“Maybe. I thought you Russians were all great gamblers,” Jamie coaxed.
Vosnesensky stiffened visibly. “I am not here to gamble. Not with lives. Especially my own.”
“But it’s not that big a risk,” Jamie urged, quickly switching tactics. “We can do it! We don’t have to stick to the plans they wrote for us on Earth. The mission orders allow us some flexibility. We’ve got an opportunity here to make a fundamental discovery about the geological history of this planet.”
“It is an unnecessary risk.”
Jamie made himself grin at the Russian. “Look at it this way, Mikhail-if we kill ourselves you won’t have to face Dr. Li or the mission controllers back at Kaliningrad.”
Vosnesensky stared at him for a long moment, then burst into a peal of laughter. “You are a fatalist!” the cosmonaut said. “Just like a Russian.”
“You’ll do it?”
“It is not in the excursion plan.”
“So we change the plan,” Jamie said. “The rover’s got the range and we’ve got enough supplies on board. If we get stuck, Mironov can come out with the other rover.”
Vosnesensky’s beefy face returned to its normal scowl. He said, “We cannot deviate from the excursion plan. It is not allowed.”
Jamie felt himself tensing. With deliberate care, he slowly rose from his squatting position. “In that case,” he said evenly, “mission regulations give me the right to go over your head and appeal directly to Dr. Li. I want to talk to Li.”
Still frowning, Vosnesensky reached out across the control panel and flicked on the communications set.
“Speak to the expedition commander then,” he growled. “Let him take the responsibility.”
“To Tithonium Chasma?” Dr. Li was startled. “But that is a thousand kilometers away from your present position.”
“Its western edge is less than six hundred kilometers from our present position,” replied James Waterman.
Li sank back in his upholstered chair. He had retreated to his private quarters to take the expected check-in call from Vosnesensky, partly for his own comfort and partly because he felt he could deal with whatever problems arose more easily without the technicians and other team members crowding around him at the communications console of the spacecraft’s command center.
His compartment was as luxurious as mission regulations allowed. Like all the other privacy cubicles aboard the two Mars spacecraft it was barely large enough to accommodate a narrow bunk, a tiny desk, and a single chair. Li’s chair could tilt back, however, like an astronaut’s acceleration couch. He often used it to sleep in, rather than the bunk, which he found uncomfortably short.
While other team members had decorated their cubicles with photos of their families or maps of Mars or even computer printouts, Li had taped an exquisite set of small silk paintings onto his walls. Mountains shrouded in mist. Beautiful birds perched on a graceful tree limb. A pagoda by a lake. Touches of home. Even if he died in space, he reasoned, he wanted the comfort of those paintings beside him.
But he did not so much as glance at them while he stared into the display screen that dominated his small desk. Waterman’s broad, onyx-eyed face looked back at him. A face that could be very stubborn, Li realized.
“I wish to give you as much latitude as possible,” Li said, “but adding three extra days to your traverse seems excessive to me.”
He did not add that Vosnesensky was not even supposed to be on this traverse. The Russian should have remained at the base camp, as the mission plan called for. He was already exceeding his directives.
“It’s necessary,” Waterman replied. “For geological reasons.”
Li almost let himself smile. Of course, for geological reasons. Naturally Waterman would have a sound scientific reason for pushing the limits. A born troublemaker.
Steepling his fingers in his lap, out of range of the comm unit’s camera, Li waited for the geologist’s explanation. Waterman looked eager, black eyes wide and sparkling, lips slightly parted, energy fairly shining from his dark-skinned face.
“We’ve calculated the rover’s fuel reserves and they are more than sufficient to take us to the Tithonium region and back to the base, sir. Plus a generous allowance for reserve.”