Vosnesensky, totally surprised, shifted from one foot to another. “Well… I suppose…,” he stammered.
Ilona threw her arms around his neck and kissed him so soundly that Vosnesensky’s face turned as red as his hard suit. Everyone laughed. Even Reed.
Jamie looked at the other members of the Mars team. One by one, from Abell’s grinning frog face to Ivshenko, leaning heavily on a pair of stainless steel crutches. Mikhail was right, he thought. Mars has tested us. Each and every one of us. None of us is the same person we were when we arrived here.
His gaze ended with Joanna, standing slightly aside from all the others, strong and proud. Her eyes gleamed back at him.
It’s going to be an interesting trip home, Jamie thought. Very interesting.
SOL 45: NOON
One after the other, the three ascent modules lifted from the surface of Mars on tongues of shimmering flame. Their rocket engines blew miniature sandstorms across the landscape as they shrieked like departing demons, leaving the lower half of each L/AV sitting empty, incomplete, on the red dusty ground.
Quiet returned to Mars. The wind sighed as though sad to be alone again. The planet turned as it had since its beginning. Here and there in special niches on the bitterly cold little world, life abided, soaking up the sunlight and whatever pitiful moisture it could find.
Night fell and the pale distant sun rose again. More nights and days passed in their turn and nothing changed on the red surface of Mars. At last on one bright morning a new double star burned briefly in the pink sky and then was gone. The two linked spacecraft that had orbited the planet, a strange twinned artificial moon from another world, began the long journey back toward Earth.
Mars was alone again. Nothing of the inquisitive visitors from Earth remained. Except their scattered equipment, dead and still now, and their domed base, waiting for the next explorers. Inside the dome, sitting crouched on an empty rack, waited a miniature stone likeness of a bear that carried a tiny flint arrowhead and an eagle’s feather, tied by a leather thong that had been lovingly knotted.
The wind of Mars stroked the dome gently, waiting also.
High up on the flat top of a mesa where the Old Ones had built themselves a city a thousand years ago, Edith Elgin and Al Waterman walked beneath the bright blue sky. They both wore strong, comfortable boots, sheepskin jackets, and broad-brimmed hats.
“They’re on their way back,” Edith told Jamie’s grandfather. “They’ll be here by the springtime.”
Al nodded and squinted up at the brilliant sky. “I hope I’m still around by then.”
Edith looked at him sharply. “Why? Are you sick?”
“Not yet,” he said. “But there’s this feeling in my bones, you know.”
“Jamie told me you had a mystical streak in you.”
Al laughed. “Yeah, I guess I do.”
They walked along in silence for a while. The wind gusted hard, lifting the collars of their coats against their necks. All that remained of the ancient city was a scattering of adobe bricks almost hidden by the wild waving grass.
“You know,” Al said, “he’s gonna want to go back there soon’s he can.”
Edith nodded. “Maybe. It’s going to be a tough fight to get everyone to agree to another mission.”
“Naw, not as tough as you think. Jamie’s found his path; he’s turned into a hero. Nobody will be able to stop him from goin’ back to Mars. Not even the President of the United States, whoever it might be next year.”
“You think he’s that strong?”
“Sure.” Al peered at her, his eyes questioning. “He’ll make a lousy husband, you know, away for years at a time.”
Edith said nothing.
“Maybe he’ll marry one of the women scientists,” Al said.
“Or maybe,” Edith smiled her brightest smile, “maybe a really smart newswoman could get herself a spot on the next expedition and go out to Mars with him.”
Al grinned back at her. “Now that would be something, wouldn’t it?”
“Yes,” said Edith. “That would be just about perfect.”
Mars waited.
The giant volcanoes thrust their massive cones high into the thin atmosphere. The long rift valley sheltered its stubbornly rugged patches of lichen. The strange rock that bore the likeness of a human face abided patiently, as it had for untold millennia. The ocean of water frozen beneath the ground waited for a warmer time when it could release its vital moisture and renew the red world once more.