Harrison

Harrison commands the Ares and its four-man crew, a man whose dry humor and blunt manner keep the expedition grounded even as Jarvis and Leroy radio back reports he dismisses as screwy. He listens to Jarvis's account of the ostrich-like Tweel with the skepticism of a man who has spent too many weary days on a half-dead world, needling his chemist even as he absorbs the implications. His grounded, sardonic presence frames the story's central tension between sober scientific caution and the bewildering strangeness of Mars.