreary rain was spattering, the first taste of autumn and grim winter.
The display screen built into the paneled wall had just turned off. For the past fifteen minutes the two men had watched and listened to the tape of the latest report from Dr. Li. The expedition commander had read from a prepared script and kept his face an immobile mask that revealed no emotion whatever.
Now the screen had gone blank. Li’s tape was finished. The snow outside blanketed the usual noises from the street. The office was absolutely silent.
The chief controller tugged absently at his ragged Vandyke. “Well,” he said in English, “what do you think?”
The head of the British team for the Mars Project was a Scottish engineer who had risen through the technical ranks to become an administrator. He was a slightly built man with graying dark hair and a crafty look in his eyes even when he was relaxing socially.
“It’s a serious blow,” he said. “The physician should have caught the symptoms earlier and taken steps to avert the problem.”
“He found the answer, finally,” said the chief controller.
“Aye, but he came close to killing them all.”
The chief controller muttered, “How can we keep the media from finding out about this?”
“You cannot,” the Scot said flatly. “Not with Brumado talking to all those reporters in Houston.”
“Then we will have to keep this information from Brumado.”
“Are you prepared to keep the entire team incommunicado for the rest of the mission? Be reasonable, man. It cannot be done.”
The chief controller shook his head. “We’d have to keep them all quiet for the rest of their lives, wouldn’t we?” He tangled his fingers in the abused Vandyke again.
“I know what you’re thinking. It’s one thing if the politicians learn of this in private. We can explain it to them reasonably and make them see that it was an unavoidable accident. But if the media get hold of it and ballyhoo it, the politicians will have to react to what the media is saying, not what we tell them.”
“Exactly. That will mean the end of the Mars Project. There will be no return mission.”
” ‘Tis a thorny problem.”
The chief controller stared out the window at the falling snow. “It’s too bad we can’t keep them all on Mars permanently.”
The Scotsman smiled grimly.
By the time Jamie awoke it was fully light. Ivshenko was up in the cockpit; Vosnesensky had already suited up and gone through the airlock to winch himself across the treacherous lake of sand to the mired rover. It was the grating buzz of the winch motor that had pulled Jamie up from his sleep.
Once he realized Jamie was awake, Reed brought him a tray of hot breakfast with six gelatinous capsules resting beside a plastic cup filled with orange juice.
“Reed’s recipe for recovering your health,” the Englishman said when Jamie looked up at him questioningly. “Enough vitamins to lift a horse into orbit.”
Jamie still felt weak and aching, but better than the day before. He realized that it was not his physical symptoms that had eased; rather, the terrible fear he had kept bottled up within him was gone. The body will heal, he knew, once the mind has been convinced that healing is possible. The real agony is in the mind, always.
He took a deep breath. The pain in his chest was gone. The turmoil in his mind had cleared away, too. Everything looked different, clearer than he had ever seen it before. As if he had looked at the world through a veil. Until now.
For the first time in his life Jamie felt an inner serenity, a certainty. He felt as sure and solid as the ancient mountains. This is what Grandfather Al told me about. I’ve found my balance, my place in the scheme of things. I know who I am now. I know where I belong. What I went through out there in the darkness has changed everything. Once you accept death nothing else can harm you. I can face anything now. Anything. He smiled inwardly. Not this time, Life Taker. Not yet.