Patel, in his yellow suit, clumsily got down on all fours to peer closely at the rock. "Yes, I believe that is so."
Joanna flattened herself beside him. "It might be just the surface coating of a colony that lives inside the rock. Like the microflora in Antarctica, they use the rocks for shelter and absorb moisture from the frost that gathers on the rock’s surfaces."
"I am afraid that it is nothing more than a patina of copper oxide," Patel said in his Hindu cadence and British pronunciation.
"We must make certain," said Monique, as calmly as if she were selecting a wine at a Paris bistro. Cool head, Jamie thought. Warm heart?
"We’ll have to take it inside…"
"Don’t touch it!" Joanna snapped.
"We can’t examine it in any detail out here," Jamie said. "We’ve got to bring it inside the dome."
"It is a possible biological sample," Joanna said with unexpected proprietary fierceness.
It’s copper oxide, thought Jamie.
Struggling to her feet, Joanna said, "I left my bio sampling cases when you called. They can maintain the ambient conditions inside them. If you bring the rock into the dome and it is suddenly thrust into our environment it would kill any native organisms that may be inside it."
Jamie nodded inside his helmet. She was right. Even though the chances were that the green streak was just a patina of copper oxide, there was no sense screwing up what might be the biggest discovery of all time.
"Please do not touch the rock," Joanna said. "Perhaps the rest of you could look around this area to see if any other rocks show such color. But do not touch them in any way. Do you all understand?"
Suddenly she was in charge. She wasn’t whispering anymore. The lovely little butterfly had turned into a dragon lady. What had started out as a geology field trip had turned into a biology session, and Jamie was just one of the flunkies. He felt his lips pressing into a tight angry line.
But he knew that she was right, and within her rights. He climbed slowly to his feet inside the cumbersome suit.
"Okay, boss," he replied with exaggerated deference. "To hear is to obey."
Joanna did not notice any humor in his crack. She detailed Monique to stand guard over the rock and ordered the other four to scour the area for other green spots. Connors, in his white hard-shell suit, stood to one side like a policeman, observing without participating. Joanna headed back toward the spot where she had left her sample cases, almost skipping across the rocky desert sands.
"Formidable." Monique’s voice sounded amused.
Jamie asked, "Say, were any of us smart enough to bring a camera with him?"
"I have a camera," said Toshima.
Jamie said, "Could you take a series of snaps of the rock and the region around it, from every angle — complete three hundred sixty degrees?"
"Most certainly."
Jamie thought back to hunting trips he had taken with his grandfather Al. They would always snap photos of each other with their catch — deer, rabbit, even the gila monster that Jamie had shot with his twenty — two when he had been no more than ten years old. His mother hated to allow Jamie to go hunting, but his father could not stand up to grandfather Al’s determination. "You can’t keep the boy cooped up in a library all the time," Al would argue. "He ought to be out in the open." Then, when they were alone together up in the wooded hills, his grandfather would tell him, "They’re trying to make you a hundred percent white, Jamie. I just want you to keep a little bit of yourself red, like you ought to be."
Jamie looked back at the rock, small enough to pick up and carry, especially in this light gravity. It’d make a great photo to send back to my grandfather, he thought. Me inside this damned suit with the rock for my trophy.
But he did not pose for Toshima’s camera.
Joanna returned after nearly half an hour with Vosnesensky at her side toting the two hefty silver-coated specimen boxes plus a pair of long slim poles that looked to Jamie like fishing rods. He knew that they were marker poles, with tiny radio beacons at their tips. He grinned to himself: Joanna’s even got the Russian working for her now.
"I wondered if I would ever have to use these," she was chattering. "I never thought I would need them on the first day of field work!"
The others had found no other spots of green in the hundred meters or so they had examined in all directions around the rock. The soil was crisscrossed now with the prints of their cleated boots, except for a sacrosanct half meter surrounding the rock. No one had dared to come any closer for fear of damaging or destroying some vital evidence.
Vosnesensky stopped and bent slightly forward, hands on hips, as if doing obeisance to the rock. In his bright red suit he looked to Jamie like a fat bell pepper with a hump on its back.
Joanna took charge. "Do not touch the rock. Before we do anything, I will need soil samples from the ground immediately around the rock and then underneath it."
"I can use the corer," Jamie said, reaching for the tool at his belt. "It attaches to the pole, so we can get samples from as deep as five meters."
"Good," said Joanna.
"That can also tell us if there is permafrost beneath the surface, no?" asked Ilona, sounding excited for the first time since they had landed.
He nodded; then, realizing no one could see the gesture through his tinted visor, he added, "Yes, that’s right."
Vosnesensky commanded, "Pete, bring the video camera here. We must have a record of this."
The astronaut said, "Right," and headed back toward the camera he had left on its tripod.
"My still camera is almost out of film," Toshima said. "I will take the last few frames now and change rolls."
"No!" snapped Naguib. "Don’t take the chance of high-energy radiation spoiling the film. Here, take my camera. It has a full roll in it."
"Thank you," said Toshima.
Connors lumbered into sight again, dangling the vidcam in one gloved hand. When he was satisfied that both still and video photographers were ready, Vosnesensky ordered, "Proceed."
But no one moved until Joanna said, "I want four samples, one from each side of the rock, as far down as you can go." Then she added, "Please."
Jamie leaned on the pole and the corer bit into the ground. It buzzed through the first few centimeters easily enough but then the going got tough. Jamie pushed hard, breaking into a sweat.
"It’s gotten like hardpan," he grunted.
"Or permafrost?" Ilona suggested hopefully.
Jamie pulled up the pole and let Patel, his fellow geologist, work the mechanism that neatly dropped the slim column of red dirt from the corer’s sharp teeth into one of Joanna’s sample boxes. Patel worked slowly, carefully, to make certain that the crumbly cylinder did not break apart.
Jamie noted that the column was striated. Different shades of red. Fluvial deposits, he guessed. There must have been an ocean here at one time. Or at least a big lake.
Four samples from the sides of the rock. Jamie had to stop his digging several times to let the fans of his suit clear away the mist that built up inside his visor. Despite his exertions, neither Patel nor any of the others made the slightest move to help him. Instead they peered at the samples and invented instant theories to explain their appearance.
They’re all too entranced with what’s going on to even think of helping, he told himself. Besides, they got an Injun to do the heavy work. Why should they bother with it?
"All right now," said Joanna, after four samples were resting in the first case. She sank slowly to her knees and bent over the rock.