“NASA has offered to fly me to Houston, the mission control complex there.”
“But what about Jamie and your daughter?”
“I must testify to the subcommittee,” Brumado was muttering absently, like a man in shock. “They asked me not to reveal any of this. Not yet.”
“But Jamie?”
Abruptly he seemed to realize she was standing in front of him. “Edith, I must have your word that you will not break this news to your network.”
“Hey, I don’t have a network anymore. I’m unemployed, remember? But what about Jamie? Is he…”
“I don’t know!” Brumado snapped. Edith realized that he was fighting to maintain his self-control. She saw tears glimmering in the corners of his eyes.
“Maybe you ought to cancel the subcommittee appearance,” she suggested.
“No,” he said, more gently. “No, I can’t do that. It would raise suspicions.”
“You could have a cold, for god’s sake.”
“And then fly off to Houston?” He smiled without humor. “Half the subcommittee would be on the next plane. Or their aides, at least.”
“Yeah, maybe,” Edith admitted.
“Will you promise me not to call anyone, not to break the story?”
“Can I go to Houston with you?”
“Yes. Of course.”
“Okay.”
“You promise not to contact anyone about this while I am testifying this morning?”
“We have a deal, don’t we?”
But Edith was thinking, In Houston I can see how bad it really is, how tough a spot they’ve put Jamie into. An eyewitness account of Alberto Brumado watching as the team on Mars tries to rescue his daughter who’s stuck a thousand kilometers from their base. And sick. I could write my own ticket with that.
Sick from what? What’s happened to them? To Jamie?
Inwardly she made up her mind to keep her silence only until she was certain that they were doing everything they could for Jamie and the others. I’ve got to find out how they got into this mess. The minute I find out whose fault it is, then all deals are off.
This could be even bigger than finding life on Mars: four explorers trapped and sick a thousand kilometers from safety. That’s a real story! You don’t have to be a scientist to get excited about that.
SOL 38: EVENING
Tony Reed smiled bitterly as the computer screen scrolled the list from the medical program’s analysis.
“Just as I told you,” he said to Dr. Yang. “The idiot machine has nothing new to tell us.”
Sitting beside him at the infirmary desk, Yang Meilin scanned the short list as a woman lost on the desert would search the horizon for an oasis.
“The answer is here,” she said, barely loud enough for Reed to hear her. “I am certain of it.”
The anger that Tony had felt earlier was gone now. Yang was not going to upstage him. She was just as bewildered and frustrated as he was. He felt almost sorry for her. Sorry for both of them. The two great medical experts, he said to himself, as stymied as a pair of chimpanzees. Says worlds for the selection board, doesn’t it?
“I have a feeling,” Yang said, pressing one hand flat against her middle, “that we have seen the answer, but we do not yet recognize it.”
Reed let a thin sigh escape. “Feelings are one thing,” he said almost gently. “What we need are facts.”
“The one clear fact that we have,” she said, “is that everyone here on the ground is ill, except you.”
Tony felt a pang of guilt. “Yes. That’s what’s so damned puzzling about all this, isn’t it?”
“What are you doing that the others are not?”
He shook his head. “Not a damned thing, as far as I can tell. I breathe the same air, I eat with them….”
“Something in the food?”
Leaning back in his chair, Tony replied, “I can’t imagine that there is something in my meals that is protecting me from whatever the others have come down with. Or conversely, that their food is tainted in some way and mine just happens not to be.”
“Vitamin deficiency is on the computer’s list.”
“Yes, I know.” Some of the old exasperation was creeping back into Tony. “But we’ve checked that out time and again. They all take their vitamin supplements, just as I take mine. It can’t be that.”