Mars

"Orange juice?"

"Pretend there’s vodka in it."

So they toasted in orange juice. Weakly. To Ilona and Joa

"Oh, I do not think they would award the Nobel for this," Joa

"Are you kidding?" Co

"There is no category among the Nobels for it," Joa

"Or chemistry," Jamie said.

"Maybe they’ll make a new category," Co

Ilona gave him a wan smile and said, "You don’t know the Swedes, Peter."

They picked at their di

So we’ve found life on Mars, he thought. I’ll bet by tomorrow there’ll be a flood of Martian jokes on TV.

His legs ached as if he’d been ru

The comm unit up in the cockpit buzzed, making Jamie’s insides jump.

"Must be Vosnesensky," Co

The astronaut’s breath was fetid. What the hell did he eat tonight? Jamie asked himself. And why can’t he turn off that damned buzzer? The noise grated like a dentist’s drill.

Jamie got up too and wordlessly began stacking up the di

Joa

Are we going to die here? The sudden idea startled Jamie. But then he thought, What of it? This isn’t a bad place to die. We’ve accomplished what we came here for. Maybe Mars will demand our lives in return for giving up its biggest secret. A fair payment, life for life.

But Mars is a gentle world, he told himself silently. It may look harsh and forbidding at first, but it’s really placid and gentle. Then another part of his mind answered grimly, Until your air runs out. Or your suit ruptures. Then you’ll see how gentle this world is.

Co

"Mikhail says we’re going to have a news conference tomorrow morning. Multinational hookup. Every goddam reporter on Earth wants to talk to us. I’ll have to go outside first thing and straighten out the video ante

"Oh god, not like this," Ilona moaned.

"Tell them we can’t fix the ante

Co

"That means I go out too," Jamie said.

"No. It’ll be okay if you just suit up. If there’s any emergency you can pop out inside of a minute."

"But the regulations…"

"Regulations permit an astronaut to go EVA solo, as long as there’s a backup suited up and ready for trouble. It’s just you poor little scientists who can’t go out on your own."

Co

"Oh yeah," Co

"Not again," Ilona protested.

"Now that we know there’s Martian life here, maybe we’ve caught Martian bugs," Co

"I’ll go first," Joa

"I’ll help you," said Jamie.

There was no such thing as privacy aboard the rover, but at least they could conduct the medical tests in the lab module while Ilona and Co

Jamie made her sit down as he rummaged through the medical cabinet for the blood pressure cuff, thermometer patches, and hypodermic syringes. He carefully took her temperature, blood pressure, and pulse. All a little higher than normal.

As he was swabbing the crook of her arm for the blood-sampling needle, Jamie said, "I hadn’t thought about it before, but if there are Martian lichen then there must be other Martian organisms, too."

Joa

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 Joa

"Then there really are Martian microbes," Jamie said as he drew her blood. "Germs and viruses and all."

"There must be. The lichen ca

"Then why haven’t we found any?" He slowly eased the plunger back.

Joa

Pressing an adhesive bandage on the tiny wound, Jamie took Joa

"You mean all those tests on the air and soil samples and rocks you did…"

But Joa

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 Joa

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."