Extinct Doesn't Mean Forever by Phoenix Sullivan (easy readers txt) 📕

be yet another week now before he could wash the sheet and pillow case. That would be Levinsol in the Martian week. Since he was supposed to have Levinsol, Zubrinsol and Clarksol off, he should have been happy, but he wouldn’t be getting the time off given current circumstances. West checked the tablet in his room while he had the chance. He’d collected a lot of pings. People were arguing who should get to transfer to Buggy A, most of the suggestions being extended versions of me.

Earth Headquarters was still objecting to the names West had sent for geographical features, and the tone of the messages was becoming angrier. West checked the select websites that were automatically sent to the buggy and noticed a lot of support had coalesced for the new names. The support had named itself the Spread Legs Gulch Convention after the gulch the United States Government still refused to mention on its maps. West decided the United States was a culture with too much time on its hands, largely because it had grown allergic to work.

“Damn.”

Green had done more work while he and Casey were scheduled for sleep. Following protocol, she had notified him. The core sample slides had been sequentially numbered. Green had taken the deposits and linked them up to get a three-dimensional image of the deposits as a whole.

Clearly this wasn’t happenstance. The deposits were tapered at either end and expanded in the middle. It wasn’t universal, but it was common enough to be the norm. What that meant, West couldn’t tell. Geology wasn’t his specialty.

The coding of sample slides and providing a three-dimensional image of them was such a standard procedure, even West knew about it. Why hadn’t Casey already done it?

Then he realized she almost certainly had. Protocol demanded it and these results could only advantage her case. Unless, of course, she had something so much stronger that sequencing seemed petty by comparison. But if she had killer evidence, why was she keeping it a secret? There were several reasons why Casey might want to keep her powder dry, and from West’s point of view, none of them were any good. The time had come to pay her a visit.

The tablet told him she was at the Cranberry dig site. Hack name. West did his own hack and checked the code. It was designed so the computer would assign the results to another site. So she didn’t want the data secret, just secret from him. That could mean she just wanted to be able to sell something once they got back to Earth. But that didn’t sound like Casey. Certainly she was greedy for recognition and to be proved right, but money had never been her priority. She was like a panther, hunting things down and toying with them, like the big cat she was.

So what was she playing at here?

If the computer wouldn’t tell him where the site was, there was one thing guaranteed to lead him to it.

“Lauer! Is the dig site on cable or beam?”

“We’re cabling over the lip of the crater, then we’re beaming to a site northeast of that.” He stared at West, waiting for an explanation.

“Cut all comms. Just do it. My order.”

Laurer reached behind him, still staring at the Commander, and pressed a single function key.

“Any other melodramatic orders you want to give, Commander?”

But West was already out of Console. He raced back to his room and put on his underwear, boots, and gloves. Then he headed to the airlock and stood in a template in the antechamber waiting for it to suit him. He stepped to the second template to get a pack, then pulled his helmet out of his locker and fastened it on. And, for the first time, he took with him the one prerogative of Command, the one thing that set him apart from all other crew members: a gun.

He followed the cable and climbed into the Secchi Crater. As predicted, they were beaming energy, but not northeast. They were sending microwaves to a receiver in the northwest, up one of the fjords of the crater. He entered the fjord and saw a number of caves.

The receiving unit, which turned microwaves back into electricity, was easy to find. But the cables, well-buried, would take too long to follow. From here, he was on his own. He began checking the nearby caves. The first couple drew blanks, but even West could see the stripes of sedimentation in the walls and what looked very much like the fossils of some kind of polyp.

In the ancient past, Mars had had life. As the atmosphere leaked into space, atmospheric pressure dropped and water evaporated to fill the gap. As the seas dried up, life retreated to areas like this crater, the last places where Mars would have had ample liquid water. This is where the last complex life lived and where their remains would be found.

Polyps — if that’s what they were — had been cut away and were left on the floor. This was the worksite until they found something more compelling.

When West entered the next cave, chatter died. Radios echoed only breathing. West looked from mask to mask as if plastic, metal, and twin lenses could show regret or remorse. But there was none; they were just masks. Computer links identified who was in what armor.

On the floor of the cave were a host of complex animals — or at least their remains. They were clearly not from Earth. Apparently, they had retreated here to nest. Small holes dug into the cave floor housed families of creatures that seemed to have had no nostrils or fur. West was no biologist, but it looked like they respired through the mouth and skin. He peered into one of the small pits. It took him a while, but no one hurried him.

These things made nests and nurtured young that were — tadpoles.

“They were amphibians.”

No one disagreed. But the adult form wasn’t a frog. It was