“But not a fanatic.”
Still walking toward her quarters, Vijay said, “Carter, there are lots of women here who’d be happy to share your bed.”
“Maybe. But none as beautiful as you.”
“Lots of unmarried women.”
Carleton grunted softly. “He’s run off with his buddy and left you here to fend for yourself.”
“ ’Kay. So now I’m fending.” Vijay tried to pry his fingers off her arm. He tightened his grip.
“I want you, Vijay.”
“No, Carter. Please let go of me.”
Vijay placed her back against the flimsy accordion-fold door of her quarters. Carleton took her other arm and pinned her against the door. She felt it shuddering behind her.
She could see the need in his eyes. Stand up to him, she told herself. Stay in control. If that doesn’t work, knee him in the groin.
“Come on, Vijay. Nobody’s going to get hurt.” He was pressing her against the sagging door, speaking faster now, his voice low and urgent. “Jamie won’t know. You’ve seen my medical dossier; you know I had a vasectomy more than twenty years ago.”
Vijay could see a few other people scattered across the dome. No one was looking their way, but a single shout would focus everybody’s attention on her.
Very firmly she said, “Carter, the answer is no. Now please let go of me.”
For a long moment he stood there frozen, leaning against her, staring down at her. Then he seemed to change. She saw the fire in his eyes tamp down. He released her arms and took a small step back from her.
“Thank you,” she whispered, rubbing her arms where his hands had clamped her.
“Sorry,” he muttered. “I got carried away.”
“Good night, Carter,” she said.
He nodded. “I’m not a rapist, Vijay.”
“I never thought you were,” she half-lied.
He turned and walked away, toward his own quarters, moving with the exaggerated precision of a man who’s trying to show the world he isn’t drunk.
Vijay slid her door open and quickly stepped into the quarters she shared with Jamie. She pushed the door shut again and clicked its flimsy lock, knowing that it would never stop a determined man.
Before undressing for the night she searched both bed tables until she found the emergency flashlight. Hefting it in one hand, she told herself it would make a decent weapon, if push came to shove.
Then she picked up the phone and asked the communications tech to contact Jamie. He ought to be in the dome up on the plain by now, she thought. Vijay had no intention of telling her husband about Carleton. Nothing happened, really, she told herself.
But she picked up the flashlight again with her free hand as she waited for her call to go through.
Tithoniae Fosse: Excursion
Jamie woke early, blinked a few times, then sat up in the bunk and remembered last night. He and Dex and Hasdrubal had reached the dome just a few minutes after sundown. Jamie had kept Dex outside long enough to see the aurora; he made some oohs and aahs but Jamie got the firm impression that the Sky Dancers didn’t impress Dex all that much. Then the three of them had a bland meal microwaved from the dome’s supplies and had gone to bed. Vijay had called, as he’d expected. She sounded a little tense, but Jamie ascribed that to her being worried about him being away on this excursion.
The last excursion we’ll be able to make, Jamie realized as he got out of the bunk and padded toward the communal lavatory. Unless Dex can find some more money for us.
No. He shook his head at his reflection in the lavatory’s metal mirror. Don’t put it on Dex. You’ve got to make the decision. This is your responsibility.
Through their brief breakfast in the dome Dex eyed Jamie warily, like a man trapped in an office with an insurance salesman, Jamie thought. He’s waiting for me to put the pressure on him. I guess I look the same way, come to think of it, waiting for him to try to sell me on his tourist scheme. We’ve got to decide on the future of our work here. Life or death.
After checking out the camper they were going to use in strained silence, Jamie, Dex and Hasdrubal started out for Crater Chang. The sun was barely above the ragged horizon as they slowly drove out of the dome. Hasdrubal did the driving; Jamie sat in the right-hand seat beside him, and Dex stood behind them, hunched between the two seats so he could watch the landscape rolling by.
For more than an hour Jamie tried to open the conversation lie wanted to have with Dex. But the words just wouldn’t come out. He sat in the cockpit and inwardly struggled to find the right words while Dex hung over his shoulder, equally quiet. Hasdrubal drove the camper in silence, wrapped in his own thoughts.
“Hasn’t changed much,” Dex said at last. “Rocks, rocks and more rocks.”
“Like watching a golf tournament on video,” said Hasdrubal. “They all look the same.”
“Miles and miles of nothing but miles and miles.”
Hasdrubal glanced over his shoulder at Dex. “You did that long-range trek, didn’t you, back on the Second Expedition. You and what’s-his-name.”
“Craig. Possum Craig. That was more than twenty years ago,” Dex said. “But it still looks the same. Mars doesn’t change very quickly.”
“Well, you’re gonna see somethin’ new in half an hour or so,” said Hasdrubal.
“The new crater. Bet it looks like all the other craters around here.”
“You’re a geologist, right?” Hasdrubal asked.
“Was, back in the day. Haven’t picked up a rock in a long time.”
Jamie listened to them chatting back and forth. Dex is pretending to be bored, he said to himself. Maybe it’s not a pretense. He’s spent half his life working to support the exploration of Mars but it just doesn’t excite him the way it gets to me. It’s not in his guts, not in his soul. Or if it is, he hides it a lot better than I do.
Dex tapped his shoulder. “Don’t you have anything to say, Chief?”
Jamie grimaced. He hadn’t heard Dex use that half-derogatory term in more than twenty years. Okay, he told himself, time to face the music.
Pushing himself up from the seat, Jamie said to Dex, “I have a lot to say, Dex. And I guess you do, too.”
He gestured to the cots that faced each other like benches. The upper cots were folded back against the camper’s curving walls. Dex went back and sat on one of them, Jamie took the one opposite.
With a knowing grin, Dex said, “I figure you brought me out here so we could talk.”
With a glance at Hasdrubal, up in the cockpit concentrating on the driving, Jamie said, “We have a lot to talk about.”
“Jamie, I know you hate the idea of tourists coming here, but—”
“We can’t do our work with tourists tramping through the base,” Jamie said.
Raising a hand, Dex said, “Hear me out, Jamie. Let me give you the full picture.”
Jamie pressed his lips into a tight line. He saw the quiet intensity on his old friend’s face. He’s dropped his mask. I was wrong: this is hitting him just as hard as it’s hitting me, almost.
“So give me the full picture,” Jamie said, almost in a whisper.
“There just isn’t any money!” Dex said. “The government, the private donors, even the big foundations—none of them are willing to put up funding for Mars.”
“The greenhouse warming…” Jamie muttered.
“That’s just a bullshit excuse. What we need for Mars is small change compared to the trillions they’re spending on the greenhouse effects.”
“But then why are we being shut out?”
“They’re out to get us.”
“They?”
“The fundamentalists. The New Morality. They’re taking control of the government. They’re putting pressure on our donors, on the universities and the foundations. They’re even shutting us out of the news nets!”