Vosnesensky hoisted his water glass. “A very good day,” he said. “We accomplished much.”
Jamie touched his plastic glass to the Russian’s. “You’ll have a good report to make to Dr. Li.”
“Yes, after we eat.”
“I’ll feed the data tapes into the computer.”
“Good. Then we call the base and see what they have been doing.”
Jamie leaned forward over the narrow table. “Mikhail, I have a suggestion about tomorrow.”
The Russian also hunched slightly forward, until their noses were almost touching.
“No more than a day or so to the east of here, if we drive steadily, is Tithonium Chasma, part of the Valles Marineris complex-much deeper and wider than…”
Vosnesensky was already shaking his head. “It is not on the excursion plan. It is too far for us to travel.”
“It’s less than six hundred kilometers from here,” Jamie argued. “We could do it in twenty hours if we didn’t stop.”
“Drive at night? Are you insane?” There was no fear in the cosmonaut’s sky-blue eyes, merely the unshakable firmness of a man who had already decided how many risks he was prepared to take.
Jamie said, “Let me explain the geological necessity.”
Strangely the Russian broke into a lopsided grin. “Fine. You explain geology. I will clear the table.”
As Vosnesensky got up and took their dinner trays to the storage rack where they would remain until the rover returned to the main base, Jamie folded the table and slid it back into its place beneath the bunk.
“The canyon walls here are undifferentiated,” Jamie began to explain. “Just one big slab of iron-rich rock that’s been worn away and exposed. That’s unheard-of, Mikhail. There’s nothing on Earth like that.”
“So you have made a great discovery. Good.”
“We’ve got to find out if the bigger canyons are like that! Is the whole canyon system that way? Three thousand kilometers of pure mantle rock? It can’t be! It just can’t be.”
Vosnesensky was already sliding into the driver’s chair and checking to see that their communications antenna was locked onto the spacecraft up in synchronous orbit.
“What do the satellite photographs show?” he asked.
The sloping transparent roof of the cockpit was so low that Jamie had to bend over as he stood behind the driver’s chair. He could feel the cold of the Martian night seeping through the plastiglass even though Vosnesensky had drawn the thermal shroud for the night.
He answered, “Not enough detail, Mikhail. We’ve got to be there firsthand and see the rock formations close up. Take samples for analysis.”
“It would take us at least two days out of our way. A full day or more to get there and the same to return to where we should be. We don’t have enough food on board, and it would be an unnecessary strain on the air recycling system. And it would wreck the mission schedule.”
“Come on, Mikhail! We can stretch the food. The fuel cells produce clean water and the air recyclers are good for months. You know that. And there’s a full week between this excursion and the next one.”
“Twenty hours of driving, even without stops.”
“I’ll help you with the driving,” Jamie said, grinning. “I’ve driven pickup trucks over worse terrain than this.”
The Russian turned in his seat and fixed Jamie with those clear blue eyes. “This is not New Mexico.”
“That’s right,” Jamie replied. “This is Mars. And we’re here to explore this new world. There’s important scientific work to be done here, Mikhail….”
“You scientists always want to break the rules.”
“Damned right!” Jamie snapped. “We’re here for the sake of science. To explore. To learn. To seek out the truth wherever it leads us.”
“Pretty words,” grumbled Vosnesensky.
“Men have died for those ideas!”
“Yes. That is exactly my point.”
“We’ve come a hundred million kilometers-” Jamie was almost shouting-“What the hell is another day or two of travel?”
“It is not authorized. It is not on the excursion plan. The mission controllers back on Earth would disapprove.”
“Fuck ’em! We’re here, Mikhail. The reason we’re here is to learn. We can’t do that by sticking to plans written a year ago. They might as well have sent unmanned machines if they’re going to make us behave like goddammed robots.”