The Martian Race (34 page)

“Belay that. I'm not strong enough.”

“Yeah, he's going over the top a lot now.”

“The test?”

“Remember Viktor's crack about there being an ‘i’ in ‘win’? Well, that ‘i’ is Axelrod, for sure.”

She smiled wanly. “He's worried his billions might slip away.”

“You should a seen him last night, after you'd nodded off. Going over all kinds of details with the folks simulating the test, asking Raoul questions about the pressure levels. Man!”

“Does he understand it all?”

“Doubt it. He obsesses over it, though—knows how to do that.”

“They think they can do the test today?”

“If everything looks right to Raoul, yeah. He'd much rather be out there working than in here listening to Axy yammer on.”

She might as well get it over with. “How'd the greenhouse footage go over?”

Marc's mouth twisted. “Couldn't cover it up. You were yelling about the Mars life and that got onto the audio. We didn't know it until the autofeeder had sent the whole segment Earthside.”

“Oh.”

“Axelrod loved it, action scene and all. Aired it right away.”

“He didn't hold off?”

“He—hell, everybody—thought it was just an accident. But the audio gave it away, once you played it through carefully.”

She grimaced. “And only a million or two people bothered with that.”

“Right. At the Consortium, nobody realized the implications until too late.”

He thumbed on a stored video:
SPECIAL MARSCAST.
Massaged by the Consortium staff, the probable number in the audience was inserted at the bottom: 1,856,000,000. She often wondered how reliable these new smart estimator programs were, but the import was clear— the bulk of humanity that could watch was tuned in.

There she ran, looking like an idiot, mouth yawning and legs churning, eyes bulged out. Voice-over by a solemn commentator: “The greenhouse was punctured by a form of Mars life the team
had not reported
to anyone but the Consortium bosses. That is the only possible deduction from conversation mistakenly leaked by the Consortium itself, in the hubbub after Julia Barth's heroic miracle run—”

“Off, off.” She waved it away.

“Look, it had to get out,” Marc said.

“Not now.”

“No kidding. Look at this.”

A jump cut to: “Already dozens of activist groups—led by the Protect Earth Party, PEPA, Mars First! and the newly formed, fast-growing Earth Only Movement, seen here in their Paris offices—have moved to legally compel the Consortium to not allow a liftoff of the Earth Return Vehicle. This would—”

“Lotsa luck,” Marc said dryly.

She chuckled. “A lawyer in Paris trying to stop Viktor from hitting the firing button, from a hundred million miles away?”

“They write out a writ or whatever, those guys think they've got the world by the tail.”

“That world, maybe. Not this one.”

“Hey, don't look so sad, gal. This is just media fluff.”

She hadn't realized that her expression was so easy to read. “I don't like word getting out this way.
MARS LIFE ATTACKS JULIA.”

“We went back over there and had a good look from outside. That spike, it's still alive.”

“Surviving on the surface?” She blinked, eyes rusty.

“Tough sonofabitch. I gave it a yank, couldn't pull it out.”

She nodded. “It's attached to all the rest of the mat in there. That figures. It's adapted to move in on any warm, wet site and exploit it to the full. What organization! To grow that fast—”

“Don't put it that way to Earthside. They'll all gang up on us.”

“Ummm … It's tough, all right—but an anaerobe. Oxygen would kill it right away.”

“Why didn't the greenhouse air do it in, then? The stuff in the vent was awfully sensitive to our oxy.”

She frowned. “Good question. Probably a concentration effect. Our tanks carry pure oxy, under pressure. Stuff we're breathing here isn't. And also, the piece that broke through looked awful rugged. Maybe it's a specialized structure, with a nonporous skin, for exploring. That would let it tunnel through anything to get towards water.”

“That's where it was headed?”

She snapped her fingers. “Of course! It grew towards the light, then vectored in on the seam, where water collects best and runs down to pool. The thing must have a water sensor that's very selective.”

“So by pure bad luck, that's the place where it could burrow through—tough little bugger!—and breach both the outside wall
and
the seal on the greenhouse.”

“Absolutely the worst luck,” she agreed. “On the other hand, we learned a lot from it.”

“You damn near learned how to push up daisies.”

“Ummmm, true. Look, that spike can defend against oxygen for at least a minute or so, or else it would've wilted. It only needed to hang on until all the air was gone from the greenhouse.”

“Yeah, but it's going to scare a lot of people.”

“Ummm, right. Not me, though. A few minutes on Earth and all that life would be finger food for every microbe around.”

Marc shrugged good-naturedly. “So we're caught, I figure. Airbus wants to beat us home and plenty of other people don't want us back at all.”

She curled her lip. “So we consent to a quarantine after we land.” “Maybe. Listen to this—”

He fast-forwarded and started the video again. “—some are saying the Airbus crew should prevent the launch of the ERV if it carries the slightest trace of this revolutionary discovery, a form of life unknown to Earth. Terming it ‘a dire threat to all Earth,’ PEPA spokeswoman—”

“Good grief!”

Marc grinned. “The price of fame.”

“No, the price of the unknown.”

“You ready to hear Axy-boy?”

“No. Viktor said he was leaning pretty heavily on the test.”

“The Consortium investors’ board has gotten into it pretty thick,” Marc said soberly. “Kinda funny, picturing a bunch of investment types poring over orbital mechanics tables.”

With a sinking feeling, she said, “Let me see.”

Axelrod looked both frazzled and energized. His tie was knotted too tight and his eyebrows kept jumping around like insects looking for some place to settle. He scowled with almost comic ferocity as he said, “Julia, this is just for you. You and me, we been through a lot, and I was never so proud as when I saw you making that run. What a woman!”

“Fast-forward,” she said.

As the tape sped Marc asked, “Sure you want me to hear this?”

“Sure. We can't be keeping secrets from each other.”

Axelrod finished his praise with a flourish, leading a toast on camera from the Ground Control team. Then he said, “I want you to know that I'm covering for you here, to the hilt. I'll take the blame for not releasing the news. We need a little statement from you, laying out how you were trying to get definitive word on just what this stuff is and so on. Maybe drop a little hint about your findings? Just an idea.”

“More ammo for PEPA, sure,” she said.

Axelrod frowned theatrically, a false note that put her on guard. “It's a firestorm down here. Just catch the news, see how they're playing it. Real live
life on Mars
—and dangerous, too—plus the race. I don't mind the extra income we're gettinbg from coverage, of course. We're playing you as the heroine of it all. You were keeping the whole discovery under wraps until you could tell if it was any kind of threat, see. But there's this panel of biologists, U.S. National Academy of Science and all. They're saying you've been exposed now, touched that nasty thing that caused the accident.”

Axelrod paused, eyeing the camera as if he could see her.

Julia said, “They're right.”

“—and so maybe you shouldn't be sharing even the same air with the rest of the crew. So these Academy people say. In case you got something, and it”—he spread his hands helplessly—”well, it spreads.”

“Too late for that,” Marc said.

“As the National Academy knows,” she said.

“A minority report even said—now, don't take this seriously, it's just a bunch of lab guys, after all—that you shouldn't come back.”

“What!” Julia sat up straight.

“That's the kind of pressure flying around here, is what I'm saying.” Axelrod looked apologetic.

“Those plants are
anaerobes,”
Julia said hotly.

“Not that most people know what that means,” Marc said.

“That's nonsense talk, of course,” Axelrod hurried on. “I'm gonna make a speech today, label these people for what they are. But we sure could use a statement back here from you. It would give the PR boys something to work with, to spin.”

“What the hell is going on down there? What are they afraid of?”

“The Creeping Unknown,
1955.”

“Huh?”

“It's an old sci-fi movie. The only survivor of a rocket ship that crashes on reentry is infected with some alien organism. It kills the guy, then goes on to terrorize London.”

“But it's just a stupid movie. Patently false.”

“Maybe, but people are profoundly ignorant about space, and science in general.”

“You think the movies are where people get their ideas about space? Good Lord, I had no idea. I thought everybody knew they were just silly stories.”

Marc shrugged. “Unfortunately, most of the sci-fi movies are about all the
bad
things that could happen with alien encounters. Invading monsters make a better movie. Cute aliens are for kids.”

“So you think people believe that the Marsmat is a threat from space? And they got that idea from sci-fi movies?”

“That's my thesis. Oh, the guy on the street wouldn't admit it, but the movies are most people's exposure to ideas about the future.”

“I have a hard time believing that.”

“Maybe, but remember that NASA quarantined the Apollo 11 astronauts returning from the
moon.”

There was a short silence.

“Okay, okay,” Julia said. “Time to go on the air.”

Marc looked relieved. “I'll go down below, do some packing.”

Julia narrowed her eyes. “Axelrod asked you to get me in front of the cameras, didn't he?”

Marc looked sheepish. “Yeah, you are the biologist, after all.”

“Here goes.” She said in a hollow bass voice, “Creatures of Earth, I speak to you from Mars.”

Marc's head jerked up, then he noticed the record button was still red. “Ha ha. The PR guys would've edited it out anyway.”

“Yep, they cut all our best stuff.”

She made a brief, clear statement detailing the vent descent. Their discoveries. A few shots of the deep vent life. A promise of further developments from her greenhouse experiments—”Which were unfortunately interrupted, as you all saw, by the unexpected, marvelous robustness of the vent life. This is hardy stuff, the product of tougher times than life has had on Earth. Now, that does not mean it's going to walk all over us. Oxygen poisons these forms immediately—I tried it on several of them, and they withered into brown husks within minutes. There is no danger to Earth here!”

After she signed off, she said, “It shouldn't be just me talking about the Marsmat, it's your discovery, too, you know.”

“Yeah, only I haven't got the investment you do. I didn't nearly get killed out there, for my research.”

“Our research.”

“You're the Lady of Life, as that TV show called you.”

“Hey, your name will be on the research papers, with mine.”

“Oh no, I have to write papers, too?”

She grinned. “Price of fame.”

26

S
HE THOUGHT OF THE FOUR OF THEM AS BEING A KEYHOLE, THROUGH
which billions of people were peering at an entire world beyond.

How to squeeze the immensity of Mars through that tiny knot? First and foremost they were pilots, engineers, scientists—not popularizes, but doers. They had made innumerable “squirts,” as Viktor called them, sent videos, commentaries, interviews. It had never been enough to feed the media maw, and now the appetite at their backs was far worse.

Still, the hardest message she had to send was to her parents. She had to sheepishly own up to not telling them the biggest story in history.
DEADLY LIFE ON MARS!
had screamed at them from the Sydney newspaper.

Her father's calm, ironic rendition of the coverage carried not a hint of irritation or distress. “We understand you had to keep this out of all transmissions, sweetie,” he had said. She'd carefulldy scrutinized the vid: Did he look more tired? “Security and all, quite so, quite justified.”

But she had apologized anyway, and meant it. With all they were dealing with, they didn't need to be awakened at 3:00
A.M.
by some arrogant media type wanting their “reaction to their daughter's near-death accident.”

Such seemingly minor emotional issues took up her time as she rested. Minor compared to the real issues coming remorselessly to bear, anyway. She had to keep matters in perspective. Her body had myriad little aches and oddities, all duly chronicled for the medicos.

By the next morning she was feeling fairly chipper. In a quick message for the doctors she said, “I got off easy, I know that. But a minute in vacuum! I'll bet your research never implied that anybody could survive so long.”

Viktor overheard her and said, “Miracle now, standard trick in future.”

She was glad to have him say something; he and Raoul were obsessively readying for tomorrow's test. “How so?”

“Big hassle to get in and out of suits, true? Easier in future to make short dashes as you did—not even holding breath.”

Somehow this shocked her. “But it was—scary.”

“First time must be. Second time will make news maybe.” He grinned. “Third, is habit.”

She recalled how staff at the Mars Society arctic station would run from the rover to the hab without bothering with the heavy down jackets and boots. There was a small
zing
to thumbing your nose at the elements. “Y'know, you're probably right.”

“Danger is fun,” Viktor said. “Of course, best way is to watch from distance. From Earthside, say.”

Like tomorrow,
she thought.

Then she resolutely put such thoughts away.