Once it had been a town, nothing more than a handful of apartment blocks and a dozen big concrete buildings that housed the cosmonaut training center, deliberately placed in the barren emptiness between a thick pine forest and a scattering of small lakes. Now, as Alberto Brumado’s car drove past the guard post at the perimeter fence, it had grown into a sizable city. Scientists and astronauts from all over the world trained here for Mars. The world’s media focused their attention here. A true city had grown around the clear blue lakes, homes for workers who served the training center, shops and open-air markets and entertainment complexes. Close by the main gate of the training center itself stood the Space Museum, a gracefully sweeping concrete form that captured the spirit of flight.
Brumado had learned the traveler’s secret years earlier: sleep whenever you can. Now, as the limousine pulled up to the main office building at the training center, he roused himself from his nap, ready to step out and face his responsibilities, alert if not actually refreshed.
Dr. Li Chengdu came almost loping down the front steps of the building on his long legs to greet Brumado and guide him to the office that the Russians had set aside for his use. Dr. Li was wearing an expensive-looking running suit of maroon and slate gray. The white pinstripe down the legs made him look even taller and leaner than usual. His face seemed strained, grayish, almost ill. Perhaps it’s that maroon top, Brumado thought. It’s not good for his coloring. He himself was still in his Washington clothes: a dark blue business suit. He had removed the tie and stuffed it into his jacket pocket hours earlier. The shirt was limp and wrinkled from his long trip.
The office to which Li escorted him was big enough to contain a broad polished conference table, Brumado saw. Good. And its own lavatory. Even better. The second rule of the inveterate traveler: never pass a toilet without using it.
Three minutes later, his bladder emptied, his face washed, and his hair freshly combed, Brumado pulled out a chair from the middle of the conference table, ignoring the massive desk and the high-backed swivel chair behind it. Brumado felt he was here to help solve a sudden problem, not to impress others with the trappings of power.
Besides, he told himself, I have no real power here, no authority over these men and women. My strength lies in moral persuasion, nothing more.
Dr. Li was pacing the office from the draped windows to the head of the conference table and back again, more nervous than Brumado had ever seen him.
“Please sit here next to me,” Brumado said mildly. “It hurts my neck to look up at you.”
Li’s thin ascetic face looked startled momentarily, then apologetic. He took the chair next to Brumado’s.
“You seem very upset,” Brumado said. “What is wrong?”
Li drummed his long fingers on the tabletop before answering. “We seem to have a virtual mutiny on our hands. And your daughter, sir, is apparently the ringleader.”
“Joanna?”
“Once it became clear that DiNardo could not make the mission, your daughter-and others-demanded that Professor Hoffman be replaced as well.”
Brumado felt confused. Joanna would never do such a thing. Never!
“I don’t understand,” he said.
“Your daughter and several other scientists here have refused to go on the mission if Hoffman is included. It is mutiny, pure and simple.”
“Mutiny,” Brumado echoed, feeling dull, stupid, as if his brain could not grasp the meaning of Li’s words.
“We cannot announce the final selections for the mission, we cannot begin transporting the scientific staff to the assembly station in orbit, if they refuse to go.” Li’s voice was high and strained, nearly cracking.
Brumado had never seen Li like this, close to panic.
“What can we do?” Li asked, raising his hands in a gesture of helplessness. “We cannot tell Professor Hoffman that he has been removed from flight status because a cabal of his fellow scientists don’t like him! What can we do?”
Brumado took in a deep breath, unconsciously trying to calm Li by calming himself. “I think the first thing I should do is speak to my daughter.”