It didn’t look so bad. It was still a crew of pilots. All USAF, actually. You had a streak of brilliance in Gershon, which was missing in Curval, and which might make a lot of difference if it came down to the wire, forty million miles away on Mars. And, unlike Curval, Muldoon knew he could rely on Gershon to apply himself to every aspect of the mission, including all the dull shitty stuff. Like the geology.

And he could expect Stone and Bleeker, both calm and unflappable, to compensate for Gershon’s instability.

Gershon, then.

It didn’t go any way toward satisfying the carping scientists; but, hell, he’d just have to absorb the flak about that. Bleeker was a good man, and there was no way he was going to bounce him.

And, of course, he reflected, with Gershon being a rookie that definitely ruled out any chances of selecting Natalie York, even if he could get Gershon some experience on the D-prime. One rookie, or near-rookie, on the crew was bad enough; two would be laughable, in his opinion.

He picked up the phone and asked Mabel to set up calls to Stone, Bleeker, Gershon, and Curval.

He wondered if he should call York. He decided there was no need.

Thursday, July 12, 1984

CHENEY-PALOUSE SCABLAND, MACALL, WASHINGTON STATE

Although it wasn’t yet 10 A.M., the sun was already intense on Phil Stone’s head and back. He could feel the sweat pool beneath his collar and under his light Snoopy helmet, and it soaked into the shirt on his back, under the heavy pack.

The ground was just black rock, it seemed to him, and the heat from the cloudless furnace of a sky came blasting straight back up at him. There was nothing but rock, scrubby grass, and smashed-up gravel for miles around.

Dangling in a plastic wallet at Stone’s belt there was a pack of aerial photographs of the area, together with a couple of outline U.S. Geological Survey maps. He unclipped the pack and looked around, trying to figure how the features he saw compared to the photographs and maps. The photographs had been blurred, artificially, so that he couldn’t see any detail finer than would be shown in Mariner photos of the surface of Mars.

The landscape here was extraordinary. Sculpted, full of knobby hills and canyons, some cut right into the bedrock. He’d never seen anything like it.

“I don’t know where the hell we are,” he admitted. “It’s damned difficult. Everything looks different, from the ground.”

Adam Bleeker, hiking beside Stone and similarly laden with helmet, pack, and Mars boots, came to a halt. Bleeker was towing a two-wheeled cart called a MET, a Modular Equipment Transporter. Bleeker leaned forward, propping his hands on his knees. His blond hair seemed to be on fire in the sunlight. “I can figure where we are,” Bleeker said wearily.

“Huh?”