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 said. "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."
"You’ve fulfilled your father’s greatest expectations," Jamie said, as gently as he knew how. "You don’t have to be afraid of him anymore."
"I am not afraid of my father!"
"I mean, he’ll have to let go of you now."
She looked into his face for a long moment, troubled, uncertain. "I will have to let go of him, too, then."
"Yes." Jamie nodded even though it hurt his head. Neither of them smiled.
Ilona and Connors took their turn in the lab module together while Joanna went to the lavatory and prepared for bed. Jamie, too restless even to think about sleep, made his way up to the cockpit. The storm shrilled continuously outside, making the night blacker than any he had yet experienced on Mars. He peeked through the thermal shroud, saw that there was nothing to see, then let it snap back into place.
He felt no fear of the billowing dust racing past. To Jamie it was more like soft cottony clouds enwrapping them; he had no sense of gritty sand particles that could scratch and grind metal. I could walk out there if I had to, even at the height of this storm, he told himself. It might even be fun.
When will it end? he asked himself. Maybe I should call Toshima and ask for his forecast. Then he thought, Why bother? It’ll end when it ends, no matter what the meteorologist says. Fingering the comforting smooth stone of the bear fetish in his pocket, Jamie told himself it was foolish to try to press things. Especially when you have no power over them. Wait out the storm. Wait out all the storms.
He felt tired, utterly tired, yet too keyed up to crawl into his bunk. Like a kid the night before Christmas. So damned tired he can barely keep his eyes open, yet too excited to go to sleep.
Connors and Ilona are spending a long time in the lab. Is she up to her old tricks again? Well, if Pete can get it up when he feels as bad as he looks, then more credit to him. And Ilona — he almost laughed — she’s like the good old Post Office: neither rain nor storm nor dark of night will stop her.
He rubbed a hand across his bristly chin. Maybe I ought to shave. If we get the antenna fixed and we’re on TV tomorrow I ought at least to try to look respectable. On the other hand, maybe I’ll look worse shaved than with a four-day growth. Maybe. Li won’t want the media to know we’re sick. Brumado must know about his daughter and the rest of us, but we sure as hell don’t want the media to pick up on it. They’ll go nuts. Martian fever. Everything we’ve accomplished will get buried the instant they suspect one of us has so much as the sniffles.
He realized that there are people on Earth who would be afraid of any Martian life. The idea of life on other worlds destroyed their comforting self-esteem, attacked their religious beliefs, shattered their view of the universe. Or worse. The UFO nuts must be going crazy! They’ll be expecting a Martian invasion, at the very least. The thought startled Jamie. Saddened him beyond measure.
Absently, his mind churning, Jamie leaned across the control panel and turned on the rover’s headlamps. Peeking through the thermal shroud again, he saw a softly diffused grayish light that revealed nothing, just a dimensionless glow like a thick, billowing fog. Thu Martian wind sang its endless song, although he thought it sounded a tone deeper than before. Is that good news or bad? he wondered.
They’re going to make us turn back tomorrow, he knew. Without getting near the cliff village. They’re going to say we’re too sick to go on and make us head back for the dome.
Jamie knew that it was the right thing to do. Four lives depended on it. Yet as he peered out at the pearly gray clouds wafting past the rover’s canopy he wondered if there were some way he could get them to agree to pushing forward instead of retreating.
I could walk it, he thought. I could walk there from here and get to see it, climb up the cliff and put my hands on it. I could do it.