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going through all the old data . . .” He paused as Derkweiler continued to frown ostentatiously. “Excuse me, Dr. Derkweiler, is something wrong?”
    The project manager was looking at him instead of the data printout that Corso had laid in front of him. His hands were folded pensively. “How long have you been looking at old gamma ray data?”
    “This past week.” Corso suddenly felt apprehensive; maybe Derkweiler and Freeman had had a run-in over the data.
    “Every week we have half a terabyte of radar and visual data coming in here, piling up, unlooked at. The gamma ray data is the least important.”
    “I understand that, but here’s the thing.” Corso felt flustered. “Dr. Freeman, before he, ah, left NPF, was working on an analysis of the gamma ray data. I inherited his work in the area and in going over it, I noted some anomalous results . . .”
    Derkweiler clasped his hands and leaned forward on the desk. “Corso, do you know what our mission is here?”
    “Mission? You mean. . .?” Corso found himself flushing like a school-boy who’d forgotten his lesson. This was ridiculous, a senior technician being treated this way. Freeman had complained to him repeatedly about Derkweiler.
    “I mean—” Derkweiler spread his arms with a big smile and looked around his office. “Here we are in beautiful suburban Pasadena, California, at the lovely National Propulsion Facility. Are we on vacation? No, we are not on vacation. So what are we doing here, Corso? What’s the mission?”
    “Of the Mars Mapping Orbiter or NPF in general?” Corso tried to keep his face neutral.
    “Of the MMO! We’re not raising organic fryers here, Corso!” Derkweiler chuckled at his bon mot.
    “To observe the surface of Mars, looking for subsurface water, analyzing minerals, mapping terrain—”
    “Excellent. In preparation for future landing missions. Perhaps you haven’t heard yet that we’re in a new space race—this time with the Chinese?”
    Corso was surprised to see it put in such stark, cold-war terms. “The Chinese aren’t anywhere near the starting line.”
    “Not at the starting line?” Derkweiler almost hopped out of his seat. “Their Hu Jintao satellite is a few weeks from Mars orbit!”
    “We’ve had orbiters around Mars for decades, we’ve landed probes, we’ve been exploring the surface with rovers—”
    Derkweiler waved him silent. “I’m talking about the long-range picture. The Chinese have leapfrogged the Moon and are going straight to Mars. Don’t underestimate what they can do—especially with the U.S. dithering around with its space program.”
    Corso nodded agreeably.
    “And here you are messing around with gamma rays. What do stray gamma rays have to do with the Mars mission?”
    “There’s a gamma ray detector on the MMO,” Corso said. “Analysis of that data is part of my job description.”
    “That detector was stuck on at the last minute,” Derkweiler said, “by Dr. Freeman, over my objections, for no discernable reason. Gamma rays were Dr. Freeman’s little hobby horse. Look—I don’t fault you. You’re trying to straighten out the mess Freeman left behind and you haven’t learned the priorities. May I therefore suggest that you stick to the mission—the SHARAD mapping data?”
    Struggling to maintain his best ass-kissing smile, Corso picked up the gamma ray plots and slid them back into the manila envelope. He would get along with Derkweiler come hell or high water. “I’ll get to work on that right away,” he said crisply.
    “Excellent. Your first presentation as senior staff is in a week—I want you to do well. First impressions and all. You understand?”
    “I do. Thank you.”
    “Don’t thank me. It’s my job to be a pain in the ass.” Another chuckle.
    “Right.”
    As Corso turned to go, Derkweiler said, “One other thing.”
    He turned.
    “You’ll probably be interested in this.” He tossed over a stapled sheaf of papers that landed on