The Carhart Shale

by Grant Callin

Judy Aarness stood looking out through the tiny window while the teacher finished taking the class through its multiplication tables. Strange that a human should have to teach a simple rote lesson. But the colony had too many priorities to squander a thousand kilos mass on PC's and monitors.

The view out the window was east. From the settlement's vantage point near the center of Kiev crater, Judy could just see the top of the rim wall twenty kilometers away. The windmills lining it were plainly visible; their huge blades turned slowly, pumping precious kilowatts. Closer, she could see construction gangs erecting the gigantic towers from which the wire magnets would be strung to deflect incoming cosmics. When they were completed next year, the central thirty kilometers of the crater would be safe -- no longer would they have to live in habitats covered by two meters of regolith.

And after that, the Dome. Twelve-hundred square kilometers of Buckyball acrylic to lid and pressurize the crater. Seven years, and they could walk around in their shirtsleeves and tend their crops and turn the farming robots into cars and computers. Shirtsleeves!

Her gaze drifted hack to the rim, then she closed her eyes and let her sight leap without bound, beyond the rim and over Managla Vallis. Two thousand kilometers to Arsia Mons, southern giant of the Tharsis Montes. She'd come back as leader of the second expedition, armed with thermal analyses from the orbiters which showed a significant heat flow from the volcano. So they'd put a landing craft smack in the center of the caldera to look for life -- and they'd found it: strange forms of cyanobacteria, eating CO2 and nitrogen, water and sunlight, and slowly replicating as they'd done for the past billion-odd years. Jack had made that expedition possible, and all the expeditions that followed. And these five thousand humans, beginning in their tiny way to turn the Red Planet green, the salmon sky blue.

Her mind's eye leapt again, another 2,500 kilometers to the heart of the Valles Marineris, then north just a hair till her seven-league boots were planted almost on the equator: Hebes Chasma. As the Earthers reckoned the seasons it had been nearly nineteen years . . ..

There was a change in the teacher's tone: ". . . And now, class, for that special treat I promised. This week we're celebrating the tenth anniversary of the first landing on Mars. Although" -- she winked broadly -- "the Earthers will have a twentieth anniversary of the event in less than a year. And visiting us today is our colony leader, Judy Aarness. She was one of the four astronauts who were the first people ever to set foot on our planet!"

As the teacher sat down, Judy moved to front-and-center and looked over two dozen young faces turned expectantly towards her. On Earth they might have ranged from six to nine years old; but here they were four or five -- the first small crop, planted when the contraceptive rule was finally relaxed in the year of the colony. The faces multicolored, the eyes bright.

She smiled as she spoke: "I was going to talk about the Dome Project, and how by our fifteenth anniversary we'll be able to walk around outside without suits, but I changed my mind. Instead, I think I'll tell you a story. A story about the first expedition. Would you like that?"

The children clapped their hands. "Yes!" -- "Yes!" -- "Tell us about the liftoff in the dust storm!" "No -- tell us about the Carhart Shale!" "Yes, the Carhart Shale!" " -- the Carhart Shale!" " -- Carhart Shale!"

Judy raised her eyebrows. "Oh, but I'm sure you've all heard that story a hundred times. Wouldn't you like to hear a different one?"

She saw consternation among the children that she might not recount their favorite. Then a hand thrust tentatively into the air, it was Frank and Yvette Mgumbo's little boy -- what was his name? Sean, that was it.

"Are you Sean?"

He grinned self-consciously. "Yes, ma'am. And my daddy said if you were going to tell us a story, be sure to tell the one about the Carhart Shale, because, he said, you tell it the best of anybody!"

"Very well, Sean, I'll tell the story." The faces lit back up as if by magic, and hands began to clap again, until Judy held out her own hand for silence.

"Before I start, who can tell me: what _is _shale?"

A hand shot up instantly, followed by three that were less positive. Judy pointed to the first one, who seemed to be the oldest girl in the class. "Yes? Carmen Borodin, isn't it?"

"Yes, ma'am. Shale is a soft s-sedimentary rock, with lots of thin layers. And it's not very useful for anything," she finished in a rush, " -- at least that's what my mom says!"

"Your mom is mostly right," said Judy, "and the people in Houston America, and all over the world who trained us in geology before we came to Mars, also thought it was useless. You see, we were looking for evidence of early life on Mars -- life which died off billions of years ago. We were looking for the remains of tiny little plants or animals called microfossils.

"Now," she continued, "this next part is very important. Shale _is not _the right kind of rock in which to find microfossils. What you have to find is a harder kind, like chert. And _that's _what we were looking for on the first expedition -- little pieces of chert, buried in limestone."

She frowned in concentration, trying to simplify the complex political and economic factors which dictated the thrust of the first expedition. "And it was important for us to find evidence of life on Mars, because the Earthers were tired of spending so much money for so many years to pay for the expedition. A lot of people wanted us to finish the first expedition, then not send any more people to Mars.

"But -- " She lowered her voice and the children leaned forward in their seats, " -- if we could find proof that life once existed on Mars, then maybe the people would regain their interest; then the other expeditions could go on as planned."

Her eyes took on a faraway look, and she stopped picking her words carefully. The children didn't mind; they were used to hearing stories in grown-up talk.

"So we chose Hebes Chasma as the first landing site. We knew from the orbital surveys that it was once a lake. And if we could drill through the regolith and get enough core samples of the sediment underneath, we just might find some hard layers or nodules of chert that would hold the microfossils we were looking for.

"Hebes Chasma is a box canyon with pretty high walls. But we found a way down with the rover . . .."

Colonel Sergei Ilitch Kabalevski straightened up from helping John Carhart seal a core into the rover's carrying case, and squinted his gaze southeastward. The rover's track was plainly visible, sunk into the soft regolith, meandering toward the morning Sun. Its depth justified the decision not to land in the chasma proper. On the other hand, if they'd landed in the valley, they might not have had to make a two-day journey and overnight in the little trailer pulled by their ugly vehicle. Sergei grimaced in distaste at its sleeping and sanitary facilities.

His eyes swung back around to Carhart, who had meandered over to the canyon wall, and was now poking around among the rocks at the bottom of a slide. Among the larger boulders were smaller pieces; he picked one up, and began hacking at it expertly with his pick. Briefly, Sergei was jealous of Carhart's field skills; his own talents lay in other directions.

Then his eyes moved compulsively up the cliffs. They rose nearly vertical for 2,000 meters, much more forbidding here than at the southern rim where they'd found a way down into the canyon. The rising Sun turned the flutes into huge, tapered stripes of light and shadow. The effect was spectacular, even though softened by the swirling dust now filling the thin atmosphere.

Sergei frowned; the dust seemed to be noticeably thicker than half an hour ago. He opened the comm channel to the landing base by pressing a button on the side of his suit.

"Toy, this is Hebes, over." In 1979, when the USGS put the first map of Mars together from the Mariner pictures, it arbitrarily gave every crater over ten kilometers a two-letter designation, depending on its longitude and latitude within a given map quadrant. Just south of Hebes Chasma was a large, shallow crater designated in this manner as "Ty" -- or more properly, "Coprates Ty." Fifty years later that was still the official designation -- but the crater had been called "Toy" ever since the expedition formed.

_This is Toy. Go ahead, Hebes._

"The dust seems to be worse down here. What's the latest from Phobos, over?"

_We really woke 'em up back on Earth. The visual feeds from the orbiters and the Phobos camera are being linked directly to the big weather computer in Kansas City. It says we've got the Mother of All Storms brewing here. It may even be bigger than the storm of '09. The Phobos crew are hopping mad; they're not going to get their twenty days down, over._

Kabalevski grunted sympathetically. The twenty-two month expedition allowed only forty days total in Mars orbit. The mission plan for the eight-member crew was for the first four to land at Hebes Chasma while the others stayed on the advance base at Phobos, observing and tending the fuel/oxy manufacturing facility. Then after twenty days they would switch, with the second crew landing at Mangala Vallis. The Mangala complex was a more promising site for geological science -- the Hebes Chasma landing was politically motivated.

Now the entire mission would be cut short after only eleven days. The wind velocities and quantities of dust from a planetwide storm were too much of a risk for machines and people.

"How much time do we have, Sergei?"

Carhart had been listening to this side of the conversation on his own two-way link. His question interrupted Kabalevski's gloomy speculation on the political consequences of the dust storm.

"I'll find out. Toy. How long until we have to lift off, over?"

_Hebes, the refined estimates from the Earth computer say that it gets really ugly here in about twenty-six hours, plus-or-minus two. Houston wants us out of here A.SAP: eighteen hours, twenty max, over._

Toy Base was fifty kilometers due south. To get there, they had to traverse almost the whole width of the valley floor, then snake up the southern rim wall along the switchback that was mostly natural, with a tiny bit manmade. The "manmade" part had cost them eight days of labor, while the other two crew members drilled for water on the narrow strip of high ground between Hebes and Toy.

Then yesterday, they'd set off on a three-day foray to get samples from the valley floor. They'd traversed down and begun a counter-clockwise loop, stopping every five kilometers to take two-meter cores. Last night at dusk they'd reached the northern rim wall. That was when they first got word that a dust storm had started in the Hellespontes mountains on the western border of Hellas Planitia. Normally, a storm seven-thousand kilometers away would not be disturbing. But the Hellespontes were infamous: most of the planetwide storms observed over the past century had begun there. They'd spent an uneasy night because of the news.

Then they queried Toy Base first thing in the morning, they got bad news and good news. Bad: the storm was spreading with great speed and looked to be headed for planetwide involvement. Good: they had time -- enough to get a few more samples and return with plenty of margin.

"Understand, Toy. Lift-off in twenty hours. We see no problems with that. We estimate sixteen hours traveling time from here to there -- eighteen hours max -- so we'll see you after dark, over."

_Roger that, Hebes. In the meantime, we'll button up here and complete the checklist. When you get back all you'll have to do is transfer your samples and climb in the boat, over."_

"Roger _that_. You're going to have two tired travelers on your hands. Over and out."

_Toy Base out._

Kabalevski shut off the link and spoke to Carhart: "Twenty hours, Jack. No problem."

"Good," said Carhart, bringing over the piece of rock he'd been dusting off. "I want you to take a look at this."

Carhart handed him the rock, and pointed to a darker spot on the face near one edge.

"What do you make of that?"

Kabalevski peered at the thing. It seemed nothing more than a sooty smudge. "Maybe an inclusion?"

"No," said Carhart, pursing his lips. "Do you know what kind of rock this is?"

Kabalevski looked carefully at the specimen. It was grayish green, noticeably different from the monotonous ruddy regolith covering the canyon floor. He turned it sideways and peered more closely; it was a layered structure. He wrinkled his forehead in concentration, trying to remember painfully learned geology lessons.

"Shale?"

"Yes," said the other, "and look at the sharp edges; this is a fresh slide -- less than a million years old. Now look up the talus, about five or ten meters above the top of the fall."

He pointed with his whole arm so that Kabalevski could follow with his eyes. "See the layer? It's a thin one, and only about twenty meters long."

Kabalevski nodded without speaking as Carhart continued: "It's something we haven't seen yet -- a shale stratum. And it's got to be old, since it's near the bottom of the canyon wall."

Carhart turned his head back to the piece which Kabalevski still held in his gloves. He spoke slowly, tapping the rock for emphasis: "I think this specimen came from that stratum, and I think that discoloration is an animal fossil. And I think I ought to climb that talus to get some more specimens."

Kabalevski stared at the other in disbelief. A small man, balding early, Jack Carhart was the most unassuming of the eight crewmembers. During the long months of confinement on the outbound voyage, he'd done his daily exercises and performed his duties without complaint; he spent his free time mostly alone, reading from his allotted ten gigabytes of computer storage. The only notable fact about the man was that his mind appeared to hold an incredible store of trivia; other than that, he was entirely undistinguished. Kabalevski was the leader of this two-man excursion; and he'd frankly rather have had one of the other crewmembers along, to cope with possible emergencies. But Carhart was the most experienced geologist among them, and an excellent amateur paleontologist to boot. Any other choice for his partner would have been rank favoritism.

Now he stared down at the other's visor, caught speechless by the uncharacteristic request. He saw Carhart's face only dimly, through his own reflection on the faceplate. When he finally found his voice, he spoke with emotion rather than logic. "That's impossible."

Kabalevski didn't even know himself whether he was talking about the idea of a large fossil, or about the difficult climb up the talus with a planetwide dust storm kicking up. Carhart chose the obvious one to answer:

"So they say." Then he paused; Kabalevski could see him purse his lips inside the helmet before speaking again: "Sergei, during practice for this mission back on Earth, how many core samples did you pull?"

"A couple of dozen, I guess."

The smaller man's head nodded inside his helmet. "About average for the crew. Well, I've pulled hundreds, from all kinds of terrain all over the Earth. Most of the time I can tell just from the feel of the sampler going down what we're going to find inside. And I'll tell you right now that we haven't pulled a single chert nodule -- hell, we haven't even found any limestone. And on the surface we haven't seen anything that even vaguely resembles a stromatolite formation. What we have is regolith -- oxidized, poisonous dirt that's going to get us nothing but sneers when we get home.

"And now," he waved his arm toward the dust swirling in the southern sky, "the expedition won't get anything else. We're finished. And with the mood back home, it might be Mars that's finished, too."

As he became more intense, he took the rock back from Sergei's hand and waved it in the air. "But now, we have something that might be truly remarkable. It's worth an extra half hour, even now, to go for it."

Kabalevski took the rock back from Carhart's hand, and looked at it. "Why can't we just bag this one and call it a day?"

"Sergei, you know the answer to that as well as I do. If that stratum up there is a true fossil bed, we're going to have humans swarming all over this planet for a generation to come. But if we go back with a single specimen -- no photographs, no corroboration -- we're going to have every other politician and media hack seeing who can shout 'Hoax!' the loudest. We'll be lucky to raise another dime of funding in the next ten years."

Kabalevski was still bemused by the other's uncharacteristic ardor. Astonishingly, he found himself debating the pros and cons of Carhart's idea. He looked up again to the layer of shale and said half to himself: "That cliff looks pretty steep -- dangerous to climb." But as he studied it further, he saw that the section past the top of the talus might just be navigable, given an experienced climber in good physical condition.

"OK," he said, coming to a decision. "I'll go up; you stay here and record with video."

Jack's laughter was completely without malice, so Sergei couldn't get angry with him.

"Sergei, I've seen you use that pick; balanced up there on that ledge, you'd be more likely to split your hand than the shale."

Kabalevski relented. He looked up toward the cliff again and said: "Don't go any farther than the top of the slide until you get up there and can report a definite safe route to the shale."

"Roger that, Sergei." Carhart had hooked his pick and a pair of baggies to his belt, and was already grabbing for handholds on his way up the big boulders at the bottom. "Get the video on me."

Sergei stepped back to the crawler, pulled the small camcorder from its niche, and activated it as he walked back to the bottom of the talus. When the scene was in focus on the monitor, he started to record visual. Then after a moment's thought, he activated the audio recorder link. As he zoomed from the wide angle to zero in on the shale, then down to Carhart climbing the talus, he spoke formally: "Colonel Sergei Kabalevski recording exploration of a possible site of macroscopic fossil life. General location: Hebes Chasma floor, at central northern wall. Specific location: shale stratum approximately sixty meters above canyon floor. Indications: possible fossil-bearing shale specimen, bagged as Hebes 11-04, found at bottom of 50-meter-high talus currently on camera. Climbing talus is Dr. John C. Carhart, whose voice will also be on this record. Because of strenuous activity required, further audio will be informal."

He checked the monitor to see that Jack was above the most physically taxing part of the climb, then asked: "Dr. Carhart, why do you think that there might be animal fossils in the stratum? -- it goes against everything we know about the evolution of Mars."

Carhart's voice was a little ragged from the exertions of his climb, but had a note of confidence that Kabalevski was glad to get on tape: "I've been to Brandon Bridge; and I've made the thousand-meter climb up to the Burgess shale. I've examined first hand pieces of rock that held fossil photographs of the explosion of life at the beginning of the Cambrian. I know what they look like. So when I broke open that specimen and saw what was inside it, and thought of the color red, something clicked inside me."

"Red? Oxides?" asked Kabalevski.

"Red." Carhart continued to speak firmly: "The color of Mars, of fire and blood, destruction and war. The Babylonians called him Negral, the Raging Fire God. The Chinese Ying-Huo, the Fire Planet. The Aztec Huitzilopochtli, the fire-being who destroyed people and cities."

He paused to catch his breath; he was laboring near the top of the talus now, sliding back half a meter for every meter he gained. A steady stream of rocks, loosened by his boots, was tumbling down the talus. As Kabalevski watched, a small one bounced down off the large bottom boulders and landed at this feet. "Careful," he said.

Jack continued without paying attention: "Yes, we know it's oxides, mainly iron. Red is the color of oxygen; the whole planet's lousy with it -- even the dust is poisoned with oxidizers. I think there was a lot more in the atmosphere at one time than anybody else thinks. It was there early, when conditions were warmer and there was standing water on the planet. There was enough, maybe, to raise the dissolved oxygen content of the water to the point where it would support evolution of multicellular -- "

_Hebes, Toy Base, Hebes, this is Toy Base, over._

Kabalevski hurriedly switched off the audio, but continued to record video as he answered the call: "Toy, this is Hebes, over."

_Bad news, Hebes. We're back in contact with Phobos. They've made another pass over the center of the storm, and found that it was a lot worse than they thought yesterday. Now they're telling us to do our damnedest to get off as soon as possible. Houston's orders are for us to try to catch the ten-hour tick rather than the twenty-hour one. And if we can't make that, just get into orbit and waste fuel matching with Phobos. What's your situation, over?_

"We're at the north rim of the canyon; ETA at Toy is sixteen hours, plus-or-minus two, over."

There was a perceptible pause before Toy's reply. _What the hell, Sergei? That was the same status you gave us half an hour ago, over._

Kabalevski picked his next words carefully: "We found a geologically interesting stratum on the north wall of the canyon, and we're getting samples, over."

_They'd better be awfully good, Hebes, or Houston will really be pissed -- hell, they'll be pissed anyway, over._

"Understand, Toy. We'll get wheels up right away."

_Roger, Hebes. We'll compute liftoff for nineteen hours from now. Please estimate the mass of the cores you're bringing back, over._

"Fourteen cores, Toy. Estimate one-hundred forty kilograms."

_We copy, Hebes: fourteen cores, one-hundred forty kilos. Now shake your butts and get back here, over and out._

As Kabalevski signed off he automatically switched the audio back on, then became aware that Carhart was whispering to himself: ". . . Mother of God, mother of all Gods . . ."

He interrupted the other harshly: "Jack, quit muttering up there, and get down off that slope. The storm's getting worse, and we've got to run."

Carhart's voice was still hushed as he responded: "Sergei, do you know what I'm putting in this bag? A piece of shale with a fossilized animal over two centimeters in length, complete with dozens of palps."

"Fantastic, we're famous," said Kabalevski. "Now shake a leg and get down here. We're late for a date with Phobos."

He saw Carhart look upward toward the dark-colored layer before he answered: "Sergei, we've got to be sure it's that stratum. Ninety-nine percent isn't good enough. Keep taking pictures; I'm going up."

"Jack, I'm ordering you to come down now."

"Begging your pardon, Colonel, but it'll only take ten minutes, and we've got to have verification. I see a way, and there looks to be a ledge, just below the stratum, that I can work from. While I'm going up, why don't you radio Toy Base and tell them what we've got here. We could use a positive headline or two."

Sergei was now angry, angrier than he had been in years. Even taking into account that Carhart was a civilian, his flouting of Kabalevski's authority was inexcusable. He took a deep breath to shout at the other -- but by then the little man was plastered against the cliff, negotiating a difficult traverse back toward the shale stratum.

So he called the base instead:

"Toy, Hebes. Toy Base, this is Hebes, over."

The reply was garbled, and interrupted by bursts of static: . . . _ebes, th. . . Toy Base. . . you moved since . . . st transmission, over?_

"Toy, Hebes, Toy, Hebes. Your transmission is poor. Repeat: transmission is poor. We have not moved since out last transmission. Repeat: we have not moved since our last transmission, over."

_Heb. . . oy. Hebes, T. . . ay parabola seems. . . hunting. We speculate that . . . dust into the mech . . . Repeat: relay . . . hunting. We are . . . tching over to manual . . . peat: switching... ssssssss . . .._

There was nothing but static after that. Kabalevski held his breath and strained his ears, but there was no carrier in the signal. He swore under his breath.

"Toy, this is Hebes. Toy, this is Hebes, over."

He listened again: nothing but static. Kabalevski felt a nervous tightening of throat and stomach muscles. He looked back up at his companion, to see that he'd finished the traverse, and was just settling his feet onto the small ledge below the shale stratum. He closed the channel to Toy Base and spoke to Carhart: "Jack, are you secure?"

"Roger. Sounds like you got a bad link with Toy."

"Worse than that," replied Kabalevski: "We lost contact in the middle of our conversation -- probably dust in the pointing mechanism of the relay antenna. It must be thick up on top."

"I'm not surprised," said Carhart. Then: "OK, I'm going to dig into this rock now. You still got the video cranked up?"

The little man was relentless. He tried one more time, even as he panned along the cliffs to zoom in on the climber: "Dammit, Carhart, get your ass down here -- now. We've got real trouble at base, and we've got to move."

"It shouldn't be more than a couple of minutes, Colonel," was Carhart's unflustered reply. Through the monitor Kabalevski could see that he was looking closely at the cliff wall. "If the two samples I picked up from the talus are a statistical representation, the whole stratum is lousy with fossils."

With the last word, he proceeded to throw his pick into the cliff; then he pulled it back and repeated the process. Kabalevski could see that he was working awkwardly, balancing on the ledge without much leverage. The colonel checked to make sure the audio was on, and zoomed in on his partner with higher magnification. Then he waited for what seemed an interminable time before finally hearing Carhart say: "Got a man-sized piece here. Just one more second while I check it."

Kabalevski watched through the monitor as Carhart swung the pick deftly to split the big rock in his hand, then peered closely to examine the cleaved surface.

"Unbelievable. There are two fossils visible on this surface: one nearly three centimeters, one about half that size. This is the mother lode without a doubt." He proceeded to hold up the specimen with the cleaved face toward the camera. "Can you get a close-up of this?"

"Roger," said Kabalevski, knowing what was coming. "The shape is plainly visible in the monitor for later verification."

"Good," said the man on the cliff. "This sample is too large to bag; I'm going to carry it down by hand -- we'll put it loose in the sealed box for examination at Freedom." Kabalevski watched him carefully put his pick on the suit hook. Then, holding the rock in one hand, he stepped gingerly backward off the ledge.

It happened before he got his lower leg planted: the ledge broke off right under Carhart's foot. Since his whole weight was momentarily on that leg, he never had a chance to recover. In an instant, he was falling sideways toward the top of the talus ten meters below.

The low gravity turned it into a slow-motion horror show. Clutching the specimen to his chest, he put his other hand out to break his fall at the beginning of the rockslide. Kabalevski had one second to wish Carhart would drop the specimen and use both hands to save himself -- then it was too late.

As the little man hit the top of the talus, Kabalevski could actually hear a snap just before the "Aaa-a" torn in anguish from Carhart's throat. Then he was rolling down on top of the small rocks at the top of the pile. Kabalevski knew that there now were rocks of all sizes tumbling down toward him, and there was something in the back of his mind telling him that he should run away from the bottom of the talus as fast as his legs would take him -- but the spectacle of disaster rooted him in place.

Carhart kept spinning in slow motion, screaming in pain each time his body rolled over the broken arm. His good arm still held the specimen tucked into his belly. Kabalevski shouted into the mike for Carhart to let go of the sample and use his good arm to help stop his roll, but all Carhart did was to begin screaming, "No! No! No!"

Instead he spread his legs, trying to slow down and turn himself so that he was sliding feet first instead of rolling. He seemed to be succeeding; and his efforts galvanized the other, who hastily set down the videocam and began to move closer to the bottom of the talus.

But then Kabalevski's attention was grabbed by a large rock bounding down at him. He dodged out of its path -- but needn't have bothered: the boulder hit an even larger one ten meters up and bounced high over his head. Instinctively Kabalevski turned to follow its flight, and watched with sinking heart as it hit the rover amidships, then rolled across the battery array and off the rear end of the vehicle.

Moaning with helplessness, he jerked his head back around. Carhart had finally succeeded in turning his roll into a feet-first slide. He was nearing the large rocks at the bottom of the talus, and beginning to slow down. But just when it seemed that things were stabilizing, his foot caught between two large boulders. This stopped his forward momentum, but with a terrible price: his leg twisted unnaturally behind him, up under his back. He gave one final scream, which died out as he came to rest about fifteen meters above. He didn't move, and didn't answer when Kabalevski called him.

The colonel scrambled up to the other man, resisting an impulse to run recklessly up the boulders; he had to be careful, since he was now Carhart's only hope for survival. The body was lying head downslope; the leg was free now, but still twisted. And miraculously, the suit was pressurized, and the integral PLISS still functioning. Kabalevski said a quick prayer of thanks for the rigorous design specs and the Dave Clark Company, then pushed his hand firmly onto the chest area. He felt movement; Carhart was still alive.

The fatal piece of shale was lying by Jack's open hand; he'd let go of it only after losing consciousness. Sergei picked it up and underhanded it carefully out onto the soft regolith in front of the rover. It was difficult lugging the inert body back down to level ground over the large boulders at the bottom of the scree; Kabalevski was panting and sweating before it was finally done.

Thankfully, Carhart remained unconscious through it all, for it would have been painful; and what he had to do now would cause even more pain. He laid the little man down beside the rover, then tugged and straightened the leg as best he could. Jack moaned softly, but did not regain consciousness.

Sergei knew that he needed to get Jack inside the pressurized trailer to give him medical attention, but there was no way that was possible. Their suits were "backouts": they were built to be used outside and kept outside, so that the dust they carried would not contaminate the habitats. One entered a pressurized space by backing up against a special airlock which mated with a large ring on the back of the suit. When the ring was situated correctly it sealed automatically, and robotic mechanisms opened the airlock and the back of the suit; the astronaut then backed out of the suit into the habitat. It required an athletic effort to use a back-in lock; and the trailer was too small to be equipped with a full airlock.

Kabalevski managed -- with much cursing -- to get Carhart into the righthand seat in front of the rover, then strapped him in, waist and shoulders. Then, panting from his exertions, he went back to inspect the damage to the rover. One dust guard was bent; it was no problem to straighten out the flimsy material. But the hardest hit area was the conduit, carrying current from the batteries to the motor. Ironically, it had been placed on top of the rover because it was safer there than underneath. He pulled a big rock -- it must have massed thirty kilos -- off the conduit run. Three of the six conduits were damaged: one was torn off and the wires broken, which meant that two of the batteries were out for sure. He carefully checked the switch-box leads to the forward computer; they seemed OK.

He went back to the foot of the talus and retrieved the camcorder, ejected the casette and slipped it into an arm pocket on his suit before tossing the camera into the back of the rover. Then he walked the ten meters to the piece of shale that might have cost Carhart his life, picked it up, and brushed off the reddish-brown regolith. One side was rough, the other cleaved cleanly by Carhart's pick. He saw two sooty spots on the cleaved side, one about a centimeter and a half in diameter, the other almost three. He looked closely at the larger spot, holding the rock so that the Sun shone on its face. The blotch was shaped like a miniature blunt sausage with three appendages at one end; on the inner curve were eight regularly spaced projections. It was an animal fossil beyond doubt.

Sergei took the rock back to the rover and put it on the floor by Jack's feet. Then he looked carefully down into the other's visor; he saw a massive bloody area around the right collarbone. He shook his head and checked to make sure that the broken arm was immobilized by the safety straps.

Kabalevski levered himself into the left seat, switched power on, and checked the control panel. Four of the twelve batteries showed open circuits; everything else seemed to be functional. It wasn't as bad as it might be; the rover would be OK on straight-and-level; it needed only six batteries for a nominal speed of six kilometers per hour, even in the deep regolith of the canyon floor. But going up the rim would be something else; it would require the full current from ten or eleven of the batteries to make the steepest pitches.

"Well, Jack, we'll worry about the south wall when we get to it." He spoke to Carhart out of subconscious need; the dangers of the situation were building pressures inside him, and talking was an outlet.

He started the rover up, and headed it back along their outbound track. The decision was governed by the decreasing visibility; he could no longer see the south canyon wall. The curved outward path would cost them several extra kilometers, but he'd be able to make better speed following the deep, pre-formed ruts in the regolith.

"Going to backtrack, Jack. No surprises that way, and it'll be the smoothest ride for you."

The panel indicators showed that the computer was doing its job, shifting the load among the eight working batteries. He looked at the clock; fifty minutes had passed since he'd lost contact with Toy Base. That meant they'd already used up forty-five minutes of slack he'd built into the estimate; and would undoubtedly use up a lot more on the south wall climb. He increased pressure on the accelerator until the rover was making eight kilometers per hour. The ride at that speed was bouncy; when Carhart groaned a little, he eased it back to seven.

"Sorry, Jack, we'll take it a little easier -- but we'll still make good time. Six, maybe seven, hours to the south rim."

After a few minutes, Kabalevski opened the comm link to Toy and tried once more to call:

"Toy Base, this is Hebes; Toy, Hebes, over." He got nothing but static in reply. Peevishly he mumbled, half under his breath: "Silly name for a base. Toy. Come to think of it, Hebes Chasma is even sillier. Why Hebes?"

And much to his astonishment, Carhart answered: "Hebe was the daughter of Zeus and Hera, the goddess of youth." Then he coughed. Kabalevski was surprised into speechlessness until Carhart continued: "For a while, she was cupbearer to the gods -- but was replaced by Ganymede; the word around the Pantheon was that he got the job because he was Zeus's favorite lover. So after Heracles died and became a god, Hebe married him and settled down to anonymity." He coughed some more, then groaned.

Kabalevski finally found his voice: "It's good to have you back, Jack. We're on the road, heading back toward the south rim ETA about six hours."

Carhart said: "I won't make it... I'm dying."

"That's ridiculous," said Kabalevski. "You're not dying, you're talking to me."

"A man knows when he's dying, and I know." He coughed again before continuing: "That leg break was bad. Damn zero-g osteoporosis. Bone must have cut an artery on its way out through the skin. I think my whole right suit leg is filled with blood."

"Then, by God, we'll get you into the trailer and get the bleeding stopped." Kabalevski had to force the words out past a lump in his throat.

"C'mon, Sergei," said the other weakly. "We both know that's not going to happen. I'd faint from the pain before you could even drag me from this seat."

Kabalevski said: "Well, dammit, you hang on anyway! The worst is over; just a ride back to Toy, then into orbit." He didn't mention the four useless batteries.

"Sure, sure," Carhart replied, then sighed and lapsed into silence.

Now that the wounded man was conscious Kabalevski felt reluctant to speak, for fear that Carhart would tax his strength by replying. The eerie silence was broken only by Carhart's fast, shallow breathing while Kabalevski drove the rover in its big arc from north to south under the mid-morning Sun of the Red Planet. He estimated the velocity of the wind now at fifty kilometers per hour; in the thin Martian atmosphere it was pushing at them with the equivalent force of only the slightest of breezes on Earth. Far worse were the effects on visibility and equipment: the ultra-fine grains got into everything that wasn't carefully sealed -- and even some things that were. Now, as Kabalevski looked over his shoulder, the dust had concealed completely the hated northern wall -- but it was still too early to be able to glimpse the south wall. During that hour Kabalevski experienced ultimate

frustration: he had a dying man less than a meter away, but could do nothing to help him but keep driving and hope.

It was Carhart who finally ended the long silence: "I'm going to tell you the story of the Cambrian explosion."

Kabalevski immediately replied: "You should be resting now, not telling sto -- " then broke off when he realized that Carhart hadn't stopped talking.

". . . You remember it, because it's important. Life on Earth began early, almost as soon as the impacting ice balls brought enough waters to cool the surface and make lakes and seas. The Sun was warmer then -- enough to keep the water standing on the surface until it turned to organic soup. The soup provided materials and zinc clays were there for templates. It only took a few million years of experimentation before replicating proteins were present in their billions; then followed cells with membranes, that could reproduce themselves and cover the seas . . .."

Carhart's voice had been getting softer and softer, and now he paused to breathe fast for a few seconds. Kabalevski spoke into the silence: "Jack, shouldn't you not try to talk and -- "

"No," interrupted the other. "I need to finish. I'll make it simple -- so even you can understand."

Kabalevski laughed politely, then stopped abruptly because Carhart was continuing again.

"-- Anaerobic cells, the cyanobacteria, dominated . . . filled their ecological niche, changed CO2 and sunlight to oxygen, put the oxygen into the atmosphere. When it had oxidized everything it could on the surface, O2 built up in the atmosphere --"

He coughed again, and paused again to catch his breath. Kabalevski didn't try to interrupt this time.

"-- And when enough built up, it was reabsorbed into the seas, and another ecological niche was created -- and filled by eukaryotic cells, with nuclei and other organelles -- cooperatives of prokaryotes that could reproduce as a complex grouping. Some of the complex cells were still CO2 eaters -- the blue-green algae and their cousins; but some were oxygen eaters; the amoebacousins, ancestors of the animals."

He was silent for a while, then said vigorously: "You getting all this, Sergei?"

"Most assuredly, Jack," said Kabalevski.

"Good," said the other. "Damn, I'm thirsty. Storytelling is dry work."

"Sip some water from your nipple," said Kabalevski.

Carhart said: "I tried -- doesn't work. Besides, what I really want is scotch. Pinch -- no, Glenfiddich. Haven't tasted Glenfiddich for two years." He coughed again, then said: "Where was I?"

"The amoebas," prompted Kabalevski.

"Oh, yes. The oxygen level in the waters continued to increase, until it reached a magic concentration where another ecological niche was created -- and populated by organisms with specialized cell groups that could reproduce sexually and diversify: the animals. The niche was filled almost instantly in geological time . . . an event we call the Cambrian explosion. That was just 600 million years ago. Before that, single-cell life had dominated Earth for three billion years."

The little man paused for a long time, breathing heavily. Kabalevski spoke: "OK, Jack, I've got all that. Now why don't you -- "

"Quiet, Colonel," Carhart interrupted again. "I'm on a roll. Now we're gonna talk about Mars. Here, there wasn't enough time to build up the oxygen necessary for a Cambrian explosion -- it was lost too early by gravitational escape; therefore if life did evolve here, it must have remained in the simple prokaryotic stage."

He laughed harshly. "It's true -- just ask the experts." He laughed again, but it ended in a cough. He cleared his voice and continued: "Except they're wrong. Every time we probe a little farther from the home planet, experts get their little wagons upset. This one's beautiful. The experts think what has happened here can't happen. They'll be swarming all over the planet trying to figure it out. And you'll lead them back to do it."

He was quiet for a long time after that. Kabalevski tried once again to contact Toy, hoping they'd somehow fixed the antenna on the south rim. But he knew they didn't have time; they were only two crewmembers performing a checklist meant for four. He drove on toward the inexorable confrontation with the southern rim wall.

During that period, Carhart spoke only three more times. The first was half an hour after he'd finished the story:

". . . Dying but brain keeps working. Physics is physics. The planet's oxygen was long gone half a billion years ago. So the explosion had to happen long before it did on Earth. Two, maybe three billion years ago. Figures . . . Mars was always in a tearing hurry to get things done . . . started his career by raping the vestal virgin Rhea Silvia -- that's how Romulus and Remus got planted. But then the core cooled too quickly . . . plate tectonics stillborn . . . couldn't recycle CO2. The larger forms died off. . . probably nothing left now but a few anaerobic bacteria, hiding from all the oxygen poisoning . . . maybe in the calderas. God, I'm thirsty."

Kabalevski's response was weak: "We'll be getting some water into you pretty soon; we're only a few kilometers from the south wall -- then up to Toy base."

Carhart said, "Liar," then was quiet again.

An hour later Kabalevski had hit a bump, and Carhart spoke as if a switch had been turned on:

"Maybe they'll call it Jack's shale." Then, louder: "Sergei, you've got to make it back, to show them! You've got the shale?"

"Yes," said Kabalevski. The lump was back in his throat.

"Good." said the little man, then lapsed back into silence. A few minutes later he spoke for the last time.

"The pain's gone . . . I can't see anything. . . damn, there's so much to do now . . .."

Carhart breathed very quietly for a few seconds after that, then let out a long, soft sigh and stopped. Kabalevski turned the comm all the way up, and heard only silence.

There was nothing to do but keep driving. Kabalevski felt an overwhelming sense of loss and helplessness -- and guilt. He should have gone for the shale -- should have insisted. But would he have succeeded? Very possibly not. Jack Carhart, who had been the least imposing member of the crew throughout the entire trip, had turned into a tiger, had enforced his own judgment at precisely the correct moment in history; his last hour had been his finest. So be it. And he would embrace Carhart's imperative: the most important thing in his life would now be to get back to Toy Base with those remarkable specimens.

The mission TO called for the expedition to leave the rover and trailer in a shelter near Toy Base as a legacy for future exploration. Now, without compunction, Kabalevski stopped the vehicle, climbed out, walked back and undid the simple hitch, letting the tongue fall into the dust. Then he climbed back into the left seat and accelerated the rover to nine kilometers per hour.

Four hours later he was at the southern wall, surveying the tangled series of rock slides that constituted the road out of Hebes Chasma. He couldn't see the top -- it was too dusty -- but knew the rim was there, two kilometers up. He now faced twenty kilometers of switchbacks -- and after that, a few straight and-level kilometers to Toy.

"Well, Jack, here we are." He'd been talking to Carhart for the past hour. "Now comes the hard part. Gotta get up these cliffs with only seven of our batteries working." Another one of the batteries had unaccountably failed during the southward trek.

They began the struggle upward, all batteries on line, speed varying from slow to slower depending on the pitch. Kabalevski could have walked up faster -- until his out-of shape body ran out of breath and energy. He was acutely aware that his own life, Carhart's legacy, and the immediate future of Mars exploration, probably depended on the ability of the rover to make it back up the twenty kilometers of rim wall slope.

A fourth of the way up, there was a pitch that was too steep. Kabalevski was ready; he'd planned his order of battle long since, during the mindless hours of the trek across the valley floor.

"Time to dump the bad batteries, Jack. I was hoping we wouldn't have to put out the effort."

They had just negotiated a hairpin, and had started up the pitch; the rover was inclined perhaps twenty degrees. On Earth, it would have been quite frightening; here it was just mildly so. Kabalevski set the handbrake firmly, checked the control panel a final time to be sure which batteries were out, then climbed gingerly out of the front seat. His first act was to find two large rocks and put them behind the back wheels of the vehicle. Then he attacked the batteries.

The simple tools in the rover's kit were adequate for the job. He took the coupling covers from the two that weren't already entirely broken off by the falling rock, and pulled the couplings out of the batteries. Then he unscrewed the tie-downs. The batteries were high-tech wonders, but they still massed sixty kilograms each. Kabalevski had to climb up, lift them by the handles, carry them to the back edge, leaning back against the slope, and drop them off. The job was difficult and dangerous. He was puffing after the first one, and sweating profusely after the fifth. When it was done he climbed back in the front seat and rested, panting, while his cooling system cleared the sweat-fog off his visor.

"Would have been nice to have had your help, Jack."

When his visor had cleared a little, he checked the clock: nine hours since he'd talked to Toy just before the accident. Three hours since they'd started up the south rim wall. They'd come four point eight kilometers -- and had about fifteen yet to the top.

"Doesn't look like we're going to make our ETA, Jack. Wonder how long they'll wait -- wonder how long Houston will let them wait." He twisted his body to look back downslope. He could make out the valley floor about half a kilometer below, but not much more; the dust was still thickening, and blowing now at seventy or eighty kilometers per hour. It was eerie to see all that activity and not hear anything -- except the slightest tick as an occasional large grain was thrown against his visor. He turned back around and looked up; the top of the wall was lost in dust.

"Let's crank it up." With a silent prayer he went to full acceleration and released the handbrake. The rover crept slowly up the slope. When it reached the top of the pitch, the speed picked up and Kabalevski's heart lightened.

Five hours later and half a kilometer farther off the valley floor, Kabalevski was swearing under his breath and clumsily backing out the screws that held the sample container in the rover's belly. The fourteen cores they'd collected -- and sixteen empty core holders -- were already strewn on the slope behind. Kabalevski had hoped it would be enough to throw them off. It wasn't. And now it was almost dark.

Kabalevski remembered this pitch well: it was a frightening 30 degrees. It was 400 meters long, and the slope would actually increase by a few degrees about one-fourth of the way up. And with all the cores and extra holders dumped off, the rover still barely crawled upward on this first part. That meant the vehicle would be stopped again 100 meters upslope.

The sample holder was not designed for quick removal; forty-eight screws held it in place, and they weren't easily accessible. It took a full half an hour, and many contortions, to get them all; therefore, the swearing. When he was done, he climbed carefully down from the rover's midsection and pulled it over the side, making sure it wouldn't hit any of the wheels. Then, heart pounding from his exertions, he got back into the driver's seat and started the rover going again. It pulled slowly up the slope.

"Maybe that extra fifty kilos'll do the trick, Jack."

But it didn't. A few minutes later the rover slowed and stopped; the batteries could just hold it without it starting to roll back downhill. Kabalevski set the brake again, cut power, and faced a spiritual crisis. There was nothing else removable -- except Jack and his suit. Removing their mass would make an enormous difference in the rover's performance. But the thought of leaving the body behind was anathema. There was an overwhelming need for Kabalevski to get Carhart back to Toy, and to Earth, for a proper hero's burial. Yet it was logical -- it was _necessary_ -- to leave the body.

But now that it had come to it, he still wasn't ready to do the logical thing. He got carefully out and forced himself to perform the now-familiar ritual of blocking the back wheels. Then he went around to the right side of the rover and unstrapped Carhart's body.

With the rover sloped so steeply, it was almost impossible to horse 100 kilos of mass out of the seat. He had to brace one foot against the side of the rover, and heave with all his strength. And when the body came out, it fell on top of Kabalevski and bore him to the ground, trapping his legs and causing a sharp pain in his left shin. The icy-cold rocks digging into his back drove him up quickly, ignoring further pain as he grabbed the bottom edge of the rover and pulled his legs out from under the body

Panting with the effort of freeing himself and standing up, he quickly checked the heads-up display; the suit retained its integrity. He took a tentative step and winced with pain, but the leg was able to bear weight. So he took a deep breath, stooped down, grabbed Carhart's body by the shoulders, and began pulling it upslope.

Twenty minutes later, he'd pulled the body less than 100 meters. His chest was heaving, his heart was pounding almost uncontrollably, and his visor was fogged with moisture his PLISS couldn't clear fast enough. He squinted upslope in the gathering darkness; 200 meters remained until the next hairpin where the grade eased off -- and he knew he was beaten. If he were fresh, he might make it up there; but the hard day yesterday, the restless night, and this day of increasing stress, had taken too high a toll of Kabalevski's strength. But those factors didn't weigh in his heart. What mattered was that he needed to get Carhart's body back to his comrades, and he couldn't do it. Tears of frustration and guilt welled in his eyes.

He shook his head to clear the cobwebs, then knelt down and pulled the body to one side of the primitive track, ignoring the racing of his heart. He stacked four flat rocks to make a cairn beside the body, then stood for a moment looking at the pathetic monument.

"I know you don't need this body any more, Jack -- but dammit . . .."

Then threw the body a salute, turned around, and started back toward the rover. He had to lean back against the slope and walk gingerly so he wouldn't pick up too much speed. He limped a little; his shin hurt like the devil.

Back in the rover the first thing he did was get the flashlight out of its compartment and check the clock: over fifteen hours had passed since he'd talked to Toy. About four more hours to the top, then one more to Toy on the straight and level. Praying that his last stop was behind him, he turned on the rover's lights, once more applied power and released the brake; the rover went up the steep slope very slowly, but it didn't falter.

"Looks like we're going to make it, Jack."

Five minutes later, he rolled past the body.

"We'll be back to render you proper honors, Jack."

Twenty minutes after that the slope reduced dramatically; the rover picked up speed and Kabalevski's heart lightened again as much as possible, with night closed in and the wind growing in force.

Three hours later another battery went out; the rover slowed, but kept going. Shortly after that two more went, almost simultaneously. The rover began to roll back downslope, even though the grade was less than 15 percent. Kabalevski hurriedly set the handbrake with a foul curse.

"Well, Jack, that big rock must've done more damage than we thought -- or else that dust is eating its way into the circuitry." He got gingerly out of the rover, winced and almost lost his balance as he put weight on his bad leg -- the bruised muscle next to the shin bone had stiffened badly.

He performed the tiresome ritual of blocking the back wheels, then used the flashlight to examine the array of remaining batteries. He couldn't see anything wrong. He flashed the light at the clock up front: almost nineteen hours elapsed since his estimate to Toy of -- what was it? Sixteen hours, plus-or-minus two? Three? How long to troubleshoot? How long to take out the three dead batteries? And would the rover make it anyway?

He forced his tired brain to do some dead reckoning, and came up with the hopeful thought that it couldn't be much more than a couple of kilometers to the rim.

"We're in luck, Jack; I think those batteries lasted long enough for us to make it to the top---if my legs hold out."

Kabalevski walked around to the shotgun seat, took the two baggies with the small shale specimens and clipped them to his waist-belt, one on each side. Then he pulled the larger specimen from where he'd put it -- how many hours ago. -- on the floor space in front of the right seat.

It was heavier than he remembered -- it must have massed five or six kilos -- and it would get heavier before he was through. Then he thought of its message, straightened his shoulders, and started up the slope, flashlight in the other hand.

"Stick with me Jack; I think I'm going to need your help."

After one hundred steps he paused to rest, heart pounding again. "Got to . . . pace myself, Jack . . . keep reminding me. If I do it right, I ought to . . . to be able to make almost as good a time as the rover."

An hour of toil passed. His body was a machine on overload; it required firm instructions from his brain not to lie down and sleep. The body negotiated for a rest every fifty steps instead of every hundred. The brain compromised and gave it seventy paces. "Help me keep count, Jack. . . I keep getting my twenties and thirties . . . mixed up."

Another hour. Kabalevski was finishing up his twenty-third rest. _OK _legs, time to get moving again. His body told him firmly that it refused to go another step. Just one more try, said the brain. The body still refused. _Look _said the brain, I promise that _if we haven't made the top by the end of the next forty paces, we'll lie down and join Jack _This was the fifth time he'd made that promise; it worked one more time. His left leg moved forward and up; the right followed; they weren't big steps, but they were something.

Twenty-six slow paces, and then he noticed something: the wind was increasing dramatically. He could actually hear it now: a thin keening -- and there were larger grains of dust in it; he could hear them rasping against his suit. And he could actually feel the force of the wind, coming from the left front; he had to lean against it against it a little, and it made his progress more difficult.

"Damn it, Jack, don't . . . l have . . .troubles . . . enough? Now the wind's picking up."

He could hear Jack laughing at him, and wondered why . . . then realized a marvelous fact: he must be feeling the wind from the top of the rim. Hardly daring to hope, he moved the light upward -- and there was no more slope, just a gentle lip. He croaked a laugh and stumbled up and over into the deep rover tracks in the regolith; the dust had half-filled them, but they were still there.

"Toy Base, Toy Base, this Kabalevski, over."

_ssss -- Base -- sss -- status, over._

"Toy Base, Kabalevski. Toy Base, this is Kabalevski. I read you one by two. I read you one by two. Status report: Carhart is dead, and so is the rover. I am on foot at the top of the rim, and in distress. Request you send the auxiliary rover as soon as possible. Repeat message: Carhart is dead, and rover is disabled. I am in distress and require immediate assistance, over."

_Kabalevski, this is -- ss -- Base -- ssss -- stand your message -- sss -- send Riko with auxiliar -- sss -- diately while I recompute -- ssssss -- peat: Riko -- sss -- her way with sss rover. Do you -- sss -- stand, over?_

"Toy Base, Kabalevski. Understand your message. You are sending auxiliary rover to my position. Repeat: your message is understood. You are sending rover to me at once . . .."

Twenty-five minutes later, he was seated blissfully in the auxiliary rover's right seat, with Nakano driving pell-mell through the dark and dust back to Toy. She was full of questions, but Kabalevski wouldn't talk.

"Later, Riko, please. I need to rest, now."

His rest was short; in fifteen minutes they were at the lander. They both used the full airlock, leaving their dust-laden suits in the outer chamber. Kabalevski brushed the dust off the big rock as best he could and took it inside the vehicle.

Judy Aarness was in the pilot's seat, busy with checkout. Kabalevski made for the water supply, grabbed a squeegee, and emptied it slowly into his mouth; his suit's supply had run out several hours ago. More strength returned with the water.

While he was drinking, Aarness finished and turned her couch around with a sigh. Kabalevski cut off her impending questions with one of his own: "What's our status, Judy?"

"We're an hour and a half past our max allowed time on the ground. This storm's about twice as ugly as we thought when we last talked to you. Phobos and Houston are so pissed off you wouldn't believe it. Based on our instrument telemetry, they're giving us less than a fifty-fifty chance of making it now. Personally, I think they're full of crap; our flight computer's fully functional, just two of the thrusters have gone over to backup, and the only thing wrong with the main engine gimbals is a little sluggishness in yaw. Seems to me we're more like seventy-thirty."

"How long to liftoff?" he asked.

She glanced over to the mission clock. "Twenty-three minutes; I've just given full control to the computer. So while you're getting your butt into the chair you can tell us what happened to Jack -- and what is that rock that's getting dust all over my clean deck?"

Kabalevski looked down at the piece of shale in his hands. The two smudges were plainly visible; the larger one's appendages were prominent. He smiled to himself and spoke under his breath: "They're really there, aren't they, Jack?"

"What did you say?" asked Kaoriko.

Kabalevski said: "Is Phobos on the comm?"

"Yes," said Aarness. "They came into line-of-sight two hours ago, and are under orders to record all voice until we dock."

_"Good," _said Kabalevski, "because I have a story to tell you." He smiled again. "A story about the Carhart Shale . . .."

The smaller children clapped their hands and cheered, amid the sighs and thoughtful looks of the older ones. One of the latter raised his hand. It was Sean Mgumbo; Judy noticed that the arm was very muscular. Sean was going back to Earth next month to attend college; he'd been diligently working out in the high-G centrifuge.

"Yes, Sean?"

"Ma'am, my father thinks that it was you, and not Colonel Kabalevski, who was with Carhart on the expedition down into Hebes -- and that you were a great heroine to get the samples back to Toy Base. Is that true?"

She frowned and put a little steel into her answer: "Sean, you know perfectly well that the members of the first expedition made a pact to keep the name of the other person confidential. The reason is that the identity of the other is not important; what he or she did was not heroism -- it was just doing a job and not giving up. It could have been any one of us -- Colonel Kabalevski, Kaoriko Nakano, or myself. In fact, it was all of us in spirit. But the real hero was Jack Carhart --"

Now Sean's and two other hands were up. She held out her own to forestall them. "Please, let me finish; this is important. We know now that fossil-bearing shale is common on Mars -- so that its discovery on the first expedition wasn't the huge stroke of luck that we thought at first . . .." She smiled before continuing: ". . . it was just a _little _lucky. The important thing that Carhart did was to seize the luck -- to recognize what he'd found, and have the courage to disobey orders and scramble up the cliff to make sure of his find -- knowing perfectly well that it was extremely dangerous to do so. It was those qualities which made it possible for us to be here today, celebrating the fifteenth anniversary of our colony . . .."

She left the classroom early, and went out into the warm sunlight under the Dome. She strolled eastward, following her shadow along a path between tilled fields; her nostrils flared at the rich smell of night soil. When she walked past a working farmer, he stopped to tip his hat and speak a respectful "Afternoon, Ma'am."

Ma'am indeed! All adults in the colony were on first-name terms -- except for her. For the past several years, they'd been saying "ma'am" to her, and calling her the Matriarch of Mars behind her back What a load of crap! She let her gaze drift up over the rim wall, out to infinity, and spoke under her breath:

"I hear you laughing, Jack. But I'll be damned if I'll let them make me a hero. Tomorrow, I'm going to hang it up. Maybe I can wangle a job at one of the polar stations, working on the Atmosphere Project. Hell, I'm only sixty-seven . . .."

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