“Why must the leader of each team be a Russian?” Ilona asked, her throaty voice purring, almost sleepy.
Everyone turned toward her.
“I mean, we have men and women of every nationality on this mission. Yet of the four teams, each group is headed by a Russian. A Russian male, at that.”
For a long moment there was absolute silence. Jamie could hear the electrical hum of the ship’s equipment and the quiet hiss of the air fans.
“I can answer that,” said Pete Connors.
“Please do,” Ilona said.
The black astronaut was sitting beside Vosnesensky, who had the other cosmonaut, Ivshenko, on his other side. Connors gave them a small grin, then turned back to Ilona.
“First,” he raised a long finger, “the commander of each team must be a pilot. A man from the military, accustomed to giving orders and having them obeyed. Accustomed to receiving orders from higher authority and carrying them out. Without discipline we could all get killed. This is no weekend hiking trip we’re on.”
“You said a man,” Katrin Diels interrupted. “Why not a woman?”
Connors made an elaborate shrug. “Guess they couldn’t find any women with the necessary qualifications.”
All three women hooted at him. Even most of the men laughed.
Once they calmed down, Connors resumed, “Second, the Soviet Federation has provided the boosters and the life-support equipment for this mission. Soviet cosmonauts have more experience in spaceflight than anyone on Earth; they’ve been doing long-term missions aboard their space station since 1971, for god’s sake!”
“Because you Americans waited twenty-five years before you put up a permanent space station,” Xenophanes said, practically sneering.
“Yeah, that’s true,” Connors agreed. “So when we started planning the Mars mission, the American government agreed that the team leaders would be picked from military pilots who had the most experience in spaceflight.”
“Meaning Russians,” said Xenophanes.
“That’s the way it worked out.”
Sliwa huffed, “The Russians outsmarted you at the very start of the program. They have always been clever at negotiations.”
“I don’t think you can say that Mikhail or Dmitri are here because some Russian politician outslicked his American counterpart,” Connors objected.
Sliwa hunched his shoulders. Vosnesensky was glaring at the Pole.
Ivshenko glanced at his compatriot, then said, “The Soviet Union has made some sacrifices for this privilege of providing leadership. No Soviet scientist was selected for the ground team, even though we have many men-and women-who are highly qualified in the fields of planetary sciences.”
“Same thing with the States,” added Connors. “We have astronauts on all four teams, but no scientists on the ground team except for Jamie here.”
They all turned toward Jamie, who forced himself to remain silent. I’m here by accident, he told himself. They all know that. And back in the States I’m only half American, whichever way you look at it.
“Perhaps we should change the subject,” Reed suggested. “This kind of argument will get us nowhere.”
Jamie was tempted to ask Reed to explain how he could sneak sex-suppressant drugs into their food or drink. But he thought better of it. No sense starting a real fight, he told himself. So he remained quiet while the others stared at one another, unable or unwilling to find a new topic for discussion.
“Well then, perhaps we should get some sleep,” Reed said.
Vosnesensky nodded vigorously. “Yes. A good idea. In ten hours or so the radiation levels should be low enough for us to leave this shelter. Then we will have to check the ship’s systems and all our equipment thoroughly to assess what damage the storm has done, and then repair it. We should sleep now.”
It was an order, not a suggestion. No one argued, not even Ilona.
SOL 8: EVENING
Jamie and Vosnesensky had started as soon as the morning sunlight made the ground around them visible. All the previous day they had taken turns driving the rover at breakneck speed along the broken, rugged badlands country, heading north by east, away from the faulted canyons of Noctis Labyrinthus, away from their base camp. Breakneck speed, for the rover, was not quite forty kilometers per hour-almost the speed limit in a school zone.