Gaea

Chapter 10

"I suppose not," said Liu, sighing. The rover was almost silent for a time, filled only with the sound of wheels rolling over gravel.

"Amit," said Liu. "I was thinking."

He looked bemused. "What?"

"I'm not sure if I like this place. I came here to find a new world. But all I see is desert."

Amit smiled. "Oh, you just wait. Here, let me show you something." He turned to the monitors and brought up a map of Gaea, compiled from satellite data. Liu realized she had never actually seen a map of the whole planet, and scolded herself for never making the inquiry.

The map was split between blue ice and yellow dessert, with two thin bands of brown and red arcing across opposite sides. A red indicator flashed the location of the Iapetus.

"You see where we are? Right there? Well..."

Amit zoomed into the map, highlighting the area near the rover. For miles all around, there was nothing except orange-brown desert, but about fifty kilometers to the north was a large lake. On Earth, it would have been no bigger than Caspian Sea, but it was far bigger than any body of water Liu had seen so far.

"Eh? What do you think?"

"I think it's great! Do you know what this means? Open water is the one thing everyplace has missed!"

"Huh?"

"Mars, Europa, Enceladus. They're all planets or moons that biologists thought would have life on them, because they all had liquid water. But none of them do. But this lake almost exactly replicates the environment on Earth. This could be it, Amit!"

"Well, that's fantastic! Can't wait for tomorrow."

Liu grinned and went to her own quarters while Amit smiled after her.

Later that night, with the sun still shining brightly on the horizon, Amit was still studying the samples he had gathered that day, scrutinizing motes of dust and flecks of stone, when a message arrived on the comm system. A stern looking man with a well-groomed beard appeared on one of the monitors.

"Good afternoon, crew of the Iapetus. This is Lieutenant Hernandez speaking. The scientific staff here at Eridu has decided they would rather the expedition divert from its current path and take a more easterly one. Starting tomorrow at oh-six hundred, your rover will change bearing to north-northeast, and continue on that new route. The purpose of this change of course is to survey the ice fields and investigate the prehistoric state of Gaea's atmosphere. We wish you the best in the coming endeavors."

The face blinked out and Amit found himself staring at his own reflection.

The glaciers that covered Gaea's dark hemisphere could be very old, and thus contain trapped air bubbles formed thousands, perhaps even millions of years ago. He was hardly an atmospheric scientist, but the idea was attractive nonetheless. He realized only a few hours after, as he was drifting off, that the new course would take the rover away from the lake.

Liu was not in a good mood the following morning. She silently watched the desert roll by, and Amit kept his distance.

There were no samples collected that day, and the two scientists busied themselves as best they could. The rock samples from the volcano contained many basic organic molecules, which was encouraging, but there were no active microbes. Amit's own studies had been much more promising, showing that the planet's upper mantle, and thus the igneous rocks forming at the volcano, was very similar to Earth's, though slightly heavier in ferromagnetic metals.