A World of Difference Read Online Free PDF

orbit?”
    “Let me see.” She fiddled with the computer. “At least twenty-nine, plus however many they got when we were on the far side of the planet and couldn’t monitor them.”
    “How many of those have they shared with us?”
    Louise did not have to check that. “Next one will be the first.”
    “Oh, but that’s the Russians, though. That’s just the way they—” Pat Marquard stumbled to a halt as she realized where her words were taking her. “—do things,” she finished lamely.
    Irv shook his head. Bragg couldn’t have had that turn out better for him if he had planned it for weeks. And now the commander took the advantage, saying, “If you all”—he carefully made it two words—“think I’m not sorry to put some distance between
Tsiolkovsky
and us, I won’t say you’re wrong. Minerva’s a big place. Why rub elbows with the Russians when we don’t have to?”
    “What if we end up needing something they have and we don’t, or the other way round?” Sarah had not given up.
    “Canyon or no canyon, we won’t be that far from them,” Bragg said. “If anybody needs anything that bad, he can holler for it.”
    “What if we need a ride home?” Sarah asked softly.
    Frank Marquard winced; Irv felt himself doing the same thing. But Bragg said flatly, “Anybody who needs a ride home is dead, unless he can make it on Minerva until another expedition comes along.
Athena
’s life-support won’t take more than six people home, and neither will
Tsiolkovsky
’s. For that, folks, we are on our own. We’d all best remember it, too.”
    The words hit home. Irv had lived on
Athena
long enough to have grown used to it, as he would have to, say, an apartment. Being reminded of how fragile a place it was hurt.
    But
Tsiolkovsky
was just as fragile. “So the territory
Viking
saw was really on the east side of Jötun Canyon, then, not the west?” Irv asked. At Bragg’s nod, the anthropologist went on. “What is the west side like, then? Are the Russians going to try to fly
Tsiolkovsky
down into badlands? If they are, I say we call them, and the hell with Houston. I wouldn’t do that to anybody.”
    Bragg frowned, but then his face cleared as he thought it over. “That’s fair,” he said. “We’ll find out.” He folded the map and stuck it into a breast pocket of his coveralls. It was not nearly detailed enough to show him what he needed. He pulled the NASA
Photographic Atlas of Minerva
off a shelf; the Velcro that held the book in place let go with a scratchy sound of protest.
    The mission commander riffled through the pages till he found the plate he needed. He held the book open. Five heads craned toward it. “Looks to be flatland and low hills, same as we’ll be landing in. None of the miles and miles of scree and boulders you see around the edges of the polar caps, and no big erosion features. They aren’t taking any worse chances than we are.”
    Frank Marquard studied the photo with a professionally appraisingglance. When he said, “He’s right,” Irv knew that any chance to overturn Bragg’s decision was gone.
    So did his wife. “All right, Emmett,” Sarah said. “But if they don’t trust us once we’re all down on Minerva, they’ll have reason now.”
    “They don’t trust us now,” Bragg answered. “And you know what? I don’t trust them, either. That’s all right. The best way to deal with ’em is to keep one hand on your wallet. That way you never lose track of where it is.”
    Sarah snorted. The Marquards went back to the labs in the rear section of
Athena
to return to whatever they had been doing. And when Tolmasov called from the
Tsiolkovsky
, nobody said anything about code groups.
    When she and her husband were in the almost privacy of their cubicle, though, Sarah Levitt said, “I still don’t like it, Irv. Not just that we didn’t tell the Russians, but that word about the changed coordinates came through today the way it did. It just seems too pat