Old Mars

Dr. al-Baz didn’t say anything for a moment or so. He toyed with the stem of his glass, rolling it back and forth between his fingers. “If I’d told you the entire truth,” he finally admitted, “I was afraid you might not agree to take me. And you come very highly recommended. As I understand, you’re not only native-born, but your parents were among the first settlers.”

“I’m surprised you know that. You must have talked to a former client.”

“Do you remember Ian Horner? Anthropologist from Cambridge University?” I did indeed, although not kindly; Dr. Horner had hired me to be his guide, but if you’d believed everything he said, he knew more about Mars than I did. I nodded, keeping my opinion to myself. “He’s a friend of mine,” Dr. al-Baz continued, “or at least someone with whom I’ve been in contact on a professional basis.”

“So you’re another anthropologist.”

“No.” He sipped his beer. “Research biologist … astrobiology, to be exact. The study of extraterrestrial forms of life. Until now, most of my work has involved studying Venus, so this is the first time I’ve been to Mars. Of course, Venus is different. Its global ocean is quite interesting, but …”

“Professor, I don’t want to be rude, but do you want to get down to it and tell me why you want the blood of a”—damn, he almost got me to say it!—“an aborigine?”

Sitting back in his chair, Dr. al-Baz folded his hands together on the tabletop. “Mr. Ramsey …”

“Jim.”

“Jim, are you familiar with the panspermia hypothesis? The idea that life on Earth may have extraterrestrial origins, that it may have come from somewhere in outer space?”

“No, I’ve never heard that … but I guess that when you say ‘somewhere,’ you mean here.”

“That is correct. I mean Mars.” He tapped a finger firmly against the table. “Have you ever wondered why there’s such a close resemblance between humans and Martian aborigines? Why the two races look so much alike even though they’re from worlds over seventy million kilometers apart?”

“Parallel evolution.”

“Yes, I expect that’s what you’ve learned in school. The conventional explanation is that, because both planets have similar environments, evolution took approximately the same course on both worlds, the differences being that Martians … aborigines, sorry … are taller because of lower surface gravity, have higher metabolisms because of colder temperature, have significantly darker skin because of the thinner ozone layer, and so forth and so on. This has been the prevalent theory because it’s the only one that seems to fit the facts.”

“That’s what I’ve heard, yeah.”

“Well, my friend, everything you’ve known is wrong.” He immediately shook his head, as if embarrassed by his momentary burst of arrogance. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to sound overbearing. However, several of my colleagues and I believe that the similarities between Homo sapiens and Homo artesian cannot be attributed to evolution alone. We think there may be a genetic link between the two races, that life on Earth … human life in particular … may have originated on Mars.”

Dr. al-Baz paused, allowing a moment to let his words sink in. They did, all right; I was beginning to wonder if he was a kook. “Okay,” I said, trying not to smile, “I’ll bite. What leads you to think that?”

The professor raised a finger. “First, the geological composition of quite a few meteorites found on Earth is identical to those of rock samples brought from Mars. So there’s a theory that, sometime in the distant past, there was a cataclysmic explosion on the Martian surface … possibly the eruption of Mt. Daedalia or one of the other volcanoes in the Albus range … which ejected debris into space. This debris traveled as meteors to Earth, which was also in its infancy. Those meteors may have contained organic molecules that seeded Earth with life where it hadn’t previously existed.”

He held up another finger. “Second … when the human genome was sequenced, one of the most surprising finds was the existence of DNA strands that have no apparent purpose. They’re like parts of a machine that don’t have any function. There’s no reason for them to be there, yet nonetheless they are. Therefore, is it possible that these phantom strands may be genetic biomarkers left behind by organic material brought to Earth from Mars?”

“So that’s why you want a blood sample? To see if there’s a link?”

He nodded. “I have brought equipment that will enable me to sequence, at least partially, the genetic code of an aborigine blood sample and compare it to that of a human. If the native genome has nonfunctional archaic strands that match the ones found in the human genome, then we’ll have evidence that the hypothesis is correct … life on Earth originated on Mars, and the two races are genetically linked.”