Ilona managed to move her chair slightly so Jamie could bend over the microscope. He saw a mottle of colors, purplish circular things interlaced with threads of a lighter bluish tone.
“I thought they were orange.”
“They are,” Ilona said softly. “We stained them for the microscope.”
“They take up dyes the same way terrestrial tissues do!” Joanna was still excited, exultant. “They polarize light the same way terrestrial organisms do! They must be based on the same kind of nucleic acids and proteins!”
“It’s too soon to say that,” Ilona corrected in a whisper.
Jamie was still peering into the microscope. Martian organisms. Living creatures of Mars.
“They are like the crustose thalli of Antarctica,” he heard Joanna say into his ear. “Do you see the outer cortex and then the clusters of algae?”
“The purple things?”
“Yes.” She even laughed, shakily. “The purple things. They are alive, Jamie.”
He straightened up and gave Connors a chance to squint into the microscope.
“It is life, Jamie,” said Joanna, tired but triumphant. “It is merely a form of lichen and it must remain dormant almost all the time. But it is alive and native to Mars.”
“We’ve done it!” Despite her exhaustion there was joy in Ilona’s voice. “We’ve found life on Mars.”
“I guess you have,” said Jamie. His insides were trembling. He felt awed by their discovery.
Connors grinned at the women. “You guys’ll get the Nobel Prize for this.”
“Yes, yes,” Joanna said. “I suppose we will. But what does that matter? Nothing matters now. We have found what we came for! Whatever happens from now on, it does not matter.”
Ilona suddenly sagged against Jamie’s shoulder for support. Jamie felt her going limp, collapsing. Outside, the dust storm sang its own melody.
EARTH
WASHINGTON: Edith was standing beside Alberto Brumado when the phone call came.
They had just returned to the red-brick house after dinner in Georgetown. Edith knew instinctively that the man was going to make his play for her. What she did not yet know was how she would react. Brumado was kind, intelligent, gentle, and even suave in a sort of bashful, boyish way.
What would he be like in bed? she wondered. And she found herself also wondering, Is Jamie bedding his daughter?
But the telephone interrupted Brumado as he was pouring two snifters of Osborne brandy. He crossed the bookshelf-lined living room and picked up the phone.
“Yes, this is he…. Oh, hello, Jeffrey, how are…” Brumado’s face went white. “What? She did? It’s certain?” He lapsed into a string of rapid Brazilian Portuguese. Then, realizing it, he switched back to English, breathless. “Yes, yes, yes. I’ll be right down. As soon as I can get a taxicab. Yes. Thanks! Thank you for calling! I’ll be there, surely!”
If he hadn’t been grinning from ear to ear Edith would have thought some disaster had hit the Mars explorers.
He looked across the room to her. “They’ve found living organisms on Mars. My daughter made the discovery!”
Edith yelled a Texas war whoop and ran to him and threw her arms around his neck. He held her around the waist and they kissed the way strangers do on New Year’s Eve.
Then, “I’ve got to get a taxi. We’re expected at NASA headquarters.”
“I’ve got to tell my boss!” Edith said.
“All the media will be informed,” Brumado said, pecking at the phone with a trembling hand. “They’re calling a news conference for midnight.”
While he paced the oriental carpet, impatiently waiting for the taxicab, Edith phoned the network vice-president at his apartment in Manhattan.
“You have reached…,” an answering-machine tape started.
Edith felt a moment of exasperation, then started laughing. When the beep sounded she shouted into the phone, “This is Edie Elgin. I’m in the nation’s capital with Alberto Brumado and as soon as a cab can get here we’re goin’ to NASA headquarters. They’ve found life on Mars, buddy! And you weren’t home to take the call!”
Edith then phoned the network news office. The news director was at home, and the woman in charge at this hour of the evening had never heard of Edie Elgin.
“I’m a consultant to the vice-president’s office,” Edith explained.