“Great,” said Connors, puffing. “I’ve got our right front wheel almost cleared.”
Looking from Joanna’s tired face to Klein’s healthy unclouded image on the little display screen Jamie realized how sick the four of them must be. His skin’s almost pink, Jamie thought.
Dr. Li came on the screen and began giving instructions about the news conference that would begin within the hour. He asked Jamie to bring Connors inside before the conference started. Jamie checked his wristwatch against the digital clock on the cockpit control panel, then asked Joanna to take over the comm link. Klein came back on and Joanna chatted with him almost as if they were old friends discussing the weather.
Jamie saw that Joanna had put on a fresh set of coveralls, coral pink, and had applied makeup to her face. She’s trying to hide the pallor, he realized, trying to look good for the media. And for her father.
Making his way back toward the airlock in the bulky hard suit, Jamie passed Ilona. She sat on one of the benches, looking exhausted. She too had put on makeup and had even wrapped a bright flowered scarf around her coverall collar. But she still looked terribly pale and weak.
Jamie tried to be cheerful. “Ready to be famous?”
She smiled faintly. No amount of makeup could hide the strain in her face, the redness of her eyes. But maybe she could get past the cameras okay. The big story today is supposed to be the discovery of life on Mars, not our physical condition.
The two-way transmission lag between Earth and Mars was now more than twenty-five minutes, so a live give-and-take interview was impossible. Instead, the media reporters and the mission controllers had worked out a different protocol. Twelve reporters had been selected from the swarms that had descended on Kaliningrad, Houston, Washington, and other capitals the instant the news of life on Mars had been released. Each of the twelve was in a different location on Earth. Each would ask a question, to be answered by one of the Mars explorers. There would be no follow-on questions. Alberto Brumado, in Washington, would fill in the time between question and answer with commentary and chat among the mission controllers, project administrators, and politicians assembled in Kaliningrad and elsewhere.
Many politicians had come to place themselves before the cameras, eager to bask in the glow of the great discovery and allow the world’s media to interview them on global TV.
Jamie wondered if Edith would be among the questioners. Not likely, he decided. She’s just started with the network; she’s not high enough on their ladder for this.
The two women sat in the cockpit seats, with Jamie and Connors standing behind them. The hour had barely been enough time for Connors to dig out one of the rover’s wheels and then drag himself back inside. He had taken off only the top half of his hard suit, and stood beside Jamie with his boots still on and his lily-white leggings spattered with red dust that exuded the stinging odor of ozone, despite his efforts to vacuum them clean.
Vosnesensky was at the comm screen in the dome, Dr. Li up in orbit. The people on Earth could speak with any of the units of the Mars expedition that they wished to converse with.
Brumado came on the screen before the conference officially began. He congratulated his daughter, and Joanna sent him a loving thank-you. Jamie was almost jealous of the warm smile she offered her father. When her message finally reached him Brumado gave no indication that he was shocked or even worried by his daughter’s appearance; she had put up a smiling front without once mentioning their physical condition.
He’s probably too excited to even notice, Jamie thought. Maybe we’re all too worked up about how lousy we feel. If it doesn’t show on television, how bad can it really be?
The order in which the reporters asked their questions had been picked at random by the mission control mainframe computer in Kaliningrad. Everyone thought that was a fittingly scientific way to handle the problem of priority. The reporter selected to be first was Hong Kong’s foremost media personality, a strikingly beautiful woman with skin like porcelain and almond eyes that had inspired poetry.