The Martian Race (33 page)

And life? Well, it went underground—and here it was, growing not a meter away.

Many people thought they knew life had never had a chance on Mars. Dead wrong! So what had been the real history of Mars life? And could she figure it out in three weeks? Or less?

Might as well go for it.

She picked three arrays of genes from different kinds of archaebacteria, at random, and set them up for testing against the solution of prepared Marsmat DNA.

She worked methodically, compensating for the inherent clumsiness of the glove box by being slow and careful. She remembered a poster in the office of one of her more obnoxious faculty advisors. Under a large picture of a rhino were the words “I may be slow, but I'm always right.”

No one would argue with a charging rhino, but they would with her. She had to be very careful.

At last she completed the protocols and inserted the first incubated gene array into the little electronic reader that was hooked up to her slate.

The image of the gene array appeared. As she watched, the biological bingo board started to light up with a few fluorescent hits.
Aha, gotcha.
One part of the board in particular was live. When the reader was finished, she saved the results, popped the sample out, and put in the second one. This bingo pattern was similar: a few hits here and there, and a concentration in one area. Finally, the third sample was being read. She concentrated on where the hits were.
Lessee, somewhere in this program is the list of what genes are where in this field …

Forty percent of archaebacterial genes did not match any other Earth life genes. Were they too primitive, or what?

No one really knew. They were included in the arrays, however.

Through her intense concentration she felt something odd.
What … ?

It was a slight breeze rippling her hair. This had just registered when her ears popped.

Pressure drop? The lock seal failing?

“Oh no—I'm busy!”

Her training kicked in. She nudged her comm connection in the collar of her skinsuit. “Marc, I've got a pressure drop out here.” Always report trouble, even if you don't understand it.

He responded immediately. “Keep talking.”

She pulled her hands out of the thin inner glove linings, looking around. The heat and humidity had painted the walls thick with beaded moisture. “The lock looks okay, but … “
You couldn't tell if a seal was failing without—

The breeze increased. Not toward the lock. Blowing down and to her right.

She knelt and peered around. The footing of the glove box was firmly attached to the low greenhouse bench and she could see nothing beyond. The damp was pleasantly warm but obscured her view. She edged around the hard plastic of the box. With her right hand she wiped moisture off the side, peering inside.

Was that a thin whistling? “Might have a micro-meteorite puncture. Trying to find—”

She froze. Something was standing straight up from the soil in the chamber. Pale, like celery in its sinewy rippling. It curved partway up, toward the side of the box. She looked toward the seal between box and greenhouse wall. A thin fog hung in the air there.

“Looks like one of my samples has grown like crazy. The Mars life, it's wedged itself into the comer where the box—”

The whistling suddenly rose to a shriek.

Startled, she rocked back on her heels. The wind whirled by her head. Toward the wall. Her ears popped again.

“Damn! The leak's growing.”

She could
see
it now. The stalk stuck out from the corner where the box met the wall. It moved visibly, forcing itself through.

Falling into the crack?

She refused to believe it was moving on its own.

Why grow toward the edge?

The Mars plant had stuck through the tough plastic and into the greenhouse. The end of it was pointed, leathery. It had poked out through the absolute worst place, breaking out to Martian pressures and the greenhouse at the same point.

Automatically she reached for it. Cold, wet, slick, tough. She pulled at it. Rubbery resistance.

“Trying to patch,” she reported.

But with what? Her hand slipped around it, air rushing past. She couldn't stem that flow with her palm.

She drew in a deep breath. Or tried to.

Time slowed. Her heart thumped in her ears.

Quickly she glanced around. Across the greenhouse all the plants were whipping in the wind. Her kit—

It was on the other side of the box. And the patches in there probably wouldn't handle this awkward split, anyway.

Screaming wind. She grabbed a sample bag and crammed it into the corner. It stuck, but only over part of the crack.

Get
more.

She leaped up and moved around the box. Marc's voice squawked at her from her comm. The damned sample bags were blowing around. She snatched for one, missed. Her ears popped again.

She caught a bag and started back toward the breach. Something tripped her. She fell in slow motion. Reached out, grabbed. Hand on the box edge. Caught herself, jerked upright. Went on. Something tapped her on the head.

She looked up. The ceiling was falling. No more pressure to hold it up.

She dropped down, struggled toward the breach. It was like an angry mouth, screaming. She slapped the bag over it, but—

Not
enough. Where are the rest? Losing air fast.

Only then did she think about her helmet.

Idiot! Where did you—

She stood up and the collapsing heavy plastic smacked her in the face. Crouching, she waddled around, trying to remember where she had put the helmet.

Usually by the lock, on the workbench.

She duck-walked toward it. She was breathing hard but nothing was coming in. It took forever to cover the ten meters. Before she got there the ceiling settled down over her. She pushed up but it was surprisingly heavy. She could raise it a foot or so but no more.

Where's that helmet?

She couldn't see in the foggy air. The density was dropping fast and water condensed out in thick clouds.

She blinked to clear her eyes. Her eyelids were slow.

Freezing? Drying out?

Helmet!

The idea came to her and without hesitation she knew it was right. The helmet was somewhere around here but already her eyes were getting a gluey feeling. She was not going to find it in time. Too hard to see.

Got to get to the hab.

The lock is right here!

She rolled sideways. The lip of the lock was easy to see. She felt upward under the still settling plastic.

There.
The release was simple, a lever. She pulled.

The hatch swung open under the fading greenhouse pressure. The shrieking was thinner now, running out of air. Just like her.

She crawled through into the short space. Fumbled up for the outer hatch release. Found it. Pulled.

Her shoulder shoved it open. Dimly she remembered what they had said a few thousand years ago about low pressures.

Don't try to hold your breath.

She got to her feet and shoved the hatch open the rest of the way. It seemed heavy.

No sound at all now. But her heart hammered in her throbbing ears.

Keep the main air passages open and the pressure will not build up, she remembered that much. Opening her throat let a gush of air out, expanding so much she felt the rush of it.

Brilliant light all around. She blinked again. Something like sand in her eyes.

The sun was a hard bright ball on the horizon. Lancing light struck her face.
Full UV. And cold.

She made herself run. The prickly sensation in her face was swarming down over her whole body and some part of her mind struggled to understand it.
Never mind.

The blazing sunshine helped, framed each detail. She had never realized how much of Mars she was missing, seen through the helmet.

Go. Her legs pumped and her throat boiled with suppressed air. The one lungful of air was foaming out of her, a stream of vapor condensing into tiny crystals that glinted in the blaring light. Above the collapsing greenhouse a mushroom of rising vapor was turning into snow.

Her lungs still felt full. The last dregs of air expanded under the hundredfold pressure drop outside.

She set her course. Around the hab, first.

Each step seemed to take forever.

The skin makes a pretty fair space suit,
a lecturer had said once, somewhere, somewhen.

Pressure wasn't the problem. Her pounding head could not think very well but it reminded her to keep her mouth open.
Let the gas laws work for you.

She had gone ten meters and her legs were like logs, thumping her feet down. Coming around the round hab walls, she studied the landscape with a floating curiosity.

All details were sharp, hard. She was still exhaling, a fog falling from her, ice crystals shimmering in it. Her face was starting to hurt. Lips freezing.

Time for another blink. Her eyelids slid down and wanted to stay there. Run blind?

Thump, thump, thump,
went her feet, so very far away.

An idea there—? Keep eyes closed, stop the corneas from freezing.

Maybe the eyelids will freeze to the corneas. Hard to open them then. Thump, thump.

Cranking up the eyelids was like lifting weights. Gravel in the gears somewhere.

She was farther along the curve of the hab now. Here came the lock, looming on the hab horizon like a tarnished promise.

Stiff, slow, her legs churned. No more helpful air boiled out of her. Nothing but a hollow feeling left. Something biting hard in her throat. She tried to force out a last packet of air,
first shout ever on Mars,
but there was nothing, nothing.

The lock. She saw it coming toward her, wobbly as it came, like a child bounding out, glad to see her.

The exterior buttons were sharp and clear and all she had to do was bring her arms up to punch the green CYCLE button. It took a long time, though, long enough to wonder why everything was taking so much effort.

Her arms were not working right. It was dark all of a sudden except for a narrow tunnel of filmy light, straight in front of her, a flashlight beam. In it she watched her right hand come up and punch for the CYCLE and miss it.

Try again. Can't be that hard … Missed again …

Her hand would not do what she told it to.

Try the other? No, it would not get here anytime soon.

Something else. Movement. Not her hand.

The lock.

Opening out.

So fast, too. She stepped back and tried to get her breath and felt something pop in her chest.

Marc. He looked so big in his green suit.

But he tilted back and fell away and the sky was there. Soaring.

A dark hole at the top of it. Black on pink. Beautiful.

25

JANUARY 25,2018

S
HE FELT FRAGILE, JUST LYING IN BED LIKE A RAG DOLL.

She lay still and listened to the hab warm up. It stretched and groaned as the metal expanded, a slow long clamor that marked both dawn and dusk. Not the sighing of soft breezes through drooping paper-bark trees, but it would have to do.

She'd slept restlessly, moaning and thrashing intermittently, according to Viktor. He'd looked at her with a solemn, searching expression, a furrow between his eyes. Later he'd insisted that she just rest up the whole day, and part of her wanted to do just that.

A quiet throbbing ran down her throat and into her chest. At times she felt that she carried the medals of a Soviet field marshal on her chest, pinned not to a uniform but to her skin. Her lips were swollen from their near freezing and the dehydrating effect of the tenuous atmosphere. Her eyes still felt sandy, an effect Earthside medicos found intriguing—which meant they didn't understand it. Nobody had ever survived a “vac event,” as space station jargon called it. Sure, there had been suit ventings, quickly patched, but nobody had run for their life before. The external cameras had caught most of her frantic, slobby sprint—big, loping strides in the low gravity, a wreath of pearly fog trailing her head the whole way.

And with the video had come her terse descriptions of Martian life ripping through industrial-strength plastics. The audio had gone out to Earthside, too.

She tried not to think about it, and of course failed.

But after a good sleep and an hour of lounging around past breakfast, she got restless. In her robe she ventured forth, to find that Raoul and Viktor were long gone for the ERV. Viktor had checked on her earlier, and she had drifted off immediately. “Oh?”

“You were asleep, prob'ly didn't notice,” Marc said, offering her some tea. She had thanked him profusely as soon as he got her into the lock, and the wonderful sensation of filling her lungs again had passed. He got embarrassed if she brought it up any more.

She eased into her acceleration couch, the best place to snuggle.

She had a deep facial sunburn, eyeballs showing red veins, dead skin on her earlobes, and overall felt as delicate as antique porcelain. “I must still be a little rocky. Mmm, it's warm in here.”

“Yeah, Viktor turned up the hab temperature for you.”

That meant heating the water jacket. They had ample power reserves in the nuclear thermal generator they carried down near the work level, so everything was pleasantly warm to the touch. The walls radiated it, the water shielding out the cosmic radiation, providing the vital fluid of their entire biosphere, and warming them. It was always a source of quiet reassurance to her that at night, sleeping together, she and Viktor were each blocking for the other some small fraction of the background radiation that lanced down from the skies here. Human shields against the unrelenting danger of the universe beyond Earth.

“You're the big media star, now,” Marc said. “Axelrod sent you a congrats message. Here, I'll play—”