kind of like to avoid that if we can,” he said, reaching for white briefs adrift in the air.
She smiled, playful. “Ah. You are afraid your wife finds out?”
“It’s not that.” Well, not entirely. At the moment, he was more afraid of the teasing he was likely to get from the other Americans aboard Polyakov. Four Team scientists, plus thirty US Marines, and the one Navy guy, Reiner, who was with the ship’s regular crew. That was a hell of an audience.
The compartment tumbled lazily about his head. He had his underpants on at last, but he was having trouble imitating the woman’s casual flexibility with the coveralls, and he kept getting both feet tangled in the same leg hole. Damn it all. You’d think that after seven months he’d have managed to learn how to dress himself….
Well, to be fair, he’d not had to dress in microgravity except for the few times he’d come up here with Joubert, one of the distinct advantages of having spin-gravity hab modules. How was it that she could be so graceful with no more practice than he’d had? Already dressed, she anchored herself from a handhold on the bulkhead, then grabbed his shoulder to brace him as he finally slid into the garment and zipped it up. Moving to the bulkhead, he untangled his T-shirt from the camera lens and switched the unit’s sound back on. Swiftly, then, he used the T-shirt as a towel, trying to soak up some of the swirling mist of various bodily excretions in the air.
A second clang sounded from the next compartment. A moment later, the hatchway banged open and a file of Marines in Class-Three armor began crowding boisterously through into the long, hexagonal chamber.
“Fall in! Fall in!” one Marine was shouting. He wore a gunnery sergeant’s chevrons on his sleeve.
“Whee-oo!” another shouted as he squeezed through the hatch. “I do believe I smell fresh puss—”
“As you were, Donatelli!” the gunny sergeant, catching sight of Joubert and Alexander before the others did. “There’s a lady present!”
“Surely ya don’t mean me, Gunny,” a hard-muscled woman Marine growled as she pushed into the compartment.
“He said ‘lady,’ Caswell. Not hormone-junky.”
“Screw you, Marchewka.”
“Silence! Fall in at attention!”
The crowd fell uncomfortably silent after that, each Marine grabbing on to a handhold to anchor himself more or less in line with the others. Alexander eyed them with distaste…ten or fifteen men and women who were suddenly making the storm cellar as confining as the inside of a walk-in safe. They carried rifles and wore partial armor—breastplates and open helmets, worn over dark green BDUs. The breastplate shells were made of an artificial laminate that took on the color of its surroundings, but that hadn’t stopped most of the Marines from customizing the things with some artistic touches of their own. Mange la merde was scrawled in red on one Marine’s armor. Dirty UNdies read another. Alexander scowled. No wonder America’s relations were so bad with the rest of the world, if these were her ambassadors.
Alexander decided that he and Joubert had better clear out before the way was completely blocked. He took a last, surreptitious look around to make sure there wasn’t any clothing adrift, then started moving toward the hatch. Joubert followed.
“Gangway, people!” the sergeant snapped. “At ease and make a hole! Civilians comin’ through!” The line of Marines hauled themselves back out of the way, giving the two of them just enough room to squeeze past. Released from attention, several Marines whispered among themselves, and someone giggled.
“Uh…excuse me,” one called out, “but did one of you lose something?”
Alexander paused at the hatch, turning in time to see a lacy, bright red bra drifting past the faces of grinning men and women. Joubert, with far more aplomb than Alexander was feeling at the moment, snagged the garment, and darted ahead through the hatch. Alexander followed, clumsily, as laughter exploded behind him.
In the connector module outside, Alexander came face-to-face with Major Garroway, who was clinging to a bulkhead beside the transport-pod hatch. The module, which was locked to the rotating hub collar, was turning slowly with a heavy, grinding sound, though here at the very center of rotation, the spin gravity at the walls was still practically nonexistent. According to the lights on the control panel, a second pod was on the way, carrying, no doubt, the rest of the MMEF section. The pods, which worked in tandem like Swiss Alpine elevated cars to preserve the cycler’s spin, could carry only about fifteen people at a time. The second car would be here any moment, and then things would really get crowded.
With a loud clunk and the hiss of matching pressures, the second pod arrived, and the hatch opened up. Another line of lightly armored men and women spilled out, moving rapidly across the module toward the storm-cellar hatch. Last out was a tall, ebony-skinned Marine in fatigues, wearing the silver eagles of a full colonel at his collar. “What are you doing here?” he demanded, glaring at the two civilians.
“Uh…inventory, Colonel Lloyd,” Alexander replied. “Just…uh…checking the stuff the arky teams’ll need at Cydonia.”
Lloyd gave them a single brief, penetrating, and disdainful look, then followed the rest of his men into the cellar.
Alexander let the major and Joubert clamber into the waiting pod ahead of him. From the still-open door of the storm cellar, he heard Lloyd’s familiar bellow. “All right, people. Enough skylarking!”
The cellar door boomed shut, cutting off the voice. Alexander clambered through the pod hatch and grabbed a handhold next to the major.
“Thanks,” Alexander told him. “For the warning, I mean.”
“Yeah.” Garroway’s voice was hard and cold. His eyes were on Joubert…or perhaps it was the UN flag on her sleeve he was staring at.
If he doesn’t like it, Alexander thought viciously, then screw him!
Alexander hated the very idea of US Marines on Mars, hated the politics, hated the twisted, jingoist, nationalistic interests that pretended that such things were necessary. They had come to Mars to do science, vitally important science, with the discovery of the Cydonian ruins, and troops were only going to get in the way.
Well, maybe they’d be able to ignore them. After all, it wasn’t like there was a war on.
TWO
VIDIMAGE—JANICE LANGE AT NET NEWS NETWORK ANCHOR DESK.
LANGE: “In Geneva, today, President Markham concluded his fifth straight day of talks with UN Director General Villanueva, announcing that, although much work remains before the outstanding differences between the United States and the United Nations can be fully resolved, he is confident that real progress is being made.”
VIDIMAGE—THE PRESIDENT ADDRESSING A CROWD OF REPORTERS AND NETHAWKS.
PRESIDENT MARKHAM: “The United States of America is not now, nor has it ever been, engaged in any plot or cover-up involving the Martian artifacts. The joint US-Russian expedition to Mars is carrying out its research and investigations for the benefit of all humankind. We welcome the presence of UN observers and scientists at Cydonia. We welcome their assistance. The discoveries made there so far are…are astonishing in their implications for humanity, for everyone on this planet,
