They walked past Jorge, hanging in the hallway just outside the classroom door. Mr. Ricardo went past him as if he wasn’t even there. Luis saw the expression on Jorge’s face, though, and his knees could barely hold him up long enough to get to Ricardo’s ancient Camaro.
The outer office of Senator O’Hara’s walnut-paneled suite had been turned into something of a theater. All the desks had been pushed to one side of the generous room and the central section filled with folding chairs. Almost his entire staff was seated there, facing the big hologram plate that had been set up on the wall across from the windows. On a table to one side of the screen rested a single VK helmet, a set of data gloves, and the gray box of a computer.
The stall had been buzzing with anticipation when the senator pushed in through the hallway door. Instantly, though, all their talk stopped. I hey went silent, as if somebody had snapped off the audio.
“All excited like a bunch of pissant children,” the senator grumbled to himself. “Half of ’em would vote in favor of another Mars mission, the young fools.”
O’Hara snorted disdainfully as he wheeled up the central aisle among the chairs. Turning his powerchair smartly to face his staffers, he saw that they were trying to look as blank and uninvolved as possible. Like kids eager to see a forbidden video trying to mask their enthusiasm as long as he was watching them.
“I know what you all think,” he said, his voice a grating bullfrog’s croak. “Well, I’m going to surprise you.”
And with that, he guided his chair to the VR rig and the two technicians, both women, standing by it.
“I’m going to use the rig myself,” he announced to his staff. Their shock was visible. Even Kaiser looked surprised, the fat sycophant.
Chuckling, he went on, “I his Mars hoopla is the biggest damned boondoggle pulled over on the American taxpayer since the days of the Apollo project. But if anybody in this room plugs himself into the landing, it’s going to be me.”
Kaiser looked especially crestfallen. He’s the one who won the lottery, Senator O’Hara figured. Thought you’d be the one to plug in, did you? O’Hara chuckled inwardly at the disappointment on his aide’s face.
“You all can see what I’m experiencing on the hologram screen,” the senator said as the technicians began to help him worm his hands into the data gloves.
An unhappy murmuring filled the room.
“I’ve always said that this Mars business is hooey. I want to experience it for myself—see what these fancy astronauts and scientists are actually going to do up there—so’s nobody can say that I haven’t given the opposition every possible opportunity to show me their point of view.”
One of the technicians slipped the helmet over the senator’s head. He stopped her from sliding down the visor long enough to say, “I always give the other side a fair break. Then I wallop ’em!”
The visor came down and for a brief, terrifying moment he was in utter darkness.
For nearly half an hour the oversized TV screen had been split between a newscaster chattering away and an unmoving scene of a rusty-red, rock-strewn landscape on Mars. Zacharias kept pacing back and forth in the back of the big room, while his guests seemed to edge closer and closer to the giant screen.
“We are seeing Mars as it was some eleven minutes ago,” the newscaster intoned solemnly, “since the red planet is so distant from Earth that it takes that long for television signals to reach us.”
“He’s only told us that twenty-six times in the past five minutes,” somebody in the crowd muttered.
“Hush! They should be coming down any moment now.”
“According to the mission schedule,” the newscaster went on, “and taking into account the lag in signal transmission time, we should be seeing the parachute of the landing craft within seconds.”
The unmanned landers had been on the ground for days, Zacharias knew, automatically preparing the base camp for the ten astronauts and scientists of the landing team. Over the past half hour the news broadcast had shown the big plastic bubble of the main tent, the four unmanned landers scattered around it, and the relatively clear, level section of the Sinai plain where the crewed landing craft would put down.
If all went well.
No sonic boom, Zack knew. The Martian air’s too thin and the lander slows down too high up, anyway. The aerobrake should have deployed by now; the glow from the heat shield should be visible, if only they had programmed the cameras to look for it.
What am I saying? he asked himself, annoyed, nervous. It all happened eleven minutes ago. They’re on the ground by now. Or dead.
“There it is!” the announcer yelped.
The crowd of guests surged forward toward the TV screen. Zacharias was drawn, too, despite himself. He remembered the two launch failures that he had witnessed. Put the project back years; almost killed it. After the second he vowed never to watch a rocket launch again.
Yet now he stared like any gaping tourist at the TV image of a beautiful white parachute against the deep blue Martian sky. He was glad that the meteorologists had been able to learn how to predict the planet-wide dust storms that turned the sky pink for months afterward. They had timed the landing for the calmest possible weather.
The chute grew until he could see the lander beneath it, swaying slightly, like a big ungainly cylinder of polished aluminum.
They all knew that the landing craft would jettison the chute at a preset altitude but they all gasped nonetheless. The lander plummeted downward and Zack’s heart constricted beneath his ribs.
Then the landing rockets fired, barely visible in the TV cameras, and the craft slowed. It came down gracefully, with dignity, kicking up a miniature sandstorm of its own as its spraddling legs extended and their circular footpads touched gently the iron rust sands of Mars.
Everyone in the big rec room cheered. All except Zack, who pushed his way to the bar. He felt badly in need of fortification.
“Nuthin’s happ’nin,” Douggie complained. “Can’t I watch Surfer Morphs?”
“Wait a minute,” his father said easily. “They’re just waiting for the dust to settle and the rocket nozzles to cool down.”
Debbie saw the two virtual reality helmets on the coffee table in front of them. Two pairs of gloves, also. Doug and Douggie can use them, she thought. Not me.
“Look!” the child cried. “The door’s open!”
That should be me, Debbie thought as she watched the twelve-person team file down the lander’s impossibly slim ladder to set their booted feet on the surface of Mars. I should be with them.
Douggie was quickly bored with their pretentious speeches: men and women from nine different nations, each of them pronouncing a statement written by teams of public relations experts and government bureaucrats. Debbie felt bored, too.
But then, “Two of us have virtual reality sensors built into our helmets and gloves,” said Philip Daguerre, the astronaut who commanded the ground team.
Debbie had almost had an affair with the handsome French Canadian. Would things have worked out differently if I’d had a fling with him? Probably not. She knew of three other women who had, and all three of them were still as Earthbound as she.
“Once we activate the VR system, those of you on Earth who have the proper equipment will be able to see what we see, feel what we feel, experience what we experience as we make our first excursion onto the surface of Mars.”