“Traci,” Tom said, peering at the girl’s breast-perched nametag. “I remember you. You’re a physics major or an optics major or something like that?”

“Tom, you never pay attention,” Roger said with a smile. “That’s the whole problem with NASA; attention to detail. She’s an astrophysics grad working on her master’s. So, you’ve been watchin’ the red planet, hey. What have you found — any canals or little green men, little funny lookin’, big-headed aliens that go aaackk aaacckk aaack?”

“You’re funny,” Traci said, smiling thinly. “Over the period of this semester I haven’t noted any visible difference. But if you take images of Mars from a semester ago then compare it to the way it looks now, it’s different.”

“How so?” Roger asked.

“It’s less red,” Traci said definitely. “The color has blue-shifted significantly. It looks more gray now. It might be my imagination but I think the albedo is up, too. Too bad the University At Home can’t afford a real spectrometer, ’cause I’d really like to see the detailed spectral content from Mars, like down to at least tens of nanometer resolution.” She paused in thought, then winked at Tom, springing up and down so her large and obviously unnatural breasts bounced charmingly. “If there are big-tentacled aliens coming to town, do you think they’ll like my hot and spicies?”

“Uh…” Tom said, his higher brain functions momentarily circumvented.

“Traci, could I get copies of those im-im-images?” Roger asked. He was just a tad more suave than his fellows, but even he stumbled over “images.” The two large images in his mind at present had nothing to do with Mars.

“Sure,” Traci said, just as seriously. “What’s your e-mail address?”