Suddenly, Helen understood. "Oh."
"Yeah. 'Oh.' Traveling to Mars just doesn't fall under the label 'normal circumstances.' And you know how much it means to him."
"Yes, I do." She took a long, slow breath. "Well, let's hope for the best. And let's also not forget—and make sure you remind him, Joe, when he needs it—that as long as you're alive you can still hope."
She finally caught up with Glendale in one of the hallways later that morning.
"Dr. Glendale—Nicholas—thank you."
The famous smile was muted but sincere. He didn't try to pretend he didn't understand, either.
"Helen, there's nothing I despise more than a hatchet job. And that was one of the most cleverly repellent things I've seen in years. It was, I assure you, a genuine pleasure."
"So you believe . . ."
"I believe that you have found the most interesting case of Problematica on record," Glendale said firmly. "Nothing more than that, Helen. I know you have some rather . . . extreme conclusions. But. . . "
"But? Nicholas—"
She more or less dragged him into a side room, away from the circulating masses. "Look at it. There isn't a phylum that even comes close. The means of locomotion is utterly alien to this world."
Glendale winced. She could see he had been hoping to avoid this conversation entirely.
"Helen . . . my dear . . ."
He stopped, looked at her, sighed, and then shifted into his professional persona that she knew so well. "Dr. Sutter, I suppose it would be easiest to speak directly about this. Can we do that? I know everyone else, including yourself, is avoiding direct statements. Can we be straight with each other here?"
Helen nodded.
"Very well. Dr. Sutter, your theory, and presumably that of your co-workers, is this: that the anomalous fossil you have named Bemmius secordii is, in point of fact, the remains of an alien creature. A star-traveling visitor to our world, who had the misfortune to encounter some of our nastier native predators sixty-five million years ago, and paid the price. Although he managed to finish off the predators as well, through the use of a weapon which used the ceramic-type pellets you found on the site as projectiles. Am I basically correct?"
Helen found herself hesitating momentarily. She didn't think any of them had ever—even to each other—put it so directly. It had been more an assumption than anything else. But what other explanation was there?
"Yes, that is correct."
"An attractive theory, certainly. We all want to have something sensational in our careers, and I remember you well as an undergraduate. You were something in the way of my star pupil. Science fiction was one of your favorite reading areas, too, as I recall. So, naturally, such an explanation would occur to you when confronted with something that bizarre."
"It would occur to a lot of paleontologists. I would have bet it would occur to you, too."
Glendale laughed. "Oh, it most certainly would occur to me. Did occur to me, I should say, the moment I finished reading your initial report. I'm an occasional reader of science fiction myself, as it happens. Unfortunately—or fortunately—I am also far too aware of the logical flaws involved to retain such a theory for very long."
Helen felt her jaw setting as it always used to when she started arguing with Glendale. She reminded herself sharply of how often that had presaged her getting roundly trounced in an argument, rather as Pinchuk just had.
"What other theory is there?"
"There are many possibilities, Dr. Sutter. Instead of immediately offering one, I want you to consider what you are asking us to accept.
You are, as a paleontologist, intimately aware of the probabilities involved in fossil formation. You may not, perhaps, have considered the probabilities of other events quite so closely, reasoning—with some justification—that there wouldn't be sufficient information to judge them by, anyway. Still, let me summarize."
He held up one hand and began counting off the fingers with his other. "You want us to believe the following unlikely chain of coincidences:
"First, an alien from another world arrives here. Perhaps you have never considered how very improbable that is, what with all the science fiction books and videos ignoring that very point. But from everything we currently know, such travel between the stars is hideously unlikely, even for us. And, so far, we have absolutely no evidence that there is any other life in the universe. We may assume it, but thus far there is not the smallest shred of acceptable evidence that it exists at all.