“We have traced the course of the ancient river bed up to this point,” Chang was saying, indicating the spot where Rosenberg and Hasdrubal had reached weeks earlier. There was no mark on the map display to show where the hopper had exploded.
Sweeping his hand down the winding track of the buried river bed, Chang went on, “Detailed imagery of cliffs along this part of the valley shows no additional structures in the cliff face.” The mission director looked squarely at Jamie. Almost accusingly, Jamie thought.
“The imagery doesn’t show any large niches in the cliffs, does it?” Jamie asked, trying to make his voice sound conversational, not confrontive.
“Small niches,” Chang answered, still bending over the table. “None as big as here, where the buildings are.”
Carleton nodded and said, “I’m willing to bet we’ll find other dwellings in the cliffs farther up the river.”
“You told us they were not dwellings,” Chang said. With a grin, Carleton said, “Touché. I misspoke, for lack of a better word.”
“Dwellings or not,” said Jamie, “it seems clear that the Martians lived in villages along the banks of the river.”
“Agreed,” Chang said, straightening up and squaring his shoulders. “Question: should we put more resources into tracing the buried riverbed farther along valley, or concentrate on excavating the village here, by our base?”
Jamie glanced at Carleton, then said, “I wish we had the resources to do both.”
“We do not.”
Tapping the lighted map display with a forefinger, Carleton said, “I say we put everything we have into excavating the village here.”
Chang did not turn toward the anthropologist. Still focusing on Jamie, he said, “Dr. Waterman, you are the scientific director. This decision you must make.”
Jamie remained silent for several moments, even though he had known this question was coming and knew what his answer had to be. Yet he hesitated, hoping to mollify Chang at least a little.
“As I said,” he began at last, “I wish we had the resources to do both. But we don’t, as you pointed out, Dr. Chang.”
“So?”
“So I believe we should use our available manpower to excavate as much of the village as we can, and continue mapping the riverbed and seeking evidence for other villages with the deep radar imagery from the satellites.”
Chang seemed almost to be standing at attention, eyes still riveted on Jamie.
“Very well,” he said. “That will be done.”
The mission director pivoted and strode back toward his office, hands at his sides clenched into fists.
Carleton let out a low chuckle. “He didn’t like that, let me tell you.”
“Neither did I,” said Jamie. “Neither did I.”
Jamie started back toward his own cubbyhole of an office, checking his wristwatch as he went. Graycloud walked beside him, slouching slightly.
The public address speakers set up in the dome’s rafters announced, “RESUPPLY FLIGHT OH-EIGHT-ONE HAS ESTABLISHED MARS ORBIT.”
A ragged, halfhearted round of cheers went up across the dome. Whoever was in charge of the PA system put on the “Going Home” movement from Dvorak’s New World symphony.
Jamie grimaced as he stepped into his narrow cubicle, Graycloud was right behind him.
“I guess some of the guys are happy about leaving,” the younger man said as Jamie slid around his improvised desk and sat down.
“I guess so,” Jamie replied absently, thinking about DiNardo’s arrival and the departure of twenty-six needed men and women. There would be four new people arriving with the priest: two from Selene and two from Earth. Twenty-six leaving, four coming in. We’re shrinking, he said to himself.
Graycloud shifted from one foot to the other by the doorless entrance, looking uneasy.
“Don’t tell me you want to go back, too, Billy.”
“No, not me!” The youngster looked genuinely alarmed. “I’ll stay as long as you want me to, Dr. W.”
“That’s good, Billy. Good.” Jamie turned his attention to his desktop screen and called up the logistics program. Graycloud didn’t leave, though, he simply stood by the entrance, fidgeting silently.
Jamie glanced up at him.
“It’s just that…” Graycloud’s voice tailed off, but the expression on his face looked urgent.
“What?”
“The writing. Those pictographs on the wall of the building. Would it be all right if I took a crack at translating them?”
Taken completely by surprise, Jamie suppressed his impulse to say, “You?” Instead, he merely leaned back in his springy little chair and waited for Graycloud to go on.
“I could do a computer analysis of the frequency of each symbol, then assign arbitrary meanings to each of the symbols and see if any sense comes out of it.”
The kid’s totally serious, Jamie realized. I’m trying to hold this operation together and he wants to tackle a problem that’s stumped the best experts in the world.
“Hasn’t anybody already done that?” he asked softly.
Graycloud shook his head. “I’ve read everything in the literature. A couple guys at Carnegie Mellon took a crack at it, but they didn’t even try to guess at what the individual symbols mean. They just did a statistical analysis of the frequency of each symbol.”
Despite himself, Jamie felt a glow of interest. “But how can you know what the symbols stand for? I mean, that’s the whole point of the exercise, isn’t it, trying to determine what they represent?”
“I’ll just guess,” Graycloud said, pulling up the only other chair in the cubicle and folding his lanky body into it. “The computers can rattle through thousands of guesses per second, y’know. If I guess wrong, we won’t get any sense out of it. But if I guess right…”
Unconvinced, Jamie said, “That’s a brute force way of going at it.”
“Right! Exactly! But with enough computer power the brute force way might give us something!”
Jamie could see the enthusiasm shining out of the youngster’s eyes. “How much computer power do you have access to?” he asked.
Graycloud actually glanced over his shoulder before answering. Hunching closer to Jamie, he lowered his voice as he replied, “At night I can put most of the units in the base together in parallel. We’ve got two supermodels and dozens of office and lab stand-alones. I can program them together. That’s more teraflops than a whole university department!”
“You have your regular duties, Billy. When would you sleep?”
“That’s the beauty part! Once I slave them all together they can chug along all night long on their own. All I have to do is check their results each morning.”
“This wouldn’t interfere with anyone’s regular work? You wouldn’t want to screw up anyone’s computer.”
“Nobody even needs to know about it,” Graycloud said, practically twitching with eagerness.
Jamie shook his head. “No, I don’t want you sneaking behind anybody’s back on this.”
Graycloud nodded, but without much enthusiasm.
“Write out a program plan, just a page or so will do.”
“And try to get Chang to approve it?”
“He’ll approve it,” Jamie said. “I’ll see to that.”
“Really?”
“Really. As long as you can absolutely promise us that this won’t foul up any of the work the computers are already programmed to do.”
“No sweat! I guarantee it, Dr. W!” Graycloud shot to his feet.
Grinning at the lad’s enthusiasm, Jamie got up from his chair and took Graycloud’s hand in his own.