"That antenna’s right over the cockpit. If it attracts a bolt of lightning we could get fried."
The electric motor’s hum turned into a rasping growl.
"Kee-rap! It’s stuck. Fuckin’ dust must be packed into the joints." Connors flicked the switch up and down several times, his usual easygoing manner disintegrating into frustrated wrath. The motor whined and strained. With a shake of his head Connors said, "Stuck in the halfway position. Won’t reach the satellite and still sticking up enough to attract lightning. Useless goddam piece of junk!" He pounded a fist against the panel.
"It is grounded, though," Jamie said, half a question.
"Yeah, but who knows how much juice a Martian lightning bolt might carry?"
Looking out at the dark clouds blowing past the cockpit, Jamie muttered, "Let’s hope we don’t have to find out."
"Wonder what the hell else the dust is screwing up."
Jamie felt his eyebrows rise.
"Like the wheels, maybe," Connors grumbled. "Maybe we’ll have to walk back to the dome."
Jamie looked more closely at the black astronaut. It was not like Connors to complain or be so bitter. The man’s face was shining with perspiration. His cheeks looked hollow, his eyes sunken and bloodshot.
"Maybe we should take another dose of that antibiotic," Jamie said.
Tapping the digital clock display Connors said testily, "Not until seventeen hundred hours. Doctor’s orders."
They both heard the footsteps at the same instant and turned in their chairs. Joanna was almost running up the length of the command module toward them. Her heart-shaped face was haggard, but she was smiling the biggest smile Jamie had ever seen on her.
"We have it!" she said, almost breathless. "Living organisms! In the rocks!"
Fast as Connors’s flier’s reflexes were, Jamie scrambled out of his seat first. His throat was so tight he could not say a word, but he pounded down the module after Joanna and ducked through the airlock hatch, Connors right behind him.
Ilona was half slumped over the optical microscope, its intense light the only illumination in the lab module. Profiled against the bright white light she looked totally spent, exhausted like a woman who had just given birth.
She smiled up at Jamie. Wanly.
"Inside the rocks," Joanna said, her voice a reverent whisper. "Just as you said back at McMurdo…"
Jamie found himself staring at Ilona. She looked terribly weak.
"It is something like terrestrial lichen," Joanna was explaining, ignoring her coworker. "They have a hard silicate shell to protect them from the cold, but the shell is water permeable. And there are windows in it that allow sunlight through." She was almost babbling. "We think the windows are transparent mainly in the infrared, but they obviously let visible wavelengths pass through them too, to some extent. Their internal water is apparently laced with some form of alcohol, a natural kind of antifreeze. They must go dormant at night or whenever the temperature drops so low that even their antifreeze crystallizes, then they become active again when the temperature rises enough for their antifreeze to liquefy. It is definite! It is real! Look for yourself!"
Ilona managed to move her chair slightly so Jamie could bend over the microscope. He saw a mottle of colors, purplish circular things interlaced with threads of a lighter bluish tone.
"I thought they were orange."
"They are," Ilona said softly. "We stained them for the microscope."
"They take up dyes the same way terrestrial tissues do!" Joanna was still excited, exultant. "They polarize light the same way terrestrial organisms do! They must be based on the same kind of nucleic acids and proteins!"
"It’s too soon to say that," Ilona corrected in a whisper.
Jamie was still peering into the microscope. Martian organisms. Living creatures of Mars.
"They are like the crustose thalli of Antarctica," he heard Joanna say into his ear. "Do you see the outer cortex and then the clusters of algae?"
"The purple things?"
"Yes." She even laughed, shakily. "The purple things. They are alive, Jamie."
He straightened up and gave Connors a chance to squint into the microscope.
"It is life, Jamie," said Joanna, tired but triumphant. "It is merely a form of lichen and it must remain dormant almost all the time. But it is alive and native to Mars."
"We’ve done it!" Despite her exhaustion there was joy in Ilona’s voice. "We’ve found life on Mars."
"I guess you have," said Jamie. His insides were trembling. He felt awed by their discovery.
Connors grinned at the women. "You guys’ll get the Nobel Prize for this."
"Yes, yes," Joanna said. "I suppose we will. But what does that matter? Nothing matters now. We have found what we came for! Whatever happens from now on, it does not matter."
Ilona suddenly sagged against Jamie’s shoulder for support. Jamie felt her going limp, collapsing. Outside, the dust storm sang its own melody.
EARTH
WASHINGTON: Edith was standing beside Alberto Brumado when the phone call came.
They had just returned to the red-brick house after dinner in Georgetown. Edith knew instinctively that the man was going to make his play for her. What she did not yet know was how she would react. Brumado was kind, intelligent, gentle, and even suave in a sort of bashful, boyish way.
What would he be like in bed? she wondered. And she found herself also wondering, Is Jamie bedding his daughter?
But the telephone interrupted Brumado as he was pouring two snifters of Osborne brandy. He crossed the bookshelf-lined living room and picked up the phone.
"Yes, this is he… Oh, hello, Jeffrey, how are…" Brumado’s face went white. "What? She did? It’s certain?" He lapsed into a string of rapid Brazilian Portuguese. Then, realizing it, he switched back to English, breathless. "Yes, yes, yes. I’ll be right down. As soon as I can get a taxicab. Yes. Thanks! Thank you for calling! I’ll be there, surely!"
If he hadn’t been grinning from ear to ear Edith would have thought some disaster had hit the Mars explorers.
He looked across the room to her. "They’ve found living organisms on Mars. My daughter made the discovery!"
Edith yelled a Texas war whoop and ran to him and threw her arms around his neck. He held her around the waist and they kissed the way strangers do on New Year’s Eve.
Then, "I’ve got to get a taxi. We’re expected at NASA headquarters."
"I’ve got to tell my boss!" Edith said.
"All the media will be informed," Brumado said, pecking at the phone with a trembling hand. "They’re calling a news conference for midnight."
While he paced the oriental carpet, impatiently waiting for the taxicab, Edith phoned the network vice-president at his apartment in Manhattan.
"You have reached…," an answering-machine tape started.
Edith felt a moment of exasperation, then started laughing. When the beep sounded she shouted into the phone, "This is Edie Elgin. I’m in the nation’s capital with Alberto Brumado and as soon as a cab can get here we’re goin’ to NASA headquarters. They’ve found life on Mars, buddy! And you weren’t home to take the call!"
Edith then phoned the network news office. The news director was at home, and the woman in charge at this hour of the evening had never heard of Edie Elgin.
"I’m a consultant to the vice-president’s office," Edith explained.
"So?"
"I’ve got a story. I’ve got to get on the air from the Washington office here. Top priority."