“You can have a very prestigious position,” Dr. Li coaxed. “Leader of the scientific analysis of the Mars samples.”
“No announcements have been made about the final team choices,” Brumado reminded him. “There will be no embarrassment for you.”
Suddenly tears sprang from Hoffman’s eyes. “What can I do? You are all against me. Even my wife!”
His head drooped to the tabletop, cradled in his arms, and he began to sob uncontrollably. Brumado turned toward Li, feeling like a torturer, a murderer.
“I will take care of him,” Li said softly. “Please go now, both of you. And send in Dr. Reed, if he is still outside. Otherwise, ask the secretary to summon a physician.”
Brumado pushed his chair back and slowly rose to his feet. His daughter still showed nothing but contempt for the sobbing man huddled at the head of the table. The mission is saved, Brumado found himself thinking. That is the important thing. The mission will go on despite this poor, wretched man.
5
It was still dark when the phone woke Jamie. He struggled up from a dream of ancient men trying to build a tower on the windswept top of a bare grassless mesa. The bricks kept melting away in the hot sunshine, the tower never rose higher than his own reach.
The phone buzzed insistently. Jamie finally opened his eyes, remembered that he was back in his own apartment again, alone, and groped for the telephone on the bedside table. The digital clock read 6:26 a.m. There was no hint of sunrise through the drawn blinds of the bedroom window.
“Dr. Waterman?” a man’s voice asked crisply.
“Right.”
“This is an official message from Kaliningrad. I am Yegorov, personnel section.”
“Yes?” Jamie was instantly wide-awake.
“You are to report to the Johnson Space Center at eight hundred hours local time and receive your orders for immediate transportation to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. From there you will board the space shuttle for transport to the orbital assembly facility.”
“You mean I’m going to Mars?” Jamie shouted into the phone.
“Oh, yes. Did you not know? You have been selected as geologist on the first landing team. Good luck.”
Jamie’s first impulse was to give an ear-splitting war whoop. But instead he merely said, “Thank you.”
He hung up, suddenly feeling hollow inside, empty, as if he had finally pushed through a door that had been locked against him and found that it opened onto thin air.
He got out of bed, showered, shaved, repacked his well-used travel bag, and drove out to the center. Sure enough, there was a team of grinning men and women at the travel office waiting for him.
“A plane will be ready for you at the airstrip in about half an hour.”
“What about my car?” Jamie suddenly realized he had made no plans about the car, the apartment, his furniture. Absurdly, he wondered what to do with his magazine and journal subscriptions.
“We’ll take care of all the details. Just sign these forms.”
Jamie scribbled his name without reading the forms. Fuck it, he thought. They can have the car and everything else. Won’t need it on Mars!
They drove him to the airstrip, the whole roomful of clerks piled into one gray agency station wagon, pressing against Jamie, wanting to be as close as they could be to the man who was going to Mars. Jamie did not mind the closeness, he was thankful for the ride; he (lid not trust himself to drive. The excitement was getting to him. Mars. Geologist on the first landing team. Mars.
Edith was standing at the entrance to the hangar, in jeans and a light sweater. Obviously not her working clothes. He suddenly felt ashamed for not phoning her.
“How’d you know?” he asked, travel bag in one hand.
She grinned up at him. “I have my sources. I work in news, y’know.”
“I…” Jamie did not know what to say. The clerks who had driven him here, the airplane mechanics, there were too many people watching them.
Edith’s grin turned rueful. “Well, we knew it wouldn’t last forever. It was fun, though.”
“I think the world of you, Edith.”