"Is it…?"
Jamie turned to see Hoffman leaning over his shoulder.
"It’s a Martian!" Jamie shouted.
"Are you sure?" The Austrian’s teeth were chattering audibly.
"Look at it! Where it’s not blackened it’s pink, for god’s sake!" he said, unable to hide the excitement he felt. "At the very least it’s good enough to get us home." Fumbling in his parka’s deep pockets he finally grasped the palm-sized radio and pulled it up to the mouth flap of his face mask. "I’m calling for the chopper. We’ve found something important. This rock is our ticket back to McMurdo."
No one could fault them for cutting short their time on the glacier. Not with a possible piece of Mars in their gloved hands and a roaring snowstorm coming down the mountain at them.
8
Nearly twelve hours later Jamie was walking tiredly from the geology lab toward his quarters, still feeling chilled inside. The storm that had been marching down the mountain range had enveloped the base at McMurdo Sound, howling outside the thickly insulated walls like an attacking barbarian army, piling snow up to the roof line. The base was snugly warm, though, as Jamie trudged slowly down the narrow low-ceilinged corridor toward his tiny cell of a room. Yet he still did not feel fully thawed out.
Joanna’s room was near his and her door was open. He glanced in. Joanna was at her desk, her fingers flickering over her laptop computer’s keyboard.
She looked up and saw Jamie.
"Please come in," she said. "I was waiting for you."
She got up from the desk chair and came toward him. Joanna still looked almost like a child to Jamie. Delicate little hands, big deep brown eyes. But in form-fitting coveralls her body was not childlike. He felt a stirring inside himself as he stepped through her doorway and stood awkwardly before her.
"I was writing a letter to my father to tell him what you did out there on the glacier," she said. "I wanted to thank you for it."
"What I did?"
Joanna smiled up at him and Jamie realized how sensuous her lips were.
"You could have called for the helicopter to pick us up hours earlier. You saw how poorly I was doing."
He did not know what to say. Suddenly his hands were as clumsy as if encased in boxing gloves. He finally settled on hooking his thumbs in the pockets of his jeans.
"If we had to be pulled off the glacier early," Joanna went on in her whispery voice, "it would have meant the end of my hopes to be on the first team. And Dr. Hoffman’s, perhaps."
"Not necessarily," Jamie muttered.
"I appreciate your staying with me and protecting me the way you did."
He shrugged.
"It would break my father’s heart if I was not on the first team," she said softly. "He wanted so much to go to Mars himself. If I fail him…"
Jamie wanted to take her by the shoulders and pull her to him and kiss her. Instead he heard himself saying, "They would have sent the chopper to us anyway, what with the storm bearing down on us."
"Yes. Perhaps." Her eyes were fastened on him.
"The… uh, meteorite looks Martian, all right," Jamie said. "Right ratio of inert gas isotopes. High pyroxene content."
Her brows went up slightly. "Organics?"
"Dorothy Loring is slicing some thin sections for the microscope."
Turning back toward her desk to shut down the laptop Joanna said, "I must get to the laboratory. She should have called me."
Jamie stepped back toward the doorway as she flicked through the file of miniature floppy disks on her desk, pulled one out, and slid it into the snug pocket of her coveralls.
Then she looked at Jamie as if she had forgotten he was in the room with her. "I do want to thank you for helping me. I appreciate it very much."
"De nada."
She came around the desk again and stopped half a step in front of him. "It was very important to me."
Looking down into her uplifted dark eyes Jamie brushed his fingertips against her soft cheek, uncertain, tentative.
Joanna flinched and backed away from him, her face reddening. "You mustn’t do that!"
"I didn’t…"
She shook her head. "We cannot get involved emotionally. You know that. They would never allow us on the mission if they thought…"
"I’m sorry," Jamie said. "I didn’t mean to upset you."
"It’s just…" Joanna almost wrung her hands. "I cannot get involved with anyone, Jamie. Not now. You understand that, don’t you? It would ruin everything."
"Sure," he said. "I understand."
She wasn’t talking about calling her father anymore. She wasn’t worried about injustice or being Alberto Brumado’s pawn. And there’s no sense in her getting involved with a guy who’s not going to make the team, Jamie told himself silently.
"I’ve got to get down to the lab now," Joanna said.
He stepped aside and let her pass, then went out into the narrow corridor and watched her hurry toward the laboratory.
At dinner that evening in the crowded dining room Joanna kept her distance from him. When the others congratulated him on having found a Martian rock that actually contained a trace of organic chemicals in it, Jamie muttered his thanks and told them he had been lucky.
"You realize, of course," said Hoffman, sitting across the table from Jamie, "that since I am the official geologist in this group and you are nothing more than a guide, that I will conduct the further examination of the meteorite. It is my responsibility now, not yours."
Dead silence fell across the table. Jamie stared into the Austrian’s eyes and saw, deep beneath the arrogant exterior, a sort of pleading, like a drowning man reaching desperately for a hand to help him.
"I thought we would work together on it," he said tightly.
"Of course, you may assist me," said Hoffman.
Jamie nodded once, got up, and left the dining room. Get away before you break something. Go off by yourself, like a wounded coyote. He hurried down the dimly lit corridor back to his room and threw himself on his bunk, still fully clothed, feeling like six different kinds of fool while the blizzard raged on outside the snowbound base.
9
"I must speak with you, privately, in your official capacity." Joanna’s voice was trembling.
Antony Reed looked up from the computer screen. She was standing in the doorway of the dispensary looking as if she would burst into tears in another moment.
"Come in," he said, rising from the desk chair. "Close the door and sit down."
Joanna was dressed almost formally, considering the lax standards of the base: tailored white blouse and snug whipcord jeans that emphasized her hourglass figure. She sat tensely on the wooden chair in front of the desk, biting her lower lip.
"I assure you that anything you tell me will remain strictly confidential between us," Reed said, leaning back in his swivel chair. It creaked slightly.
She was terribly upset, he saw. Nervous and fearful. He realized that Hoffman had gone after her at last. The Austrian has nibbled at the bait.
"What I have to say may have a bearing on our work, on the personnel selected for the mission," Joanna said.
Reed kept his face perfectly serious.
"I must have your promise that you will not reveal anything I tell you to the project administrators."
Leaning forward and placing his forearms on the desk, Reed said in his best professionally grave manner, "If what you are about to tell me actually does have a serious bearing on the mission, then you are placing me in an ethical dilemma."
She nodded and drew in a deep breath. Reed admired the way her blouse moved, even though it was buttoned up to the neck.