Beth no longer cared if someone else held her baby. She wanted it in her lab ASAP. With a vindictive joy, she was able to conscript the man who had bet the most on her losing her lunch on the ride back and shoved the box into his downtrodden face. He had lost money and time because of his wager.

  Beth almost jogged back to her lab, running various theories in her mind. Planetary magnetism made the most sense. But it hadn't reacted at all to any of the other potentially magnetic metals in the vicinity. It would have to be a powerful rock indeed to be held in an upright position like that. Besides, they had driven past several of the planet’s broken magnetic fields in order to get here. And it hadn’t shifted positions once.

  Speaking of here…

  Beth pointed out the table in the middle of her lab. “Thomas, put it there. Thanks, goodbye.”

  He thumped the box on the table and slunk back out of the room.

  The table was the cleanest part by far, as it was where she stored incoming specimens. It was stainless steel with a six-inch lip that prevented stray pieces from falling off the table. Underneath it was a series of labeled boxes that held specimens waiting to be examined. The room around the table held various adjustable lights, cabinets of equipment, a sink, and two chairs. One of which she slid into place and eagerly grabbed the tools to unwrap the early Christmas gift.

  If she wanted to have this marvel all to herself, she had to make sure to make herself invaluable before one of the more senior geologists got assigned to it. Although if they really wanted it, they could have bestirred their old bones to brave the wilderness and wild commandos.

  …

  Beth had been up for almost twenty-four hours straight. She had slept in her lab, awoken, and slept again over the last forty-eight hours. She had run every test, taken every sample, and had cross referenced every book that was applicable. She grabbed her hair and clenched it in a frustrated, repetitive motion. Finally giving in to the awful conclusions that the data had presented to her in triplicate.

  Turns out she would need to share her findings with someone else after all. And not even a geologist. Her earlier hypothesis had all been wrong, but the one that was true made less sense.

  After running several tests, Beth had confirmed the nature of the rock. Its composition was identical to that of obsidian with opal inclusions. But while the outside was made of rock, the inside was not.

  It was alive.

  Its oval appearance didn’t just look like an egg; it probably was one.

  Which was the problem of the biology department.

  The next step was to tell those higher up what had gone on. Glumly, she opened a comms channel to the captain to send immediate aid and started to prep a containment box for the cursed egg. If anything was alive, it was a biohazard, and she had already been chewed out by the commander for taking this long to declare her discovery. With the faux rock properly contained, Beth put on a mask, flooded the room with a decontaminate, then used the shower in the corner and washed the mask.

  Her decon squad escort arrived just as she put on her biohazard helmet. They held a terse silence while they waited for the biologist assigned to the case to arrive. He arrived soon enough. One of the younger biologists whom she didn't really know, but the captain had told her his name was Mark. An unusual last name, but probably just as common as Kane. he was dressed in a puffy white suit, twin to hers.

  He immediately hovered over the boxed egg. “Lieutenant Kane, what a wonderful discovery you have made. People have been speculating about life on Mars since the late 1880’s, and had all but given up hope as each part of the planet has turned up only fossilized remains. Yet here we have the surviving remnant of a lost world, though no endling, I hope.” He glanced up quickly and grinned, “I am certainly eager to unpack it, if you will pardon my rude exit.”

  She shrugged. “Be my guest, I had all the fun I could before calling you.”

  “Very well then. Goodbye.”

  Good riddance.

  But she was madly disappointed all the same.

  The escort walked ahead and behind him to prevent others from coming too close. Mark and the egg as they walked down the hall. Then stopped.

  Beth frowned and leaned out of her door to get a better look.

  All of them were scrambling wildly near the floor and yelling at each other. She took a step closer to watch the scene when some turned her way.

  No. That wasn’t right. Towards the egg.

  Someone must have dropped it by accident.

  The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  Then her heart rate spiked horribly at the realization that the egg had been inside an airlock box.

  Faster than she had thought possible, she slid into her lab and sealed the door shut while it was still far away.

  Beth huffed shakily and stepped back from the door, then tripped. She landed roughly on her leg while a flailing hand caught the edge of the table.

  Until they arrived at the spare biolab and guarded the door as it closed behind her.

  A scream tore through her throat as she saw the thing she had tripped over.

  And she was still screaming when the escort opened her door to retrieve their quarry, which was sitting upright by her ankle.

  …

  An hour later, the various scientist they had consulted on the matter shook their heads and shrugged their shoulders. The egg could not be removed from Beth by any means, and in the face of such impossibility, the commander had proffered a blithe solution that satisfied no one, especially Beth.

  “Just put the thing back in the box, and put Lieutenant Kane and the box on the cart. ASAP.”

  After that, everyone left except for Mark, Beth, and the original escort. Though Dr. Jeffries, a space physicist, said he would swing by to examine the anomalies of the creature. Dr Annalise, environmental analyst, had said much the same, and for the same reason.

  Soon after, Beth found herself trundled on the uncomfortable cart with Mark nattering behind her as he pushed.

  “This creature will give such interesting insights into possible taxonomy, habits, and biome conditions of Mars before its fall. Who knows what sort of animal will hatch from it! Based on the size, I would assume a larger animal on par with a dinosaur. Although an ostrich egg is the same size as this one. I do hope its size is more relative to the ostrich for obvious reasons, although I would bet it turns out to be reptilian in nature based on what we know of the former Mars environment. Regardless…”

  Elizabeth tuned him out and mourned the amount of time would be lost cooped up in the bio lab to babysit something that had a mind of its own.

  …

  The biology lab that they ended up in was a new one, specially cleaned out for the new project. It looked much like her own space, with a lipped table in the center and a shower in the corner. Otherwise, it was much larger with a room attached to the side that contained a small bedroom for the scientist to sleep in if their subject was in critical condition. Not all the animals that they had brought from Earth held up well under the different gravitational pull. Birds being the most at hand example, since they use gravity to help them swallow.

  Mark busied himself with a cheerful hum as he set up equipment to do his own tests of the egg.

  Beth sat glumly in a chair. The egg had settled by her ankle like a twenty-pound puppy.

  Mark turned and hit his fingers against his helmet. He looked down in confusion, then shrugged it off. It seemed that he had forgotten his decon suit when he went to adjust his hair or something. “I’m ready if you would place the egg in this machine here.”

  Beth obliged silently and watched closely as he closed the lid and clicked some buttons. He stepped back a little and gestured towards the door. “That’ll be your new room for now. You can’t um, go anywhere til we do a safety assessment. I’ll try to get this done as soon as possible so that you can go back. Sorry.”

  “It’s fine. All that will suffer is my ego and passion projects.”

  With this piece of junk a bust, she wanted to be back out there. Looking for new things to discover.

  He turned to prepare a different machine and said flatly, “I get it. I have passions too.”

  …

  In the end, Beth had to share an office with this dude and do her work as he hovered over the egg running tests.

  It hadn’t taken long for him to determine the thing to be a benign anomaly, which the captain asserted was “a damn contraction”. But Mark assured him that any sort of harm would be physical and non virulent, as had been the worry. And didn’t commandos specialize in physical danger? A grudging agreement had ensued, with a security plan that was very simple. “Lieutenant Kane, stay put until otherwise ordered.”

  Her saving grace was that the egg seemed to allow a twenty foot radius in which to move about. This allowed her full range of the lab and sleeping quarters without unexpected teleports.

  Beth had someone bring her a table of labeled, but not yet examined, rocks and tools from her lab. It was a task she could fully immerse herself in. Except when visiting scientists came in. The lab was not made for this many people with all the accompanying equipment.

  She avoided them and Mark assiduously, and he returned the favor. At least, as much was possible in such tight quarters.

  …

  After several days, she found herself gazing sightlessly ahead at Mark. She focused on him with a frown.

  He looked familiar.

  Maybe they had gone to the same college or university at the same time. He was the same age afterall.

  “Did you go to Caltech?”

  He didn’t look up from his work. “No, why?”

  She pursed her lips. “How about Georgia Tech? I hear they have a stellar program in Astrobiology.”

  He finally looked up. “I got my undergrad at Arizona State University and finished the rest at the University of Naples.”

  She pursed her lips. “Do you lecture? TED Talk? Or something else noticeable?”

  Beth returned to her work as he shot her an incredulous look. “You don’t remember me?”

  Her head turned towards him warily. “No?”

  Was he going to have hysterics? She stood slowly, “Hey, I’ve just remembered something I have to do…” Beth edged to the door.

  He stood and spoke one reluctant, drawn out word. “Bethany...”

  She flinched.

  Only her parents called her by her full name.

  He removed his protective goggles and pinched the bridge of his nose, “I’m Markus. You know, boyfriend in high school?”

  For the first time in years, Beth felt blood rush to her face and burn her ears.

  Maybe she should go dig her grave now and get a start on that opalization process.

  Beth rushed out the automatic doors.

  ? > <)

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