Stone and Leavitt continue to examine the tiny green patches inside the Scoop VII collection basket.
“Hold,” says Stone, standing up to look on the monitor.
“More pistachio?” asks Leavitt.
“I count four patches,” says Stone. “Keep going – – I’ll computerize the coordinates. Let’s take a look at the rock at a hundred.”
Leavitt moves the camera back to the rock at 100x magnification.
The rock is now a boulder, splattered with green.
“I doubt that’s what knocked the capsule off trajectory,” says Stone.
“Unless the rock was going at tremendous speed, or unless the rock was terribly heavy,” replies Leavitt.
“Oh, for Pete’s sake, Ruth, it can’t be that heavy. Hall and I could lift the capsule!” says Stone. “However, it’s possible that the rock is different in space. Out there, it might do anything.”
“Maybe it has elastic properties we don’t even know yet,” says Leavitt.
“Let’s have a look at the green patches,” says Stone. “They must have come off the rock. If it is rock.”
The camera scans across several instances of the green patches.
“You know something?” says Leavitt, “They do look like splatters of paint.”