Toshima called in and asked for the air temperature outside the rover.
“Goin’ up,” Connors reported, surprised. “It’s up to just about ten degrees.”
Jamie mentally converted the centigrade figure to fifty degrees Fahrenheit.
Toshima smiled toothily in the display screen. “Friction from dust particles heats the atmosphere. There could be lightning.”
“Lightning?”
“It is possible. Be certain all equipment is protected.”
Connors blew out an exasperated breath. “Everything’s buttoned up, but the comm antenna’s standing out there in the wind like a lightning rod.”
“It is grounded, isn’t it?”
“Sure, but how many amps will this lightning be packing?”
Toshima looked blank. Jamie realized that when he did not know the answer to a question he simply did not reply at all.
“Okay,” Connors said, “I’m going to crank down the antenna in between transmissions.” The astronaut glanced at the digital clock on the panel. “I will call you in forty-eight minutes, at exactly fifteen hundred hours.”
The meteorologist nodded.
“If you’ve got an emergency call for us, send it over the voice radio or the computer link. Those antennas are flush to the roof. We can talk through the modems if we have to.”
“I understand.”
Connors signed off, then turned to the bank of switches on his left side. Through the shrill of the wind Jamie heard the faint click of a rocker switch, then the buzz of an electric motor overhead.
“That antenna’s right over the cockpit. If it attracts a bolt of lightning we could get fried.”
The electric motor’s hum turned into a rasping growl.
“Kee-rap! It’s stuck. Fuckin’ dust must be packed into the joints.” Connors flicked the switch up and down several times, his usual easygoing manner disintegrating into frustrated wrath. The motor whined and strained. With a shake of his head Connors said, “Stuck in the halfway position. Won’t reach the satellite and still sticking up enough to attract lightning. Useless goddam piece of junk!” He pounded a fist against the panel.
“It is grounded, though,” Jamie said, half a question.
“Yeah, but who knows how much juice a Martian lightning bolt might carry?”
Looking out at the dark clouds blowing past the cockpit, Jamie muttered, “Let’s hope we don’t have to find out.”
“Wonder what the hell else the dust is screwing up.”
Jamie felt his eyebrows rise.
“Like the wheels, maybe,” Connors grumbled. “Maybe we’ll have to walk back to the dome.”
Jamie looked more closely at the black astronaut. It was not like Connors to complain or be so bitter. The man’s face was shining with perspiration. His cheeks looked hollow, his eyes sunken and bloodshot.
“Maybe we should take another dose of that antibiotic,” Jamie said.
Tapping the digital clock display Connors said testily, “Not until seventeen hundred hours. Doctor’s orders.”
They both heard the footsteps at the same instant and turned in their chairs. Joanna was almost running up the length of the command module toward them. Her heart-shaped face was haggard, but she was smiling the biggest smile Jamie had ever seen on her.
“We have it!” she said, almost breathless. “Living organisms! In the rocks!”
Fast as Connors’s flier’s reflexes were, Jamie scrambled out of his seat first. His throat was so tight he could not say a word, but he pounded down the module after Joanna and ducked through the airlock hatch, Connors right behind him.
Ilona was half slumped over the optical microscope, its intense light the only illumination in the lab module. Profiled against the bright white light she looked totally spent, exhausted like a woman who had just given birth.
She smiled up at Jamie. Wanly.
“Inside the rocks,” Joanna said, her voice a reverent whisper. “Just as you said back at McMurdo….”
Jamie found himself staring at Ilona. She looked terribly weak.
“It is something like terrestrial lichen,” Joanna was explaining, ignoring her coworker. “They have a hard silicate shell to protect them from the cold, but the shell is water permeable. And there are windows in it that allow sunlight through.” She was almost babbling. “We think the windows are transparent mainly in the infrared, but they obviously let visible wavelengths pass through them too, to some extent. Their internal water is apparently laced with some form of alcohol, a natural kind of antifreeze. They must go dormant at night or whenever the temperature drops so low that even their antifreeze crystallizes, then they become active again when the temperature rises enough for their antifreeze to liquefy. It is definite! It is real! Look for yourself!”