The video slowed to normal speed and the faint, tinny grind of the laboring drill came through. “Right about here we were in about thirty meters, going pretty slow through some resistant stuff, salts maybe, then all of a sudden the drill started to cut real fast. Right…there. Raoul is monitoring the depth and he shouts to me that it’s speeded up. I stopped it then so we wouldn’t lose the tip. Now we’re pulling it out, and you can see that the drill tip is smoking.”
The camera came in for a close-up.
“Uh-oh,” said Julia, automatically sympathetic.
“That’s what it looked like, anyway, but it wasn’t hot, wasn’t even warm.” He smiled, looking at Julia and Viktor slyly.
“So how could it be smok—oh, wait, it was water vapor!” shouted Julia. “You found water!”
Marc grinned. “Yep. The drill tip was really wet, and making cloud like mad.” Mars was so cold and dry that water on the surface never passed through a liquid stage, but sublimed directly from frozen to vapor. The team had concentrated their efforts to drill for water in places where early morning fogs hinted at subsurface moisture.
On the screen the two suited figures were jumping about.
“So are pingos after all.”
“Sure seems that way.” Suddenly, Julia could see how pleased Marc was. She hadn’t noticed much until now, so preoccupied was she with Viktor’s accident and the vent.
“How far in did you go?” asked Viktor.
Marc turned off the video. “Just under ten meters. We went back in to confirm, of course. Got one hell of an ice core.” He grinned again.
“What does Earth think?”
“I hope they’re thinking: one more step towards a colony,” said Julia.
“Well, they asked for all the particulars we could squirt ’em, that’s for sure.”
She was suddenly enthusiastic. “This is great news! Fresh water on our doorstep, practically.” She had a sudden thought.
“It is fresh water, isn’t it?”
“Yep. I used it in the soup.”
“What? Native water? Did you run it through the mass spec first? It could be full of toxic metals.”
He laughed. “Relax. Just kidding. I left the analysis for you to do. And a chunk of ice.”
“Wow. It’s like suddenly discovering you live next to a lake.”
“More like frozen lake.”
“A frozen bumpy lake.”
“Typical Mars.” This last from Raoul, who appeared from the galley with mugs of hot chocolate. “On Earth, you’d look for water in the low spots, stream channels. Here, it’s backwards—water is in the hilly hummocks. An upside-down world.”
His sardonic wit could sometimes cut through Julia’s high moods, but not tonight. She was irrepressibly cheered by the discovery.
“A toast to the first lake on Mars,” she said, “and to the discoverers.”
They clicked mugs and drank.
“Can tell why Julia is so happy: she thinks we’re going to build hot tub in the greenhouse.”
“Now that’s an idea. But first, what does Earth think?”
“Well, they’d prefer more cores to make sure all the hills are pingos. First indications are, though, that this is probably good enough.”
“Good enough for the government, as they say,” said Raoul with uncharacteristic levity. Raoul was the top mechanic on the team, and ritually cynical about governments. He even disliked the fact that NASA had separately contracted with the Consortium to supply some geological data.
“Too bad we’re not working for the government, eh?” shot back Marc.
Julia looked over at him, surprised. The brief exchange left much unsaid, but all understood the shorthand. Tensions were definitely building as the launch date approached. No one wanted to be the cause of a delayed return. The search for subsurface water had gone slowly, disappointing some of the mission backers, raising the specter that the team would be asked to stay longer to complete the mapping.
They didn’t seem in a mood to discuss her going back to the vent. Time was pressing, and the next item was the engine test. She had better wait before bringing it up at all.
She knew through the years of working with these guys that timing was everything in prying up the lid of the male mind. She had learned that in the toughest of schools: NASA, and beyond.
After Katherine dropped out, there had been strong pressure to have an all-male crew. Many within NASA hadn’t wanted a woman along at all. Adding one had inevitably made for tensions, but on the other hand, it also gave half the possible Earth audience somebody to identify with. And the Consortium could be subtle.
Even on Mars, the undeclared war between the sexes continued. As the sole woman on the mission, she had been the target of special psychological counseling during the final months before the launch. Her marriage to Viktor clarified what NASA delicately termed IRA, for Interpersonal Relationship Activities. Instead, they concentrated on how she could tell one of the “guys” that he was wrong without getting into a pissing contest. Someone was worried that she would bruise fragile male egos if she found fault with her crewmates.
She needed to be positive, supportive, but indirect, they said. No criticism of her crewmates. And they had her read old studies of the relationships between airline pilots and co-pilots. “Co-pilots on commercial aircraft use indirect hints to correct pilots who are making mistakes, even though these mistakes can be a matter of life and death,” read one of the learned studies she’d been given. Hollywood screenwriters got it wrong again, had been her first reaction. All those airplane terror movies, and the cockpit scenes fraught with punchy dialogue, hadn’t happened.
“Captains give more than twice as many commands as first officers, reinforcing the arrogance of rank. Airline accident reports, however, show that first officers often must correct captains’ mistakes,” she’d read.
She’d tried to imagine how this scenario would work on Mars. What if she had to tell someone he’d left the airlock open without seeming to be critical? No shouting, “Close the @#$%! airlock door or we’ll all die!” Instead she was supposed to say, “May I borrow your scarf? There’s a breeze somewhere.” And then fall to the floor gasping for breath. What about something slightly more direct, like, “Oh, did you think it was getting a bit stuffy in here?”
She’d started to chuckle to herself. Okay, Instead of “Your helmet isn’t buckled down right,” she could say, “What a novel way you’ve arranged your helmet. It’s so much more interesting like that.” Or, to Viktor, “I love you, but you’re about to drive this rover off a cliff.” By then she had been convulsed with laughter.
