“We can’t just let them die!” said another woman.
“But a rescue attempt might fail and there will be more deaths,” countered a Japanese male.
“Half the reporters in the world are pounding on our doors,” someone commented sourly. “We’ve got to do something, and do it now!”
“We should never have permitted an excursion into the canyon,” a Frenchman complained. “Not on the very first mission. It was not in our original plan. We bowed to blatant American political pressure. That is what has put us in this chamber pot.”
“But Brumado’s daughter is one of the people who are stranded. We can’t let her die! Who’s going to face him and say that we decided to let his daughter die?”
“I am convinced,” said a chubby, balding Russian, “that the only thing we can do is to bring up the people in the dome right now, get them up to safety in the orbiting ships, and then send the last lander down to the canyon to take up the four in the rover.”
“And abort the expedition two weeks earlier than the schedule calls for?”
“Schedule?” an American shouted. “Schedule? What the hell difference does the damned schedule make? We’re talking human lives here!”
The chief controller pressed both his hands together, almost as if praying. “I am afraid that your suggestion is the only reasonable course of action that we have open to us. Even though it is not entirely free of risk.”
“It means that the people in the rover will have to wait at least another two days before the lander can be sent to them.”
“I doubt that we can close down the operations at the dome and bring all those people up with their equipment and specimens in just two days. The schedule calls for a full week to shut down the dome.”
“This is an emergency! Leave the equipment and specimens. Bring up the people and get on with the rescue, for god’s sake!”
“Leave everything?”
“Retrieve it on the next mission.”
“There won’t be another mission. Not if we have to abandon this one, run away from Mars like thieves in the night.”
“That’s the most stupid metaphor I’ve heard yet!”
“Just because you’re a woman doesn’t give you the right to…”
“Silence!” roared the chief controller. “I will not have us squabbling like children in a schoolyard. We will abort the mission. We will bring up the people in the dome as quickly as possible and then send the last of the landers to pick up the traverse team in the canyon. Anyone who wants to go on record as being against that decision should raise his or her hand. Now.”
Not a single hand went up.
“And it is also agreed,” the chief controller added, “that none of the expedition members will be allowed back to Earth unless and until this medical problem is solved. They will remain quarantined in Earth orbit.”
“If they get that far,” someone said in a stage whisper.
WASHINGTON: Edith could tell from Alberto’s face that something had gone very wrong.
“What is it?” she asked.
They were in the kitchen of the Georgetown house, just finishing breakfast before heading to Capitol Hill. Brumado had a date to testify before a congressional subcommittee holding hearings on the next fiscal year’s budget for space. The kitchen overlooked a lovely garden bounded by a red-brick wall. Most of the flowers were gone this late in the season, except for the hardy little impatiens lining the curved brick walkway with pink-and-white blooms that nodded in the soft morning breeze.
“What is it?” Edith asked again.
Brumado was at the telephone by the sink. His face was ashen. “My daughter… the traverse team… they are stranded in the canyon. Their rover vehicle has bogged down.”
Edith got up from the glass-topped table, her breakfast instantly forgotten. “They have the backup rover, don’t they? They can pick them up…”
But Brumado was shaking his head. “They’re sick. All of them on the ground team. Something has made them all very sick and weak.”
“Jamie too?”
“Yes. Him too.”
Edith felt her own breath catch in her throat. She swallowed hard, then asked, “What’re they going to do?”