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."