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“You gave us quite a shock.” Melanie, the mission’s doctor said, as he regained his consciousness.
“What happened?” He asked.
“We’re not sure.” She replied slowly. “We think you pushed yourself too hard, and we noticed you hardly drank any water from your suit.”
“I drank what was required.” Tom defended himself.
“What was required for a normal EVA,” Melanie corrected him, “You were pushing yourself to the limit on this last EVA, you need to up your water use to compensate.”
“Yeah, it makes me have to piss.” Tom ignored the usually very precise Doctor saying normal for EVA mission on Mars instead of her usual nominal. “And I can’t stand doing it in the suit. But I hardly ever drink more than the very minimum required.”
“Well, I’ve told before if you keep this up, I’ll need to up your minimum.” She said lacking any of the soothing bedside manner she was known for.
“How long was I out?”
“About half an hour, long enough for us to move you to bed and set up an IV drip. I could have woken you up earlier but with you the tests go faster if you’re unconscious.”
“I’ve got to check my samples.” Tom started to get up.
“They can wait, they aren’t going anywhere.” She said sternly. “You’re going to stay and get re-hydrated.”
“It will be after dark by then,” Tom said, “We’ll be on minimum power without the solar panels.”
“Then you couldn’t get much work done anyway,” she told him. “It won’t hurt you to get some extra sleep tonight any way. How much sleep did you get last night?”
“I was in bed by my required time.” Tom felt like a child having to say he didn’t miss bedtime, but it was a requirement that they all got a full night’s rest before an EVA.
“And how long before you fell asleep?” Melanie probed.
“Well, I did a quick review of EVA checklist, but that couldn’t take long.” Tom told her.
“An hour and a half, according to the computer log. And did you sleep the whole night.”
“OK, I’ll admit it, I got up a little early.” Tom said sheepishly.
“Like an hour early?” Melanie asked.
“If you already know the answers why are you asking?” Tom felt himself getting annoyed, even though the rational side of his brain knew she was just doing her job.
“I’ve taken a lot of heat from Bob, head of medical back on Earth for giving you guys a lot of slack, just telling you what you need to do before work and assuming you’d be an adult and do it.
“Everyone else would listen and I didn’t have to worry. With you,” Melanie sighed before continuing, “You take my orders, and they are orders even if I try to make them sound like suggestions, and see if you can shave off the edges and obey the letter of the order but not the spirit. Like drinking the exact required water and no more, and getting four hours of sleep before an EVA, when the regs say you should have a minimum of seven.
“I even stuck my neck for you on that. Your sleep patterns show you’re fine with six and I talked Bob into letting you slide.
“So you repay me by not getting the modified amount of sleep letting yourself get dehydrated to the point you pass out. Bob is going to catch hell for your little stunt for the next two weeks and I won’t be able to defend my actions.
“All the people I beat out for this mission will point to your little stunt and say they were right that I shouldn’t have been on this mission because of my relationship with Bob.”
“Wait, you and Bob are a couple?” Tom was perplexed, all the time dealing with medical staff on Earth Melanie was strictly professional with Bob, her superior.
“Yes.” Melanie said forcefully, “It’s not a secret. I had to show that I was twice as good as all the other candidates to get this position, now he will take the heat because I was easy on you.
“So from now on, I will check that you get enough sleep before you go on an EVA, not after you pass out. When you are on the surface, I will monitor you and make sure you aren’t straining yourself without drinking the proper amount of water.
“Do I make myself clear?”
“Yes Ma’am,” was all Tom could say.
“Now give yourself time to recover and I expect you to report to me for a full physical in the morning. Right now I’ve got to give my last private transmission back to Earth. Thanks to your little stunt it will be advise to Bob as how to handle the crisis you’ve created for him and not… Well you don’t care.”
Melanie quickly got up and left the room.
Tom knew he had messed up, but he had never seen Melanie get angry with anyone. She had always been firm but nice, this was the first time he saw her without the nice.
With nothing else to do Tom pulled his medical chart to see how bad he messed up. The chart surprised him, the first thing he noticed was after he passed out his blood pressure was a slightly elevated. As a biologist Tom knew that animals suffering from dehydration pass out because the lowered blood pressure makes the brain receive less blood and the brain forces the body to give it more blood by passing out making it easier to send blood to the brain. If it was dehydration his blood pressure should have been lower, not higher, than normal.
He looked at his other vitals to see what made Melanie think his passing out was caused by dehydration. His heart rate had been elevated and his body temperature was 38 degrees Celsius. That fit with dehydration, but it could also be explained by his pacing during the half hour lock down in the airlock. He remembered how he was starved coming back to the base and that his urine was clear. Those to things didn’t fit with dehydration; his appetite should have been suppressed and his urine should have been dark.
It was clear to Tom that Melanie had messed up the diagnosis. As the mission’s biologist he was most qualified to look over her work and if he thought she messed up he was supposed to report it to Bob back on Earth. Looking at the clock he realized he would have to do that immediately to get the message to him before communications were cut off because of the conjunction. If he thought Melanie was mad before, breaking into her last conversation with Bob so he could call her incompetent would really send her on the warpath. After being yelled at for not following procedure he decided the best course of action was to not follow procedure and just keep an eye on her work from now on.
His decision was easier to follow because the lack of sleep she scolded him for was starting to catch up with him. He couldn’t do anything with the saline bag attached to his arm and he was in a comfortable bed. He decided to rest his eyes for a second and he was out like a light.
When he woke up 5 hours later he just had to glance at the dark light tube to see that it was night outside and the base would be running on minimum power. He could still do some work on his samples even without using the more powerful equipment.
He headed to the lab, and found Sarah was working alone on their samples.
“Hey.” She smiled when she saw him, while she threw a couple switches. “You gave me quite a fright.”
“Sorry.” Tom was thrown off guard; she hadn’t said that much at one time, other than giving technical reports, since they landed.
“I’m glad you’re OK.”
“Me too.”
“I was afraid it would spoil my plans.” She grinned.
“Plans?”
“I’ve finally got you alone.” She unzipped her jumpsuit letting it fall to the floor, reveling her naked body. “No one around, no cameras, not having the entire population of Earth listening in on every single word. It’s the first time since we left Earth that we’ve truly had a chance to be alone.”
“I’m truly flattered.” Tom said trying to get his mind to think straight, not an easy thing to do with a beautiful woman standing naked in front of him. “But you don’t sound like yourself.”
“No?” She asked coyly. “Maybe this is the first time I’ve been able to be myself. I know the rest of you
have learned to ignore the cameras on you all the time, but I can’t. You know I almost gave up this opportunity when I found out about the media sponsorship.”
“When I get back to Earth I want to be remembered for the work I did here, not some dumb comment that would be meaningless until it got played over and over on the news. So, not having everyone watching is liberating. I can take my clothes off without being forever known as the Naked Mars Chick.”
“It’s not that I’m not interested.” Tom’s heart was racing as his mind wondered what had happened to his friend. “But this is happening too fast. We’ve been working together non-stop for years and you’ve never hinted at wanting… this.”
“Are you really that obtuse?” Sarah looked shocked, “I thought you were playing along so that back on Earth people would talk about your research, not our relationship. As discrete as I tried to be, even on Earth people noticed. I’ve heard Sarah-hearts-Tom.com is one of the top sites on the Internet, right below lolcats.
“With communications down for two weeks we can have fun and see what happens without it being a major news item. Then when the cameras are back on whatever happens will be old news. So this is our chance to be ourselves without the whole world watching.”
“I am going to have to think this all over.” Tom told her, as much as he had grown to love being with Sarah, for some reason her new aggressiveness frightened him and all he could think of was getting out of the lab as quickly as possible. “We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”
“I’m literally throwing myself at you and all you can say is we’ll talk tomorrow?”
“Sorry. That’s the best I can do.” Tom said and retreated back to his bunk.
He spent the rest of the night cowering in his bed afraid of the woman who had been his closest friend on this planet.
When his bunk was filled with sunlight filtered down through the light tube he knew it was finally dawn and soon the base would be running at full power again.
Bill was in the common area having breakfast so Tom joined him.
“How are you feeling?” Bill asked without his normal smile.
“I feel great.” Tom lied. “I can’t wait to get to work on my latest samples. Once we have full power I’m sure I’ll make some mind blowing discoveries.”
“I’m confident you will,” Bill got a smile that didn’t quite seem right, “You should look over Sarah’s work before heading to the lab. Even examining them at low power your samples are showing some interesting results.”
“Then I need to run a full check on them right away.” Tom felt excited.
“I need to talk to you about that.” Bill said with a stern look on his face. “We have a sandstorm moving in, and the sensor on access port to the unpressurized lab is not responding. It could be nothing but we can’t take the chance of too much Martian dust getting into the equipment.
“You’re gonna have to wait until tomorrow to check your samples. But in the meantime you’ll have plenty to do going over Sarah’s results.”
“But I’m on the verge of discovering the existence of extraterrestrial life.” Tom was really annoyed at how Bill always tried to make every conversation end on a positive note, “You know that sensor has been giving us trouble. This discovery is worth taking the chance on.”
“If the sensor is right and the sandstorm takes out the lab, the rest of our time here is wasted. Nothing is worth that. Especially when you should be checking Sarah’s results before starting your tests anyway.”
“But those samples may have…” Tom started.
“… the first proof of extraterrestrial life.” Bill finished his sentence for him. “I’m not jeopardizing the rest of our mission for your work no matter how important it is. It can wait until tomorrow.”
Bill stormed out of the room and went to his quarters.
Tom wondered how their little world could have become so crazy overnight. Then he had a wild thought. If a Martian lifeform had survived being frozen for millions of years, they might have brought it on board.
In the warm comfortable surroundings of the base it could have thrived. It might have infected the crew and affected their brains. That would explain why everyone was acting strange.
He shook his head in a vain attempt to shake away these thoughts. As he did that he saw the airlock. He looked around and saw no one. It wouldn’t hurt to peek at the suits to see if there was anyway something could have gotten into the base.
This could be his only chance to do this unobserved. He took one last glance to make sure he wasn’t being watched. He took apart the inner door monitor and deactivated the sensor so no one would know what he was doing. Procedures said that he needed permission to open the inner door to the airlock, but with everyone acting so strange he couldn’t trust them knowing his suspicions.
He carefully inspected his suit. Sarah had done a great job in vacuuming it off; The composite material had gotten scratched up in the past year of being exposed to the Martian soil, but she had managed to make it dust-free. Then he inspected Sarah’s suit. He had cleaned it off fairly well except the spot between the legs.
He never thought of himself as a prude but he guessed something in him restrained from sticking a vacuum hose on a girls privates, even when it was covered by a 1 inch airtight piece of Armor.
He could see where the red Martian soil had darkened, probably a piece of the ice sample stuck on it, then melted when they pressurized the airlock with warm air.
Tom checked his pockets and pulled out his small notepad, he ripped a page out and held it under the spot on the suit that had the darkened soil. He shook the suit until the soil fell off into the paper.
Sneaking back through the base he made his way to the med station. The high-powered microscope was put on stand-by mode as the main power was being used for someone else’s experiment. He unplugged their experiment without checking what it was and powered up the microscope. He quickly had a sample prepped, dyed and on a slide. As the microscope was adjusting it’s focus, Tom caught a glimpse of what he feared. He saw the definite rounded shape of a single cell organism.
“What the hell are you doing with the equipment?” Tom heard Melanie scream.
Tom had never heard Melanie raise her voice before in the year they had been on the mission. He looked around and saw in his haste he had made a total mess of the station.
“I’ve found something you might want to take a look at.” He told her, trying to calm her down.
“You couldn’t ask me?” Her voice was still louder than normal. “You had to come over and make a mess out of the lab, and destroy my work?”
“This was real important.” Tom told her.
“More important than following procedure?” She lashed out, “You’ve been bending the rules since we landed, but destroying someone’s experiment is too much, even for you.”
The raised voices brought all the other teammates out to see what was going on.
“What do you think your doing, Tom?” Bill was down right angry, “The airlock door has been tampered with, if the outer door were to fail we would all be dead. Those monitors are there for a reason.”
“I think I know why everyone is acting strange.” Tom told him.
“How is everyone acting strange?” Bill sighed.
“Since when do you get angry and irritable?” Tom asked.
“When you put the lives of the crew at risk I’m going to get angry, If I’ve have a little harder time dealing with your antics then normal it’s because my cat, Mr. Fluff-ball, is very sick back home and with the Conjunction, I won’t know if he’ll make it…” Bill had to stop as he got choked up.
Tom was speechless finding out the person who ultimately responsible for all their lives was affected so much by a cat named, Mr. Fluff-Ball.
“You’d know that if you ever listened to him.” Melanie said. “But, you never listen to anyone, do you?”
“OK, since when have you been blunt and uncaring about your patients?” he as
ked her. “Like you where last night?”
“When my relationship with Bob is already strained by not even being able to talk back and forth in real time, and you go and get both of us in so much trouble that I’ve got no idea if he’ll still be in charge after we get out of Conjunction, I think I’m entitled to tell you the consequences of your actions.”
“But it wasn’t my actions that caused a problem.” Tom said, “I looked over the results of your exam and my blood pressure was elevated. That rules out dehydration.”
“I… I… I’m sorry.” Melanie said, “I was going over the initial proposals for new EVA procedures that mission control wants to implement after the Conjunction and they are really nervous about dehydration making a crew member pass out on EVA. Then I get pulled away to find you passed out after an EVA and I must have jumped to the wrong conclusion. Somehow my role of establishing health rules got in the way of my being a doctor. I guess I rushed things when I shouldn’t have, but this isn’t really the way to do a performance review.”
“Can we just all calm down a bit?” Sarah said. “Tom you’re just overworked.”
“When did you decide to start talking?” Tom asked.
“As soon as I turned off the microphones,” she told him. “Like I told you last night, it’s hard for me to talk freely knowing every word I say will be played over and over on every screen on Earth.”
Tom thought a second. All these things made sense on their own, but he would need to check on one last piece of the puzzle before he could put his suspicions to rest.
“OK, what about the Martian space bug I found.”
“Congratulations.” Sarah cheered. “You finally did it.”
“Check it out,” Tom pointed to the microscope. “You’ll see it’s the bug that has infected the crew.”
Melanie glanced at Bill, who nodded. She went over and looked through the microscope.
“This little thing.” She said. “It couldn’t win a fight with a paramecium.”
She stepped back from the microscope and gestured for Tom to look.
Tom peered through the eyepiece. He saw that he was right about it being a single celled organism, but the Doctor was right. Its insides had only a few blobs and only the barest of cell nuclei, the mitocandria, which is the powerhouse of cells on Earth, was either missing or too small to make out clearly. As he watched, the dye he used was quickly permeating the cell membrane. Either something in the medium he used to prep the slide was killing it, or it was naturally a lot slower moving than single celled organisms on Earth.
This organism wouldn’t stand a chance in the advanced human blood stream, and for this organism to exist, meant nothing advanced had developed around it, or it would have been gobbled up long ago.
As he was trying to come to terms with the complete meltdown of his idea that Martian life had taken over the base, he felt a prick on his butt cheek. A second later he felt dizzy and he knew the Doctor had sedated him.