“That’s the best we can do, Pat,” the mission commander said, her tone as hard as concrete. “You’ll have to make ends meet until then.”

“Our batteries will crap out on us, Gloria. You know that.”

“Conserve power. Your solar panels are okay, aren’t they?”

Nodding, O’Connor replied, “They weren’t touched, thank God.”

“So recharge your batteries by day and use minimum power at night. We’ll come and get you as soon as we possibly can.”

“Right.” O’Connor clicked off the radio connection.

“They’ll come and pick up our frozen bodies,” Bernstein grumbled.

Faiyum looked just as disappointed as Bernstein, but he put on a lopsided grin and said, “At least our bodies will be well preserved.”

“Frozen solid,” O’Connor agreed.

The three men stood there, out in the open, encased in their pressure suits and helmets, while the drill’s motor buzzed away as if nothing was wrong. In the thin Martian atmosphere, the drill’s drone was strangely high pitched: more of a whine than a hum.

Finally, Bernstein said, “Well, we might as well finish the job we came out here to do.”

“Yeah,” said Faiyum, without the slightest trace of enthusiasm.

The strangely small sun was nearing the horizon by the time they had stored all the segments of the ice core in the insulated racks on the hopper’s side.

“A record of nearly three billion years of Martian history,” said Bernstein, almost proudly.

“Only one and a half billion years,” Faiyum corrected. “The Martian year is twice as long as Earth years.”

“Six hundred eighty-seven Earth days,” Bernstein said. “That’s not quite twice a terrestrial year.”

“So sue me,” Faiyum countered, as he pulled an equipment kit from the hopper’s storage bay.

“What’re you doing?” O’Connor asked.

“Setting up the laser spectrometer,” Faiyum replied. “You know, the experiment the biologists want us to do.”

“Looking for bug farts,” Bernstein said.

“Yeah. Just because we’re going to freeze to death is no reason to stop working.”

O’Connor grunted. Rashid is right, he thought. Go through the motions. Stay busy.

With Bernstein’s obviously reluctant help, Faiyum set up the laser and trained it at the opening of their bore hole. Then they checked out the Rayleigh scattering receiver and plugged it into the radio that would automatically transmit its results back to Tithonium. The radio had its own battery to supply the microwatts of power it required.

“That ought to make the biologists happy,” Bernstein said, once they were finished.

“Better get back inside,” O’Connor said, looking toward the horizon where the sun was setting.

“It’s going to be a long night,” Bernstein muttered.

“Yeah.”

Once they were sealed into the cockpit and had removed their helmets, Faiyum said, “A biologist, a geologist, and Glory Hallelujah were locked in a hotel room in Bangkok.”

Bernstein moaned. O’Connor said, “You know that everything we say is being recorded for the mission log.”

Faiyum said, “Hell, we’re going to be dead by the time they get to us. What difference does it make?”

“No disrespect for the mission commander.”

Faiyum shrugged. “Okay. How about this one: a physicist, a mathematician, and a lawyer are each asked, ‘How much is two and two?’”

“I heard this one,” Bernstein said.

Without paying his teammate the slightest attention, Faiyum plowed ahead. “The mathematician says, ‘Two and two are four. Always four. Four point zero.’ The physicist thinks a minute and says, ‘It’s somewhere between three point eight and four point two.’”

O’Connor smiled. Yes, a physicist probably would put it that way, he thought.

“So what does the lawyer answer?”

With a big grin, Faiyum replied, “The lawyer says, ‘How much is two and two? How much do you want it to be?’”

Bernstein groaned, but O’Connor laughed. “Lawyers,” he said.

“We could use a lawyer here,” Bernstein said. “Sue the bastards.”

“Which bastards?”

Bernstein shrugged elaborately. “All of them,” he finally said.

The night was long. And dark. And cold. O’Connor set the cockpit’s thermostat to barely above freezing, and ordered the two geologists to switch off their suit heaters.

“We’ve got to preserve every watt of electrical power we can. Stretch out the battery life as much as possible,” he said firmly.

The two geologists nodded glumly.

“Better put our helmets back on,” said Bernstein.

Faiyum nodded. “Better piss now, before it gets frozen.”

The suits were well insulated, O’Connor knew. They’ll hold our body heat better than blankets, he told himself. He remembered camping in New England, when he’d been a kid. Got pretty cold there. Then a mocking voice in his mind answered, But not a hundred below.

They made it through the first night and woke up stiff and shuddering and miserable. The sun was up, as usual, and the solar panels were feeding electrical power to the cockpit’s heaters.

“That wasn’t too bad,” O’Connor said, as they munched on ration bars for breakfast.

Faiyum made a face. “Other than that, how did you like the play, Mrs. Lincoln?”