The Martian Race by Gregory Benford

unknown survived, unsullied. And deadly.
    They all snorted when the expected question came in from Janet. She looked embarrassed, but what could she do? “And how are you feeling, with Airbus getting nearer and your own launch—”
    Marc started before Janet was finished. “We'll wave to them as we head home.”
    It was what they always said.
    Then they turned to the story of the pingos. Earth had already gotten the video footage, and in the intervening hours had reacted. Axelrod's press team had decided to play it up in a major way. Another great success for the mission: WATER on Mars! Janet duly asked the team a long list of standard questions: how much water had they found, what did finding water mean to the mission, etc. As co-discoverers, Marc and Raoul fielded the questions, leaving Julia free to think her own thoughts.
    What did the water mean? She sat back and envisioned life on Mars with plentiful water, no longer a cold, dusty desert. Under a pressurized dome the greenhouse effect would raise the temperature to something livable. A colony could grow plants, have open pools of water, even fountains, if they wished. She smiled as she thought about strolling along tree-lined walkways from hab to hab without helmet and suit, then realized with a start that she would never do it. They were just a few weeks from launching to Earth.
    A few short weeks, something inside of her said.
    How odd. When they'd arrived it'd seemed as though they had such a long time ahead of them. Now, suddenly, they'd made a major discovery, but so late …
    She suddenly remembered the sample she'd picked up outside the vent. She'd been so worried about Viktor she'd forgotten about it!
    She mentally tuned back in to the broadcast, suddenly impatient to be off. Could she slip away? Janet wished Viktor a speedy recovery, and transmitted some medical advice from the ground team of doctors. The public part of the broadcast ended. Then Janet turned to technical details about the upcoming liftoff test. Viktor's accident was one more mishap to be overcome. Janet didn't fail to mention the obvious: the sprained ankle meant their captain would be less effective if anything went wrong with the engine test fire of the Return Vehicle. What should have been a routine test now loomed as a potential crisis.
    There had already been plenty to worry about. The subject of the ERV had been a touchy one ever since they'd arrived.
    Soon after touchdown they'd discovered that the Return Vehicle was damaged. A failure in the aerobraking maneuver apparently had made the Return Vehicle come in a shade too fast, crushing fuel pipes and valves around the engines. None of the diagnostics had detected this, since the lines were not pressurized. In some places where the damage went beyond mere repair, Raoul had been forced to refashion and build from scratch several of the more tricky parts. Working with the Earthside engineers, he had been steadily making repairs.
    In this he drew upon not only his technical training, but his family's tradition of Mexican make-do. His father and uncle ran a prosperous garage in Tecate, just below the U.S. border. He'd grown up in greasy T-shirts with a wrench in his hand. Coming from a country with a chronic shortage of hard goods meant that “recycle and reuse” was not just a slogan but a necessity.
    Viktor admired his work, and they understood each other at this basic level. The Russian space program, starting way back in the Soviet era, had always operated in the same way. Cosmonauts on Mir were expert at cannibalizing discarded electronic components to make repairs. Still, although Raoul was good at creative reuse and making novel pieces fit, he had never before had to work under this kind of pressure. Their return, and quite possibly their lives, depended on his repairs.
    They ended the transmission on an edgy note. It was two months and counting to launch.
    As soon as they signed off, Julia slipped away to her lab space, where