“Yeah!”
“Do you know what this is?” Carleton’s voice was brimming with excitement.
“Their farm?”
“Farm, hell! This is their cemetery! I’ll bet my life on it! We’ve found their cemetery!”
Larkin started to frown at the word “we,” but then he thought, What the hell. He wants to horn in on the credit, so what? If he’s right…
He sat there, squatting on his knees with Carleton stretched out prone beside him in the bulky hard suit, until the sun dipped below the edge of the excavation and the area darkened into shadow.
“All right,” Carleton said, sounding excited. “All right. Now what we’ve got to do is—ugh!”
“What? What do we have to do?”
“Get me back on my feet! I can’t get up in this damned hardshell.”
Larkin laughed and tried to pull Carleton up. He had to call two other men to help him.
Tithonium Base: Discussion
Jamie asked to use Chang’s office for this meeting of the team’s three key people to decide on the future of the exploration effort. He began by explaining the conclusions of the logistics study that Maurice Zeroual had headed.
“We can afford to maintain fifteen people on Mars,” he told them. “That’s all that the Mars Foundation can support, even with help from Selene.”
“Fifteen people?” The shock broke through Chang Laodong’s normal impassivity. “Not enough. Impossible.”
“That would really be a skeleton crew,” quipped Carter Carleton.
Jamie nodded grimly. “Skeleton, as in dead.”
Carleton nodded.
The other person in Chang’s office was Nari Quintana. She sat in one of the chairs that flanked the low coffee table, her legs tucked under her, her brown eyes flicking from one man to the next.
Jamie, on the sofa beside Chang, asked her, “Dr. Quintana, would reducing the number of people here to fifteen or so present any special medical problems?”
She hesitated a moment, then replied, “I can’t see where it would. Except that I would probably have to help in some of the other work, like Carter’s excavation.”
“You would stay?” Jamie asked. “Under those circumstances?”
Quintana nodded slowly.
“Indefinitely?” Jamie prodded. “I don’t know how frequently we’d be able to bring resupply flights in.”
“There’s a flight due in next month, isn’t there?”
Chang said, “That is the last scheduled flight.”
“There’ll be one more,” Jamie said, his voice almost choking. “To take most of the staff home.”
“Evacuation flight,” said Chang. “Yes. But no further resupply flight for at least one year.”
“One year,” Quintana echoed. She took a deep breath, obviously juggling several possibilities in her mind. “I will stay. But not forever, of course.”
“Of course.”
Chang said, “I will have to return to Earth.”
Jamie turned toward him. “No, that’s not necessary.”
Chang closed his eyes briefly. “Very necessary. I am an administrator, not a working scientist. I cannot dig in Dr. Carleton’s pit. I should not fill a position on a geology team that a younger, more vigorous man could occupy. When the evacuation flight comes, I will leave on it.”
Jamie wanted to say something, but he could not think of any words.
“All right,” Carleton said impatiently. “Are we finished? I’ve got to get out to the dig. We’re starting to probe their cemetery.”
Jamie held up one hand. “Be patient a bit, will you?”
“But—”
“Your wife should be part of this discussion,” Quintana said. “She’s our psychologist. Emotional questions will be just as important as medical, if you plan to reduce the staff here to fifteen.”
“You’re right,” Jamie said. As he fished for his phone in his shirt pocket he couldn’t help thinking, We’re shriveling away, just like the lichen. But it won’t take a million years for us to disappear from Mars.
Carleton, sitting across the low table from Quintana, shook his head impatiently. “Just when we’re about to hit pay dirt. We’ve located their cemetery. I’ve got an engineering team rigging up a deep-radar set so we can use it to see what’s buried there before we start digging.”
“Do you really believe it’s the cemetery?” Quintana asked.
“I’m certain of it.” Jabbing a finger at her, Carleton went on, “In another week we’ll be uncovering the remains of the Martians who lived in that village. We’ll be making epochal discoveries, learning what they looked like, how they treated their dead. And now this. Reduce our work force to fifteen. It’s as if they don’t want us to find anything.”
“They?” Quintana asked.
“The fundamentalists. The idiots who’re running the governments back Earthside. And everything else.”
Chang almost smiled. “Perhaps they are right. Perhaps God does not want you to make discoveries.”
Carleton glared at him.
“I was joking,” Chang said.
Jamie clicked his phone shut. “Vijay will join us in a few moments.”
Chang sighed, then said to Carleton, “Many discoveries will remain undone. The new crater that the meteor impact made. The search for other villages. Stratigraphy mapping. South polar cap’s melting. None of that. With fifteen people they can only stay here at base. No excursions.”
“My excavation will slow down to a crawl,” Carleton muttered.
Someone tapped at the office door, then slid it open. Vijay stepped in, wearing coral coveralls with a bright orange and yellow scarf tied around her waist. Jamie moved over on the sofa to make room for her to sit between him and Chang.
“We’re discussing the problems that might arise when the staff here is reduced to fifteen people,” Jamie explained.
“The question of psychological problems came up,” said Quintana.
Vijay glanced at Jamie, then turned to face the others and began, “Yes, the emotional pressures of having only a dozen or so people will certainly increase. ’Specially at the outset. It’ll be painfully clear that we’re here on a shoestring.”
“What do you see as major problems?” Chang asked.
“Fear,” she replied immediately. “We’ve all got a certain amount of fear to deal with, but most of the time we keep it bottled up inside. Remember when that meteor hit, a couple weeks ago? The fear came out then, di’n’t it?”
Quintana mused, “With only fifteen people…”
“The fear quotient will grow, of course. It’ll show up in different ways. Moodiness. Irritability. Aggression, in some.” She looked directly at Carleton.
“Physical aggression?” Jamie asked.
“Maybe sexual,” Carleton said. “Fifteen people is a damned small gene pool.”
That night, as Jamie climbed wearily into bed, Vijay asked, “Well, d’you think your meeting accomplished anything?”
“A little,” he said, pulling the thin cover over himself. “Chang said he’d leave. Carleton figures that digging up his village is about all we can do with just fifteen people.”
“Nan’s planning to stay?”
He turned toward her. “Yes. She said she’d stay indefinitely.”
“Good.”
Jamie turned off the lamp on the night table. Their bedroom went dark, except for the faint greenish glow of the digital clock’s display.
“You di’n’t tell them about the other option, did you,” Vijay said. It was a statement, not a question.
Jamie didn’t reply.
“Dex’s plan,” Vijay added. “You could keep more’n a hundred scientists here if you let Dex have his way.”
“I’m not turning Mars into a tourist resort.”