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screens, cut her off.
"We've been over all this, ya know," Braddock said. He walked over and
glowered at the largest blowup. "Nothing there. Vehicle's too small to see on
orbiter photos."
"Tell it to Percival Lowell," Philippe said.
"What?"
"Never mind."
"I'm looking for tracks," Carter said. "Not the vehicle."
"Find anything?" Lena asked.
"Yeah."
Braddock looked surprised. "Yeah? What? What ya got?"
"Look here," Carter replied. He disappeared behind the stereo mask and began
moving the cursor on the big screen. "Maybe you can't see it unless you use
the stereo viewer, but there's at least one trail running off a long way west
into ... what's west of the end of the Hellespontus Road?"
"Dust devils," Braddock said grumpily. "The summer dust storms come out of
there. If you'll look farther west, you'll find a lot of dust devils out
there. He musta got hit by one."
"Yeah, yeah. We found those."
"You found the dust devils already?" Braddock looked surprised again.
Carter turned away from the screen and studied him. "Yeah. What do you see
when you're out there on the ground?"
"Nothing. A lotta dust in Hellespontus country ... lotta craters. Not much
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else."
"I think you'd better mobilize all your people out there to follow this." He
pointed to the screen.
"What? I don't see anything."
Carter drew his finger along the screen. "Tracks. The only ones this far from
the end of the Hellespontus
Road. It's got to be him. Even with the mask, you can only see segments of
tracks. Just here and there. I
have to use stereo and a lot of blinking with the earlier images, but I can
project it and follow it from one segment to another. Listen. You get in touch
with your people in the field, I'll follow this damn thing as far as I can and
tell you the coordinates of each fragment I find. They can head out there on
the ground and see what they can see." Braddock glanced at Trevina in
surprise.
Late Wednesday afternoon. Only two days left for Stafford to survive. If he
was alive at all.
Braddock and his party had gone grumpily back to Braddock's office to manage
the search, promising to relay any track positions from Carter to the field
crew.
Carter continued studying the images on the screen. Behind the stereo mask, he
was immersed in the machine. "Look," he would say from time to time, "I've got
something."
There was a moment when Annie and Carter were in the lab alone together. She
was silent at first.
"What's eating you?" Carter asked her from behind the mask.
"I'm getting hungry and I've got a story to write...." She stepped close to
Carter and looked intently at one of the images on the screen. Low ridges and
boulders casting shadows. She put her hand on the back of Carter's chair and
peered intently at the screen, not at him. "Carter, Iwant to ask you
something.
I don't know why I'm saying this. A journalist isn't supposed to ask this
question. It's supposed to come from you, but I want to ask you this because I
want to keep ... a good relationship with you. Look at it as my own cynical
investment in the future of my news source, if you want. Anyway, we may need
each other before this is done. I think I know how you feel about me tagging
along. Anyway, here's the question. Is there anything so far that you want off
the record?"
Behind his mask, Carter felt a million thoughts, running from anger to
pleasure. He had to do all the work and she got to write ... Still, she was
trying to be helpful.... "No. Use what you want.There's no secrets on Mars as
far as I'm concerned. We're all in this together." Why did it feel like he
kept forcing himself to say that?
"You're an interesting man. Do you ever have any serious doubts? I mean, about
what you are doing?"
"Doubt?"
"Maybe that's what I can help you with. Doubt."
"What do you mean?"
"Reporters have to be more skeptical than builders."
He wanted to ask her what she was talking about, but Philippe returned.
She stepped back, away from Carter. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]