Mars

He heard Joa

"Listen…," he said, his voice sounding weak, far away, even to himself. "Tell them… it doesn’t matter. Doesn’t matter… that I died. That all of us die. Everyone dies. Not important. We’ve learned so much… and there’s so much more… to find out."

"You must not die, Jamie! You must not!"

He felt no pain. A profound sense of acceptance spread over him, as if he had always been meant to be at this place. He remembered his grandfather telling him of Chief Seattle, who had said long ago that the Earth does not belong to man, but man belongs to the Earth. We belong to Mars, too, Jamie realized. Now we do. Now we do. And to the sun and all the worlds, all the stars. That’s why we want to see it all, explore it all. It’s our heritage. Our birthright. It’s worth dying for.

I understand, he said silently, marveling at the clarity of his vision. Finally I understand who I am.

The whole universe of stars hung up in the darkly glittering night sky and gazed down at the small frail figure of a man lying helpless and alone on the frozen windswept slope of an ancient avalanche on Mars.

From far, far away he heard voices, but they meant nothing to him. They faded into the silence of eternity.

He understood now that Man Maker and Life Taker are one and the same, just two different aspects of the single creator. I’m ready, Jamie said silently. I’ve done the best I could. Now I’m ready for you. He heard Coyote laughing in the crystal darkness of the frozen night.

SOL 40: MIDNIGHT

Something was droning faintly in his ears. It was all dark, he could see nothing. His body felt numb, encased in ice. But there was that soft humming sound coming from somewhere.

His eyes were gummy. Too tired even to try raising his head or moving his arms, Jamie used every atom of his willpower to force his eyes open. A blurred confusion of grays swam before him. He blinked several times. It was the curved ceiling of the rover. The hum was the steady background throb of electrical power. He was lying on his back on one of the bunks. A bottom bunk, he saw, still blinking, focusing. The top bunk was pulled up and locked into its stowed position.

Vosnesensky appeared over him, his beefy face strangely gentle, tender. His wrinkled green coveralls looked too big for him, as if he had lost weight.

Jamie tried to say something but his throat was too dry. All that came out was a cracked groan.

"Rest, my friend," Vosnesensky whispered. "Do not try to exert yourself. Here…"

The Russian lifted Jamie’s head and brought a steaming mug to his lips. "Easy… just a sip."

It felt scalding hot on Jamie’s tongue. And good. Hot tea, heavily laced with lemon concentrate. He took several sips. It felt warm all the way down.

Vosnesensky laid Jamie’s head back down softly on the bunk, then looked at him silently with dark solemn eyes. Jamie realized the Russian was sitting on the opposite bunk, not standing. From up in the cockpit he heard Ivshenko’s voice speaking in English: reporting to the dome, or maybe straight to Dr. Li.

"You went out," Jamie croaked. "You went out and got me."

The Russian shook his head. "Reed went out."

"Tony? Tony brought me in?"

Vosnesensky nodded.

Jamie lay there, realizing that they had pulled him out of his hard suit. He wormed a hand into the pocket where the bear fetish was; it felt solid, warm, comforting. Tony went out and got me, he said to himself. Tony’s not trained for EVA, but he went outside in the dark and dragged me in.

He heard the clumping thumps of boots and then Reed came into his vision, still encased in his yellow hard suit, except for the helmet. He looked like a man at an amusement arcade posing behind a cardboard cutout figure.

"You’re very lucky, James," the Englishman said softly. "No frostbite. We got you in time."

"You saved my life."

Reed’s face flushed slightly. "Couldn’t let you freeze out there, could we?"

"Our physician has become a hero," Vosnesensky said. But he did not smile.

"It took a lot of guts to go out into the night," said Jamie. "Mars has given you courage."

Reed glanced at Vosnesensky. "No heroics. Mikhail Andreivitch would have strangled me if I hadn’t gone out," he said. "I was saving my own life, actually."

"I don’t believe that. It took a lot of courage. A coward would have stayed in here no matter how Mikhail threatened."

"You were practically here," Reed said. "You collapsed less than a couple of hundred meters from the rover. We couldn’t sit here and let you die. That would have killed the other three in your group, as well, wouldn’t it?"

"But still…"

Vosnesensky scowled down at Jamie. "After what you did, in your condition, our physician’s little journey is insignificant."

Jamie smiled back at him. "Except for one small detail — without that little journey everything I did would have meant nothing at all."

Reed suddenly looked terribly uncomfortable. Vosnesensky shrugged and slowly pulled himself to his feet, leaning heavily on the metal supports of the upper bunk.

"You should try to sleep," Vosnesensky said.

"Yes," Reed agreed swiftly. "Rest. You’ve earned it."

"Dmitri is in contact with Co

Jamie nodded, his eyes already closing.

"Good," he said. "Good."

His last conscious thought was that Reed seemed a reluctant hero. God knows what Mikhail threatened him with. But Tony came through. That’s the important thing. Tony came through when it counted.

The chief controller sat behind his desk, alone in his Kaliningrad office except for the head of the British contingent. Outside the room’s one window a cold, dreary rain was spattering, the first taste of autumn and grim winter.

The display screen built into the paneled wall had just turned off. For the past fifteen minutes the two men had watched and listened to the tape of the latest report from Dr. Li. The expedition commander had read from a prepared script and kept his face an immobile mask that revealed no emotion whatever.

Now the screen had gone blank. Li’s tape was finished. The snow outside blanketed the usual noises from the street. The office was absolutely silent.

The chief controller tugged absently at his ragged Vandyke. "Well," he said in English, "what do you think?"

The head of the British team for the Mars Project was a Scottish engineer who had risen through the technical ranks to become an administrator. He was a slightly built man with graying dark hair and a crafty look in his eyes even when he was relaxing socially.

"It’s a serious blow," he said. "The physician should have caught the symptoms earlier and taken steps to avert the problem."

"He found the answer, finally," said the chief controller.

"Aye, but he came close to killing them all."

The chief controller muttered, "How can we keep the media from finding out about this?"

"You ca

"Then we will have to keep this information from Brumado."

"Are you prepared to keep the entire team incommunicado for the rest of the mission? Be reasonable, man. It ca

The chief controller shook his head. "We’d have to keep them all quiet for the rest of their lives, wouldn’t we?" He tangled his fingers in the abused Vandyke again.

"I know what you’re thinking. It’s one thing if the politicians learn of this in private. We can explain it to them reasonably and make them see that it was an unavoidable accident. But if the media get hold of it and ballyhoo it, the politicians will have to react to what the media is saying, not what we tell them."