"An hour’s drive, perhaps a little more." Vosnesensky slid into the pilot’s seat and punched up a map display on the control panel’s central screen. "Yes, about one hour."

"Let’s get going! Right away! I’ll drive."

"I will drive," said Vosnesensky firmly. "You are too excited. You would drive like a cowboy, not an Indian." Then he chuckled deep in his throat at his own wit.

Jamie blinked at the Russian. Humor, from Mikhail? That’s even more rare than morning dew on Mars.

Now the rover lurched and swayed as Vosnesensky threaded between rocks and over ridges, every ounce of his attention focused on his driving. He had the throttle full out and the segmented vehicle was making its best speed across the rusted desert. To Jamie, sitting at Vosnesensky’s right, the rover was a large metal caterpillar inching its way across the Martian landscape. The dusty red ground was strewn with rocks, as everywhere, although craters seemed to be much fewer than farther west. Boulders as large as houses lay here and there, making Jamie itch to go out and investigate them.

But they stayed inside the rover, comfortable in their coveralls, and stuck to their low-speed dash toward the Grand Canyon of Mars. Jamie gripped the stone fetish in his pocket. There’s moisture in the air in the morning, he kept repeating to himself. It must be coming from the canyon. Must be.

He worried in the back of his mind that Dr. Li’s approval might be countermanded by someone in the chain of command on Earth. He wanted to be at their destination when such a signal came in — or so close that they could do some exploring before they had to obey the command to return to base. Mikhail seems to want it too, Jamie thought. In his own way he’s as excited as I am.

"I have never met an Indian before," Vosnesensky said abruptly, without taking his eyes from his driving.

"I’m not much of an Indian," Jamie replied. "I was brought up to be a white man."

"But you are not white."

"No, not entirely." The rover jounced over a little rill, bouncing Jamie in his seat. "In the States we have people from every part of the world — all the nationalities of Europe, Asians, Africans…"

"I have heard about the problems of your blacks. We learned in school how they are hold down by your racist system."

Jamie felt himself bristling. "Then why is the only black man on Mars an American? Why haven’t the African nations joined in this expedition?"

"Because they are poor," the Russian answered, deftly maneuvering the rover around a new-looking crater about the size of a swimming pool. "They cannot afford luxuries such as space exploration. They can barely feed their people."

"Is this really a luxury, Mikhail? Do you think that reaching out into space is a waste of money?"

"No." Vosnesensky’s answer was immediate and firm beyond the shadow of a doubt.

Thinking of the run-down pueblos and crumbling old adobe homes in New Mexico, Jamie mused, "I wonder. Sometimes I think the money could have been better used to help poor people."

The Russian shot him a quick glance, then returned to his driving. For long moments he said nothing and Jamie watched the dusty red land pass by, rocks, tired worn gullies, craters, little wind-stirred dunes. Off toward the horizon he saw a dust swirl, as red as a devil, spiraling into the pink morning sky.

"What we do helps the poor," Vosnesensky said. "We are not taking bread from their mouths. We are enlarging the habitat of the human species. History has shown that every expansion of the human habitat has brought about an increase in wealth and a rise in living standards. That is objective fact."

"But the poor are still with us," Jamie said.

A slight note of exasperation crept into the Russian’s voice. "The Soviet Federation alone has spent thousands of billions on aid to poor nations. The United States even more. This expedition to Mars has not hurt the poor. What we spend here is a pittance compared to what they have already received. And what good does it do for them? They go out and produce more babies, make a new generation of poor. A larger generation. It is endless."

"So they’re not going hungry because we’re here on Mars."

"Definitely not. They lack discipline, that is their problem. In the Soviet Federation we pulled ourselves up from a backward agricultural society to a powerful industrial nation in a single generation."

Yes, Jamie replied silently, with Stalin in the driver’s seat. He didn’t care how many millions starved while he built his factories and power plants.

"But tell me, what was it like when you were growing up in New Mexico? It is near Texas?"

"Yes," Jamie said. "Between Arizona and Texas."

"I have been there. Houston."

"New Mexico is nothing like Houston." Jamie laughed. Then, "Actually, I did most of my growing up in California. Berkeley. That’s where my parents taught, at the university. I was a kid when we moved there. But I spent a lot of my summers in Santa Fe, with my grandfather."

It had been a trying day. Jamie was almost seventeen, finishing high school, a vast disappointment to his parents because he had no clear idea of what he wanted to study in college.

His parents had flown with him to Santa Fe, where he was to spend the summer. His grandfather had just announced that he had secured a full scholarship for Jamie at the university in Albuquerque — if Jamie wanted it.

They were sitting in the dining room of Al’s house, up in the hills north of Santa Fe, the evening meal long finished as they sat and talked across the big oak table littered with the remains of roasted goat.

The dining room was large and cool, with a slanted beamed ceiling high above the floor of gleaming ochre tiles. Through its broad window Jamie could see adobe-style town houses dotting the slopes that ran down to the city. Al owned most of them; rental condos for the skiers in the winter and the tourists who wanted to buy genuine Indian artifacts all year long. The sun was going down toward the darkening mountains. Soon there would be another spectacular New Mexico sunset painting the sky.

Jamie had gobbled every scrap of the cabrito, enjoying the spices that Al’s cook had used so generously. His mother, who would eat lapin and even frogs’ legs without a qualm, had barely touched her dinner. Jamie’s father had eaten his portion easily enough, but now he unconsciously rubbed his chest, as if the spices had been too much for him.

"I’m sure you meant well, Al," Lucille was saying, with her sweetest, most persuasive little-girl smile, "but we had just assumed that Jamie would stay at home and attend Berkeley."

"Do the boy good to get a different slant on things," Al said, pulling a pack of slim dark cigarillos from his shirt pocket. "That’s what schoolin’s supposed to be all about, isn’t it: gettin’ an education? That moans more than books and class work, don’t it?"

Lucille frowned as her father-in-law lit up and blew a cloud of thin gray smoke toward the beamed ceiling. She cast a sharp glance at her husband.

With a slight cough, Jerome Waterman said, "Dad, the boy hasn’t even made up his mind about what he wants to study yet, let alone about where he wants to go to school."

They’re talking as if I get to make the decisions, Jamie thought. But they’re not even asking me what I think.

His father was going on, "Considering his grades and the results of his aptitude tests…"

"Aw, bullshit on all that crap!" Al blurted. Then he turned his most flattering smile on his daughter-in-law. "Sorry for the language, Lucille. But I don’t think those psychologists could find a skunk in their own clothes closet, let alone help a seventeen-year-old boy figure out where he wants to head in life."

"I will not have Jamie turned into an Indian," Lucille said firmly.

Al guffawed, a reaction Jamie had seen him use often in his store when he needed a moment to frame his thoughts before replying to a tough question.