Part 15 (2/2)

Lauren gave an exaggerated salute and said, 'I claim this world for all the future generations of mankind.'

The flag toppled the instant Jim snapped the picture. Brus.h.i.+ng the red sand from the stars and stripes, Lauren wondered if she had said the wrong thing.

In the corner of the bas.e.m.e.nt that was their kitchen, Jessica helped Lauren fix hot chocolate for the men. Six hours had pa.s.sed since Lauren's excursion, and the sun was two hours below the horizon. Outside the weather was lousy - seventy below - but that was the trouble with showing up during a million-year ice age. Bill was in the control room reporting to Houston on the progress of their mission. Jim and Gary were just up the ladder, in the living area. Gary was reading The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury and trying to defend himself against Friend's emotionless criticism of the repair job he had done on the generator. Jim was studying soil samples. Now he asked if he could have a cup of coffee instead of hot chocolate.

'But Lauren,' he said, from the level above. 'I've been awake a week. The caffeine won't shock my system. Oreos don't taste good without coffee. Plus I hate hot chocolate.'

'NASA wouldn't have given us the coffee,' Gary added, 'if we weren't supposed to drink it.'

'Jim smuggled it aboard,' Lauren called.

'G.o.d wouldn't have given us coffee,' Jim said, 'if it wasn't good for us.'

'What about Oreo cookies?' Lauren asked. 'G.o.d didn't give us Oreo cookies. All that junk is just junk. I won't have you getting sick.'

'It satisfies the soul,' Jim said. 'Man does not live by vitamin complexes and protein powders alone. I can't work without my cup of coffee.'

Lauren looked at Jessica, saying, 'All he eats is sweets. I should never have let him bring those cookies aboard the Hawk. We have strict menus that we're supposed to follow.'

'What about the chocolate in the hot chocolate?' Jessica asked. 'Doesn't it have caffeine in it?'

Lauren lowered her voice. 'It's really carob.'

Jessica laughed. 'My grandpapa used to drink twenty cups of coffee every day. He took it scalding hot, with a tablespoon of sugar. He lived to be ninety-seven.'

'A great and wise man, no doubt,' Jim said.

'You are not helping me,' Lauren complained to Jessica.

Jessica leaned over and whispered in her ear. 'Make Jim his coffee. He'll just sneak down here in the middle of the night and drink it, anyway. Then he won't be able to sleep.'

'I heard cookies dilute the effect of caffeine,' Jim said.

Lauren snorted. 'Now we know what killed the Russians. They landed on Mars and ate all their desserts at once in celebration and died of hypoglycemia.' She opened the lid on Jim's instant coffee jar. She'd had it out anyway. She put one - just one - teaspoon into a cup and added boiling water.

'Make it strong,' Jim called.

Lauren put in another teaspoon.

'I want some, too,' Gary said. 'I hate hot chocolate. It gives me pimples.'

Lauren scowled and tossed Gary's hot chocolate down the disposal chute. While she fixed another cup of coffee, Jessica began to sniff the air like a bloodhound.

'My, that smells good,' Jessica said, and sighed. 'When I was a little girl, my mom used to make a fresh pot of coffee every morning. It would take the chill right out of your bones.'

'Jesus Mars Christ,' Lauren muttered.

Later, they gathered in the living area, each with a cup of strong coffee in hand, including Lauren. She sat next to a porthole, searching the bleak western horizon for signs of Phobos, the larger of Mars's two moons. It was supposed to rise shortly.

Gary had reached over on the couch and poked her in the side with his big toe.

'Don't do that!' she snapped.

He set his book face down on his chest and asked, 'Is it up yet?'

'You should know,' she said.

'What?' Gary asked.

'I haven't seen it,' Lauren said. She turned away from the window and removed the foot Gary had generously dropped in her lap. 'I must be looking in the wrong part of the sky.'

'Watch southwest,' Jim said, bent over a picture of a rock he'd photographed earlier under a microscope. 'Phobos comes up fast.'

'Have you made any discoveries with the samples we collected today, Professor?' Bill asked Jim. Jessica sat beside her husband on the other couch, brus.h.i.+ng her hair.

Jim put an Oreo cookie in his mouth and took a sip of his coffee. 'No discoveries,' he said, chewing. 'Just greater confirmation and refinement of the theories we have been forming about Mars since the Viking series. There was water here once. Not too recently, but not that long ago, either. I'd say between one and two million years ago.'

'Explain,' Bill said.

'The planet's river beds were carved by water,' Jim said. 'Mars may be a volcanic planet, but no lava, no matter how thin and runny, could have cut the ravines we have here. Of course, that's not news. Since the Vikings everybody's figured that Mars possessed surface water at one time. When that time was has always been the question. After studying these rocks and this soil, I feel the effects of erosion on Mars have been severely underestimated. The air here is thin, but we've already recorded winds as high as fifty miles an hour, far higher than we antic.i.p.ated, and plenty high enough to make dust airborne. Do you all see my point? The ravines I studied today are relatively sharp edged. They couldn't have been subject to erosion for too long. That means the water that dug the ravines must have been here as recently as a couple of million years ago. I'd say there was still water here when the human race was getting started.'

'You're saying there were ca.n.a.ls here, then?' Lauren asked, poking fun at him.

Jim smiled. 'If you want to call them that.'

Lauren reminded herself why water could not exist in the liquid phase on Mars. In the thin atmosphere, it would immediately vaporize or freeze. It snowed on Mars, but it never rained.

'But Jim,' Lauren said, 'that means the atmosphere was at least ten times thicker then. What could have blown it away?'

Jim pulled the two halves of another Oreo apart and began to lick the icing. 'I wonder,' he said.

'What if Mars came into conjunction with the Sun?' Bill said. 'When the axis of the planet was tilted at such an angle that both poles were facing the sun at a relatively similar angle. In such a case, the layer of frozen carbon dioxide that covers the ice water at the poles could evaporate. That would cause the atmosphere to undergo a considerable rise in density. Is that not possible, Professor?'

Jim nodded. 'Possible. However, I've always favored intense volcanic activity filling the atmosphere with dust and causing the greenhouse effect, and in turn raising the temperature. No conjunction to the sun would melt the ice water at the poles. Only the carbon dioxide would melt.'

'But those are theories on how the atmosphere could become dense,' Lauren said. 'How did Mars lose its air in the first place?'

Jim shrugged. 'Some cosmic catastrophe perhaps.'

[Message from Houston.]

'What cla.s.sification?' Bill asked.

[Cla.s.s F, Bill.]

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