“Yes—asked for them several times. Or to at least see them.”
“Show him a video,” Marc said.
“Not of the vent descent, no,” Viktor said. “Maybe of the samples in their little dishes. That would be okay, I suppose.”
“He wanted to go to the greenhouse,” Julia said.
Raoul said, “Did you notice him stop and look at it when they were headed back to their rover?”
Marc said, “Yeah, he wanted to walk over there so bad you could feel it.”
Viktor sniffed. “Knew we would come out if he did.”
“Yeah,” Marc said, “but it takes five minutes minimum to suit up.” Julia grinned wryly. “Me, I’d just make the run without the suit again. He’s not getting my samples.”
“Offer to work on them with you?” Viktor persisted.
“Sure. And to go down the vent with me.”
The men all looked stern. “Sure, help him win the prize money,” Raoul said. “I bet he’d like plenty of help, maybe toss us a free dinner or something.”
Viktor said, “No descent with him, no.”
Julia said nothing. Somehow they all knew there was more. Nobody spoke. At last she said, “He offered me the berth home if I would.”
Predictably, each exploded in a different way. Raoul smacked his palm on the table, Marc shot to his feet, Viktor gave a loud, derisive grunt.
“Bastard!” Raoul shouted. “He’s going to bargain us down for it, I knew it.”
“Not all of us,” Marc said, pacing back and forth. “What’ve the rest of us got to offer?”
“True for now,” Viktor said gravely. “Have pilot. Doubt would want Marc’s rocks, but his core samples might help them. I am thinking that Raoul may be useful to them.”
Raoul blinked. “How come?”
“Getting ice from pingos, nobody ever done. Need good engineer. Engineers. Gerda is able but there is lot of labor to do.”
Raoul could not disguise his interest, not from people who had lived with him for years. “Think so?”
“If cannot get enough water, they cannot lift in the best launch window. More they wait, more they need. Orbital mechanics very clear. Could be they will need smart worker.”
Marc said, “Sheesh!”
“I doubt that,” Raoul said, measured and not very convincingly, to Julia’s ear.
“I do not like this,” Viktor said. “Captains should decide who goes. Not bargain.”
“What’d you say?” Raoul asked her. “I told him no, of course.”
Raoul kept his face carefully under control but his voice was strained. “Really? You’d sit on those samples and not go home?”
“You bet.”
Nobody said anything, but Julia could feel the furious calculation going on in the room. She could not tell whether they believed her. The signal bell rang and she was glad to hear it. It was Axelrod, of course. Marc started the priority message and sat down.
“I heard it all, guys. That Chen sonofabitch! One slot, he says.”
Axelrod was pacing before his desk and the view through the broad window behind it was of city lights winking in the night. They had long since ceased keeping track of the mismatch of times between the planets; their clocks gained half an Earth hour every day. Yet somehow Julia was surprised to see the moon hanging in a luminous evening sky. Comfy Earth was indeed a long way from raw Mars.
Axelrod looked frazzled, gray. “Well, don’t think you guys have to deal with him up there. I’m talking to his bosses right now. They’re playing cagey. Not saying how many berths they could squeeze out. One, Chen says. My engineers say that’s a pretty plausible number, given the uncertainties we have about their detailed designs.”
“Fits with what I know from the training,” Marc said.
Axelrod waved away his own reservations. “They’re hinting like crazy about those samples of yours, Julia. I figure we got ’em there, I really do. You’re not to tell him anything that might help him find that vent. Nothing. He might be able to just follow your tracks back. In fact, don’t talk to him at all about this stuff.”
“A little late, Axy,” Raoul said sardonically. “The old time delay strikes again.”
“We discussed theory, genetics,” Julia said defensively.
Axelrod looked at the camera cannily. “One thing I learned in tight negotiations like this. Make damn sure you know your opponent’s true position. What’s valuable to him. So he doesn’t get that for a cheap price, while you’re imagining he wants something else.”
“Gotta admire him,” Marc said. “He’s holding no cards but he’s still playing the game.”
“He knows this sort of business,” Viktor said. “We do not.”
Axelrod spread his hands. “Say, suppose, they need a part or something. Have to come to you, Raoul. Or maybe they really do need fuel, after all this talk about mining those pingo hills. Nobody’s ever done that, right? They couldn’t have trained for it—Marc hadn’t even drilled through to the ice until after they’d boosted on their way. Could be they don’t have all the equipment they need. Or can’t do it at all, and that engineer, that Gerda, has already found that out.”
“He’s got a point,” Marc said.
