[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.Future Mars missions will be just as dead as those four people.”“So what’s the president want to do? Let them die on Mars?”Fleming shook her head once more.“You have to understand that the president is a lame duck.His term ends in thirteen months.He has very little leverage with Congress.”“And Donaldson wants his job,” Harkness muttered.“He certainly does.And if Donaldson gets into the White House, human spaceflight beyond the Moon will be a dead issue.”Saxby leaned back in his chair and wished the pain in his chest would go away.Heartburn, he told himself.You always get heartburn when you get excited.Calm down.Calm yourself, dammit.Harkness was asking, “So what is the president going to do?”“He hasn’t made up his mind yet.Viscerally, deep in his guts, he wants to authorize the follow-on.Politically, he’s worried that it will turn into a fiasco and hand next year’s nomination to Donaldson.”“Why doesn’t he just come out and tell the people that Donaldson’s wrong about this?”“Because Donaldson belongs to the president’s party, and the president doesn’t want to tear the party apart and hand the White House to the Democrats.”Saxby squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, then said, “So what you’re telling us is that the next election is more important to President Harper than those four people struggling to survive on Mars.”Fleming glared at him.“What I’m saying is that the president has to look at all sides of this.It’s not as simple a matter as you think.”“Seems simple enough to me,” said Harkness.“Life or death.”“The president wants to save your people on Mars,” Fleming insisted.“But he’s got to find a way to do it that won’t play into Donaldson’s hands.”Saxby stared at her for a moment, then turned to Harkness.“You’d better tell Connover and his team to stay alive.”Fleming smiled tightly.“It would help if they found some water for themselves.”Saxby had to agree.“That it would, Sarah.That it would.”December 18, 203516:00 Universal TimeMars Landing Plus 43 DaysFermi HabitatTed Connover turned away from the window and surveyed the habitat’s central compartment.Hammocks hung on the walls.Chairs were scattered haphazardly.Looks like an encampment more than a temporary shelter, he thought.All we need is a fire for toasting smores.After weeks of daily excursions, the ground outside was churned with bootprints.And despite all the vacuuming they did every day, the floor inside the habitat was smudged with the pink ridges of their boot tracks.He turned back to the window and looked at the five hydroponic gardens they’d built.The plants were doing well in their stout oblong boxes.They didn’t seem to mind that the Sun was farther away than on Earth, or that they were growing in a water solution instead of dirt.They wouldn’t like Martian dirt: it was loaded with perchlorates and other chemicals, more like bleach than farming soil.Water, Connover thought.They’d still not found water and they were nearing the point where the problem would be critical.They might even have to raid one of the hydroponics gardens.He hoped it wouldn’t come to that.He and McPherson had spent the morning on another fruitless water search, this time to a rock formation about three kilometers to the west.After studying and restudying the data from the satellites, and with the help of data-processing algorithms developed just for this purpose by some of the brightest scientists back on Earth, they had decided this site was a likely spot for having subsurface ice.So Ted and Hi had gone out there this morning and found.nothing.The core samples were nothing but rock and dirt.No trace of ice.And when they’d returned to the habitat, Ted found a message from Houston that a dust storm was heading their way.The Mars meteorologists said it would be a big one, perhaps global.“Just what we need,” he muttered.“What is just what we need?” Catherine asked.Startled, Connover spun around to see the French geologist eyeing him with a curious smile on her face.“Hi, Catherine.I didn’t hear you come in.”“I was in the biology lab, talking with Amanda.”With a sigh, Ted jabbed a finger toward the communications console.“Latest weather forecast predicts a dust storm.A big one.”“But that is not terribly dangerous, is it?”“No, not really.” Despite his mood, he produced a little grin.“It won’t be like big dust storms in the American Midwest, with a wall of opaque dust obliterating the horizon and gale-force winds.”“Mars is much more gentle, non?”“Oui,” he said, exhausting his French vocabulary.“We won’t see Dorothy and Toto lifted off to Oz.”More seriously, Catherine asked, “How bad will it be, Ted?”“A drop in barometric pressure,” he replied.“Some haze.If you go outside, you might notice a stronger breeze than usual.Nothing scary.”“Nothing to worry about, then.”“We’ll have to clean the dust off the gardens and the all the solar panels,” Connover said.“After the storm’s over.”“The reactor?” she asked [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]