Mars

"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.

Joa

"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 Joa

"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.

Co

But no one moved until Joa

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 Joa

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 Joa

Jamie got down beside her. "You’ll need help lifting…"

"No!" she snapped. "I can do it myself. This is Mars, after all."

Jamie flushed with sudden anger and then felt sheepish. She’s right. The damned rock only weighs a few pounds here. And she’s not going to let anybody touch it but herself.

Toshima clicked away and Co

Jamie stared hard at the ground beneath the rock. Flattened and smoothed by the rock’s weight but otherwise no different from the rest of the soil. What did you expect? he asked himself. A Martian rattlesnake coiled up under it?

"Now if you will please take a core sample from the ground that was beneath the rock," Joa

"How deep?"

"As deep as you can go," she said. "If you please."

Jamie did it. While they all watched in silence he dug the pole in as far as it could go. Gently, delicately, he pulled the core sample up…

"Look!" shouted Monique Bo

"What?"

"What is it?"

"I thought…" She was almost breathless. "When you pulled out the stick, I thought I saw sunlight glinting off… something."

"Something?"

"What?"

"Was it water droplets?" Ilona asked.

"Perhaps," said Monique. "I don’t know. It was gone in the blink of an eye."

Ilona dropped to her knees so hard that Jamie was afraid she would hurt herself or bang up her suit. She wormed her gloved hand down into the hole that he had dug and pulled it out swiftly. The sleeve of the suit was smeared with reddish dust and crumbling bits of rust-colored dirt.

"Look! Look!"

A half dozen tiny glinting drops of moisture were on her gloved fingers, like dew on the petals of a flower. Before any of them could say a word the droplets disappeared, evaporating into the thin cold Martian air.

"It’s water!"

"It must be water!" Monique said, her voice vibrating with excitement. "Below the ground. Water!"

Naguib was laughing like a schoolboy. "We’ve discovered water! The first water found on an extraterrestrial body! It’s only a few drops, but it’s water! And liquid water at that!"

Jamie stood there leaning on the pole, all his physical tiredness from the digging evaporated just like the droplets from Ilona’s glove. The others were practically capering, waving their arms and almost dancing in their hard suits, they were so thrilled.

All except Joa

And Jamie, who stood behind her with the pole gripped in both hands, standing like a Navaho warrior with his lance butted on the dusty ground, wondering what his colleagues would do if that green patch actually turned out to be real living Martian organisms.

DOSSIER:

JOANNA MARIA BRUMADO

At the age of sixteen Joa

An only child, she had spent all her life at home under the gentle, loving hand of a mother who never raised her voice yet ruled her household absolutely. When she was younger Joa

"Your father is handsome and very romantic," Joa

"He loves us too much to care about anyone else," Joa

Joa