Yet he had to report on the scurvy and the chain of events that had led to it. There was nothing else that Li could do except tell the facts to the men and women who directed the mission. There is no way to cover it up, Li realized. Nor would it be proper to do so. Even to think of a cover-up is criminal. No matter what affect this has on my career or the careers of others.

Scurvy. Everyone on the ground team nearly killed by scurvy because they had overlooked the fact that pure oxygen had deactivated their crucially needed vitamin C supply. The politicians will jump to the conclusion that the traverse team got stuck in their rover because the scurvy sapped their strength and their judgment. And now Vosnesensky, of all people, is disobeying orders and trying to rescue them.

Vosnesensky. Wait until the mission controllers sink their teeth into that morsel! What a mess. What a confounded, convoluted, unequivocal disaster.

Li knew he had to tell the facts to Kaliningrad. Still he hesitated.

Pacing his private cubicle in three long-legged strides, back and forth, back and forth, he passed his desktop computer a dozen times without even thinking of starting to file his report.

Even if I wanted to hide the facts it would be impossible. They will know soon enough that we are not evacuating the dome, as ordered. He agonized for hours. How to put the best face on this disaster. How to tell the news in a way that will not destroy any chance for future missions to Mars. How to admit my own inadequacy without ruining my chances for the future.

That is the important thing. How to tell this terrible news in a way that will not destroy our chances for the future. That is the vital thing.

Virtually all of the reports from the ground team were made orally and transcribed into hard copy automatically by the computers in the spacecraft and back at Kaliningrad. Li alone regularly wrote out his reports and transmitted them in written form. But what can I write now? What words can soften this news?

Like a caged cheetah he paced back and forth, seeking a way out and finding none. Finally, in an agony of reluctance, he sat at his little desk and began pecking on the computer keyboard with his long manicured fingers.

Dmitri Iosifovitch Ivshenko had the physique and the personality of the typical cosmonaut. Slight of build, lightning-fast reflexes, and enough youth to have survived being a fighter pilot and then a test pilot. Drinking all night, sobering up on oxygen in the morning, breakfasting on a cigarette and then throwing up behind the hangar before climbing into the cockpit of some supersonic jet. Yet once in the cockpit he became cool and calculating, capable of sizing up a situation in an instant and doing the right thing at precisely the right moment on a combination of instinct, training, and blindingly fast thought processes. He did not consider himself to be a bold pilot; the bold ones died young. Ivshenko was a cautious pilot who flew dangerous aircraft. When he transferred to the cosmonaut corps he was almost bored with the Newtonian predictability of each space mission.

He was not bored now. He was not particularly worried, either. Merely careful. No need to rush, he reminded himself as he cautiously poked his pole into the sandy ripples a meter in front of his boots. We are here to rescue those four wretches, not to get stuck alongside them.

Dust stirred up where he prodded the ground. The pole sank in a few centimeters, then seemed to hit firm soil. Ivshenko nodded inside his helmet and took a step forward, dragging his safety tether behind him.

"How is it?" Vosnesensky’s voice rasped in his earphones.

"Soft, like sand. Not good traction."

"Be very careful."

"I am always very careful, Mikhail Andreivitch."

"Then be doubly careful."

"Yes, sir, comrade group commander." Ivshenko chuckled to himself and took another step forward.

His foot slid out from under him. His body half turned as he grabbed at the pole with both hands but it too was sinking into the sand, suddenly the consistency of talcum. Clouds of pink dust billowed softly as Ivshenko felt himself slipping, sliding forward, his boots suddenly without purchase, sinking into a sea of soft red sand.

He did not call out. Even as he sank down into the clinging dust he let go of the useless pole and tried to twist his body around and reach back toward the last bit of firm ground. But inside the cumbersome hard suit he could barely turn a few degrees as he floundered, arms flailing, legs kicking. It was like sinking into gooey mud. Ivshenko imagined himself being sucked down into quicksand.

With those rapid reflexes and his ability to size up a situation quickly, Ivshenko stopped his struggling even as he heard Vosnesensky bellowing in his earphones: "What’s wrong? What’s happening?"

He felt something firm beneath the heel of his left boot and tried to balance all his weight on it. But the boot slipped off it and he continued to sink slowly, inexorably, into the fine red dust. It rose up to his chest, up to his armpits, to the lip of his helmet.

"I am sinking," he reported glumly. The visor of his helmet was spattered with rust-colored dust. His arms were spread across the surface of the sand like a swimmer trying to float. He was afraid to move them for fear of sinking faster.

Vosnesensky swore in Russian.

"I’m sinking!" Ivshenko repeated, louder, his voice pitched higher. The talcumlike sand was crawling up the faceplate of his helmet.

Vosnesensky hesitated only a moment. It would be dangerous to try to back up on this slope, he knew, but Ivshenko’s tether was attached to a simple ring fastener on the nose of the vehicle. There was no winch to pull him up.

"Sit down," he snapped at Reed as he punched the control panel buttons that put all the wheel motors into reverse.

Reed slipped into the right-hand seat, his eyes goggling at the scene in front of them. Ivshenko’s helmet had disappeared into the sand almost entirely. He was yelling something in Russian, but his radio voice was breaking up, garbled with static.

"Pull me up, dammit!" Ivshenko shouted into his helmet microphone. He was completely drowned in the red dust now. And still sinking. It was bottomless.

Then he felt the tether take hold. Like a parachute blossoming over his head. Ivshenko felt the same rush of gratitude and joy.

"Good! Good! Pull me back."

He knew Vosnesensky would inch the rover backward with infinite care, infinite caution. That’s fine, Ivshenko said to himself. I have twelve hours of air, maybe more. Take your time, Mikhail Andreivitch. Take all the time you want, but keep pulling me up.

His head rose above the sand and almost instantly he could hear a babble of voices: Reed, Vosnesensky, the four in the other rover, all talking at once.

"I’m fine," he said to them all. "Keep pulling."

His shoulders came free of the dust. He could wave his arms at them all. Then his left boot seemed to catch on the same projection of underlying rock that had almost stopped him when he was sinking.

"Wait, I’m caught…"

But the tether kept pulling him. His left leg was pinned somehow. He tried to twist it free as he called on Vosnesensky to stop for a moment.

The tether was made of the same lightweight, high-strength carbon fiber composites as those that linked the spacecraft together. The underground rock was as hard and durable as granite. The rover continued to grind slowly backward despite Ivshenko’s yowls, stretching him as if he were being racked.

It only took a few seconds. Ivshenko felt his knee pop, a searing bolt of pain stabbing the length of his leg. He screamed a curse at the universe as the tether suddenly went slack.

Vosnesensky bellowed into the cockpit radio, "What’s the matter with you?"

"You’ve just broken my leg, that’s all," Ivshenko answered in a voice sharp with misery.