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?»
Bernstein pointed to the control panel’s displays. «Batteries damned near died overnight,» he said.
«The solar panels are recharging them,» O’Connor replied.
«They won’t come back a hundred percent,» said Bernstein. «You know that.»
O’Connor bit back the reply he wanted to make. He merely nodded and murmured, «I know.»
Faiyum peered at the display from the laser they had set up outside. «I’ll be damned.»
The other two hunched up closer to him.
«Look at that,» said Faiyum, pointing. «The spectrometer’s showing there actually is methane seeping out of our bore hole.»
«Methanogens?» mused Bernstein.
«Can’t be anything else,» Faiyum said. With a wide smile, he said, «We’ve discovered life on Mars! We could win the Nobel Prize for this!»
«Posthumously,» said Bernstein.
«We’ve got to get this data back to Tithonium,» said O’Connor. «Let the biologists take a look at it.»
«It’s being telemetered to Tithonium automatically,» Bernstein reminded him.
«Yeah, but I want to see what the biologists have to say.»
The biologists were disappointingly cautious. Yes, it was methane gas seeping up from the bore hole. Yes, it very well might be coming from methanogenic bacteria living deep underground. But they needed more conclusive evidence.
«Could you get samples from the bottom of your bore hole?» asked the lead biologist, a Hispanic American from California. In the video screen on the control panel, he looked as if he were trying hard not to get excited.
«We’ve got the ice core,» Faiyum replied immediately. «I’ll bet we’ve got samples of the bugs in the bottom layers.»
«Keep it well protected,» the biologist urged.
«It’s protected,» O’Connor assured him.
«We’ll examine it when you bring it in,» the biologist said, putting on a serious face.
Once the video link was disconnected, Bernstein said morosely, «They’ll be more interested in the damned ice core than in our frozen bodies.»
All day long they watched the spikes of the spectrometer’s flickering display. The gas issuing from their bore hole was mostly methane, and it was coming up continuously, a thin invisible breath issuing from deep below the surface.
«Those bugs are farting away down there,» Faiyum said happily. «Busy little bastards.»
«Sun’s going down,» said Bernstein.
O’Connor checked the batteries’ status. Even with the solar panels recharging them all day, they were barely up to seventy-five percent of their nominal capacity. He did some quick arithmetic in his head. If it takes Tithonium five days to get us, we’ll have frozen to death on the fourth night.
Like Shackleton at the South Pole, he thought. Froze to death, all of ’em.
They made it through the second night, but O’Connor barely slept. He finally dozed off, listening to the soft breeze wafting by outside. When he awoke, every joint in his body ached, and it took nearly an hour for him to stop his uncontrollable trembling.