Free Marsquake! by Brad Strickland, THOMAS E. FULLER Page B

brine basins on the surface before!”
    Sean looked at Jenny and mouthed “Blueberries?”]
    “Later,” she mouthed back.
    “Mr. Doe,” Ellman said dryly, “I’m sure that Miss Laslo’s face is enchanting, but will you please pay attention to your photography? I believe Dr. Rormer is waiting for you to finish your pictures. Thank you.
    With his face burning, Sean snapped away.
    That evening, when they were once again in a tent, Sean asked Jenny, “Blueberries? Is that what you called those things? What the heck are blueberries? I mean, they can’t be real berries, not on Mars. Are they some kind of rock, or—”
    Jenny gave him a funny look. “Haven’t you read your history?”
    “Enough to know that no berries ever grew on Mars,” Sean said grumpily. If Jenny had a fault, he thought, it was that she was so bookish, especiallywhen it came to subjects that interested her.
    “No, of course the Martian blueberries aren’t
fruit
. That’s just a name someone tagged them with when—look, these things have been known for ages and ages. If I’m not misremembering, way back during the very first unmanned explorations of the planet, people found blueberries. I think it was one of the United States surface rover missions back in the twentieth century, or maybe the early twenty-first. They called them ‘marbles’ then.”
    “Marsbles, you mean,” Sean said, laughing. “Too small for marbles. So what are they?”
    “Concretions of minerals,” Jenny said. “They’re kind of mysterious, even today. Nobody knows exactly how they formed. At first people thought they might be ejecta, material that was blown out in volcanic eruptions or thrown up into the air by meteorite impacts, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. You only find them in Martian sedimentary rock, in basins where there was standing salty water eons ago. They’re not perfect spheres, but they’re so round they have the look of something made artificially.”
    “But there were never any Martians.”
    “Well, so far as we know,” Jenny conceded. “Though we’re sure there were some very basic Martian life-forms. Did you know that on Earth they’ve found meteorites that were blasted off the surface of Mars and that show evidence of bacterial life? It’s even possible that some Martian bacteria might have reached the Earth alive.”
    “But bacteria don’t
make
things. They couldn’t have made the blueberries.”
    “I didn’t say they did,” Jenny protested. “I just meant that the blueberries look artificial, as if something made them, that’s all.”
    “Just because they’re round? River rocks are round,” Sean said. “No one thinks they were chiseled out by river gnomes or anything.”
    “Rivers on Mars didn’t last long enough to leave any river rocks,” Jenny shot back. “And yes, it’s possible that some kind of natural forces shaped the blueberries. But really, the odd thing is that even after people actually got their hands on the samples of these things, no one could figure out exactly whatthey were. They contain pretty high levels of copper, which is odd because copper is fairly rare on the surface of Mars. And they’re always found in areas where there are trace fossils that just might be the remains of Martian bacteria, so it’s just barely possible that the two might go together somehow.”
    “Well, the two of us found the first underground blueberries on Mars,” Sean said, yawning. “So maybe we’ll go down in the history books.” He reached for a water bottle and a ration pack without much enthusiasm.
    “How’s your finger?” Jenny asked. “How badly did you cut it?”
    Sean held up his forefinger, putting on a pained expression. “Stabbed to my very heart, I am. Scarred for life. My life’s blood flowing out like a mighty river. My tender young flesh forever mutilated—”
    Jenny was shining a flashlight on his fingertip and closely inspecting his skin. She snapped off the light. “Oh, shut up. I