At the moment he was temporarily able to forget his discomfort, however.
The many tiny dials and indicators told a story all their own to Brown's
trained vision.

"Just another half hour," he whispered to himself. "Just thirty more
minutes and I'll land. It may be just a dead planet but I'll still be
the first."

There really wasn't a great deal for Brown to do. The ship was
self-guided. The Air Force had trusted robot mechanisms more than human
reactions.

Thus Brown's entire active contribution to the flight consisted in
watching the dials (which recorded everything so even watching them was
unnecessary) and in pressing the button which would cause the ship to
start its return journey.

Of course the scientists could have constructed another mechanism to
press the button and made it a completely robot ship. But despite their
frailties and imperfections, human beings have certain advantages.
Humans can talk. Machines may see and detect far more than their human
creators but all they can do is record. They can neither interpret nor
satisfactorily describe.

Brown was present not only to report a human's reactions to the first
Mars flight; he was also along to see that which the machines might
miss.

"We've never satisfactorily defined life," one of his instructors had
told Brown shortly after he started the three grueling years of training
which had been necessary, "so we can't very well build a foolproof
machine for detecting it. That's why we've left room for 105 pounds of
dead weight."

"Meaning me?"

"Meaning you."

"And I'm your foolproof machine for detecting life?"

"Let's say you're the closest we can come to it at present. We're
banking everything on this first trip. It'll be at least eighteen
months later before we can get a second ship into space. So it's up to
you to get everything you can ... some evidence of life, preferably
animal, if possible. With public support it'll be a hell of a lot easier
squeezing appropriations out of Congress for the next ship and to get
public support we need the biggest possible play in the newspapers. If
anything is newsworthy on Mars it should be evidence of life ... even
plant life."

So here he was, 105 pounds of concentrated knowledge and anticipation,
itching with the desire for action and also from more basic causes
having to do with two months confinement in a small space with a minimum
of water.

"Life is most probable at the poles," the instructor