Read Online People of Mars by Rita Carla Francesca Monticelli - Free Book Online

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.