The Martian Race

by Gregory Benford

  Chen stroked Trailblazer's badly pitted solar panels. “We can also learn much about weathering conditions here.”

  “You'll have plenty of time to do that,” Marc said sardonically.

  Chen blinked, his lips thinning under pressure. “Not so much as you.”

  Julia had worked with Chen enough to read his subtle moods. “You'll spend your time on biology? With only three of you—”

  “No,” Chen said, turning to her. “Though I wish to discuss that in detail with you. I have brought different laboratory apparatus, some specially designed in light of your findings here. Particularly I shall study the fossil cells, and try to find many more.”

  Julia carefully did not give anything away in her face. It was going to be unbearably exacting to talk shop with Chen when she had a greenhouse of the real stuff—and could not breathe a word of it. Aaaargh! “That will help fill in the history of life here.”

  “We spent our first days collecting samples, some short-range drilling,” Gerda said. “Your reports were correct. The labor is difficult in the suits.”

  “Wait'll you get calluses where you never expected them,” Marc said to Claudine. “Those suits are murder.”

  “I would appreciate instruction in avoiding that,” Claudine said, her voice softening.

  “We expect to circumnavigate Gusev Crater in perhaps a week,” Chen said. “We shall be taking drill samples every ten kilometers from the walls.”

  “You've seen my topo maps, right?” Marc said. “Space your holes between mine, we'll get a better sample grid.”

  Viktor was still studying Trailblazer, frowning. “We can map out complementary methods, cooperation, yes.”

  “In our stay here we can expect, in sixty days, only to augment your pioneering—”

  “Sixty?” Viktor demanded quickly.

  “We shall launch at the very end of the return window.”

  “You have a different class of trajectory in mind?” Viktor asked.

  She saw what was coming in Chen's deliberately blank expression, the eyes studying Viktor like a laboratory specimen. “An accelerated one, yes. Faster than your Hohmann orbit.”

  In the long silence that followed she remembered the embarrassed quiet of only a few days before, one of suppressed giggles. Now all seven eyed each other as the words sank in. Flinty anger in Viktor's eyes, Marc's openmouthed astonishment, Raoul's mouth scrunched into a tight arc. A studied, calm gaze from the other women.

  “To beat us back,” Raoul said loudly.

  “You knew it was a race,” Chen said.

  “But the Mars Accords!” Julia blurted. “You can't possibly get the range, the depth of our studies here! We've got hundreds of kilos of—”

  “All invaluable, of course,” Chen said smoothly. “We shall depend enormously upon your reports, to be sure.”

  “What? What?” Marc sputtered. “You—”

  “We shall visit the sites you found most productive,” Gerda said slowly, formally. “Taking parallel samples from nearby will nicely verify your work and provide an interesting set of—”

  “Verify?” Julia's mind spun. “The Mars Accords require a lot of representative samples and a cross section—”

  “We believe we will be able to persuade the Accord Board that we have complied with their essential minimum,” Gerda said mildly.

  They've rehearsed this, Julia thought. She could sense the barely suppressed energy in the room. “Look, damn it, this makes no sense. Trying to run around, snatch up a few things—”

  “Ah,” Gerda pounced. “But we have your thorough work as a guide. In two days we were able to complete a satisfying fraction of the geological—”

  “You're following in our tracks!” Marc shot back.

  “Well, of course,” Gerda said in the slow, pedantic tone that was really starting to get on Julia's nerves. And this cramped room, the seething anger—Gerda raised a finger, as if in a lecture. “There is nothing wrong with science building upon the work of—”

  “This isn't science!” Viktor exploded.

  “It's a goddamned race!” Raoul finished for him.

  Julia said, “And you're trying to sneak in, grab stuff from where we've found it, and scoot back Earthside. Nobody believed you'd try that, because we've done real exploring here, and, and—” She gasped for air, suddenly aware that she had been holding her breath.

  “We shall satisfy the minimum requirements,” Gerda said. “I am sure we all realize that the Mars Accords have been, ah, reinterpreted several times during your stay here, to increase the work you needed to do. That was perhaps a bit greedy of the Accords Board. We intend to hold them to their original statement of work, and contest their decision in court if need be.”

  She's not an engineer, she's a goddamned lawyer, Julia thought giddily.

  “You could not have done this,” Viktor said tightly, “if not for finding the ice under the pingos.”

  Chen had been quiet the last minute, letting Gerda carry the argument forward, obviously by arrangement. Now he said, “That was the break we had for so long hoped. Originally we planned to go to the northern pole and use the snows there. Conditions would have been difficult in the cold. Making the proper scientific studies would have taken much more time. But your discovery of the pingo hills, measuring the depth of the ice—yes, that did it.”

  Marc slammed his fist abruptly into a bulkhead, startling them all. “I cleared the way for you.”

  Chen said, “I wish we could all look at this as scientists.” He smiled benignly.

  It flashed to Julia that Chen was especially enjoying baiting Marc. He's gloating. He still resents Marc for coming back to the Consortium, she realized.

  “Some of us are engineers,” Viktor said ominously. “Pilots.”

  Chen nodded thoughtfully. “We do not take from you the glory of being the first.”

  “Just the first to return,” Julia said sharply.

  “Well, yes,” Chen allowed civilly. “We shall win the Mars Prize. Races usually do go to the swift. Surely this outcome must have occurred to you.”

  24

  JANUARY 24,2018

  THEY DIDN'T STAY FOR LUNCH AFTER ALL.

  The ride back was irksome, and not just because they had to eat their emergency rations.

  After Chen's announcement, there was no choice. Viktor had led them proudly out into the Airbus lock, refusing to sit down to lunch with “our sneak competition.” Julia's stomach was in a knot anyway. She never knew what to do in tricky situations—thank God Viktor was captain. He hadn't hesitated for a minute.

  Rover Boy's emergency kit stocked cereal bars and sugary water, yucky stuff at the best of times, and these were not the best. The one container of real food had been removed to make room while Raoul was moving his machine shop to the ERV.

  They traded dour looks and munched, each so self-involved that nobody except Marc, who was driving, looked out at the midday view. The white dot of Phobos hung on the eastern horizon. Julia rode alongside Marc while the other two sat in the fold-downs behind.

  “Bastards,” Raoul said. “Steal our results …”

  “We broadcast them to the world,” Julia said. “The Consortium made a fortune selling those ride-along virtual reality shows. I guess in a way it served them right.”

  “Only we pay,” said Marc. “Twice.”

  “Yes. Was big pain to make them,” Viktor said.

  “So now Chen can visit each site, know just where to look,” Marc said. “Just great.”

  “We have a hole card, though,” Julia said. “The vent life.”

  “Thank God we kept it secret,” Marc said.

  Raoul brightened. “The Mars Accord panel—right. When we get back, even if we come in second—”

  “Then we spring our surprise—real life-forms,” Julia said eagerly. “We say that to come back with a bunch of rock cores and miss the Marsmat is unacceptable. That Airbus did a smash-and-grab operation, not a scientific exploration at all.�
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  Marc said happily, “Yeah, that's in the formal wording of the Accords; ‘Carry out a thorough scientific exploration of a landing site of relevance to important issues, especially the past or present existence of life there.’ Airbus sure isn't gonna do that.”

  Julia smiled. “You memorized it.”

  “Thirty billion riding on that wording,” Marc said. “You bet your ass I did.”

  Viktor nodded soberly. “Good argument. No lawyers here, however. We do not know how will play to the Accords Board.”

  “I'm betting they'll buy it,” Marc said.

  Viktor said, “I like to think so.”

  Raoul said, “We have to keep it secret, though. Not give Airbus a chance to find the vent and go down it.”

  Julia said, “Absolutely.” At Viktor's surprised look she added, “And I wouldn't have said that until about an hour ago.”

  “That'll fix the bastards,” said Raoul gleefully.

  Viktor said bitterly, “They melt pingo ice while they collect samples at our already explored sites.”

  Raoul said, “The nuke gives them all the energy they need to drill the ice, heat it up, drive pumps.”

  “Nice touch, to deliver to us the repair kit,” said Julia.

  “Why not?” growled Marc. “We found their fuel for them. And I thought I was so damned smart, getting into the pingos.”

  “Or another idea …” Raoul stared into space.

  “Where else is fuel?” Viktor asked.

  “Suppose they bet we would fail. The ERV wouldn't fly. Then they could use the ERV's methane,” Raoul said bitterly.

  “Very neat,” Julia said ruefully. “They had backup strategies, and one of them paid off.”

  “Only if they can get back first,” Raoul said vehemently.

  Silence. Then, “Can we beat them?” he asked Viktor.

  “Possible. We think so much in terms of Hohmann orbits, I must check with Earthside to judge non-Hohmann.”

  “There are a lot of choices of liftoff dates, plus added delta vee needed?” Raoul asked. “I remember some 3-D plot.”

  “Infinity of choices,” Viktor said. “Maybe double infinity, I am not mathematician.”

  “They have to load a lot of melted ice,” Raoul said. “Can't get that done and do much sample collecting.”

  Marc said, “They had half a year to sit in their little can and think how to do it.”

  “Will be great opportunity for gamble,” Viktor said. “Old technology of chemical rocket, race against new nuke.”

  “Chemical rockets are tried and true,” Raoul said. “They're more reliable.”

  “But in long run,” Viktor said mildly, “nukes are the way to explore and develop the solar system. Mine asteroids, move things.”

  Raoul frowned. “Yeah, I guess. But the old tech had better come out ahead, this one last time.”

  They all nodded and munched their bars.

  As Zubrin Base came into sight, they struggled into their helmets and gloves and prepared to disembark. Marc dropped Viktor and Raoul by the dune buggy, and with Julia continued around to the hab's airlock.

  Viktor and Raoul took off for the ERV in a cloud of dust, the rusty fines falling with a leisurely reluctance.

  To Marc fell the prickly task of informing Axelrod about Airbus's plans. “Although he won't be surprised,” Marc predicted.

  As he packed up his geology cores for transfer to the ERV, he would be on open comm with Julia. This informal kind of backup was a system they had worked out over the long months when any two of them were working close by.

  “Okay, I'm off for Frankenstein's greenhouse,” she said as she prepared to leave the hab in skinsuited garb.

  As she entered her inflatable castle, Julia was surprised to see the clarity of the greenhouse walls obscured by a light coating of condensation. Puzzled, she walked the length of the greenhouse to check the controls. The heaters were set on high. Of course! She popped her helmet and felt warm air. She'd been keeping the heaters on high so she could work without getting cold. Guess I forgot to turn them down when I left yesterday. Good thing we're not paying any electric bills. Still, I'd better remember today. She gratefully removed her parka and outer gloves and left them and her helmet on the greenhouse bench next to the controls. That way, I'll have to come back to retrieve them and I'll remember to reset the controls.

  She drew in a warm, foggy breath. Life! The only human-friendly biosystem within a hundred million miles. Until they had ventured to dear, dry Mars, nobody had felt, month after month, how barren the rest of Creation was. In this little space, cupped against the soil, was a tiny human garden. Its moist promise reminded her of the vent descent.

  She walked back over to the mist chamber. It was hard to see inside due to the condensation, but there seemed to be a mass of Marsmat against the greenhouse wall. Interesting. It's growing toward the light, like a damn plant. Only even thinking of it as a plant is wrong; it's alien. Oh, well, I'll check it later. Gads. There's so much to do here all of a sudden.

  In her head a list of studies was assembling. Now that the vent life was reproducing, she'd need more microscopic work to determine how it divided. If it had some type of chromosomes or was truly prokaryotic. And a whole bunch of interesting stuff about what environmental clues it responded to …

  Her mind was whirling happily. There was enough work here for years, not weeks! She sighed. If they lifted off quickly in order to beat Airbus back, she'd have to figure out how to keep her precious specimens alive for over half a year. But that was for later.

  Today she was going to find out whether the vent harbored a distant cousin, or an alien.

  She looked over her library of genes. They represented a wide spectrum of organisms, the soup to nuts of Earth life.

  It was reasonable to expect that Mars life would most closely resemble Earth's primitive anaerobes, the archaebacteria, for a couple of reasons. If Earth and Mars had exchanged life early on, there would have been something like these organisms on both planets. Both worlds had an early CO2-rich atmosphere, after all.

  On Earth, wildly successful photosynthetic bacteria—once called blue-green algae—sucked up the CO2 and produced oxygen as a waste product. So abundantly, in fact, that they altered the planetary atmosphere. After about two billion years, Earth's atmosphere contained only a tiny amount of CO2, and about 20 percent oxygen. Soon afterward, multicellular life arose to take advantage of the energetic oxygen. The anaerobes retreated underground, where they remained still.

  That revolution probably never happened on Mars. The atmosphere had bled away before the great blooming of the photosynthesizers. As the air thinned and the temperature dropped, the surface water froze, then sublimed away.

  And life? Well, it went underground—and here it was, growing not a meter away.

  Many people thought they knew life had never had a chance on Mars. Dead wrong! So what had been the real history of Mars life? And could she figure it out in three weeks? Or less?

  Might as well go for it.

  She picked three arrays of genes from different kinds of archaebacteria, at random, and set them up for testing against the solution of prepared Marsmat DNA.

  She worked methodically, compensating for the inherent clumsiness of the glove box by being slow and careful. She remembered a poster in the office of one of her more obnoxious faculty advisors. Under a large picture of a rhino were the words “I may be slow, but I'm always right.”

  No one would argue with a charging rhino, but they would with her. She had to be very careful.

  At last she completed the protocols and inserted the first incubated gene array into the little electronic reader that was hooked up to her slate.

  The image of the gene array appeared. As she watched, the biological bingo board started to light up with a few fluorescent hits. Aha, gotcha. One part of the board in particular was live. When the reader was finished, she saved the results, popped the sample out, and put in the second one. This
bingo pattern was similar: a few hits here and there, and a concentration in one area. Finally, the third sample was being read. She concentrated on where the hits were. Lessee, somewhere in this program is the list of what genes are where in this field …

  Forty percent of archaebacterial genes did not match any other Earth life genes. Were they too primitive, or what?

  No one really knew. They were included in the arrays, however.

  Through her intense concentration she felt something odd. What … ?

  It was a slight breeze rippling her hair. This had just registered when her ears popped.

  Pressure drop? The lock seal failing?

  “Oh no—I'm busy!”

  Her training kicked in. She nudged her comm connection in the collar of her skinsuit. “Marc, I've got a pressure drop out here.” Always report trouble, even if you don't understand it.

  He responded immediately. “Keep talking.”

  She pulled her hands out of the thin inner glove linings, looking around. The heat and humidity had painted the walls thick with beaded moisture. “The lock looks okay, but … “ You couldn't tell if a seal was failing without—

  The breeze increased. Not toward the lock. Blowing down and to her right.

  She knelt and peered around. The footing of the glove box was firmly attached to the low greenhouse bench and she could see nothing beyond. The damp was pleasantly warm but obscured her view. She edged around the hard plastic of the box. With her right hand she wiped moisture off the side, peering inside.

  Was that a thin whistling? “Might have a micro-meteorite puncture. Trying to find—”

  She froze. Something was standing straight up from the soil in the chamber. Pale, like celery in its sinewy rippling. It curved partway up, toward the side of the box. She looked toward the seal between box and greenhouse wall. A thin fog hung in the air there.

  “Looks like one of my samples has grown like crazy. The Mars life, it's wedged itself into the comer where the box—”

  The whistling suddenly rose to a shriek.

  Startled, she rocked back on her heels. The wind whirled by her head. Toward the wall. Her ears popped again.