McGee looked out his side window. An eight-foot boulder bounded down the hill on a collision course with the rover. He gripped the steering wheel, searching frantically for some way to avoid it. In desperation he tried flooring the accelerator, but the boulder kept pace.
"Kevin, hard right!"
McGee saw a steep depression in the terrain. She couldn't mean—
Rebecca's arms reached over his shoulder to jerk down the wheel; he cooperated, willingly tumbling the rover into the ditch. The monstrous boulder bounced harmlessly overhead, but the vehicle kept rolling. As McGee held himself in place, Rebecca was tossed into the rear, where she desperately tried to grab the back of the seat as the rover continued spinning, crashing, rolling, over and over.
Finally they landed miraculously upright at the bottom of the ravine. With a rushing, roaring sound, the rock slide came to a halt around them. As the dust settled, the two gaped out the windows, emotionally drained, speechless.
"Well, you wanted to get to the bottom of the gorge," he finally ventured. "McGee delivers."
Rebecca slowly raised her shaking hand and pointed. About twenty yards in front of the rover was a group of unusual-looking rocks. "McGee, look at that." Her voice was level with authority as she started to seal the fastenings on her Marsuit. "Let's go."
Still stunned by the very fact of their survival, McGee was mystified. "Go where? Rebecca, we better check out the rover for damage before—"
"That can wait."
Was she in shock? McGee had no time to investigate as Rebecca reached for her helmet, apparently preparing to depressurize the rover, whether he was ready or not. He fastened down his helmet just before Rebecca opened the valve to vent the rover cabin. Then the hatch was open, and she was off, running like a mountain goat across the rocky terrain. McGee watched her go. It was hard to believe someone so graceful could move so fast.
When he caught up to her he was panting, but Rebecca was already pouring nonstop geo-biological commentary into her recorder, snapping holograms of everything in sight.
"Slow down, Rebecca. Those things have been here for three billion years. They're not going to run away."
She turned to him. Her face was tear-streaked but never more beautiful. "Do you know what these are, Kevin? Bacterial stromatolites! See, look at this micrograph. Those rod-shaped pores in the material, that's where the organisms actually were. Classic coccoid bacterial structural form. Look, look at this chromatograph readout! There are even organic residues in the fossil structure."
McGee peered at the rocks. They certainly were odd—lumpy, porous—but had they been alive? He shrugged, uncertain.
"There was life here once!" Rebecca rejoiced. "That's all that counts." She hugged him in her Marsuit and started to cry, mumbling inside her helmet. "We found it, we found it!"
McGee held her, a little bewildered to be comforting a woman who had just made the greatest discovery of her career—and who had just caused the rover to crash down a steep ravine. Over her shoulder, he saw a blue-green discoloration among some rocks farther down in the gully. He stroked her back. "Rebecca?"
"Yes?" she sniffled, gradually emerging from her euphoria.
"I knew the Moon was made of green cheese, but Mars?"
Rebecca regarded him curiously. "What are you talking about?"
McGee pointed to the blue-green smear. When Rebecca saw it too, she stared at him in open-mouthed astonishment. She moved toward the rock slowly, almost as if stalking it. Finally she knelt, and McGee followed, leaning over her shoulder.
"What is it, Rebecca?"
She was very cool and deliberate now, completely composed. "I've never seen a mineral like this before."
She focused the holocamera on the mineral, scraped a little off into a sample bottle, photographed the rock again, and began a round of clinical description into the recorder. She went on for some time, sampling, photographing and recording, clambering all over the rock, paying no attention to McGee. Then she saw something and started to push madly at the boulder, trying unsuccessfully to tip it.
"Help me, Kevin! I've got to get under this rock."
"What? Whatever for?"
"This stuff up here is dead, but maybe only for a few hundred thousand years. What's underneath might be much better preserved. I've got to see."
McGee looked at the big boulder. He might be able to roll it under the low Martian gravity, but if it should slip it would have more than enough mass to crush Rebecca. "And you want me to lift this rock so you can crawl under it? Why not jack it up?"
She turned to him, her eyes bright with tears, her voice urgent. "There won't be time! If anything is alive, the current Martian environment will destroy it in seconds, minutes at most. You've got to lift the rock, and let me scramble under and grab a quick sample. That's the only way."
"Do you know how dangerous that could be? Houston would never allow it, Townsend would never allow it."
"They're not here, we are. We might never get another chance like this."
McGee looked up the treacherous scree slope. "This whole hillside is nothing but avalanche debris. The neighboring rocks could give way in a second when I lift this boulder and you'd be crushed. I could never forgive myself if—"
"Please, Kevin, it's my life, and I'm willing to take the risk. For this." Again, the bright eyes, the pleading yet courageous voice.
McGee looked at her, then at the hillside. "Okay, but move fast. I'm not Superman."
"I'll be faster than light!" she cried happily.
McGee wedged his shoulder against the huge rock. "All right, then brace yourself here with me. I'll need your help to roll it up initially. When I think I've got its weight under control, I'll give you the signal—then you go like hell."
"Right."
"Okay, heave!"
"We can do it!" she cheered, then gasped with the effort. The rock began to rise, ponderously opening a gap about eighteen inches high at their knees. McGee straightened himself to form a rigid support where he could hold it himself, at least for a short while.
"All right, I've got it. Go."
Rebecca ducked under the rock, disappearing from the waist up. McGee strained to keep the boulder in place but the nearby pivot rocks restraining it from behind began to wobble.
"What's taking you, Rebecca! Get out of there now!"
"Just a minute." Rebecca's voice sounded husky in his suit radio.
McGee felt a stab of cold in his hands. The rock had pierced the insulation on his glove. "Rebecca! The cold's getting through. I can't hold it much longer."
"Just hold on a bit more." A bit. The cold seared his hands, penetrating his bones. Agony.
Finally, Rebecca backed out and McGee let go, the boulder collapsing back into place, missing her helmet by seconds. He stood with his fingers stretched out stiff and throbbing.
"Let's see those hands." She rubbed McGee's gloved fingers in hers. Then she slapped them together. He winced. "You feel that?"
"Ouch!"
"Good, then there's no frostbite." She smiled.
"Dr. Sherman, you really need some work on your bedside manner."
"Kevin, you and I have to get back to the Beagle at once, so I can examine these samples with the electron-scanning microscope and high-grade opticals."
She began marching back to the battered vehicle. McGee watched her for a moment, shaking his head in bewilderment, then finally followed.
When McGee examined the scraped and pummeled rover, he realized that getting back would not be easy.
In the first place, the vehicle obviously could not climb back up the loose and treacherous slope it had descended. "We'll have to drive for miles along the base of the ridge, after which we'll need to cross a hundred miles of bare planitia to get back to the base. If we can find it."