Glancing down at the blank gray screen of the communications console he realized that Waterman was both an asset and a liability. It’s a mistake to get him involved in the politics of this thing. He does not think politically; all he is interested in is the science. He is aflame to make a great discovery on Mars. So much so that he could ruin everything.
Thank god we could speak in private, Brumado said to himself. With the time lag between us it was difficult enough to get anything agreed to. It would have been impossible if others had been listening in.
More than a hundred fifty million kilometers away, Tony Reed stared thoughtfully at the dead screen of his own laptop. He had gone from the dome’s communications center to his infirmary, slid the accordion-fold door shut, and immediately tuned in on Jamie’s conversation with Brumado.
As the team’s physician and psychologist I have every right to know exactly what is going on, he had told himself. Secrecy be damned! They have no right to keep secrets from me.
Now he removed the plug from his ear and yanked out the hair-thin wire that connected it to his computer. So Jamie’s forcing them to send him back to Tithonium Chasma. Good! It can’t be soon enough.
SOL 14: AFTERNOON
Jamie had been unusually silent and moody at lunch, Tony Reed thought. Even for our stoic red man he’s being awfully quiet and withdrawn.
Reed was sitting at his infirmary desk, mulling over Jamie’s conversation with Brumado. The man has cheek, Tony thought, almost admiringly. Whatever inner demons are driving him, he has the gall to make demands on Brumado himself. And the Vice-President of the United States.
Smiling to himself, Reed thought, With any luck at all he’ll be banished to the orbiting spacecraft and leave Joanna to me.
Humming tunelessly, Reed tapped at his computer keyboard, calling up the afternoon’s schedule. Six of the seven scientists were supposed to be continuing the tedious business of mapping the depth and extent of the underground permafrost layer. Toshima, the seventh, would remain inside the dome working with his meteorology instruments. Reed had no responsibilities for outside work; one of the advantages of being team physician, he told himself.
Tony punched up his personal mission task schedule on the computer screen and saw that it was time for his weekly inventory of pharmaceutical supplies. With a barely suppressed moan of boredom he started by checking out the stocks of analgesics and vitamins. Next would come the uppers and downers. Have to be especially careful with them. Can’t have these people depending on drugs.
Pock!
The sound startled him. What on earth was that? Reed cocked his ears, but heard nothing more than the usual hums of machinery and the distant muffled voices of the others. With a shrug, he turned his attention back to the task at hand.
Wearily he went through the computer’s file on the analgesics. Every aspirin tablet must be accounted for. No one was allowed to take even one on his own; only the team physician could dispense the pills, and he had to keep a strict record of who received what.
Everyone took vitamins, of course. Reed slid the box of vitamin bottles out of its rack in the container bin and toted it to his desk. Four big bottles of five hundred each. Just one of the pills provided all the daily vitamin supplement a person required; carrying two thousand of them to the surface was typical mission overkill.
With a light pen Reed began to check the bar codes printed on the lids of each jar, like a supermarket clerk checking out groceries. Damned silly busywork, he grumbled to himself. Yet if the computer did not show a bottle-by-bottle check of the inventory, Vosnesensky would be up in arms. All mission tasks must be accomplished, as far as the Russian was concerned, no matter how trivial or boring.
Then a new thought struck him. If Jamie has his way and returns to the Grand Canyon he’ll probably want to take Joanna with him. She’s the mission biologist, after all. Damn him! Reed snarled silently. There’s got to be a way to get this insolent red man separated from the Brazilian princess. Let’s hope they banish him to orbit.