Mars

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.'

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.