by Ben Bova
Edith took a folding chair set up by the side wall, next to an emergency exit. She smiled to herself. She had her story, and she would continue to gather in all the details of the human side of this fantastic night. Even if she had to finish the job in bed with Brumado. That might not be such a bad way to end a night like this, she thought.
Although stodgy gray-haired NASA administrators officially broke the news to the goggle-eyed reporters, it was Alberto Brumado who ended up doing most of the talking. The soul of the Mars Project had his hour in the limelight. His smiling, triumphant face and voice were broadcast all across the world.
Life on Mars.
While Brumado answered the reporters’ myriad of questions and bantered happily with them, no one noticed that the physician in charge of the medical section sat at the very end of the table of NASA officials, looking tired and grim. No one asked him a question. No one paid him any attention at all. Which was just as well, because he had made up his mind to remain absolutely silent, no matter what. He was not the kind of man to rain on the organization’s parade.
SOL 37: EVENING
Dr. Yang Meilin gave a disdainful snort at the data on her display screen. Pushing her chair away from the tiny desk, she got to her feet and opened the accordion-fold door of her infirmary.
Dr. Li was up in the command section, of course, in the middle of a three-way conversation with the excursion team down at Tithonium Chasma and the mission controllers at Kaliningrad.
So they have found life on Mars, Dr. Yang said to herself. And they are all sick, perhaps even dying. Could there be a connection? No, that cannot be, she said to herself.
The passageway was empty, silent except for the hum of machinery. Everyone in the craft is packed into the command module, Yang realized. No one is paying any attention to this medical emergency. No one is paying any attention to me.
When she reached the command module, Dr. Li was at the comm console. Every one of the display screens was lit up. Alberto Brumado himself was beaming happily from the main display, while the other screens showed bigwigs in Kaliningrad, Houston, and what appeared to be Tokyo. Men, all of them. The TV link to the excursion team was out due to the storm, but Joanna Brumado was on the radio, trying to answer the volleys of questions.
She is beautiful, Yang thought, and the daughter of Alberto Brumado. Now she has found life on Mars. The center of everyone’s attention, everyone’s desires. I am nothing but a nondescript physician, the bearer of unhappy news. No wonder they want to ignore me.
Does Brumado know that his daughter is ill? Yang thought not. The mission controllers knew, of course, but so far they regarded the malady that was affecting the entire ground team as nothing more serious than a bout of flu.
It is more than flu. Yang was sure.
What if there are Martian organisms in the air? Viruses or microbes so tiny or so different that they escaped notice when the air was tested. What if they can infect human cells?
She shook her head, a motion that set her severely straight bangs whisking back and forth. Nonsense! Alien organisms cannot affect terrestrial cells. Their metabolisms would be completely different.
And yet, from the little that she had been able to glean about the lichenlike creatures Brumado and Malater had discovered, they were remarkably similar to terrestrial organisms. They must do a DNA workup, Yang thought. And a thorough chemical analysis.
A Martian plague. The very idea was too outlandish even to consider seriously. It was as unlikely … as—she felt a tremor race through her body—as unlikely as being hit by a meteoroid.
Then she realized that she was standing in the hatch of a spacecraft orbiting the planet Mars, standing on tiptoes to peek over the shoulders of the crowd clustered around their leader, who was being congratulated now by the directors of the Mars Project for successfully finding the first extraterrestrial life forms ever discovered by humankind. What can be considered outlandish? she chided herself. What might be likely or unlikely?
How happy they all looked. Even Li, the human scarecrow who never allowed himself to relax, was smiling joyfully at the multiple screens facing him. They were all congratulating each other, man to man, like an overaged athletic team that had just won an unexpected victory, confident that this discovery would assure their futures.
But not if the people on the ground die. That will terrify everyone. And they are dying. Despite Reed’s assurances, the data showed that something was debilitating all the men and women on the surface of Mars. They are growing weaker. They are dying.
• • •
It had been a momentous day. Despite their fatigue and pain the foursome in the rover had spent the entire afternoon on the radio with the dome, with Li and the other scientists in the orbiting ships, with the mission controllers in Kaliningrad and then Houston, and finally with the project directors in Moscow, Washington, Tokyo, and six other capital cities on Earth.
“You might know this is the one time the goddam TV link is down,” Connors grumbled.
The TV antenna was still jammed in its halfway-down position, useless. But the backup radio voice links worked, even though the interference of the dust storm made the transmissions relayed from orbit sound faint, blurred with crackling static.
Joanna had used the computer modem and the attached fax machine to squirt every bit of data—and all the photomicrographs—she and Ilona had gleaned from the lichen. Ilona herself was resting in her bunk; after she had practically collapsed in his arms, Jamie had unfolded the bunk and insisted that she try to sleep.
It was well after sundown before all the radio calls were finished. They would still have been talking, but Jamie begged off, claiming that they had to eat and rest so they would be fresh the next morning. Dr. Li had quickly taken the hint.
“I will handle all communications until you are ready for the morning’s work,” he said.
They had made no mention of their illness to the project brass in the various capital cities. Neither had the mission controllers, who knew as much about their condition as Li did. No one wanted to tarnish the triumph of the moment.
Now the four of them were gathered around the rover’s narrow table, seated as usual, the two men on one bench, the two women opposite. Ilona seemed slightly better for the few hours’ sleep she had obtained; still, she looked pale and drawn. Joanna too looked sallow, tense, her eyes shadowed, her cheeks hollow.
Connors was relentlessly cheerful, as if he dared not show anything but good humor. Yet it seemed to Jamie that his movements were slower than usual, forced, his breathing heavy.
“We’ve got to have a toast,” the astronaut said, sliding out from the bench and heading toward the refrigerator built into the galley bulkhead. “A toast to the discovery of extraterrestrial life.”
Jamie felt dull, achy. Connors’s phony enthusiasm irritated him, but he kept silent.
“Damn! There’s nothing in here to toast with,” Connors muttered, scanning the inside of the fridge.
“Is there any orange juice?” Joanna asked.
“Yeah. Still got a half a quart of it.”
“Let’s use that, then,” said Jamie.
“Orange juice?”
“Pretend there’s vodka in it.”
So they toasted in orange juice. Weakly. To Ilona and Joanna. To the discovery of life on Mars. To the unequivocal fact that Earth is not the only world that harbors life. To the Nobel Prize that the two women would share.
“Oh, I do not think they would award the Nobel for this,” Joanna said.
“Are you kidding?” Connors insisted. “For the discovery of extraterrestrial life?”
“There is no category among the Nobels for it,” Joanna pointed out. Then she added, musing, “Unless the Swedish Academy wants to stretch their definition of medicine and physiology.”
“Or chemistry,” Jamie said.
“Maybe they’ll make a new category,” Connors suggested hopefully.
Ilona gave him a wan smile and said, “
You don’t know the Swedes, Peter.”
They picked at their dinner trays. The meal went slowly. The aftereffect was setting in, Jamie realized. The reaction, the letdown after the high excitement of discovery and success.
So we’ve found life on Mars, he thought. I’ll bet by tomorrow there’ll be a flood of Martian jokes on TV.
His legs ached as if he’d been running cross-country all day. He felt weak. Leaning his head back against the padded bulkhead Jamie wondered how sick they really were, and how soon they would recover. It seemed to him that they were all getting worse, not better.
The comm unit up in the cockpit buzzed, making Jamie’s insides jump.
“Must be Vosnesensky,” Connors guessed. “I’ll get it.”
The astronaut’s breath was fetid. What the hell did he eat tonight? Jamie asked himself. And why can’t he turn off that damned buzzer? The noise grated like a dentist’s drill.
Jamie got up too and wordlessly began stacking up the dinner trays. He noticed that none of them had finished more than half their meal, yet the jug of orange juice was entirely gone. Plenty of toasting, he told himself. Good thing we didn’t have any vodka to spike it.
Joanna got up to help. Ilona slumped back on the bench, eyes half glazed. She’s in real trouble, Jamie thought, studying her pale face. Outside, the wind was still keening, calling, like the beckoning spirit of a departed loved one.
Are we going to die here? The sudden idea startled Jamie. But then he thought, What of it? This isn’t a bad place to die. We’ve accomplished what we came here for. Maybe Mars will demand our lives in return for giving up its biggest secret. A fair payment, life for life.
But Mars is a gentle world, he told himself silently. It may look harsh and forbidding at first, but it’s really placid and gentle. Then another part of his mind answered grimly, Until your air runs out. Or your suit ruptures. Then you’ll see how gentle this world is.
Connors came back to the table as Jamie was sliding the trays into the storage rack.
“Mikhail says we’re going to have a news conference tomorrow morning. Multinational hookup. Every goddam reporter on Earth wants to talk to us. I’ll have to go outside first thing and straighten out the video antenna. They want to see us.”
“Oh god, not like this,” Ilona moaned.
“Tell them we can’t fix the antenna,” Jamie said.
Connors started to shake his head, thought better of it. “Got to try, man. Besides, I’ll have to go out tomorrow anyway to see how much sand’s piled up against us and whether there’s any other damage to the rover.”
“That means I go out too,” Jamie said.
“No. It’ll be okay if you just suit up. If there’s any emergency you can pop out inside of a minute.”
“But the regulations …”
“Regulations permit an astronaut to go EVA solo, as long as there’s a backup suited up and ready for trouble. It’s just you poor little scientists who can’t go out on your own.”
Connors was trying to be jovial, but Jamie felt himself snarling inwardly at the astronaut.
“Oh yeah,” Connors added. “Reed wants another set of tests: temperature, blood pressure, pulse rate, and—the best comes last—more blood samples.”
“Not again,” Ilona protested.
“Now that we know there’s Martian life here, maybe we’ve caught Martian bugs,” Connors said. “That’s something new to worry about.”
“I’ll go first,” Joanna said, struggling to get out from behind the table.
“I’ll help you,” said Jamie.
There was no such thing as privacy aboard the rover, but at least they could conduct the medical tests in the lab module while Ilona and Connors remained in the command section. The lab felt intimate with just the two of them in it. Only the single strip of overhead lights was on, throwing muted shadows over the equipment they had used earlier, softening the lines etched into Joanna’s pallid, uneasy face. The wind sang its high, shrill note outside, but here in the lab alone with Joanna it was almost cozy.
Jamie made her sit down as he rummaged through the medical cabinet for the blood pressure cuff, thermometer patches, and hypodermic syringes. He carefully took her temperature, blood pressure, and pulse. All a little higher than normal.
As he was swabbing the crook of her arm for the blood-sampling needle, Jamie said, “I hadn’t thought about it before, but if there are Martian lichen then there must be other Martian organisms, too.”
Joanna nodded solemnly as she pumped her arm up and down. “Yes. Lichen may seem like a lowly form of life to us, but they are highly organized compared to protozoa and even alga colonies.”
Jamie hated needles. It almost made him sick just to watch someone, anyone, being stuck with one. It was an effort to keep his hands steady as he jabbed the hypodermic into the swollen vein in Joanna’s arm on the first try. She flinched slightly.
“Then there really are Martian microbes,” Jamie said as he drew her blood. “Germs and viruses and all.”
“There must be. The lichen cannot be the only form of life on the planet. There must be at least a primitive ecology.”
“Then why haven’t we found any?” He slowly eased the plunger back.
Joanna was watching the syringe fill with dark blood. “Either they don’t exist outside the canyon, or we did see them but did not recognize them as microbes.”
Pressing an adhesive bandage on the tiny wound, Jamie took Joanna’s wrist and made her fold her arm.
“You mean all those tests on the air and soil samples and rocks you did …”
But Joanna, was already off on another tack. “Jamie, on Earth there are deposits of iron oxides that were produced by ancient bacteria. Do you think it is possible that the iron oxides on the surface here are the result of biological activity?”
He blinked at the new idea. “All the dust, all across the planet?”
“From millions of years ago. Hundreds of millions.”
“That could explain why the iron is still on the surface,” Jamie mused aloud. “Why it didn’t all sink toward the core; why the planet’s not differentiated the way Earth is.”
Then he looked into her dark weary eyes. “It could explain a lot of things, maybe. I never thought about the possibility of biology affecting the geology here.”
“It is possible, perhaps,” she said.
“Perhaps.”
Then he realized he was holding a syringe full of her blood in his upraised hand. Carefully, Jamie injected the blood into a stoppered tube in the automated blood analyzer. It sat on the far end of the lab bench, stainless steel and glass vials, smaller than the coffeemaker back at the dome and still gleaming new. They had not expected they would need to use it.
“How do you feel?” he asked as he pecked out Joanna’s name and the time on the medical computer’s keyboard.
She tried to smile. “I will live. I think.”
Her breath smelled bad too. Jamie guessed that his own was not sweet. Stepping slightly back from her, “What the hell is it? What’s making us sick?”
“Tony will find it,” she said softly. “He is an excellent physician.”
“Yeah. They’ll end up calling it Reed’s Martian Fever.”
“But we don’t have fever,” Joanna pointed out gently.
“Yes you do,” he said. “Low-grade, but your temperature’s above normal.”
Jamie entered the data from her tests into the lab’s computer, which automatically modemed the information up to the orbiting spacecraft and back to the dome. He turned on the analyzer; except for its green light glowing it gave no hint that it was working. Silently its findings about Joanna’s blood sample would also be relayed automatically, through the computer link.
Without getting up from her chair Joanna plucked at Jamie’s sleeve.
“Now I’ll do you.”
He looked down at her. “Do you feel well enough … ?”
“I won’t bleed you to death, Jamie,” she sai
d. “I am still capable of doing simple tasks like sticking a needle into your arm.”
Reluctantly, Jamie rolled up his sleeve.
As she wrapped the pressure cuff around his arm Jamie applied one of the temperature-sensing patches to his own forehead.
“The question is,” she said, almost to herself, “do the lichen represent the best that Mars can do, or are they the survivors of more complex life forms that have become extinct?”
Jamie leaned his rump against the edge of the workbench as she read off the digital display of his blood pressure.
“Maybe that rock formation really was a village?” he asked.
“We have not seen any other evidence for intelligent life, Jamie. I am merely suggesting …”
“There’s that face carved on the rock up in the Acidalia region.”
“Oh, James! Surely you don’t believe that!”
He shrugged. “Now that we know that there’s life on Mars, who knows what to believe?”
“That there were once intelligent Martians?” She was reaching for a fresh hypo.
Looking away from the glinting needle, Jamie said, “The planet’s had billions of years. Time enough for intelligence to evolve—and then get wiped out when the climate changed.”
Joanna shook her head as she tied the rubber tubing above Jamie’s elbow. “But there is no evidence, no remains of civilization, no ruins.”
“All covered up by the dust storms.” He pumped up his arm. “Except for my village up there in the cliff. Maybe there are more … ouch!”
“I’m sorry.” She had missed his vein. It took her three tries before she got blood.
Jamie said, “This changes everything for you, doesn’t it?”
“What do you mean?”
“Finding life. You’re a famous woman now. You’ll be more famous than your father.”
She blinked several times. “I had not thought about that. Once we get back … ”
“We won’t be able to settle into normal lives after all. At least you won’t.”
“Nor you,” Joanna said. “If it had not been for you, we would never have gotten here.”