Mars Life by Ben Bova Read Free Book Online Page B

thought, I might not have Mars much longer. They’re going to take that away from me, too.

TITHONIUM BASE: THE FOSSIL

    Nearly everyone in the base crowded around the big stereo table. Ordinarily used to show three-dimensional views of Martian terrain, now it was a blank, unlit white—with the palm-sized fossil vertebra resting in front of Carter Carleton. It was light gray, the color of ashes; bits of dirt still clung to it here and there.
    Carleton surveyed their eager faces as they pressed close, felt the heat of their bodies, the scent of their excitement. Directly across the table from him stood Chang Laodong, the mission director, bald and dour in his dumpy-looking blue coveralls with their mandarin collar, looking, as usual, as if he’d been sucking on a lemon.
    Trying to suppress the supreme delight of this moment, Carleton spread his hands and, smiling, said, “Well, it’s a vertebra. No doubt of it.”
    Chang forced a pale smile. “We must obtain verification of your identification from qualified paleontologists.”
    Nodding, Carleton replied, “I’ve already sent stereo images of the fossil to half a dozen of the top universities.”
    “And to program headquarters in New Mexico?”
    “Of course,” Carleton replied. In his excitement he hadn’t initially thought about Waterman, back in Albuquerque, but then Doreen had reminded him of the mission protocol.
    Chang stared hard at the fossil, as if he could force it to give information by sheer willpower.
    “It certainly looks like a vertebra,” said Kalman Torok, running a hand through his thick mop of hair. “See the ridges?”
    “And the central cavity where the spinal cord runs through,” added one of the other biologists.
    “What kind of an animal is it from?” someone asked.
    “Who the hell knows? This is all brand-new territory!”
    “From what I know of physiology,” Carleton said slowly, deliberately working to keep his voice calm, “this looks like it came from a quadruped. Bipedal vertebrae don’t have such thick walls.”
    “Then it’s not from a Martian. One of the intelligent species, I mean.”
    “How do you know?”
    “If it’s not bipedal — “
    “Intelligent species don’t have to be bipedal.”





WASHINGTON, D.C.: REFLECTING POOL

    Jamie, you can’t just barge into the Oval Office,” said Francisco Delgado, the president’s science advisor. “Hell, I haven’t seen her myself in three weeks.”
    Delgado was a compactly built man with the physique of a former athlete who had gone soft. His brown-skinned face was starting to show jowls, although his hair was still dark and thick, as was his heavy brush of a moustache. He wore a dark gray business suit with a lighter gray sweater beneath its jacket. Jamie had known him since Delgado had been a biology professor from the University of California at Santa Cruz, and a consultant to the crew selection committee for the Second Mars Expedition.
    Dressed in stiffly new jeans and a pullover under an old, thin blue windbreaker, Jamie was walking with the science advisor along the Reflecting Pool between the phallic spire of the Washington Monument and the Athenian harmony of the Lincoln Memorial. When Jamie had phoned from Boston to ask to see him, Delgado had suggested a breakfast meeting. Jamie was surprised that breakfast turned out to be a sweet bun and a plastic cup of coffee purchased from a street vendor.
    It was a chilly morning, gray, with a hint of rain in the humid air. Only a few tourists were meandering by this early in the day, many of them pushing baby carriages, looking cold and unhappy with the weather.
    Delgado walked briskly, paper-wrapped bun in one hand, coffee cup in the other. Jamie kept pace with him and within a few minutes he no longer felt chilled: in fact, Jamie wished he had a hand free to unzip his windbreaker.
    “I need to talk to her,” he said. “This new discovery changes everything.”
    The science advisor shook his head as he munched