She is beautiful, Yang thought, and the daughter of Alberto Brumado. Now she has found life on Mars. The center of everyone’s attention, everyone’s desires. I am nothing but a nondescript physician, the bearer of unhappy news. No wonder they want to ignore me.
Does Brumado know that his daughter is ill? Yang thought not. The mission controllers knew, of course, but so far they regarded the malady that was affecting the entire ground team as nothing more serious than a bout of flu.
It is more than flu. Yang was sure.
What if there are Martian organisms in the air? Viruses or microbes so tiny or so different that they escaped notice when the air was tested. What if they can infect human cells?
She shook her head, a motion that set her severely straight bangs whisking back and forth. Nonsense! Alien organisms cannot affect terrestrial cells. Their metabolisms would be completely different.
And yet, from the little that she had been able to glean about the lichenlike creatures Brumado and Malater had discovered, they were remarkably similar to terrestrial organisms. They must do a DNA workup, Yang thought. And a thorough chemical analysis.
A Martian plague. The very idea was too outlandish even to consider seriously. It was as unlikely as… as-she felt a tremor race through her body–as unlikely as being hit by a meteoroid.
Then she realized that she was standing in the hatch of a spacecraft orbiting the planet Mars, standing on tiptoes to peek over the shoulders of the crowd clustered around their leader, who was being congratulated now by the directors of the Mars Project for successfully finding the first extraterrestrial life forms ever discovered by humankind. What can be considered outlandish? she chided herself. What might be likely or unlikely?
How happy they all looked. Even Li, the human scarecrow who never allowed himself to relax, was smiling joyfully at the multiple screens facing him. They were all congratulating each other, man to man, like an overaged athletic team that had just won an unexpected victory, confident that this discovery would assure their futures.
But not if the people on the ground die. That will terrify everyone. And they are dying. Despite Reed’s assurances, the data showed that something was debilitating all the men and women on the surface of Mars. They are growing weaker. They are dying.
It had been a momentous day. Despite their fatigue and pain the foursome in the rover had spent the entire afternoon on the radio with the dome, with Li and the other scientists in the orbiting ships, with the mission controllers in Kaliningrad and then Houston, and finally with the project directors in Moscow, Washington, Tokyo, and six other capital cities on Earth.
“You might know this is the one time the goddam TV link is down,” Connors grumbled.
The TV antenna was still jammed in its halfway-down position, useless. But the backup radio voice links worked, even though the interference of the dust storm made the transmissions relayed from orbit sound faint, blurred with crackling static.
Joanna had used the computer modem and the attached fax machine to squirt every bit of data-and all the photomicrographs- she and Ilona had gleaned from the lichen. Ilona herself was resting in her bunk; after she had practically collapsed in his arms, Jamie had unfolded the bunk and insisted that she try to sleep.
It was well after sundown before all the radio calls were finished. They would still have been talking, but Jamie begged off, claiming that they had to eat and rest so they would be fresh the next morning. Dr. Li had quickly taken the hint.
“I will handle all communications until you are ready for the morning’s work,” he said.
They had made no mention of their illness to the project brass in the various capital cities. Neither had the mission controllers, who knew as much about their condition as Li did. No one wanted to tarnish the triumph of the moment.
Now the four of them were gathered around the rover’s narrow table, seated as usual, the two men on one bench, the two women opposite. Ilona seemed slightly better for the few hours’ sleep she had obtained; still, she looked pale and drawn. Joanna too looked sallow, tense, her eyes shadowed, her cheeks hollow.