“Couple billion years, at least,” Faiyum replied. “Maybe more.”
O’Connor, noting that the motor’s batteries were down to less than fifty percent of their normal capacity, asked, “Do you think there’ll be any living organisms in the ice?”
“Not hardly,” said Bernstein.
“I thought there were supposed to be bugs living down there,” O’Connor said.
“In the ice?” Bernstein was clearly skeptical.
Faiyum said, “You’re talking about methanogens, right?”
“Is that what you call them?”
“Nobody’s found anything like that,” said Bernstein.
“So far,” Faiyum said.
O’Connor said, “Back in training they told us about traces of methane that appear in the Martian atmosphere now and then.”
Faiyum chuckled. “And some of the biologists proposed that the methane comes from bacteria living deep underground. The bacteria are supposed to exist on the water melting from the bottom of the permafrost layer, deep underground, and they excrete methane gas.”
“Bug farts,” said Bernstein.
O’Connor nodded inside his helmet. “Yeah. That’s what they told us.”
“Totally unproven,” Bernstein said.
“So far,” Faiyum repeated.
Sounding slightly exasperated, Bernstein said, “Look, there’s a dozen abiological ways of generating the slight traces of methane that’ve been observed in the atmosphere.”
“But they appear seasonally,” Faiyum pointed out. “And the methane is quickly destroyed in the atmosphere. Solar ultraviolet breaks it down into carbon and hydrogen. That means that something is producing the stuff continuously.”
“But that doesn’t mean it’s being produced by biological processes,” Bernstein insisted.
“I think it’s bug farts,” Faiyum said. “It’s kind of poetic, you know.”
“You’re crazy.”
“You’re a sourpuss.”
Before O’Connor could break up their growing argument, their helmet earphones crackled, “Tithonium here.”
All three of them snapped to attention. It was a woman’s voice, and they recognized whose it was: the mission commander, veteran astronaut Gloria Hazeltine, known to most of the men as Glory Hallelujah. The fact that Glory herself was calling them didn’t bode well, O’Connor thought. She’s got bad news to tell us.
“We’ve checked out the numbers,” said her disembodied radio voice. “The earliest we can get a rescue flight out to you will be in five days.”
“Five days?” O’Connor yipped.
“That’s the best we can do, Pat,” the mission commander said, her tone as hard as concrete. “You’ll have to make ends meet until then.”
“Our batteries will crap out on us, Gloria. You know that.”
“Conserve power. Your solar panels are okay, aren’t they?”
Nodding, O’Connor replied, “They weren’t touched, thank God.”
“So recharge your batteries by day and use minimum power at night. We’ll come and get you as soon as we possibly can.”
“Right.” O’Connor clicked off the radio connection.
“They’ll come and pick up our frozen bodies,” Bernstein grumbled.
Faiyum looked just as disappointed as Bernstein, but he put on a lopsided grin and said, “At least our bodies will be well preserved.”
“Frozen solid,” O’Connor agreed.
The three men stood there, out in the open, encased in their pressure suits and helmets, while the drill’s motor buzzed away as if nothing was wrong. In the thin Martian atmosphere, the drill’s drone was strangely high-pitched, more of a whine than a hum.
Finally, Bernstein said, “Well, we might as well finish the job we came out here to do.”
“Yeah,” said Faiyum, without the slightest trace of enthusiasm.
The strangely small sun was nearing the horizon by the time they had stored all the segments of the ice core in the insulated racks on the hopper’s side.
“A record of nearly three billion years of Martian history,” said Bernstein, almost proudly.
“Only one and a half billion years,” Faiyum corrected. “The Martian year is twice as long as Earth years.”
“Six hundred eighty-seven Earth days,” Bernstein said. “That’s not quite twice a terrestrial year.”
“So sue me,” Faiyum countered, as he pulled an equipment kit from the hopper’s storage bay.
“What’re you doing?” O’Connor asked.
“Setting up the laser spectrometer,” Faiyum replied. “You know, the experiment the biologists want us to do.”
“Looking for bug farts,” Bernstein said.
“Yeah. Just because we’re going to freeze to death is no reason to stop working.”
O’Connor grunted. Rashid is right, he thought. Go through the motions. Stay busy.
With Bernstein’s obviously reluctant help, Faiyum set up the laser and trained it at the opening of their bore hole. Then they checked out the Rayleigh scattering receiver and plugged it into the radio that would automatically transmit its results back to Tithonium. The radio had its own battery to supply the microwatts of power it required.
“That ought to make the biologists happy,” Bernstein said, once they were finished.
“Better get back inside,” O’Connor said, looking toward the horizon where the sun was setting.
“It’s going to be a long night,” Bernstein muttered.
“Yeah.”
Once they were sealed into the cockpit and had removed their helmets, Faiyum said, “A biologist, a geologist, and Glory Hallelujah were locked in a hotel room in Bangkok.”
Bernstein moaned. O’Connor said, “You know that everything we say is being recorded for the mission log.”
Faiyum said, “Hell, we’re going to be dead by the time they get to us. What difference does it make?”
“No disrespect for the mission commander.”
Faiyum shrugged. “Okay. How about this one: a physicist, a mathematician, and a lawyer are each asked, ‘How much is two and two?’ ”
“I heard this one,” Bernstein said.
Without paying his teammate the slightest attention, Faiyum plowed ahead. “The mathematician says, ‘Two and two are four. Always four. Four point zero.’ The physicist thinks a minute and says, ‘It’s somewhere between three point eight and four point two.’ ”
O’Connor smiled. Yeah, a physicist probably would put it that way, he thought.
“So what does the lawyer answer?”
With a big grin, Faiyum replied, “The lawyer says, ‘How much is two and two? How much do you want it to be?’ ”
Bernstein groaned, but O’Connor laughed. “Lawyers,” he said.
“We could use a lawyer here,” Bernstein said. “Sue the bastards.”
“Which bastards?”
Bernstein shrugged elaborately. “All of them,” he finally said.
The night was long. And dark. And cold. O’Connor set the cockpit’s thermostat to barely above freezing and ordered the two geologists to switch off their suit heaters.
“We’ve got to preserve every watt of
