Welcome Aboard Air Marineris

That night I had dinner with Dini. She found time for that not because she hungered to see me, but because she wanted in on the search for life. I didn’t blame her, but I was just a little jealous of her change of attitude. She hadn’t eaten dinner, or many other meals, with me, for many months. My drive for my own projects hadn’t made me a paragon of domesticity either. But did it make me love her less? How could it? I am immensely proud of her accomplishments.

I didn’t mean to keep her from you. I have only offered scraps of description. Dini is gorgeous. Her face is too wide, her nose is too big, and her mouth is too small. She is slim enough to qualify as scrawny, but it doesn’t make any difference to me. I love the presence that is her. I love her dark intensity. She comes together in my mind as perfect. The face, the nose, the mouth, the frame, might be critical on another person, but not on her.

I sat there, listening to her, and marveling at her. Why didn’t everybody feel the same? How could they resist? She was eating pomme frits and a vegetarian cassoulet made with leeks instead of sausage. She matched it with pieces of baguette smeared with cloned butter and red wine. I had the same, and it was the perfect satisfying meal.

“You’ve got to go back there, Mo. There’s no more methane coming from your samples. I don’t see any traces of organisms in them, even though I’ve just been looking on a cam. If you had cut through a deposit, you would see something, and we would have some methane generation. Nothing. So it must be even deeper. On Earth, life goes down kilometers. It could be the same thing here. We might need to dig all the way down, but the best bet with what we’ve got is to go down in stages and hope we will find something.”

“I have one more idea. Since we don’t seem to be getting any reaction at surface temp and pressure, maybe we could elevate both to an approximation of what it might be subjected to down under. We could put it in an air lock, gradually raising both. That might prompt a reaction where we have seen none. We could take it up your freight elevator to one of the two freight locks you have up top. That would allow us to control conditions while still effectively keeping the sample outside for isolation purposes. Let’s try it.”

“Well, I could do both. We have half a dozen more bits. I can ask Lou to put them on a supply ship and send them out in our direction. We don’t have any more after that. We didn’t expect to do much core drilling. For more, we’ll need to order from the LEO colonies. They fabricate them there from the Moon’s micro diamonds.

“As for the temperature raising experiments, I think you could handle that. Lou would be happy to help lift the stuff. Have you had any success with your exobiologist search?”

“Not yet. The truth is that there are no experts because there are no examples of extraterrestrial life. You are going to correct that, aren’t you, dear? I have found quite a few people who want try to become exobiologists, though. Most of them are microbiologists. No green people types. I don’t think those types have had much inspiration outside of science fiction. I’d sure like to know what that Abner fellow is thinking about that. According to Bee, he listens to them on a regular basis. Too bad they don’t talk back. Maybe they will someday. Maybe we can redeem ourselves, and maybe they will tell us about little green fems.”

“That, however, is speculation, my love. One microbiologist would be helpful, preferably one who specializes in extremophiles. I have no idea of what to look for. Examination of the centuries-old musing on what substances and structures to look for doesn’t help much with current knowledge. Too bad those new dictionaries from the Cthaw are concentrating on the physical sciences. Where are those aliens when we need them? They could tell us a thing or two. Our aliens don’t tell us about their cousins on Mars. All they do is send us magic radios.”

“Let’s take some coffee upstairs. I have a lot to say to you, and this isn’t the place. I don’t want dessert.”

There was a smile on her face. She thought I meant something else. I might have, but not then. My heart was fit to burst. Mere loving wouldn’t cover it.

It was a good hike up the pegpole. We were on the top floor where we had been placed when we needed that protection. Then it was just a long way. The view was good, though. Twenty floors up gives you some perspective.

Dini had decorated our place with all the stuff that mattered to her. The French were so attached to their cultural legacy that they could never accept the loss of it. The cities, the churches, the art, were so much a part of them that they couldn’t let them go. Some consider that the dollhouse replicas they built in their underground cities were ridiculous, but I don’t agree. The Pyramid of the Louvre, the half-size Champs Elysée and the rest seem brave and a bit forlorn, but never pathetic. Dini didn’t use them, though. She had pictures of the originals on our walls, interspersed with the great art her compatriots had created. I loved it. It was enough for me that we had the cliffs of the Valles on our front wall. That satisfied my need for mountains. They were ghost visions of my home and kindred.

The sound system played the greats of French popular music in the background. Serge Reggiani, Edit Piaf, Jacques Brel, and dozens of others caressed or scratched the ear. I was very happy to take on her culture as an overlay to my own. I could hardly wait until we sat down. She poured the coffee from the carafe precisely, like a surgical opening, sure and swift. The brown bubbles floated on the surface of the nectar. I am impatient. I went first. Bad manners maybe, but very satisfying.

“Dini, dear, the last months have been very stressful, both for you and me. Through it all, I feel our work had been coming between us. I know you have a big heart. That’s why you want to help everyone. It’s obvious. It’s not because you care less, it’s because you care more. You have room for others besides me. I love that about you. I am no one to complain about spending too much time at work. That’s why your interest in this life search is so wonderful for me. We are working together, and I love that. You know, we haven’t had dinner together in months. And now, we are spending the evening, not just the night, together. Like a couple. It completes the circle for me.”

“I know. I feel it too, dear. Ever since I got here, I’ve felt there is just so much to do. So many people need me. That feels good, but it’s frustrating too. It’s never ending. And when you had that dustup with Linus, and they charged you, I became frightened I would lose you. Frightened that they would take you. I can’t leave now, with everything here. There are so many of them and so few of us. Billions against thousands. I didn’t think we had a chance at first. That Bennet guy looked like the best lawyer you can imagine. That’s one of the reasons I left the trial. It was overwhelming, and I felt helpless. I needed to get back to someplace I could control, someplace I could help. I was sorry not to be there to offer my support, but I didn’t want to spook you. You had enough problems.

“Now, I realize that I was cheating everyone working the way I do. We all need some time to ourselves. Especially in a place like this. That’s why I can’t help looking at the tanning beds from the other end of the cafeteria while I am collecting myself to go to work. There, I’ve confessed myself to you, my darling. I’m a secret slug. I really want to lie down and pretend to fall to sleep. You can keep to yourself in public. It’s not being alone in your room, which is depressing, but being solitary in the company of others. I wish I had time for that, to lay next to you. Wouldn’t that be nice if we had some time?”

Then she giggled.

“Then, we’d really fall asleep. Could either of us really do that for more than five minutes? Thinking of things you’d like to do if things were completely different is a diverting exercise, but it doesn’t get anything done.”

The pixie grin left her face, and she became serious. It was time to go on. She continued:

“Let’s talk about the great quest, Cherie. I would like to take a small piece from one of the samples that is still producing methane, if we can find one. I have been trained to recognize living cells. We have the microscopes in our clinic. Until we have someone, I can at least look. If I find something, I have tests to check if there are signs of life. They will show large molecular weight organic compounds. Not good for everything, but a good start. There are positive signs many places in the canyon, but we can’t tell whether one is as good as another.

“If you still get methane at your site, lets dig again. If we’ve done something to impair it somehow by drilling, we can try someplace else. That cap you set could tell the story. It would be able to sense round the clock, especially at night. It’s at ground level, too. The gas may dissipate so much it is undetectable elsewhere. Maybe the production is constant, and the detection is varied. Isn’t amazing that we have never looked?”

“So now that we’re working together, can you go over Lou’s data and see whether there are any time or property differences in gas generation at the first site? It’ll speed up my search. Later, when we go farther, we can set them up for the copter and send it to do closeup shots. Maybe we’ll be able to find something distinctive.”

“Now, sweetie, you can lose yourself in my work. At least I’ll have your indirect attention. Let’s go to bed. I am feeling much better about the future now.”

“Let’s wait for that. We’ve just started our journey. We’ll put on some proper music. Reggiani, perhaps, the Romance album. Let’s relax first.”