it himself.
“The way I see it,” he was saying, “a slab of rock down below gave way under stress, and allowed an underground cache of ice to come into contact with a heat source. Maybe radioactivity—could be it even released a pocket of magma. The ice flashed into steam—et voilà!”
As usual, not everyone agreed, and the discussion became heated, turned into an argument that continued on through the afternoon. The most exciting aspect of the discovery of this heat source, and underground water, was the possibility of life—their main reason for being on Mars, after all. So far only microscopic worm-like fossils, similar to those found on the meteorite on Earth, had been discovered, and these were certainly not the sort of conclusive evidence they’d been hoping for.
What was needed was proof of indigenous Martian life, preferably still alive! As Viking had discovered, the surface of Mars, its regolith, had been thoroughly sterilized by the presence of peroxides. But the discovery, also in the late 1970s, that weird forms of life thrive in the absence of sunlight and oxygen around sulfurous undersea volcanic vents called black smokers had expanded the parameters considerably. Life exists in rocks a kilometer under Earth’s surface, and can lie dormant for up to 40,000 years until water arrives to reactivate it. Indeed, Earth has a greater amount of biomass beneath than on the surface. So hope was still high that some form of life would be found on or beneath Mars.
Naturally, Aurora played a full part in the debate, and did no more sketching that day.
As the Sun sank, the crew-members piled into the cylindrical rover and drove back towards their base.
The going was tricky, especially in the low sunlight, which cast long, slanting violet–black shadows. The slightest depression looked like a deep crater. Hayashi Minako switched on the powerful headlight as she edged her way cautiously along a ledge formed by a lava tube, her rather pudgy face, framed by dark hair, intent as she concentrated on driving, peering through the Plexiglas bubble of the cabin.
Suddenly, with no warning apart from a crunching sound heard through the chassis of the vehicle, the roof of the tube beneath them collapsed. The rover teetered along for a few meters at an alarming angle, then rolled over completely. It clanged against scattered boulders, overturned again and came to rest on its side in soft dust.
The crew picked themselves up.
“Is everyone OK?” asked Verdet.
There were cries of “I think so” and “Just bruises, I guess.”
Then they became aware of the fact that Aurora lay deathly pale. The right sleeve of her spacesuit had been ripped open on a buckled and jagged piece of bulkhead. Blood gushed from her shoulder, and white bone protruded. Someone grabbed the First Aid box, and before long was applying a tourniquet and pad. Fortunately, the cab of the rover was pressurized, and, although badly dented, its outer skin did not seem to have been fractured.
With difficulty, they winched the rover upright, and in a purple twilight the vehicle limped back to base.
* * * *
At first it seemed that Aurora was back in that strange yet familiar dream she had known before. It had reappeared several times since her brief yet spectacular sortie into the world of rock music—nearly always when she was for some reason at best semiconscious. She had come to call the experiences her “flashes”. But this time the white-gowned figures stood around looking down at her gravely. There was no music or gaiety. Behind them, the slopes of the volcano (could it be Olympus Mons? No, surely it was too small—and it was clad in green for more than two-thirds of its height) were wreathed in clouds. Suddenly the view was blotted out. Brilliant violet–white light flared, too painful to look at. She tried to cover her eyes, but her arm would not move....
* * * *
She screamed, and opened her eyes to see the tiny sick bay, partitioned off from the rest of the Hut. Robert Lundquist, the mission’s only qualified physician, leaned over and pushed her back into her pillow.
Much later, he gave his patient the news. “Anne, my dear, I don’t know how else to break this to you. If we were back on Earth a surgeon might just be able to help you. But there was nothing else I could do. Your arm was severed at the shoulder. I—I’ve had to amputate it. I am so, so sorry.”
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