“And that’s that.”
Dex shook his head. “No, that’s just the beginning. I’ll see to it that when the people leave Mars they mothball their base, you know, wrap up all the equipment, seal the domes they’ve been using, keep it all ready for somebody else to use.”
Kinnear’s smile widened. “You’re starting to interest me, Dex.”
“Once the last of them has left Mars, the Navaho no longer have their claim to the place. It’s open for grabs.”
“And we grab it!”
“We send a skeleton team to the base and reopen it, then claim exclusive use of the area for Kinnear Travel, Inc.”
“Holy shit! Would that be legal?”
“Perfectly legal. The Mars Foundation will be your partner, Rollie. You and me together. What’s more, I’ve got some experts from Selene who can build a completely shirtsleeve environment for the tourists. Let ’em wander through the village and the cliff dwellings without using a spacesuit.”
“Tourists on Mars. Hot damn!”
“Scientists, too,” Dex said quickly. “We’ll bring scientists back, but they’ll be working under our direction.”
“Sure, sure, we’d need a few scientists to work as guides for the tourists.”
“And to continue their own studies, Rollie. I want to carry on with the work they’re trying to do now.”
“Yeah, okay. We could even bring your pal Waterman back—but under our terms.”
“Jamie?” Dex was truly surprised at the thought. “No, he won’t go back. Not if we’re running the show. He hates the whole idea of bringing tourists to Mars.”
“So? What’s he going to do?”
Feeling truly sad, Dex said, “He’ll probably commit suicide. Or murder.”
Tithonium Base: Jamie’s Office
Sitting tensely in the little bungee-cord chair in his office cubicle, Jamie asked, “So what do you think?”
Maurice Zeroual looked equally tense. He was a logistics specialist from Selene who had come to Tithonium Base on the resupply flight a few weeks earlier. Born in Algeria, Zeroual had fled to the Moon when his nation dissolved into murderous sectarian violence. He had volunteered to study the possibilities of making the Mars base self-sufficient.
He did not look happy. Zeroual was a smallish man, wearing a loose-fitting white shirt and gray slacks. His skin was as dark as scorched tobacco leaf. A thin fringe of a beard outlined his jaw. Jamie thought he smelled a strange cologne: like mint, or some oriental spice.
“I haven’t completely finished my analysis,” Zeroual began, in a soft tenor voice with a definite British accent.
“But you’ve learned enough to ask to meet with me,” Jamie said, also softly, trying to encourage the younger man to speak freely.
“I can see the general picture clearly enough, yes.”
“And?”
Zeroual’s dark brown eyes shifted away from Jamie’s. “There’s no way you can continue to support two hundred people here. Not with the resources available to you.”
Jamie took in a breath. I expected that, he said to himself. Aloud, he asked, “How many?”
“At best, maybe thirty.”
“Thirty?”
“The optimal number would be somewhere around half that. Say, fifteen people. You could support fifteen people here indefinitely with the food you raise in the greenhouse and the amount of additional supplies that Selene can afford to send you.”
“Fifteen people.”
Zeroual leaned forward, rested his palms on his knees. “Of course, if you can obtain some continued funding from your Mars Foundation you could enlarge that number slightly.”
Nodding, Jamie said, “The Foundation can provide a trickle of money, I suppose. I don’t know for how long, though.”
“I’d advise that any funding you get from the Foundation should be devoted to enlarging your greenhouse,” Zeroual said earnestly. “If you can enlarge your resource base, even just a little at a time, you can support more people.”
“Like the Old Ones,” Jamie muttered.
“Excuse me?”
“The original people who settled in the southwestern United States, a thousand years ago or more,” Jamie explained. “They had to survive in a very harsh, very arid environment. They learned how to grow crops with precious little water. They learned to survive.”
Zeroual nodded. “Ah. Yes. Something like that. You’ll have to learn to survive in a harsh environment. With very little help from outside.”
Washington, D.C.: Senate Investigation Committee
“State your name and affiliation, please.”
“Franklin Haverford Overmire. I have the honor to be archbishop of the New Morality Church.”
Archbishop Overmire looked tanned, vigorously healthy and completely at ease at the witness table, smiling at the senators arrayed across the front of the room. He wore his customary custom-tailored black suit. His light brown hair was cut just short of his clerical collar.
The clerk offered a Bible to Overmire; the archbishop placed his beringed right hand lightly upon it.
“Do you swear that the testimony you are about to give this committee will be the entire truth?”
“Of course.”
Morning sunlight beamed through the long windows of the committee chamber. At the head of the room sat the senators; every member of the committee was there. Every row of spectators’ benches was filled. The side aisles were crammed with news media camera teams.
The committee chairman, a crusty white-haired veteran of decades of Washington infighting, hunched over his pencil-slim microphone and announced in a grating voice, “The purpose of this investigation is to determine if the death of a member of the exploration crew on Mars was caused by negligence.”
He paused dramatically, then added, “Or if the conditions on Mars are too dangerous to allow human exploration there to continue.”
Sitting in the front row of benches directly behind the witness table, Dex Trumball fingered the subpoena he had folded into his jacket pocket. The committee lawyer who had personally presented the subpoena to him in Boston had promised that Dex would be called on the first day of the hearings. But he wondered why Archbishop Overmire had been asked to appear. What’s he got to testify about? Dex asked himself. All he knows about Mars is that he’s against our exploring it.
Besides, this committee can’t shut down our program. The government isn’t funding us and they can’t stop us. This hearing is strictly public-relations crap, a chance for these politicians to get their faces on the news.
Sure enough, after the first few powder-puff questions, the senator from Overmire’s state of Georgia was granted the floor. She was a youngish-looking woman with ash blond hair, slightly plump, with a high voice that reminded Dex of the whining of a handheld power drill.
“Archbishop Overmire,” she began, smiling broadly enough to make dimples, “the official report of Monsignor DiNardo’s death on Mars states that he suffered a paralytic stroke.”
“So I understand,” said the archbishop.
“Our investigation has determined that he had a preexisting cardiac problem, yet he was allowed to make the journey to Mars.”
“Scientific hubris,” the archbishop replied.
“You mean that the scientists directing the exploration of Mars didn’t investigate his health deeply enough to determine that he was suffering from cardiac disease?”
“Not exactly.”
“Or they ignored the fact that Monsignor DiNardo was ill? They allowed him to risk his life knowingly?”
Overmire shook his head slightly. “I’m afraid that the late Monsignor DiNardo thought of himself as a scientist ahead of his being a priest of the Roman Catholic Church. He wanted to work on Mars so badly that he was willing to tempt God.”