The Martian Enigma

by D. B. Reynolds-Moreton

  ‘I think we’d better leave it alone, God knows what it’s for, and if we start it up, and don’t like the result, we may not be able to stop it.’ Greg had spoken.

  Reluctantly, they withdrew from the controller, but Hans tried to push it back into its recess. It defied even the well muscled Hans, and as a final gesture of frustration, he gave it a parting kick.

  There was a ‘ting’ from within the unit, the flashing symbol ceased to flash for a moment, and then the square was filled with scrolling hieroglyphics. As the square filled, the symbol at the top changed, and another screen began to roll down.

  ‘Well done Hans.’ John called out. ‘You’ll get us all killed yet, if you try hard enough.’

  ‘He’s not doing too badly at the moment,’ Paul chipped in, ‘and I don’t think he needs any encouragement.’

  They left the room, deciding to return a little later to see what state the screen was in, and if it held a clue as to what the machine was meant to do.

  As they turned to go back to the main reception area, as they referred to it, a small passage on their left, which they hadn’t noticed before, tempted Paul, and he was going down it before the others could question his judgement.

  ‘Come back Paul.’ Greg called. ‘Let’s check it out carefully.’

  But it was too late, Paul had reached the end of the tunnel, and stood there, transfixed.

  The others, on hearing a gasp from Paul over the radio link, went down the narrow passage with imprudent haste, only to find him safe and well, and staring at the wall ahead, and then it was their turn to gasp.

  The only light in the room came from the figures on the walls, and they glowed in a multitude of colours. There were lines of symbols, similar to those they had seen before, but these were interspersed with pictographs in little groups, and the occasional small painting of a scene.

  ‘This looks like two languages, the symbols and the pictographs. Maybe we could work out what it all means if we could decipher a few of them.’ Paul was ever hopeful.

  ‘See those two bird like drawings,’ John pointed at the wall, ‘the ones with a bird’s head and human legs? I’ve seen something very like that before, in a museum. I think it was Egyptian, it was found on a stone from that area, anyway. I was only a child at the time, so I can’t be too sure.’

  ‘I know the Egyptians got about a bit, but I didn’t think they got this far!’ Ben chuckled, and the others joined in.

  ‘Hold it, John’s got a point there.’ said Greg, coming to the rescue. ‘I’ve seen something like it too. Look, there’s another, a fish like sign, that’s similar to one of the Egyptian hieroglyphs, and look over there, there’s more.’

  All four walls were covered in pictures, pictographs and symbols, and in one place a curious kind of script. Although the letters didn’t look familiar, taken as a line of writing, it looked as if it could have originated from Earth.

  They weren’t too sure how long they had stayed in the picture room, but the low oxygen warning alarm brought them up to present time very quickly. The emergency oxygen was on the trolley which they had left back in the passage, and it was getting close to change over time.

  ‘We must be more careful in future, these emergency bottles don’t last too long, and if we got trapped anywhere, we would have a problem on our hands.’ Greg made his point with a solemn look on his face, but it lost most of its impact because of the restricted view they had of it through his helmet.

  The journey back was thankfully uneventful, as their oxygen was running low as they neared the Lander.

  After their routine chores, and a meal, the discussions on what they had found went on into the small hours, and again Greg had to call a halt to the proceedings, so that the team would get enough sleep for the next day.

  Whatever it was that had tried to nudge the orbiter out of position on the previous night, didn’t bother again. It had either broken down, lost interest, or realized it had been defeated.

  Next day, Greg, realizing that they had been side tracked by the exploration of the living quarters and the control room yesterday, was determined to make a special effort to gain access to what lay behind the massive doors which shut off the end of the cavern.

  Access to the cavern was without problems, and the team set about trying to find the controls which would open the shutters. Nothing was found which even vaguely resembled a method of opening them, and the search was moved back to the control room in case the answer lay there.

  They tried all the desk units, but only got pictures of the complex and the surrounding area. The machine which had come out of the wall and nearly squashed John, was still filling the grids with symbols, only now nearly a quarter of the squares were filled, and the symbols in those squares had ceased to move.

  ‘That thing’s chuntering away to itself doing something, and I’d dearly like to know what.’ Greg said, trying not to sound concerned.

  ‘I think the only way we’ll get into the next section, is to use a laser cutter. Shall I try and find a really big one?’ Hans had that gleam in his eye which a little boy gets with their first construction sets.

  Greg agreed to the request, as he couldn’t see any other way around the problem. Shortly afterwards, Hans came back dragging something large and lethal looking on a piece of cord, it being too heavy for him to carry on his own.

  Hans and Paul lifted the laser cutter up, and aimed it at the massive shutters, Hans having convinced Paul that he knew how to use the tool. The activating pad was pressed, and a beam of intense light hit the left shutter. Nothing happened, the light seemed to be absorbed by the material it was trying to cut. Disappointed in the extreme, Hans and Paul lowered the cutter after a few moments when it became obvious that it wasn't going to do the job.

  ‘Looks like they have something in there they don’t want anyone else to see.’ commented Greg. ‘But there must be a way in.’ There was, but the team didn’t find it.

  After spending a frustrating couple of hours looking for a method of entry, they gave up. Hans suggested that they may find a clue if they searched through the video screens in the control room, and as no one could think of anything better to do, they did just that.

  The first thing they did was to check the big machine to see if more of the grids had filled with symbols, they had.

  ‘I don’t like the feel of this.’ said Greg. ‘This damn thing is checking out and then counting down to something, and I’d be a lot happier if I knew what it was.’

  ‘I don’t see how it can do us any harm.’ said Ben. ‘It’s probably counting tea cups or something, they were a very tidy lot.’

  ‘I still don’t like it.’ Greg replied. ‘We can’t switch it off, and it’s searching for something, I only hope it isn’t us.’

  Each member of the team took one of the smaller consuls, and ran through the pictures from the multiple cameras dotted about the complex, but none of them gave any information on the big doors they were so keen to open. They did get a view of them, but it was only from inside the main hall, and they could see that for themselves.

  ‘I’ve got that picture of the third entrance again.’ called Paul. ‘We could have a look at it, if we have time.’

  ‘All right, make a note of the details, and any outstanding features to help us identify it from the outside. If we have time, we’ll take a peek.’

  Somehow, the complex had managed to screen out any transmissions the team had tried to make to Earth, so instead of sending details of what they saw directly, it all had to be recorded on electronic cameras, and then sent on after they had returned to the Lander.

  The best part of the next two weeks was spent cataloguing and filming the contents of the complex, and relaying the data back to Earth. A few alien power tools, which they had managed to coax into action, were also collected and stored in the Lander, but because of the weight limitations, there were not as many as Hans would have liked.

  Every so often, the count down on the big machine in the
control room was checked, and slowly the little grid squares on the screen were being filled with stationary symbols, which made Greg a little more edgy each time they visited the room.

  During their search for data, Ben found what he thought to be an old map of the planet.

  ‘It’s not a map as we know it, but I think that’s what it is.’

  The valley and the complex were clearly shown, and three other similar complexes were marked out, but how far they were from the Lander was not clear, as there were no measurements or scales indicated.

  The four complexes were delineated in red, while there were many more sites scattered about the northern hemisphere outlined in orange. They came to the probable conclusion that the orange sites might have been the original settlements of the aliens, while the red ones were built much later to facilitate the exodus.

  Greg asked permission from Earth to explore an area where there was a red site with three orange sites close by, the journey would be made in the Lander as they were unable to calculate the actual distance, and it was more than likely too far to walk.

  Two days later they received the go ahead, with the proviso that all work on the present complex was completed first.

  Paul spent his evenings making a detailed map of the journey to the new site, as they would have to rely on visual observations of the ground below in order to find it, and they thought the terrain may have changed over the years.

  ‘Pity we shan't have time to visit the other entrance on this site.’ John said. ‘It might be the power plant for the complex.’

  ‘We’ll only have time for one more exploration, and I think we may learn more from the site Ben found. There will be other teams visiting Mars before long, and they’ll have a poke around in there no doubt.’ Greg felt they had done more than was initially asked of them, and his main aim now was to return his team in one piece to their home planet.

  When they had penetrated every nook and cranny of the complex they were permitted to enter, and recorded all the information they could, they still had three days left before they had to begin the journey back to Earth.

  Because of the relationship of the orbit of Mars around the Sun relative to that of Earth, there is a time when Mars is within fifty-four million kilometres of Earth, and that was the time chosen for the flight to the red planet to land.

  This gave the exploration team a period of three weeks to complete their work, after which the planet would then be moving away from Earth, and the journey back would subsequently be very much longer.

  They left the complex for the last time, and returned to the Lander. Next day, they would try to find the new site Ben had located, do a quick exploration, and then back up to the orbiter, and the journey home could commence.

  During the night, one of the famous Martian wind storms rattled the Lander, so the team were not quite so bright eyed as they made preparations for take off.

  Greg took his place at the controls, easing the Lander up into the Martian dawn, and then took his instructions from Paul who frantically tried to make his map match the terrain drifting by below.

  ‘Things must have changed somewhat since the old map was made.’ Paul muttered, as he glanced back and forth from his map to the series of ridges and valleys speeding past beneath them. ‘You’ll have to slow up a bit or go higher, I’m not too sure of this next bit.’ A flat plain of lava spread out to the horizon, with little detail to link to his map, but as the Lander rose up into the thin Martian atmosphere, Paul picked up the next feature he had been looking for, and they were on their way again.

  The Lander cruised on, and eventually Paul called out that he had identified the valley where the main complex was supposed to be, but there was no physical sign of the three adjacent orange sites.

  Greg brought the Lander down onto the plateau at the edge of the valley, and everyone heaved a sigh of relief.

  ‘According to the old map, the first orange site should be over there.’ Paul said, pointing out across the featureless plain. ‘And the next one should be on that lower section, just beyond that ridge.’

  They set off, Hans dragging his beloved trolley behind him, and cursing every time it hit a stone, or one of the wheels got caught on a well embedded piece of rock.

  ‘Bloody sight rougher bit of ground than the other place.’ he mumbled, kicking the odd stone out of the way. ‘I think we should take it in turns this time.’

  ‘I’ll take over from you,’ said Paul, ‘when you feel exhausted, and then you can navigate for a while.’ They didn’t hear any more complaints after that.

  The first sign of anything other than the random rock or two, was a square block of stone, and the mere shape of it told them that it had been fashioned, rather than being a freak of nature. They spread out, scanning the area for others, when John made the next discovery.

  ‘I think we’ve been walking on them, here’s one just below the surface of the sand, and here’s another.’

  Feet shuffled and scraped at the ground, sand flying in all directions in the low gravity, and many more blocks were found, the outline of a stone building being more than apparent.

  ‘Looks like we’ve found the first Martian settlement,’ said a jubilant Paul. ‘So the old map was correct after all.’

  ‘Seems odd, just that one lone block, and all the others level with the ground or below it.’ said John. ‘Are these the tops of the buildings which have been filled with wind blown sand, or have the main walls been removed?’

  ‘As there’s no sign of any roof structures, I’d say the walls have been taken down, and probably used for something else.’ Hans replied.

  The settlement was of a considerable size, spread out across the plain in all directions, but as there was nothing else to see apart from the sunken blocks, Greg suggested that they move on to the next site.

  Paul referred to his map again, confirming that the next site was below a distant ridge, although the ridge only amounted to a slight rise in the surrounding terrain.

  By now, the Lander was only just visible on the horizon, and as there were no features to act as way markers, Greg was concerned that finding their way back might be difficult.

  The problem was solved by Hans, hammering one of his extension rods from the trolley into the hard Martian ground, the silver coloured metal shining in the weak sunlight.

  The ridge, such as it was, proved to be much further away than they had supposed, the flatness of the plain making distance difficult to judge. It was an exhausted group of men who finally arrived on the ledge of rock above the fault in the Martian crust, to gaze down on the remaining stubs of what had once been the proud second Martian settlement.

  ‘It’s a bit of a climb down, do you think it’s worth it?’ asked John, not that interested in blocks of stone, whoever they may have been fashioned by.

  ‘We’ve come this far, so we’ll make the extra effort and take a closer look. It seems a little different to the previous site,’ Greg wasn’t that easily put off.

  They left the trolley on the ridge, and clambered down the rough layered surface of the slope to reach the plateau below.

  ‘It looks as if this whole lower level of the plateau has dropped about fifty metres due to faulting,’ said Paul. ‘I wonder if it happened before or after they built here?’

  ‘Can’t tell at the moment.’ replied Hans. ‘We’d need some organic matter to date to be certain, and there’s precious little of that about.’

  It didn’t take long to reach the first of the block like sections, and the group gathered around it.

  ‘If I’m not mistaken,’ began Hans, ‘this is their version of concrete. The exposed surface has been blasted by wind born sand, but if we scrape the sand away from the base, we should see what it was like before it was eroded.’

  Hans hurried back to the top of the ridge and the trolley, to retrieve anything which would act like a spade, and returned a little out of breath, but enthusiastic.

  The sand and small stones around t
he base of the twenty metre long block was dug away to a depth of half a metre before there was any noticeable difference in the surface of the structure. The deeper they went, the more pristine the surface became, until Greg called a halt to the excavation.

  ‘I think that tells us what we want to know.’ he said, standing back to survey the huge block. ‘This was undoubtedly cast, probably in situ. It must be damn tough stuff to have withstood the battering it's received from the sand storms. See if you can determine its hardness, Hans.’

  Spread out before them lay a huge collection of buildings, or to be more precise, the lower remains of massive walls, only just breaking the surface of the Martian landscape. A whole town had been constructed here, lived in, and then destroyed, but why, and by what?

  ‘I can understand why they might disassemble the buildings made from stone blocks,’ said John, ‘they may have needed the stone somewhere else when they left the site, but why destroy constructions made from concrete which can’t be used again?’

  ‘The only thing I can think of is that they didn’t want anyone else to know they had been here,’ Greg replied, ‘but who else was here? Surely there couldn’t have been a threat from space!’

  They spent a while looking over the remains of the buildings, recording data from the site layout for future investigation by others, and digging a few holes in search of artefacts, of which there were none.

  Greg called a break about midday, and asked Paul where the third and last orange site was.

  ‘According to the map I made, it should be in the valley just below us. The red one, which I assume is like the first one we found, is at the top end of the same valley, so we could visit them both quite easily.’

  They left the plateau, and began the steep climb down to the deep rift below. The trolley was left behind, as it was considered too dangerous to take down the loose surface of the incline, but each member of the team carried what they considered to be something useful for the exploration.