She could see a growing acceptance in their faces.
“It’s not all bad, this solution,” she said. “For one thing, it forces Earth to launch another mission. That’s what we all want, isn’t it? Not to abandon another planet, like we did the moon, after a brief fling. But to move toward colonization.”
Marc nodded. “I’m not sure we thought of ourselves as the colonists.” He paused. “I sure didn’t.”
“Neither me,” Viktor said.
Marc continued, as if provisionally trying out the idea, “So how do we pick? Short straws again? Volunteers?”
“Should be captain’s orders.” Viktor spread his hands.
“True,” Julia said, letting him feel his way through this.
Viktor shook his head slowly, staring straight ahead. “Decision is too hard.”
Claudine nodded without speaking.
As if from a great distance, Julia heard herself saying, “I’ll stay.”
Viktor was stunned. “Why would you…?”
It was suddenly so clear. “Random picks won’t cut it. We have to have the best team possible to both go and stay. Claudine has to go back, she has the only experience on the nuke. Learning all those systems will be hard enough for us.” She paused. “I suspect Raoul is too valuable not to have on the ship.”
Raoul started, “Thanks, but I screwed this up and—”
“No, you’re essential, is true,” Viktor said.
Julia rushed ahead. “And besides, he has a new family waiting for him. After that…” She shrugged. “But look, I can’t make any decision except for myself.”
“Why would you want to stay?” asked Marc. “Your Marsmat?”
She frowned. “I guess so. I don’t think I’m ready to never see it again. And I got a funny feeling up at the…the cemetery this afternoon. I suddenly felt like a resident in a frontier settlement, not an astronaut on a space junket.” She looked at Viktor. “Sorry, I should’ve said something to you first.”
“Maybe we should all think about this some more before we make any final decisions,” said Marc.
“We don’t have time anymore,” said Raoul.
“We should inform Earth, at any rate. Maybe they’ll have an idea,” said Marc.
“Earth can suggest, but we decide. New law of space,” said Viktor.
Heads nodded. There was a little pause. Julia felt curiously light, but she could almost see the stresses coursing through the others.
“I’m curious about one thing. Why did you say you had a Martian solution?” asked Marc.
She was relieved at the chance to talk about science for a bit. “I’m just feeling my way through this, but I think the Marsmat is not a single organism at all. It’s a cooperative community of different kinds of single-celled organisms. Like a stromatolite, maybe, or a primitive jellyfish.”
“Remind me about stromatolites,” said Raoul.
She was surprised at such a question from Raoul, who was never much interested in biology. She guessed he needed a break from the intense conversation they were having.
“Stromatolites are huge living mounds, basically layers of blue-green algae and silt. As a life-form they’re very old, maybe three billion years. At least there are wavy layers in rocks of that age that may be their fossils.”
“Earth’s past is Mars’ present?” asked Claudine.
“Oh, they’re not just fossils. I’ve seen living ones on the west coast near Perth, just off the beach in the shallows of the Indian Ocean.”
“They’ve been around for three billion years? Mon Dieu. I had no idea.”
“Well, my point is not their age, but how they survive. Anaerobes with different metabolic requirements can work in tandem, one thriving on the output of the one before it. It’s a community survival strategy.”
Raoul asked, “Adopted because Mars was under stress from its beginning?”
“Makes sense. In a way, it’s the old Earth solution too. Before the oxygen-using multicellular forms raised the competitive stakes, the anaerobes used a different system. Well, in fact they still do. Bacteria faced with a poison in their environment don’t have to wait around for a random mutation that would help them out. They just pick up a useful gene from another bacterium. And not just other strains of the same kind, but even species not closely related. That’s why antibiotic resistance spreads so rapidly.”
The others looked a bit blank, so she finished up hurriedly, “I’m just saying that the anaerobes work together instead of at cross-purposes. Instead of competing with different organisms in a race to get ahead, they all move forward together. I think that’s what the Marsmat has done. That’s what we’re doing too.”
“An incredibly positive spin, that,” said Marc, smiling. “You’ve learned a lot from your trivid career so far.”
“That’s not what I was trying to do, sugarcoat it.” Julia looked at him sharply. She glanced over at Viktor. His face was unreadable.
“Not to put too fine a point on it, but we’re up against the wall here. What other choice do we have?” asked Marc.
Raoul looked up. “Yeah, but who’s number two?” He gestured with his head at the Earth-Mars chronometer mounted on the wall. A long, tense silence. “Anybody volunteer?”
Around the table Julia saw compressed lips, worried eyes.
Raoul pressed. “This is bigger than us, y’know. Anybody wanna call Earth?”
