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files in my head, Jamie said to himself. Aloud, he replied “Mostly pretty young. Postdocs in their late twenties, thirties, for the most part. I guess the oldest person on the team right now is Carter Carleton.”
    Her eyes widened. “Carter Carleton? The maverick anthropologist? He’s on Mars?”
    “He has been for nearly a year,” Jamie said. “And he’s no more of a maverick than you are.”
    Samuels hesitated for the barest fraction of a second, then turned to face straight into the camera. “We’ll be back in a moment. But first this.”
    The overhead lights dimmed slightly and the muted monitor screen suddenly showed a housewife staring into a sink full of dirty dishes.
    From the larger flat panel that linked to Los Angeles Rhonda Samuels said to Jamie, “You’re doing fine.” A younger woman rushed to her side with a brush in one hand and a spray can in the other.
    “I just want you to understand,” Jamie replied slowly, “that we’ll never knowingly endanger our people on Mars.”
    She nodded while her assistant fussed with her perfect hair. Jamie thought of Edie Elgin, the TV newswoman he’d lived with when he was in Houston training for the First Expedition. Beautiful, bright, gutsy Edith. She was married now and living in Selene, the underground city on the Moon. Married to Douglas Stavenger, no less, Selene’s founder and de facto leader.
    “One thing, though, Dr. Waterman. Call me Rhonda. Not Ms. Samuels. Got it?”
    “Got it,” Jamie said, nodding.
    “In one!” called the floor director, a hand on the intercom plug tucked into his ear.
    Jamie sat up a little straighter and tried to clear his mind as the hairdresser scampered out of view.
    The floor director pointed at Jamie and the interviewer turned on her brittle smile again. “Dr. Waterman, let me ask you a different question.”
    “Fine, Rhonda,” said Jamie.
    “What are we getting out of the exploration of Mars? What have you discovered that’s worth the billions of dollars that have been spent on your program?”
    Jamie felt his cheeks flare with sudden anger and hoped the cameras didn’t pick it up. Forcing himself to take a calming breath before speaking, he answered, “That’s sort of like asking how high is up.”
    “What have you found?” Samuels insisted. “After all, you’ve spent billions —”
    “Life,” Jamie said sharply. “We’ve found the most important thing that’s ever been discovered, Rhonda. We’ve found that ours is not the only world on which life exists. More than that, we’ve found intelligent life. Intelligence arose on Mars, just as it has on Earth.”
    “But it’s gone extinct.”
    “That’s not the important point,” Jamie said. “The important point is that intelligence is not rare in the universe. We’ve explored two planets —Earth and Mars —and found intelligence on both of them. Two for two. There’s probably all sorts of intelligent species on other worlds.”
    “Really?” Rhonda Samuels’s carefully painted face looked almost fearful.
    “Really,” said Jamie.
    She hesitated, cocked her head slightly to one side. Getting instructions through her earplug from her director, Jamie guessed.
    At last she said, “Dr. Waterman, you’ve made the point that you would never knowingly endanger the men and women now on Mars.”
    “That’s right.”
    “But how can you be sure of that? Aren’t they in danger every day they’re on Mars, every moment?”
    Jamie rocked back slightly. “I don’t think they’re in such terrible danger.”
    “You don’t? Aren’t you being naive about that? After all, they can’t breathe the air, can’t walk in the open without wearing spacesuits. Do you have adequate medical facilities on Mars? Can you evacuate someone if a medical emergency comes up?”
    “We’ve never had that kind of a problem.”
    “The people have a right to know just how much danger your team on Mars is in.”
    “We know how to deal with the conditions on Mars.