Vosnesensky commanded, “Pete, bring the video camera here. We must have a record of this.”
The astronaut said, “Right,” and headed back toward the camera he had left on its tripod.
“My still camera is almost out of film,” Toshima said. “I will take the last few frames now and change rolls.”
“No!” snapped Naguib. “Don’t take the chance of high-energy radiation spoiling the film. Here, take my camera. It has a full roll in it.”
“Thank you,” said Toshima.
Connors lumbered into sight again, dangling the vidcam in one gloved hand. When he was satisfied that both still and video photographers were ready, Vosnesensky ordered, “Proceed.”
But no one moved until Joanna said, “I want four samples, one from each side of the rock, as far down as you can go.” Then she added, “Please.”
Jamie leaned on the pole and the corer bit into the ground. It buzzed through the first few centimeters easily enough but then the going got tough. Jamie pushed hard, breaking into a sweat.
“It’s gotten like hardpan,” he grunted.
“Or permafrost?” Ilona suggested hopefully.
Jamie pulled up the pole and let Patel, his fellow geologist, work the mechanism that neatly dropped the slim column of red dirt from the corer’s sharp teeth into one of Joanna’s sample boxes. Patel worked slowly, carefully, to make certain that the crumbly cylinder did not break apart.
Jamie noted that the column was striated. Different shades of red. Fluvial deposits, he guessed. There must have been an ocean here at one time. Or at least a big lake.
Four samples from the sides of the rock. Jamie had to stop his digging several times to let the fans of his suit clear away the mist that built up inside his visor. Despite his exertions, neither Patel nor any of the others made the slightest move to help him. Instead they peered at the samples and invented instant theories to explain their appearance.
They’re all too entranced with what’s going on to even think of helping, he told himself. Besides, they got an Injun to do the heavy work. Why should they bother with it?
“All right now,” said Joanna, after four samples were resting in the first case. She sank slowly to her knees and bent over the rock.
Jamie got down beside her. “You’ll need help lifting…”
“No!” she snapped. “I can do it myself. This is Mars, after all.”
Jamie flushed with sudden anger and then felt sheepish. She’s right. The damned rock only weighs a few pounds here. And she’s not going to let anybody touch it but herself.
Toshima clicked away and Connors focused the vidcam tightly on the rock as Joanna reached out and grasped it at both ends, keeping clear of the green patch on its side. She tugged the rock up off the ground and placed it inside the other silver sample case as tenderly as a mother laying her newborn infant in its crib.
Jamie stared hard at the ground beneath the rock. Flattened and smoothed by the rock’s weight but otherwise no different from the rest of the soil. What did you expect? he asked himself. A Martian rattlesnake coiled up under it?
“Now if you will please take a core sample from the ground that was beneath the rock,” Joanna said as she sealed the lid of her sample case.
“How deep?”
“As deep as you can go,” she said. “If you please.”
Jamie did it. While they all watched in silence he dug the pole in as far as it could go. Gently, delicately, he pulled the core sample up…
“Look!” shouted Monique Bonnet.
“What?”
“What is it?”
“I thought…” She was almost breathless. “When you pulled out the stick, I thought I saw sunlight glinting off… something.”
“Something?”
“What?”
“Was it water droplets?” Ilona asked.
“Perhaps,” said Monique. “I don’t know. It was gone in the blink of an eye.”
Ilona dropped to her knees so hard that Jamie was afraid she would hurt herself or bang up her suit. She wormed her gloved hand down into the hole that he had dug and pulled it out swiftly. The sleeve of the suit was smeared with reddish dust and crumbling bits of rust-colored dirt.