The Martian Race

by Gregory Benford

They were quite merry, and Raoul took his ribbing well.

  Airbus had treated them to a sumptuous lunch—a chicken dish frozen from a fancy Beijing restaurant, Chinese beer, a sticky German pastry desert. “Not really better than our grub,” Marc said, “but, thank God, different.”

  “They sure outclassed us on the dress code,” Raoul said.

  I noticed you appreciating the women, for sure, Julia thought.

  “They have pressed work suits especially for landing,” Viktor said dismissively. “Show business. Let them work here a month, they look like us.”

  “Threadbare, stained, beat up,” Raoul agreed. “I sure would hate to spend the next two years in that chicken coop they've got.”

  “And already they have been for over half a year,” Viktor said.

  “Everything does seem small,” Raoul said. “The whole ship does, in fact. I'd like to crawl up under that cowling, see how the nuke is pinned in—”

  “Crawl under ERV's skirts, if that's on your mind,” Viktor said, earning another round of guffaws.

  “I wonder where they've got their supplies stowed,” Raoul persisted.

  “It did not look to me like there is enough carrying capacity for years of the supplies,” Viktor said.

  “Another layer of storage, I'd guess,” Marc said. “Between the fuel tanks and that equipment bay. Use the food for shielding from the nuke, that's the way I'd want it.”

  Raoul nodded. “They had more time to design and build. Their engineers probably thought of a few more twists.”

  “Those bedrooms of theirs are tiny,” Julia said.

  “Maybe they all sleep together,” Marc deadpanned.

  Viktor grinned. “Sell that story to the tabloids, make another million.”

  “Hey, don't think I couldn't,” Marc said. “You should see what some of the big shows are hinting at. Two women, one guy, going to Mars for years. My uncle sent me a squirt on that—therapists talking, giving it some intellectual covering fire, while the host makes cheap jokes and they show ‘suggestive’ videos.”

  “Better than three guys, one woman, for years?” Julia asked mildly.

  “Lots better,” Marc said. “Plays to male fantasies and all.”

  She shot back, “How about female fantasies?”

  “No market,” Viktor said. They all laughed, a little ruefully.

  21

  JANUARY 20,2018

  IT WAS MIDAFTERNOON WHEN THEY REACHED ZUBRIN BASE. BY UNSPOken consent, Marc parked the dune buggy by the ERV. Raoul and Viktor manhandled the repair kit off the buggy, grunting. Mass weighed less on Mars, but its inertia was the same. They disappeared quickly into Raoul's fix-it shop.

  “Look at them go.” Julia smiled at their retreating backs. “Kids with new toys.”

  Marc snorted. “And I suppose you're not eager to get at those bio samples?”

  “Not at all, but I'll race you to the greenhouse anyway.”

  In their lobster suits this was a joke. Over the months they had learned how to walk without looking like overstuffed teddy bears, but the suits were cumbersome.

  As they approached the hab, she was struck by how clunky it looked compared to Airbus's sleek nuke. The shape of a giant tuna can, its lines were not improved by the rows of sandbags they'd stacked on the top for radiation protection. Still, it had the familiarity of home, and they'd lived in it fairly comfortably for almost two years.

  A thought struck her. “Hey, Marc, what're they gonna do for rad protection in that nuke? They can't do what we did, that's for sure.”

  “Maybe they have some fancy shielding under the skin of their craft.”

  “No one talked about it when you were on their project?”

  “Uh-uh. We didn't even know if the thing could fly at that point. But it's a good question.”

  By the time they emerged from the hab in skinsuits and insulated Marswear parka and pants, it was about 4 P.M., and across their rosy pink work yard the shadows were lengthening, blue streaks across a red landscape.

  They walked the thirty meters around the hab and alongside the length of the inflated walls to the greenhouse air lock, moving in the slow-motion skipping dubbed “Mars gait” by Earthside media. Julia regretted the lateness of the hour. Still, it was late spring and the sun would be up for several more hours.

  She entered the greenhouse eagerly, shucking her outerwear and helmet. She was elated to finally have some biology to work on. Early in the mission, she had repeated the robot Viking biology experiments, hoping to find something different. She spiked samples of the Martian dirt—“regolith” to Marc—with water and nutrients, sealed them in small pressure vessels, and incubated them. She then checked for any gases produced by the metabolism of life-forms in the soil.

  This time life is looking for life directly, no robots in the way.

  To avoid the embarrassing possibility of introducing her own microflora into the experiment, she had initially worked with the samples only outside, under the cold red-stained sky. But in her pressure suit and insulating outerwear she was clumsy, and each step went slowly. They all had special two-layer gloves that allowed them to peel back the heavy insulation down to a thin, flexible inner glove. But her hands got quickly cold and stiff and it wasn't like working barehanded.

  In response to her complaints, Viktor had fashioned the greenhouse glove box. The elevated greenhouse temperatures kept the water from freezing and speeded up the results enormously.

  Sure enough, as in the Viking experiments, there was an immediate response of dry surface peroxides to the water. A spike of oxygen. When that had run its course, she bled off the gases and resealed the pressure vessels. Nothing further happened. Viking and all the other probes had found only chemistry after all, no evidence of life.

  She'd tried this experiment with samples plucked from Marc's cores, and anyplace that looked promising. And she'd never found anything different.

  Finally, she'd streaked a plate with a dirty spoon after dinner one night, and cultured some vigorous Earth bacteria. These she ran through the same experiment, with fresh Martian dirt. After the initial spike of oxygen from the chemistry, she'd gotten nothing more.

  The peroxides had savaged the microbes, ripping apart cell walls. It was quite clear why the robot landers had found no signs of organic chemistry. For Earth life, Mars was like living in a chemical blowtorch.

  But this time it was different. Waiting for her were living samples.

  She went straight to the glove box. Time for a good look at this critter.

  On Earth, she'd had many discussions with other biologists about how best to proceed with an unknown sample. All agreed: before slicing, dicing, or extracting, spend some time observing. Get all the clues possible from the living organism.

  She plopped the sample from the underground pool under the dissecting scope. That would give her a good overview of the sample, live and in 3-D. She'd collected some of the water with the swimming forms—Marc's “shrimp”—and a piece of the closest mat.

  Under the scope they didn't look much like shrimp. They were small, pale red, motile forms, moving through the water with beating, whiplike projections. Under good magnification, they looked even less like shrimp, and more like motile colonies. They seemed to be made of several distinct types of cells held together by a flexible matrix. At one end was a knobby protuberance—she didn't want to call it a head— with a lighter spot.

  When she first turned on the light, they were moving very sluggishly, and there were just a few. Again, they clustered under the spot of light in the dish. After a few minutes, they became more energetic. More started to appear.

  But from where? She scanned over the rapidly thickening group. Moving the spot of light sent them into frenzied movement until they had relocated the light.

  She caught the edge of the mat in her field of view. That was the source. They were swarming from—under? inside?—the mat.

  She increased the magnification, focused on a thinner patch. There. She
watched, fascinated, as a round, pale red blob embedded in the slimy matrix of the mat began to move under the light, popped out, and swam off. She moved the focus to another one and triggered the built-in vid.

  “Hey, Marc,” she called, “come look at this! Your shrimp are popping out of the mat.”

  Marc had been working on one of the long trays they used for growing crops. He'd come to relish gardening during the long months of the mission, often volunteering to help Julia in the greenhouse. She could imagine him pottering away in a garden in his later years.

  As he approached she got up and gave him her seat. She straightened up, feeling chilled and stiff. The greenhouse was warm enough for just the skinsuit when she was moving around, tending the plants. She set the floor heater to a higher setting. Working in outerwear would be too cumbersome here. She rubbed her thighs for warmth. Even her boot heaters couldn't fight off the chill seeping from the floor. Darn this cold planet!

  Marc watched a while in silence.

  “Wow. What are they doing?”

  “I'm not sure. Something I did triggered it, though. The light, maybe.”

  “I mean, what's the use of swimming to a wall-hugging life-form?”

  “Good question. Same goes for photoreceptors—they're of minimal use underground.”

  “So …” He frowned. “The shrimp evolved on the surface of the planet?”

  “Sure seems that way. During Mars’ warm, wet past. These are fossil features.”

  “Man, that was a long time ago.” He looked up, frowning. “On Earth, cave creatures are blind. How come these primitive eyes lasted hundreds of millions of years underground?”

  “There must be positive natural selection for a swimming, ‘seeing form, or else mutations would destroy the genes coding for these features.” She paused, thinking furiously. “So either they need eyes to get around in the mat glow, or there have been several warm, wet periods, maybe lots of them … or the mutation rate is drastically lower here.”

  “Hmm. Well, that could be, y'know. Underground, there are no cosmic rays, and Mars has fewer radioactive elements than Earth anyway.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “Oh?”

  “Yeah, there're more heavy elements the closer a planet is to the sun. Also, the heavier elements on Mars are concentrated in its core. No tectonic recycling up to the surface as on Earth.”

  “I never thought about that. Cosmic rays and radioactive decay account for a lot of the background mutation rate on Earth, so on Mars—”

  “It's probably a lot lower,” he finished.

  “Damn. Too many choices. Wish I could talk to Chen about this. I just hate this secrecy.”

  He stood up. “Yeah, there're lots of things I'd like to ask Airbus too.”

  “Such as?”

  “Such as if they want to use this facility, for example. I'm harvesting beans today, but I could also be planting some for them. I mean, they'd be no good to us, ‘cause they don't mature for two months or more, when we're long gone.”

  “Unless—” She stopped.

  “Unless we're stuck here?”

  “It crossed my mind.”

  “Well, uncross it. We've got to get off this rusty ball of slag,” he growled.

  She was surprised at his vehemence. Time to deftly change the subject.

  “I'm still thinking about how small their ship is. It's definitely ERV-sized.”

  “Smaller. NASA intended the ERV for a crew of six. That nuke is sized for four, max.”

  “Exactly. How are they going to live in something that size and actually do something? I mean, you can survive in something the size of a New York studio during transit, because there's nothing to do, really.”

  He shrugged. “Maybe they plan to use the hab after we're gone.”

  “Hmm. I never thought of that. Wouldn't they have to ask the Consortium? And tell us? So we can leave it up and running for them? And they're not very close—for moving in, that is.”

  “They can just reposition. The nuke is much better for that sort of maneuvering, I'll bet.”

  “I was thinking along a different track. Suppose they're not here for very long.”

  “A flags-and-footprint expedition? That won't win them anything. But we're just guessing again. We don't know. It's like dealing with Br'er Fox and the tar baby.”

  “I agree, we don't know much at all. That bothers me. But what gets me is we're sitting on the biggest news to hit Earth in centuries. And I can't tell anyone! To hell with private ventures and prizes if this is what it means.”

  She was surprised at how agitated she was. Maybe it was contagious. Time for another session with Erika.

  “Well, I don't know what to say. We just gotta ride with it for a while, I guess.” He stretched. “Back to my beans. Have fun with your shrimp.”

  She plunged happily back into her work. Outside, the wind whistled softly around the plastic walls. It was another reason she enjoyed the greenhouse—the sighing winds. Sounds didn't carry well here, and the hab was so insulated it was virtually cut off from any outdoor noise.

  She was keenly aware that these were probably the only samples she was going to get, and there were many tests to run. As well, biologists all over Earth would want samples. She decided to try to grow some more. After all, we've grown Earthly crops here …

  After some thought, she settled on a variant of the standard greenhouse mist chamber. On Earth these were used to induce cuttings to grow roots. Here she hoped it would encourage the mat to grow. If it likes light, heat, and water, that's what I'll provide.

  She set it up next to the outside wall of the greenhouse for light. She prepared a shallow tray with some neutralized Martian soil for substrate. She guessed that the peroxides would be bad news for even the indigenous life. Rigging a sprinkler system came next, then concocting a watery brew of inorganic elements to sprinkle it with. Dunno what it uses for energy—there are Earth organisms that like sulfur, even one that uses manganese. So I'll give it a metal cocktail and it can pick what it likes. She made it airtight—duct tape to the rescue!—and provided a Martian air supply by splicing it into the glove box duct.

  “Okay, I'm off.” Marc's words broke into her musings.

  Julia realized she'd been completely lost in her work.

  “Is it time already? What's for dinner?”

  “Greenhouse surprise.” He held up a bag of vegetables. “I feel goulashy tonight.”

  “Mmmm. I've got to finish up here, then I'll be along. I want to try culturing the mat, see if I can keep it healthy. It'd be a pity to have to bring back only preserved samples.”

  “Shouldn't be too difficult. Keep it in a cold, dark, airless closet.”

  “Yeah,” she said absently. “I wish I knew for sure what triggers the swimming forms to pop out of the mat. But then I don't know why there are motile forms at all.”

  “Yeah, where would they go?”

  “They swim, so that implies water. Lakes, rivers, oceans. Do you think there's open water farther down in the vent?”

  He shrugged. “Could be. It's warm enough for sure.”

  “Doesn't help me much. I took several samples going down, and there are actually more swimming forms in the mat that's high up in the vent.”

  “Up high? Why would that be?”

  “Well, I've got a crazy idea. I fooled around with the conditions in their sample dishes. Add water, and a few of them pop out. Warm it up, and more come out. But when you add light, they come pouring out. Water, heat, light … all together what do they suggest?”

  “Ah … good times topside?”

  “Yes. Your warm and wet episodes. Maybe the motile forms are the seeds, or the explorers. Bits of mat get blown out of the vent during outgassings. When conditions improve on the surface, the bits of mat land in a puddle, or a lake. The motile forms pop out and swim away to colonize it.”

  “Ingenious. I like it,” said Marc, catching her enthusiasm.

  “My problem is timing. What's your b
est guess about how often it could've happened?”

  “A warm and wet time? My cores in Ma'adim Vallis covered a couple billion years of Mars history. From crater wall evidence there were at least two big, long-lasting lakes in Gusev crater. And I found several other layers with fossil microbes, as you recall. So, averaging something that I probably shouldn't, maybe every four hundred million years there's a major warming period. It's preceded by heavy volcanism. That provides the CO2 to warm up the planet for a while.”

  “Four hundred million years is a long time to wait for a swim.”

  “Well, in between times, there are those upwellings of crustal water triggered by gosh knows what. Volcanoes, maybe. That gives them more chances.”

  “That sounds better.”

  “Yeah, and outgassings with bits of mat probably happen on a time scale of months, or at most years. So if there were a flood event, the mat could take advantage of it.”

  “Marc, you're a genius. Spiffy geology—sorry, areology—on demand.”

  He left humming. A happy geologist.

  Outside, the sun was setting, and she knew the temperature was starting its steep plunge to subzero range. The thin atmosphere didn't have enough mass to buffer temperature changes. From one minute to the next it could change by twenty degrees Centigrade.

  The dune buggy cruised slowly by, churning sand. She waved at Viktor enthusiastically through the murky sides of the greenhouse. They all knew to go back to the hab at sundown, another safety procedure to minimize risk.

  After her shower she met Viktor in their bedroom. She unwrapped from her waffle-weave robe and sprawled, relishing nudity. The robe was cozy and allowed Raoul and Marc no tantalizing glimpses; no point in making it any harder on them.

  Early on, she and Viktor had arranged their two cabins so that one was a bedroom and the other an office. They met there before dinner to unwind together on the nights when neither of them was cooking.

  Innumerable nosy media pieces had dwelled on the tensions between a crew, half married and half not, complete with speculations on what two horny, healthy guys would feel like after two years in a cramped hab with a rutting couple just beyond the flimsy bunk partition. What tensions would emerge?