Walking in the corridor, Hassan was checking on his folio the acknowledgement of receipt by Houston of his medical reports and of those concerning the sorties. The message icon was blinking on the top of the display. The excessive communication delay between Mars and Earth didn’t allow the crew members to navigate on the global terrestrial internet in real time, but they could perform deferred activities, like sending or receiving private messages. Letting his finger slip on the thin device’s screen, he started browsing his emails, until he found one from his brother. A stab of nostalgia grasped his heart as he remembered the family he would never see again.
In that moment, he heard cheerful chatter coming from the kitchen. Anna’s voice stood out over the others. A joke, a laugh. Hassan turned his attention to the origin of the sounds, foretasting the upcoming challenge, then he folded his folio and put it in his pocket. His brother could wait, for now.
“Here you are!” Dennis welcomed him energetically. “We were getting worried. You’re usually the first one to wake up.” There was something out of place in the commander, but he couldn’t focus on it because his gaze was drawn elsewhere.
“Do you like it this way?” Robert said, standing behind Anna’s chair and massaging her shoulders.
“Oh, yeah, I do,” she replied, voluptuous, closing her eyes in approval. “You’re fantastic.”
Hassan tensed up. He could feel the blood pulsing in his head. He placed a hand on his temple. The game had started over again, but with different rules.
“Today you stay, Dennis will accompany me.” He didn’t understand right away that Michelle was talking to him, until he concentrated his attention upon her.
“What?” So that was out of place: Dennis was wearing the clothing for a sortie.
“I wanna be there, when we reach the sac, so I can report immediately to Houston,” the commander said with a wide smile on his face. “It could be the solution to all our problems.”
Finally Hassan realised the meaning of those words. “Are you sure?” he asked, uncertain, meeting Michelle’s darkened gaze. She stepped back and slightly shook her head, rolling her eyes and twirling a lock of hair with her right index finger.
That behaviour wouldn’t have escaped Anna. He could sense her irritated look on him.
“We can keep in contact all the time, there’s no need for you to go in person.” He was insisting a bit too much, but he didn’t care right now.
With an abrupt gesture, Anna pushed away her plate. The fork tinkling resounded in the room, breaking the embarrassing silence, followed by the tapping of her hasty steps as she left.
“I’m perfectly able to manage this sortie,” Dennis replied, annoyed. “And anyway, until proven otherwise, I’m the one in charge here. Consider it an order.”
“Okay.” Hassan raised both his hands in resignation. “You are the boss.”
“The west Aeolian turbine has suffered a huge drop in performance compared to the east one.” Dennis was addressing Robert. “Take advantage of Hassan’s availability to go out together and see what’s wrong.”
Robert snapped on his feet, saluting. “Yes, Sir,” he exclaimed, then he burst into coarse laughter.
What had she done?! Stupid, stupid, stupid.
The laboratory door slammed, Anna leant against it. She nervously dried a tear with her palm.
The previous night, after seeing Michelle and Hassan together, she allowed her pride to lead her actions. She hadn’t reasoned. She had wanted to take control of the situation, flattering herself that she could change things. And now, she had been humiliated.
After all, she deserved that. She had always known that that man was venom. So many times her mother had told her to stay away from those like him. They make you feel so marvellously wrong that it seems right, for a few brief moments. Then they use you, they frighten you, and they throw you away. You are just a woman. She hated him, was afraid of him, deplored each gesture of his, each word from him, and yet she couldn’t help but think about him.
‘What’s wrong with me?’
Seated on the floor, with her shoulders against the door, she looked for an answer, as she watched the long morning light piercing through the glass wall and reaching her feet. A single brilliant surface, so even, except for an irregularity, precisely over there under the microscope counter. In the greenhouse, on the other side of the glass, the foliage of a plant, shaken by the air from the life support fans, made the sun rays ripple, revealing a thousand tiny, blue reflections.
She tilted her head to one side, intrigued, and then, forgetting all else, crawled toward the origin of such wonder.
A light layer of red dust was covering the floor, inside it was a large azure stain, round and damp. It had to be the remains of the sample dropped by Robert. It had ended up in a hidden place, and been missed by the small vacuum cleaner. As she took a close look at it, she noticed other smaller stains scattered around the big one, some partly merging, all damp. The azure crystals, which had been evenly dispersed in the sand the day before, were now all gathered in the stains, giving them the same colouring.
An intuition made its way into her thoughts; an incredulous smile escaped her. Then she stood up.
Step by step he drew himself level with the roof end facing westward, near the towering shaft that supported the Aeolian turbine. Usually such a manoeuvre would’ve taken a few minutes, but today the wind was quite strong and it made his progress on the ladder slow and uncertain.
The roof had a convex shape, to prevent the accumulation of dust on its surface, but a long footbridge ran along its top. It connected the anchoring points of the two shafts on the external wall of the station and allowed a person to walk from one to the other without difficulty.
Once his head reached it, Robert grabbed the waiting hand. Hassan helped him to climb and fastened his safety rope to the handrail.
Above him, the gigantic blades of the turbines were moving, slow and constant, propelled by the thin Martian air. Such a wind on Earth would’ve made them work at maximum speed, but Mars’s atmosphere was much more rarefied, and therefore produced less electricity. Actually, it was an experimental system, which only contributed a small amount of power to Station Alpha, mainly supplied by the photovoltaic panels dispersed on the building and on the area around it. Its purpose was mostly to evaluate the possible benefits of using such technology when compared to the efforts for its maintenance.
“They appear to be moving at the same speed,” Hassan commented.
Robert was consulting the readings related to both systems on the augmented reality. The west turbine was producing 30% less energy. There had to be a dispersion somewhere, which caused a voltage drop.
“I’m going to check the connection panel, maybe some terminal got loosened or this damned microscopic dust has managed to get through, causing an increase in the resistance.” Even before waiting for a reply from his colleague, Robert headed towards the turbine, letting his snap-link run along the safety handrail.
“Okay, meanwhile I’ll have a look at the other one.”
Pushed by the wind, Robert reached the turbine shaft. Luckily, the gusts didn’t carry more dust. Perhaps they would turn out to be useful in facilitating the cleaning of the contacts. He took a power screwdriver from a pocket and removed the manual closing device, making sure to put aside each screw. Under that was another panel which, when under power, sealed the inside of the box hermetically. He noticed right away it didn’t appear to adhere to the edges, which showed some reddish lines due to the dust settled into the gap.
“I knew that …” he told himself. “The dude who designed that stuff was really a genius.”
He deactivated the hermetic seal, which, as was evident, had long since stopped working properly, and inserted the screwdriver tip into the gap to use it as a lever.
All of a sudden his brain was flooded with a loud, high-pitched sound. By instinct, he drew back and dropped the screwdriver, which tumbled down the roof. He placed his hand on his helmet, as if he could cover his ears. He was feeling as if his head was about to explode and he started screaming, but that sound was so loud that he couldn’t hear his own voice. An unexpected gust of wind pushed him from behind, making him lose his balance. In an instant, his feet slipped on the footbridge and he found himself falling along the curve of the roof, until he stopped abruptly, held by the safety rope.
“Hassan!” he shouted into his helmet microphone.
The sound had ceased and it was replaced by a distant buzz. He thought he could make out a voice, but he wasn’t sure. His own breath rumbled inside his head and everything sounded muffled. His arms and his torso were stretched out on the roof, while his legs dangled down the wall, shaking panicked, in a useless attempt to find a foothold.
“Hassan, can you hear me?”
He played around with the controller on the left wrist of his suit to extend his transmission to the emergency channel of the station.
“Anna, are you hearing me?”
No reply.
Robert forced himself to calm down and glanced at the ground. Just three metres separated him from it, a little less than ten feet. A dangerous fall on Earth, but not that much on a planet with a little more than one third of its gravity. He could unhook from the rope and let himself slip downwards.
He wasn’t even able to finish formulating that thought when he felt himself fall again. He seized the ledge with his hands while the safety rope, dragged by the unhooked snap-link, fell past him to swing in the air as it hung from his suit.
“Pressure leak inside suit, return immediately to the station.” The voice of the helmet unit resounded in his ears.
There wasn’t much time left. He had to jump and hope for the best.
While he attempted to position his legs to cushion his fall, he noticed he couldn’t move the left one very well. It seemed stuck. With some difficulty, he tried and looked down. A hem of his suit had slipped deep into a gap between two adjacent panels that insulated the wall against radiations. Perhaps while sliding against a sharpened edge, a microscopic cut had been created. From the values he could read on the augmented reality, the pressure drop was minimal and the life support was able to compensate. But, actually, the situation prevented him from jumping. If he tried it, at best he would get trapped mid air with his suit stuck in the gap. At worst, it would tear completely.
Robert was assailed by a sudden terror.
“Christ, Hassan, where the fuck are you?!”
How could the snap-link have unhooked? Hassan had secured it. Why wasn’t he coming to help him? Was it possible he didn’t realise that something was happening? Was he really unable to hear him?
His heart was beating like crazy. An emergency icon was blinking insistently in the helmet’s augmented reality, warning that he was in a condition of extreme cardiovascular stress. His right hand fingers hurt, while he could barely feel those on the left one. It was almost impossible to hold on with those clumsy gloves. He sensed himself slipping down. Sweat was dripping on his brow, blurring his sight.
Then he lost his grip.
But at the very last moment he felt his arm being grabbed.
“Pressure equalised,” the inexpressive voice of the AI enunciated inside the airlock.
His hands still trembling, Robert tried to unfasten the safety lock of his helmet, but his fingers kept on slipping on the mechanism. Hassan, who had already removed his own, reached out towards him.
“Don’t you fucking touch me!” Robert said, pushing him away.
“Hey, calm down. I just want to help you.”
“You’ve already done enough for today.” His voice was broken by adrenaline, which still flowed in his body. Finally, a click was heard and the helmet’s base detached from its seat.
“You are in shock. Sit down for a moment and breathe.”
“Where the fuck have you gotten to?!”
Hassan looked at him, puzzled.
“I’ve been calling you for at least five minutes!” Robert continued. Now he was trying to take off the remainder of his suit, but he didn’t appear to be making any progress.
“I didn’t hear you. Are you sure you haven’t turned off your transceiver?”
As he heard the calmness of the other man’s voice, Robert lost his temper and lunged at him, grabbing his neck. “Fuck you, you tried to kill me!”
But Hassan didn’t seem at all perturbed by the accusation. His gaze expressed a composure barely tinged by annoyance.
“Rob, get your hands off me.” He articulated those words one by one. “I have no intention of hurting you, now. But if you don’t back off, I will be forced to.”
Robert stared straight at his eyes for some moments. Hassan was bigger and stronger than he was. With a tug, he pushed his colleague against the wall and took a step back.
“You unhooked my safety rope.” It wasn’t a question, but a statement.
“I beg your pardon?” There was an air of superiority in Hassan’s tone. How it got on Robert’s nerves when he used it.
“Don’t pretend you don’t understand!”
“I was twenty metres away.”
“No.” Robert shook his head. That wasn’t what he meant. He felt confused. “I mean … you didn’t fasten it as you should have on purpose.”
Hassan let a chuckle escape. “You’re out of your mind. I bet you smoked a joint before breakfast … or worse. Lately I’ve noticed some inconsistencies in the medicine inventory …” He stopped abruptly and tilted his head. “What’s on your neck?” And he tried to get closer to him. “It looks like a big bruise.”
Robert instinctively touched the spot pointed by the other guy and, as he did so, it hurt a bit. But he didn’t want to offer him an opportunity to change the subject.
“It’s very strange. Let me have a look at it.”
“I said don’t touch me!” His voice exited his throat with a higher tonality than the one he’d have wanted. “You fastened my safety rope. I trusted you!” Robert pointed his finger at him.
“I’ve fastened it perfectly. You were there, too.” Hassan picked up the snap-link and started examining it. “Here it is, I knew it, look, it’s bent. The latch doesn’t match completely and the rope passed through it, while you were struggling.”
“You bent it!” Robert realised he was sounding like a broken record, but he couldn’t stop.
“Oh, yes, now I can bend steel with the power of my thoughts,” Hassan mocked. “It’s your responsibility to check all your equipment before any external activity.” His tone became grave. “Don’t get mad at me because you’ve become inattentive and you’re sloppy when doing your tasks. They should’ve never selected you for this mission.”
“You’d have liked that, wouldn’t you?”
Why didn’t Michelle answer?
She had sent her the data and pictures more than half an hour earlier. She needed to talk with her. The more time went on, the more frequently she swung between the sensations of great discovery and great blunder. But no, it couldn’t be a simple artefact. She felt it was important.
The sudden and abrupt opening of the door, as she was immersed in her thoughts, made her start.
“What the … Robert!”
He had stormed into the laboratory in a flash. But why was he still wearing the external activity suit?
“I don’t wanna be caught in the middle.” He was speaking and shaking his head. He looked upset.
“What happened?” She was worried. She had never seen him like that.
But he ignored her question. “Hassan is your fucking obsession. I don’t wanna be caught in your crossfire. Enough. I’m outta here.” He moved his arms as a sign of surrender.
“Tell me, what happened?” She got closer to him, taking his face in her hands. It was soaked and cold.
He didn’t stop her, but remained rigid. He appeared to be out of his senses. “He tried to kill me out there,” he shouted, pointing to an undefined spot on his right. He almost whined.
“Rob, Rob,” Anna called him, forcing him to look her in the eye. “You’re safe now. Breathe. Tell me everything.”
“He sabotaged my equipment.” He was panting.
“Think, why would he do that? It’s absurd.”
Robert appeared to calm down. He watched her in silence for a moment. “You tell me why.” His voice’s tone was quiet now, sharp.
Anna held her breath. What was he talking about? How could he know?
“Do you think I’m completely blind? Or just stupid?”
“You’re fucking paranoid, Green,” Hassan started off, while he entered the room. Unlike Robert, he wasn’t wearing his suit anymore.
The latter pushed back Anna’s hands brutally and hurled himself at him. But Hassan blocked his arms.
“If I wanted to kill you …” he hissed. “We wouldn’t be having this conversation, because you’d already be dead.”
Robert tried to free himself, pointlessly.
“And anyway I do know more creative and reliable ways to succeed, without having to rely upon your ineptitude.”
Unable to utter a word, she watched them terrified. She had never seen so much hatred and verbal violence since the beginning of the mission. She was afraid that, whatever she did, she might make the situation worse.
Then Hassan let him go.
“Fuck you,” Robert inveighed against him and, without losing eye contact with the other man, backed off with an awkward pace towards the door. And he went out as quickly as he had entered.
“You are a bastard.” Anna regretted the words the very moment Hassan turned to her, fixing his furious gaze on her.
“If I’m a bastard, what are you?”
She felt as if she had been stabbed by that unexpected statement, by the maliciousness with which it had been expressed; she was unable to answer back even when he walked on and stopped in front of her. Then, as if to react to an imminent threat, she raised her hand to slap him.
But he blocked it mid air. “Let me understand. I’ve really become the subject of all your outbursts, haven’t I?”
Caught by surprise, she didn’t dare reply.
“This entire situation is your fault, you know?”
What the hell was he talking about?
“You play the bosom buddy with him, for years. All that cuddling and massaging … but you won’t put out. And then he loses his head.” He grinned, sarcastic. He seemed pleased by the sound of his own voice.
“Who says you’re the only subject of my outbursts?” Why the hell didn’t she shut up? She was alone with him, he was blocking her, holding her arm, and she continued to provoke him. She was really asking for it.
Hassan appeared to consider her statement for some long seconds, maybe undecided on the best way to punish her. Then all of a sudden he started laughing out loud.
All useless. He hadn’t believed her.
“You and brother Rob?” And he laughed again, but without releasing his grip on her. “Sometimes you can be really witty, little Anna.”
She tried to take advantage of his hilarity to free herself, but with no result.
“You’re hurting me.”
Hassan stopped laughing and resumed studying her with his dark, inscrutable eyes. His fingers relaxed so that she wouldn’t feel any pain, but not enough to let her go.
“There’s one thing you should know well. Among all of you there’s only one person I would never intentionally hurt … you.”
Anna stopped struggling and decided to look at him again. Every part of him expressed a sense of menace. But not his eyes. They seemed sincere.
“Anna, here I am, are you still there?” Michelle’s voice resounded from the loudspeakers.
“I have to answer.” She said that, indicating her wrist, which was still imprisoned in Hassan’s grip, with her eyes.
Finally he opened his fingers.
Removing her gaze from his, Anna went back to the counter and activated the main screen in the laboratory, where Michelle’s face appeared. She was on the passenger’s seat inside the rover. From the picture, it was evident that the vehicle was moving. The woman smiled.
“We’re just finished loading the equipment and we are returning to the station. I’m so looking forward to telling you everything.”
“So, what do you think?” Anna interrupted her, without a big preamble, and turned on the microscope’s screen. She wasn’t interested at all about the outcome of the sortie.
“What’s this?” Hassan stepped in, behind her.
Michelle’s puzzled gaze turned to him. “Ah, you’re there, too …” She wasn’t smiling anymore now. In fact, she looked annoyed.
Anna turned to him, but he seemed not to notice her gesture and kept on watching the same screen, with a worried expression. Therefore she placed a finger on her folio, still in operation on the counter, and in doing so a pointer appeared on the picture.
“This is a colony of environmental bacteria. There are so many of them on the laboratory floor, they come from the greenhouse.” With a circular movement of the pointer she highlighted an azure stain. “I’ve found several of them.”
“And why are we looking at some banal environmental bacteria?” Hassan had now come closer to the microscope, just beside her.
“Yesterday Robert broke a vial containing a sample of regolith, which we’d collected during our latest sortie.”
He let an ironic snort escape. “That’s why I had to put three stitches in his hand. What an idiot.”
Unwittingly, Anna found herself almost smiling at that comment, but she tried not to let it show and resumed talking. “I believed I’d cleaned everything from the floor, but some of it was still down there.” She pointed to an imprecise spot near the counter. “Along with some blood drops, which the bacteria appreciated.”
“Interesting.” It was evident from the tone of his voice that he thought the exact opposite.
“Wait,” she cut in, irritated, while searching for something in her folio. Anna had now put aside any personal competitions and identified again with her scientific role, and she wouldn’t accept anyone not taking her seriously. Eventually she found what she was looking for and expressed it with a pleased smile, while placing the previous image, reddish with solid azure stains, side by side with a new picture of the vial containing the intact rocky sample. The latter looked like ordinary regolith, but, as light hit that from different direction, it caused weird azure reflections.
Hassan’s gaze lit up, but before he could say anything Anna enlarged the first image, showing that the phenomenon was in fact due to the presence of many tiny, azure spots randomly arranged within each single stain on the surface of the Martian substrate.
“They are crystals of beryllium, exactly aquamarine, but they are microscopic.”
“The bacteria have subsumed the crystals.”
“All the crystals,” Anna specified, showing an enlarged image with some azure-dotted bacteria, whilst the space around them let the white light of the microscope freely pass through.
“You can’t say that with absolute certainty, without checking the whole sample,” Michelle stepped in. Her cautious attitude annoyed Anna.
“It’d take a lifetime to check it all.” She didn’t like when someone contradicted her. She had spent the entire day on that wad of dust and, when she worked, she did so with extreme care and professionalism. “But I have checked enough of it to be reasonably certain I’m not wrong.”
Michelle didn’t look convinced at all. “Curb your enthusiasm.”
“I think Anna is right.” Hassan had just spoken. His unusual statement hushed both women.
“That’s a good one! You agreeing with Anna about something.” Michelle’s voice tone was sarcastic, but he ignored her.
“As far as I know, there’s no reason why bacteria should selectively absorb some microcrystals of beryllium, so much as to concentrate them in their cytoplasm. It would be strange even if they just contained the double the amount compared to the outside.”
“They may have been bound to organic particles already available on the floor, which the bacteria have then taken via phagocytosis.” Was Michelle just playing the devil’s advocate in that situation, to avoid easy enthusiasms, or was there something else she couldn’t stand?
He grumbled. “Anything may have happened to this sample. It remained in a damp, highly contaminated place for many hours. But this is still a bizarre phenomenon.”
Anna placed her hands on her hips. It seemed absurd to be joining forces with Hassan, but as long as it turned out to be useful, she couldn’t see any down side. Within the group dynamics, his point of view was the important and second only to Dennis’s. And the commander always set great store by his opinion.
“Have you analysed the crystal in the original sample?” Hassan turned to her.
“I’ve handled the content of the first vial during the observation under the optical and the scanning electron microscopes. Although I’ve worked in a sterile environment, I cannot exclude any possible contamination, given the small quantity. I was going to use the other one for the chemical analyses.” If Robert hadn’t disintegrated it.
“You said there was a sample from a probing pipe,” Michelle said.
“Yeah, but it doesn’t come from exactly the same spot as the other two. There were some beryllium crystals, but their concentrations were so low compared to the other elements in the regolith, that the analyses I’ve performed weren’t quite conclusive. In general I haven’t identified other strange substances …” The sentence remained mid air.
“But …” Hassan prompted her.
Anna looked at him, and then she turned to the screen occupied by Michelle’s head and shoulders. “But … in the deepest layer, where there was a slightly higher quantity of crystals, I detected some traces of carbon compounds.” She pronounced the last words in an almost reverential tone.
“Organic molecules?” Michelle asked with scepticism.
The other woman hesitated, watching an undefined point in front of her. “Biological …” She just whispered that.
“Biological?” Hassan asked, surprised.
“Nucleobases, mostly.”
“In how many samples?!” he urged her.
“Just one.”
“Ah!” Michelle exclaimed, pleased. “It’s surely an artefact. You’ll have touched the inside of the pipes without gloves, maybe Robert did, and some DNA coming from his skin remained there.”
“I didn’t say I’ve found some nucleic acids, but just some components of them,” Anna protested. Michelle wasn’t listening and was making every effort to contradict or belittle her. That got on her nerves.
“Okay, you have found some degraded DNA,” the other woman said, hushing her up. “So you haven’t properly sterilised the equipment. That’s all. In other words, the entire sortie was a disaster.”
“I have found traces of adenine, guanine, cytosine, and … uracil. And, before you ask me, no, there was no trace of thymine, therefore it cannot be degraded DNA.”
“Degraded RNA,” Hassan commented.
Anna shrugged. The ribonucleic acid contained uracil instead of thymine, hence, at least in theory, it might have been degraded RNA.
“It’s quite unusual to contaminate something by mistake only with your RNA, unless your DNA ends up there, too. But we are talking about traces, it might still be a less than an ordinary artefact …”
That latest statement made Michelle gloat.
“Or …” Hassan continued, placing a hand on Anna’s shoulder, who had to rely on all her strength not to retract from that uninvited contact. “Someone here has just found the building bricks of life on Mars!”
It sounded more like a mockery than a serious assertion, but it made her feel strange to hear someone else say it out loud, particularly a qualified person. It seemed almost real, surely much more important than finding an ice sac. It was for her and that was the only thing that counted.
But Michelle let a laugh escape, which nobody followed.
She didn’t want to give in. Was it envy, a sense of competition, jealousy? Anna didn’t know whether she should worry more about Michelle’s stubborn aversion or about Hassan’s public support. He neither said nor did anything without a well-defined ulterior motive.
“Excuse my interference,” Dennis’s voice said out of sight. A hand peeked out from the right side of the screen and touched something. The picture enlarged to include him.
“I’m afraid this discussion is becoming a bit sterile. As I understood, the collected samples can’t be considered completely reliable …” Anna was about to open her mouth, but Dennis raised his tone. “Whatever the reason. Things like this happen. Anyway, to avoid further doubts, you can do another sampling at the same site, maybe collecting many more samples, after making sure you’ve sterilised all the equipment. A diagnostics of the steriliser may help, just to be sure. One way or the other, if it doesn’t work properly, it might jeopardise all the work we are doing, whatever you may have found or not found.”
“I’m going to do that right now,” she exclaimed, with renewed enthusiasm. She would check it bit by bit, to dispel all doubts. And she would re-sterilise everything at least twice.
“If you are able to finish it by today, you may do another sortie tomorrow.”
As she heard those words, Anna remembered what had happened earlier. “Talking of Robert,” she started, but Dennis cut her off with a hand gesture.
“Have you fixed the west turbine?” he asked Hassan.
The latter shook his head. “It wasn’t possible: it was too windy.”
She looked at him, incredulous. He had no intention of reporting the accident and didn’t appear at all worried about it.
“Let’s do it like this,” Dennis continued. “I’ll take care of that with him tomorrow. You can go with Anna.” It wasn’t a question.
Anna’s mouth gaped. “Pardon?”
“Please, don’t start.” Dennis rolled his eyes and snorted. He didn’t notice his wife was staring at him in anything but a friendly way. “You need someone to accompany you and help you do the sampling. Hassan is more than suitable for this purpose.”
“Tomorrow’s going to be interesting,” Hassan commented with a sneer fixed on his face.
Michelle turned to the camera. And she didn’t look at all pleased.
She was sitting alone, staring at the half empty glass on the table, just in front of her. The drumming of her fingers was the only sound in the room. The implications of her discovery, supposing that it was confirmed, were enormous. The entire Isis mission was born with the purpose of proving the existence of present or past life on Mars, and perhaps she was about to achieve it. But that wouldn’t be the end of it, if she did. Such a success would mean new missions with more sophisticated equipment and more staff to carry on the research.
It was supposed to be a thrilling thought, but then, why wasn’t Anna feeling thrilled?
There was of course the dread that everything would burst just like a bubble, that what she had discovered wasn’t anything but an unusual contamination, but that wasn’t what unsettled her.
Truth was that she felt nothing. She had decided to go to Mars to make history and she’d already succeeded. But she had also done it to start a new life, a life on a new planet. What better opportunity to make a clean sweep of the past? And she’d succeeded in that purpose as well. The life she had lived on Earth was so remote, it was just like an old story she’d read somewhere. The memory of herself like she’d been then had almost faded, like she had never really lived before coming to Mars. Even Jan felt like part of a beautiful, distant dream. There were days when she didn’t even think about him at all, but when she did, the pain didn’t grip her as it did in the past.
Yet she wasn’t satisfied with her new life. She had thought the feeling was due to the dread that no new launch would take place, but now the finding of an ice sac by Michelle would suffice to confirm it. No, there was more.
The cohabitation inside that prison surrounded by an immense desert was becoming more and more unbearable. The entire world out there was in fact prohibited to them. And in there, in Station Alpha, all was too narrow, monotonous, repetitive and it did nothing but amplify her deep loneliness, pushing her to perform silly and dangerous actions just to feel, for a few moments, the sensation she was still alive.
A noise coming from outside made her turn to the window. The hatch of a rover was closing. Two persons were walking towards the entry to the station, carrying a big container.
The sun had just set, but it was already dark. Only she had stayed up, waiting for them. She hadn’t seen Robert since that afternoon. She wanted to talk to him, but perhaps it was better to let him cool down, for today. And Hassan, who knew what he was plotting?
A deep clangour announced the opening of the heavy airlock door, not too far from the kitchen, followed by a cheerful shouting and the sound of steps; Michelle’s laughter, getting closer and closer.
Anna swallowed another sip and yawed. By now, they were accustomed to wake up before dawn and go to bed not long after dusk to reduce the energy consumption to minimum in the absence of light. It would’ve been nice to spend all that time sleeping, dreaming of being elsewhere, of being a different person.
“Hey,” Michelle started off, as she entered the room. “Is it only you? We were expecting a welcoming committee.” She had a happy expression, she seemed not to notice Anna’s dejection. Or maybe she didn’t care. Once they had been friends, but things had changed in an imperceptible way, day by day.
“You look grim!” Dennis walked around his wife and moved close to the table. He was holding a jar with some soil at the bottom.
Anna gave a hint of a smile. The commander was the only one who had always stayed the same. Pity that he often kept to himself. The few times she had talked to him alone, he had always succeeded in injecting new enthusiasm into her.
“You’ll like this.” He opened the jar and, triumphant, he showed some tiny condensation drops on the inside of the lid.
At first, Anna didn’t understand what he was referring to.
“We extracted this sample from the layers just over the ice sac, and we took the internal pressure to one atmosphere to avoid letting the crystals sublimate.” He goggled, faking amazement. “And at room temperature, it finally appeared.” The regolith contained in the jar was dark, damp. “Behold the water of Mars!”
Michelle laughed, while her husband let some drops drip on his palm and then he rubbed it on his face, wetting it.
“Not just the few drops we extract with difficulty around here, but plenty of water. Over there the terrain fifty metres down is more and more soaked, of course, it’s in its solid state, but if you go deeper, the regolith is almost completely replaced by ice. It’s a very small area, but it might be very deep.”
“It’s wonderful news.” It was indeed, and Anna was doing her best to appreciate it.
“I do believe that in a while we’ll have to squeeze together, to make room for the additional crew.” Dennis kissed his wife. “Well, I’m going to do a last report to Houston, but I’m starving.”
“Leave it to me,” she said, caressing his face. It was such a tender family portrait, but it struck no chord with Anna. She had the facts.
As soon as Dennis left the kitchen, Michelle put aside her joyous expression. What a great actress.
“What are you doing? You shouldn’t drink alone.” Her voice tone sounded more sarcastic than worried. “It isn’t a good sign at all. What’s going on with you?” She took a glass, poured some vodka and sat beside her. She was trying to play the friend role. “Aren’t you glad about the news? You can relax now, the launch will be confirmed. A new crew will arrive. It’ll be fun. Maybe there will be some nice guy …”
Anna shot an icy glare in her direction.
“I mean, for you,” Michelle specified and gulped the whole content of her glass. “I’m good.” And she laughed again.
“Oh, yeah,” she got as answer.
“Come on, I’m serious.” Michelle poked at her with an elbow. “Aren’t you curious? There were some remarkable ones during the training, weren’t there?”
“I didn’t notice that.”
“Well, of course, Robert would become jealous.”
That latest statement roused Anna from her apathy. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Hey, don’t act scandalised. I see the two of you are buddy-buddy, I thought there was something more …” She winked in a conspiratorial way.
“There’s nothing between Robert and me.”
“Then what’s wrong with me wanting to find you a fiancé?” And here she was laughing again. “I know, I shouldn’t drink with an empty stomach. I guess I’m already drunk.” She stood up. “I’ll better prepare something to eat.”
“I’d like to go,” Anna murmured.
“Go?” Michelle asked, as she opened the fridge and started looking for something inside.
“Back to Earth.”
The other woman turned to her, perplexed.
“I want to ask Houston for the authorisation to get on the return spacecraft.”
The Isis 2 mission included a return spacecraft, to take back some Martian rocky samples to Earth for the very first time. She was remotely operated, but her interior was arranged with accommodation for up to three persons, in case of the need to take someone home for medical reasons. Actually, it was too early to ask to leave the mission, although such option was contemplated in exceptional circumstances. Lately Anna had reached the decision to try it anyway. She was sick, perhaps not physically, but surely at a psychological level. She was going to suggest that she kept on working on the mission on Earth. Maybe they would listen to her. She had to try.
“There’s nothing more for me here.”
Michelle stopped what she was doing and sat back. Her concern seemed genuine. For the first time in many months, Anna believed she glimpsed in her face the dear friend she had once been.
“Forgive me. I didn’t know you were feeling so bad.” She placed a hand on her arm. “No, what am I saying? I supposed so, but I was so wrapped up in my business that I preferred not to see.”
There was a long waiting pause, but nothing happened.
“I’d like you to talk to me.”
“There’s not much to say.”
“Is it because of Jan? Have you contacted him in the end?”
Anna shook her head. “He made a new life for himself where there’s no room for me.”
“And so, why?”
“I want to breathe again in an open place. Go about and meet other people.” The memory of her first encounter with Jan forced its way into her mind, but she shooed it to a remote corner. Instead, she concentrated on the sea in front of Stockholm City Hall, the cries of the seagulls. “I want some peace.”
“What’s happening?” Anna’s words didn’t seem to convince the other woman. Even she had realised it was an umpteenth desire to escape from something.
“You know very well what’s happening!” She couldn’t pretend not to see. “We can keep on saying we are family, but the truth is that life here is becoming impossible. There was a little accident today and Robert accused Hassan of trying to kill him.”
“What?!”
“The point is that we’re becoming paranoid, we don’t trust each other. You can’t deny that.” Michelle was about to speak, but Anna stopped her. “We have secrets.” And she fixed her gaze on the other woman’s eyes.
Michelle’s hand moved back. She looked around with evident embarrassment.
“Shouldn’t you make dinner for your husband?” Anna asked, pushing her glass away and standing up.
The other nodded and, without saying anything, went back to the fridge.
The corridor light in the lodging came on, as Anna was walking. She wished she were sleepy, so that she could stop over-thinking for a few hours. For a second she considered knocking on Robert’s door, but then she didn’t feel like it. She still had his accusations ringing in her ears. If only she’d had to go out with him tomorrow, they would’ve had time to talk, clarify things. She didn’t want to lose her last and only friend.
Instead, she would be doing that sortie with Hassan.
Unwittingly, she turned to the end of the corridor, where her enemy’s quarters were. The previous night she had covered that distance lightly, without thinking. That had made her feel good. It all seemed so unreal now.
Sooner or later, she’d be forced to clarify things with him, but she didn’t fancy that. She felt she owed him no explanations, but she also felt he wouldn’t let go.
The idea of telling Dennis what she had seen flashed through her mind for a moment; she could warn him against what was happening behind his back. Life at Station Alpha would’ve become hell, but it would’ve been amusing to give Hassan a hard time. Anna smiled with malice just thinking about it.