“I like geology,” he said. “I’d like to study geology, I think.”
More than an hour had passed since they had started off. Jamie was fingering the bear fetish in his coverall pocket as the rover climbed the slope of a ridge, laboring up a steepening grade that was strewn with smallish rocks and pebbles. The red soil seemed sandy, crumbly. Jamie could hear the electric motors that drove each individual wheel whining, struggling.
Vosnesensky slowed the vehicle to a crawl. Looking out ahead, Jamie could see only the approaching top of the ridge and the pink sky beyond it. Not a cloud in that sky, it was as clear and empty as the deep blue skies he had known in New Mexico.
“Can’t we go any faster?” Jamie urged. “The moisture’ll be all baked out of the air by the time we reach…”
Abruptly Vosnesensky tramped on the brakes. Jamie lurched forward, reflexively jabbing his hands out to the control panel. He started to complain, then gaped at what lay outside the plastiglass canopy.
“We are here,” Vosnesensky said.
What Jamie had thought was the ridge line was actually the rim of the canyon. Beyond it there was a huge, vast, yawning emptiness. They were perched on the edge of a cliff that dropped away precipitously for miles and miles. Another few feet and the rover would have pitched over the rimrock and plunged down forever.
“Jesus Christ,” Jamie breathed.
Vosnesensky grunted.
Jamie stood up in his chair, peering as far as he could into the depths of the enormity of Tithonium Chasma. It was dizzying, and knowing that this gigantic cleft was merely one arm of Valles Marineris, that the valley system stretched more than three thousand kilometers eastward, made his head swim even more.
Then he felt his heart clutch in his chest. “Mikhail-it’s there. The mist…”
Frail gray feathers of clouds were wafting through the vast canyon far below, like a ghostly river that glided silently past their round staring eyes.
“The sunlight has not reached that deep into the canyon,” Vosnesensky said.
“Yeah.” Jamie pushed out of his seat and started back toward the airlock and the hard suits. “Come on, we’ve got to get this on tape before the clouds evaporate. There’s moisture down there, Mikhail! Water!”
“Ice particles,” the Russian said. He followed Jamie toward the suit locker.
“They melt into liquid water.”
“And evaporate.”
“And form again the next night.” Jamie was struggling into the lower half of his suit. “The moisture doesn’t go away. It stays in the valley-for a while, at least.”
He had never put on a hard suit so quickly. After the lower half, the boots (it was much easier that way), then the torso, finally the helmet. Vosnesensky helped him into his backpack and checked all the seals and connections while Jamie quivered like a bird dog on the scent.
As he was grabbing for the video camera Vosnesensky said sternly, “Gloves! Think before you step outside. Go down the checklist no matter how excited you are.”
“Thanks,” Jamie said, feeling sheepish.
“In fact,” Vosnesensky said, sliding his helmet over his head and fastening the neck seal, “the more excited you are the more you must force yourself to stop and go through the checklist point by point.”
“You’re right,” Jamie said impatiently.
The Russian grinned at him, like a squat bear showing its teeth. “If you kill yourself here I will be in big trouble with Dr. Li and the controllers in Kaliningrad.”
Jamie found himself grinning back. “I wouldn’t want to get you in trouble, Mikhail.”
“Good. Now we are ready to go outside.”
It was not fair to call it a canyon. Jamie could not see the other side, it was beyond the horizon. The abyss named Tithonium Chasma was so vast, so awesome, that at first Jamie merely stared out from behind his tinted visor, numb with excitement and an overpowering feeling of reverence.
Unbidden, words from his long-forgotten childhood formed in his mind:
These are the words of Changing Woman,
wisdom she gave to the Holy People: The only
goal for a man is beauty, and beauty can be
found only in harmony.