So we terminated that think tank and put all the resources we could manage into extraterrestrial colonization. At the beginning, that had looked like the least hopeful solution of all.
But — almost! — we had managed to make it work. When Roger Torraway landed, that completed the first and hardest step. By the time the ships that were following him reached their positions, in orbit or on the surface of the planet, we would be able, for the first time, to plan for a future, with the survival of the race assured.
So we watched with great satisfaction as Roger stepped out on the surface of the planet.
Roger’s backpack computer was a triumph of design. It had three separate systems, cross-linked and sharing facilities, but with enough redundancy so that all systems had point nine reliability at least until the 3070 backup computer reached orbit. One system mediated his perceptions. Another controlled the subsystems of nerve and muscle that let him walk and move. The third telemetered all of his inputs. Whatever he saw, we saw on Earth.
We had gone to some trouble to arrange this. By Shannon’s Law there was not enough band width to transmit everything, but we had included a random sampling feature. Approximately one bit per hundred was transmitted — first to the radio in the landing craft, where we had assigned one channel permanently for that purpose. Then it was rebroadcast to the orbiter, where General Hesburgh floated, watching the television screen while the calcium oozed out of his bones. From there, cleaned and amplified, it was burst-transmitted to whichever synchronous satellite of Earth was at that moment locked into both Mars and Goldstone. So what we all saw was only about one percent “real.” But that was enough. The rest was filled in by a comparison program we had written for the Goldstone receiver. Hesburgh saw only a series of stills; on Earth we broadcast what looked exactly like on-the-spot movies of whatever Roger saw.
So all over the Earth, on television sets in every country, people watched the beige and brown mountains that rose ten miles tall, saw the glint of Martian sunlight off the window frames of the lander, could even read the expression on Father Kayman’s face as he rose from prayer and for the first time looked out on Mars.
In the Under Palace in Peking the great lords of New People’s Asia interrupted a planning session to watch the screen. Their feelings were mixed. It was America’s triumph, not theirs. In the Oval Office President Deshatine’s joy was pure. Not only was the triumph American, it was personal; he was identified forever as the President who had established humanity on Mars. Almost everybody was at least a little joyous — even Dorrie Torraway, who sat in the private room at the back of her shop with her chin in her hands, studying the message of her husband’s eyes. And of course in the great white cube of the project outside of Tonka, Oklahoma, everyone left on the staff watched the pictures from Mars almost all the time.
They had plenty of leisure for that. They didn’t have much else to do. It was astonishing how empty the building became as soon as Roger was out of it.
They had all been rewarded, from the stockroom boys up: a personal commendation for everyone from the President, plus a thirty-day bonus leave and a jump in grade. Clara Bly used hers to finish up her long-delayed honeymoon. Weidner and Freeling took the time to write a rough draft of Brad’s paper, transmitting every paragraph to him in orbit as it came off their typewriters, and receiving his corrections via Goldstone. Vern Scanyon, of course, had a hero’s tour with the President, in fifty-four states and the principal cities of twenty foreign countries. Brenda Hartnett had appeared on television twice with her kids. They had been deluged with gifts. The widow of the man who had died to put Roger Torraway on Mars was now a millionaire. They had all had their hour of fame, as soon as the launch got off and Roger was en route, especially in those moments just before the landing.
Then the world looked out at Mars through the eyes of Roger, and the senses of the brother on Roger’s back, and all their fame blew away. From then on it was all Roger.
We watched too.
We saw Brad and Don Kayman in their suits, completing the pre-egress drill. Roger had no need of a suit. He stood on tiptoe at the door of the lander, poised, sniffing the empty wind, his great black wings hovering behind him and soaking in the rays of the disconcertingly tiny, but disconcertingly bright, sun. Through the TV pick-up inside the lander we saw Roger silhouetted against the dull beige and brown of the abrupt Martian horizon…
And then through Roger’s eyes we saw what he saw. To Roger, looking out on the bright, jewel-like colors of the planet he was meant to live on, it was a fairyland, beautiful and inviting.
The lander had stretched out skeletal magnesium steps to stroke the surface of Mars, but Roger didn’t need them. He jumped down, the wings fluttering — for balance, not for lift — and landed lightly on the chalky orange surface, where the wash of the landing rockets had scoured away the crust. He stood there for a moment, surveying his kingdom with the great faceted eyes. “Don’t rush things,” advised a voice in his head that came from Don Kayman’s suit radio. “Better go through the exercise list.”
Roger grinned without looking around; “Sure,” he said, and began to move away. First he walked, then trotted; then he began to run. If he had sped through the streets of Tonka, here he was a blur. He laughed out loud. He changed the frequency responses of his eyes, and the distant towering hills flashed bright blue, the flat plain a mosaic of greens and yellows and reds. “This is great!” he whispered, and the receivers at the lander picked up the subspoken words and passed them on to Earth.
“Roger,” said Brad petulantly, “I wish you’d take it easy until we get the jeep ready.”
Roger turned. The other two were back at the steps of the lander, deploying the Mars vehicle from its fold-down condition behind its hatch.
He bounded back toward them joyously. “Need help?”
They didn’t have to answer. They did need help; in their suits it was a major undertaking to slip the retaining strap off one of the basketwork wheels. “Move over,” he said, and quickly freed the wheels and stretched the stilted legs into stand-by position. The jeep had both: wheels for the flat parts, stilts for climbing. It was meant to be the most flexible vehicle man could make for getting around Mars, but it wasn’t. Roger was. When it was done he touched them and promised, “I won’t go out of line of sight.” And then he was gone, off to see the patches of color around a series of hummocks, Dali-bright and irresistible.
“That’s dangerous!” Brad grumbled over the radio. “Wait till we finish testing the jeep! If anything happens to you we’re in trouble.”
“Nothing will,” said Roger, “and no!” He couldn’t wait. He was using his body for what it had been built to do, and patience was gone. He ran. He jumped. He found himself two kilometers from the lander before he knew it; looked back, saw that they were creeping slowly after him and went on. His oxygenation system stepped up the pump-rate to compensate for the extra demands; his muscles met the challenge smoothly. It was not his muscles that propelled him but the servo-systems that had been built in instead; but it was the tiny muscles at the ends of the nerves that ordered the servos. All the practice paid off. It was no effort at all to reach two hundred kilometers an hour, leaping over small cracks and craters, bounding up and down the slopes of larger ones.
“Come back, Roger!” It was Don Kayman, sounding worried. A pause while Roger ran on; then a dizzying sense of movement in his vision, and another voice said, “Go back, Roger! It’s time.”