Bored with the rock-sampling task, Senator O’Hara lifted the visor of his VR helmet.
“Get me out of this rig,” he told the two startled technicians. Turning to Kaiser, he said, “You can try it if you like. I’m going into my office for a drink.”
The ground was rising slightly as the rover rolled along. “Should be at the rim in less than a minute,” the driver said.
Zack felt his hand ease back on the throttle slightly. “Don’t want to fall over. It’s a long way down.”
Nothing ahead of them but the dull, rock-strewn ground and the deep blue sky.
Debbie checked the timeline on the dashboard computer screen and slowed the rover even more. “We ought to be just about… there!”
The rim of the grandest canyon in the Solar System sliced across her field of view. Craning her neck slightly, she could see the cliffs tumbling away, down and down and down, toward the valley floor miles below.
Mist! The floor of the valley was wreathed in mists that wafted and undulated slowly, rising and falling as Zack watched.
It’s the wrong time of the year for mists to form, he knew. We’ve never seen this before.
As far as the eye could see, for dozens of miles, hundreds of miles, the mist billowed softly, gently along the floor of Valles Marineris. The canyon was so wide that he could not see the opposite wall; it was beyond the horizon. Nothing but gentle, whitish mist. Clouds of mystery. Clouds of excitement.
My gosh, Zack thought, do they extend the whole three-thousand-mile length of the valley?
Luis roamed across the rust-colored sandy landscape, staring at more rocks than he had ever seen in his whole life. Some the size of pebbles, a few bigger than a man. How’d they get there? Where’d they come from?
And what was over the horizon? The geologist said something about big volcanoes and mountains higher than anything on Earth. Luis thought it’d be great to see them, maybe climb them.
Debbie stared at the mists billowing along the valley floor. They seemed to be breathing, like something alive. They’ve got to be water vapor, she thought. Got to be! And where’s there’s water there could be life. Maybe. Maybe.
We’ve got to get down onto the valley floor. Got to!
Zack felt like a child, the first time his father had taken him up in a helicopter. The higher they went, the more there was to see. The more he saw, the more eager he was to see more.
Staring out at the mist-shrouded rift valley, he finally realized that this was the difference between human explorers and machines. What’s beyond the horizon? What’s beneath those mists? He wanted to know, to explore. He had to seek the answers.
He realized he was crying, tears of joy and wonder streaming down his cheeks. He was glad that none of the others could see it, inside the VR helmet, but he knew that neither embarrassment nor disapproval mattered in the slightest. What’s beyond the horizon? That was the eternal question and the only thing that really counted.
Yeah, this is great, Luis thought. For these guys. For scientists and astronauts. It’s their life. But it’s not for me. When I leave here tonight it’s back to the ’hood, and Jorge, and all that crap.
Then a powerful surge of new emotion rose within him. Why can’t I go to Mars for real someday? Mr. Ricardo says I’m smart enough to get a scholarship to college.
Fuck Jorge. Let him do what he wants to me. I’ll fight him back. I’ll kick the shit outta him if that’s what I gotta do to get to Mars. He’ll have to kill me to keep me away from this.
Senator O’Hara was mixing his third martini when Kaiser came in, looking bleary-eyed.
“You been in the VR rig all this time?” O’Hara asked. He knew Kaiser did not drink, so he didn’t bother offering his aide anything.
“Mostly,” the pudgy little man said. O’Hara could see his aide’s bald head was gleaming with perspiration.
“Bad enough we have to waste a hundred billion on this damned nonsense. Is it going to tie up my entire staff for the rest of the day?”
“And then some,” Kaiser said, heading for the bar behind the Senator’s desk.
O’Hara watched, dumbfounded, as his aide poured himself a stiff belt of whiskey.
He swallowed, coughed, then swallowed again. With tears in his eyes, he went to the leather sofa along the side wall of the office and sat down like a very tired man.
O’Hara stared at him.
Holding the heavy crystal glass in both hands, Kaiser said, “You’re going to have to change your stand on this Mars business.”
“What?”
“You’ve got to stop opposing it.”
“Are you crazy?”
“No, but you’d be crazy to try to stand a-gainst it now,” Kaiser said, more firmly than the senator had ever heard him speak before.
“You’re drunk.”
“Maybe I am. I’ve been on Mars, Teddy. I’ve stood on fuckin’ Mars!”
Kaiser had never used the senator’s first name before, let alone called him “Teddy.”
“You’d just better watch your tongue,” O’Hara growled.
“And you’d better watch your ass,” Kaiser snapped. “Do you have any idea of how many people are experiencing this Mars landing? Not just watching it, but experiencing it—as if they were there.”
O’Hara shrugged. “Twenty million, maybe.”
“I made a couple of phone calls before I came in here. Thirty-six million VR sets in the US, and that’s not counting laboratories and training simulators. There must be more than thirty million voters on Mars right now.”
“Bullcrap.”
“Yeah? By tomorrow there won’t be a VR rig left in the stores. Everybody’s going to want to be on Mars.”
O’Hara made a sour face.
“I’ll bet that half the voters in dear old Pennsylvania are on Mars right this instant. You try telling them it’s all a waste of money.”
“But it is!” the senator insisted. “The biggest waste of taxpayer funds since SDL”
“It might be,” Kaiser said, somewhat more moderately. “You might be entirely right and everybody else totally wrong. But if you vote that way in the committee you’ll get your ass whipped in November.”
“You told me just the opposite no more’n ten days ago. The polls show—”
“The polls are going to swing around 180 degrees. Guaranteed.”
O’Hara glared at his aide.
“Trust me on this, Teddy. I’ve never let you down before, have I? Vote for continued Mars exploration or go out and find honest work.”
With enormous reluctance, Debbie pulled the helmet off and removed the data gloves. Doug was still in his rig, totally absorbed. He might as well be on Mars for real, Debbie thought.
Shakily, she got up from the living room sofa and went to Douggie’s room. Her son was watching three-dimensional cartoons.
“Come with me, young man,” she said in her not-to-be-argued-with voice. The boy made a face, but turned off his 3-D set and marched into the living room with his mother.