Word: soiling
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Earthquakes, floods and fugitive diseases are, at any rate, random evidence that the earth itself is mysteriously and sometimes wildly alive. That somehow added to the metaphysical fascination of watching the Americans' Viking lander scratch around in the rusty Martian soil to see if that world, too, had been visited by the secret force...
Communist countries are almost always disjointed by bureaucratic stupidity. The most frequently cited example is agriculture. It is true that the Soviet Union suffers from natural handicaps, including bad weather and arid soil. Even so, the basic problem is its communal farming system, which fails to provide the farmers with sufficient motivation. The dismal results are well known; Moscow must buy huge tonnages of grain from the profit-seeking farmers...
Nearly two hours later, Viking signaled that a xenon lamp, which simulates Martian sunlight in one of the biology experiments, had turned on. This confirmed that the arm had delivered soil to the laboratory and that the biology experiments had started. The first experiment-a search for evidence of the life process called photosynthesis-was under way. The photosynthesis experiment, plus the two that showed the unexpectedly early results, will take twelve days to complete. Furthermore, the tests will have to be repeated before Viking biologists can draw any firm conclusions about the existence of life in the particular soil...
Reddish Hue. Viking's mechanical arm also delivered soil, scooped from the same trench, to an inorganic chemical analyzer, which will determine the elements in the material. The inorganic chemistry lab's first findings showed that the soil sample contains calcium, silicon, titanium, aluminum, iron and the iron oxide responsible for the reddish hue of Mars. But Viking's arm may have failed to make delivery to still another miniature laboratory, an organic chemistry analyzer designed to look for evidence of past Martian life. After two attempts, telemetry showed that soil had apparently not reached the interior...
...Martian life is discovered, Project Scientist Gerald Soffen speculates, it will probably be quite different from anything found on earth. Martian organisms are likely to be microscopic in size. They would also have to be capable of extracting life-giving moisture from the planet's arid soil and atmosphere. Soffen believes they might do this by means of some sort of biological pump or natural siphon. "Martian critters have had billions of years to adapt," he explains. Somewhere in the process of evolution they must have had to face-and overcome-the need for water. "So what they developed...