In the jargon of the Mars Project their vehicle was called an L/AV: landing/ascent vehicle. It had been designed for efficiency, not comfort. It was large, but most of its space was given to capacious cargo bays housing equipment and supplies for the six explorers. Atop the cargo bays, on the airlock level, the hard suits and backpacks for outside work were stored. There were four fold-down seats in the airlock level, but the compartment felt terribly crowded to Jamie when he and the three other scientists were jammed into it, especially when they were bundled inside their cumbersome hard-shell suits. Above the airlock level sat the cockpit with the cosmonaut commander and astronaut second-in-command.

If they had to, the six men and women could live for days inside this landing vehicle. The mission plan called for them to set up their base in the inflated dome that the robot was building. But they could survive in the lander, if it came to that.

Maybe. Jamie thought that if they had to spend just a few more hours cooped up in this cramped claustrophobic compartment, somebody would commit murder. It had been bad enough during the nine-month flight from Earth in the much roomier modules of the parent spacecraft. This little descent vehicle would quickly turn into a lunatic asylum if they had to live in it for days on end.

They donned the backpacks using the buddy system, as they had been trained to do, one scientist helping the other to check out all the connections to the suit batteries, heater, and air regenerator. Then check it all again. The backpacks were designed to connect automatically to ports in the pressure suit, but one tiny misalignment could kill you out on the surface of Mars.

Then they began to check the suits themselves, from the heavy boots to the marvelously thin and flexible gloves. What passed for air outside was rarer than the highest stratosphere of Earth, an unbreathable mix of mainly carbon dioxide. An unprotected human would die in an explosive agony of ruptured lungs and blood that would literally boil at such low pressure.