“We should get someone to check out what’s there as soon as our communications return!” Stanley replied. “It seems to be where the disturbances are from!”
“That looks empty?” Orwell announced, looking into the front window with high powered binoculars, hardly able to see in the blackness there.
Campbell took the binoculars and searched where he was looking, and stood confused, and replied, “What happens now? How the hell could anything be there?”
“I think we’re going down …” Stanley shouted, and the shuttle started going downwards.
“I’ve recovered control of it!” he gasped, after a few minutes of struggling to control it.
“We’ll have to land!” Lyndon announced, checking everything about him, preparing himself.
Cronenberg gasped at the situation and rushed into his shuttle commander’s seat, one of their impact protection seats, designed for him, and the shuttle started reacting crazily and viciously shuddered, as if caught in some force, and they started descending swiftly and he realized like most of the crew that the worst outcome could become real, and he saw them reacting and preparing themselves for their worst fears.
He copied positioning himself in his seat and prepared for what was ahead, and considered using something for violent impacts.
As it hurtled downwards he spotted the last shreds of sunshine illuminating the sky on an area of the horizon, and he spotted the startled faces of the two pilots recalling emergency procedures, and others swiftly securing equipment or themselves.
He wished he had a better view at a main window of what was happening! He imagined it bursting into flames with the powerful fuel and the entrance being blocked.
The last shades of weak light pulsated, in various motions, through the front pilots window, and he considered what could happen! Would it ruin everything if the shuttle was destroyed and they survived?
Yet they had revealed something, and with incredible powers, powerful enough to take down a powerful large shuttle, with such high technology, and he wondered if they could discover what it was and save the day! If they survived to see what was there!
All they could do was wait for the outcome, and try to do everything they could, and he realized he was actually part of a real drama and occurrence, perhaps for the first time in his life!
He started realizing how professionally skilled and proficient the crew actually were, and how far they had gone out of their way to get them and carry out the Mars operation, and he realized why they had chosen him, and had realized the dangers!
Everything on the shuttle appeared in order, and it was only being influenced by something clearly below, somewhere, and he wondered if it was a natural phenomenon, and if it could be a danger to flights over that region. He was sure it was forcing them to land – or was it their imagination, and some force like gravity, and he wondered if there were disturbances like it on the Earth.
He saw that they were having a hard time controlling the speed of their descent!
How could anything take control of such a powerful shuttle, and at such a distance? What form of technology was behind it? Could they use it in warfare? Was it a form of military technology? Could they figure out a way to block and stop it?
Surely there had to be a way to obstruct it or just weaken it?
One of the crew called out, “It’s not increasing in power!”
He realized that some of them were holding back information about it, and he considered if he should try and get it!
The pilots tested and did what they could perceive and he realized that it was a more interesting trip than he had even imagined! Nothing anywhere seemed enough to understand it, and he was sure none of them had anything to properly explain it!
There had to be something irregular, visible, and solid behind it, and he wondered if he could get it if he had long enough and the right means!
“We’ve still lost all contact with the base!” Campbell confirmed loudly, as he examined his equipment.
He noticed as it got lower to the ground the crew started avoiding looking at each other, with occasional horrified glares, realizing they that they were going to land soon and they might not be any longer in control of their fate!
“I don’t get this!” one of the pilots uttered, as he looked up startled. “It is as though something kicked in there and has started landing it, and I cannot discover why and why it is going to a different destination than we were set to land!”
“Is there anything visible there?” Cronenberg asked curiously.
“Nothing visible! It seems to be carrying out some form of alternative plan – to land us!”
The shuttle shifted down low, but still at a regulated pace, almost as though it were being overwhelmed by something.
Occasionally the crew started monitoring what was happening about them as it happened, and Cronenberg realized that they liked to handle things rather than ignore them, and they were not fully confident of surviving!
Even the most professional pilots on the Earth would have a hard time finding a landing site below, and they were allowing it to land them there.
The shudders from turbulent energy surges made them jerk forwards and backwards, making them all go silent and stop silent conversations, and they started putting on their spacesuit helmets.
At times he felt as if he were drifting down to a hideous death!
It plummeted and suddenly administrated what was an almost perfect landing, but smashed hard into something, and his eyes bulged brightly, and he barely believed the destructive forces lashing out at the shuttle.
When he realized that they had avoided dieing, when it stopped, flames bursting out, and an alarm blared out, and a sudden explosion smashed it with tremendous force!
Then as he caught sight of something in the obscurity out in the distance, through a window, he heard them all trying to escape and realized that the shuttle had acquired serious structural damage and fuel was leaking out and had ignited.
Chapter 3
The Crash Site
After the astronauts had jumped onto the Martian soil Cronenberg and copied the others lifting out oxygen tanks and he rushed away from the crash site with them, and he had a strange sensation and thought that he was somewhere far more than an uncharted desolate region of Mars!
It was as though they were entering somewhere else, and making the first step for mankind to something!
He did not know what their next biggest problem would be!
Was it even dieing of starvation? Or was there something there after all, which had brought them there, which was getting ready to kill them all or what?
They never had any communications with the outside world and the shuttle was damaged beyond what they could repair and the last of the fuel was burning away, and they were lucky as the shuttle had been designed right and it did not have a fatal explosion, but they never knew if what had taken them there would allow them to leave, be found, and allow them to live!
The next peculiarly that they saw was the strangely tinted night sky, and nobody could recall seeing anything like it but they had not been outside the base at night that much.
Yet he was sure it had not been there when they had landed!
There was sand and rocks everywhere, unhampered by humans, and it was very dry and he watched the astronauts return and get fire distinguishers and help control and put out the flames, while others removed equipment and things they needed outside the shuttle, and he watched their speed increase, and slow when the flames started going out, and their reactions when it was annihilated, and they started moving back in the shuttle and fixed its lighting and heating.
They eventually all started resting and went to sleep to conserve energy supplies, and left everything for the morning.
Cronenberg woke early, after sleeping too long, and examined the outside world lighten up as the sun rose above the horizon, and he watched the other astronauts slowly awaken, eat, and start work checking the damage.
/> “There’s some form of powerful energy influence,” Rosenberg announced, after checking things, “and it’s still stopping us scanning what’s out there!”
“Just as it was on the airplane?” he replied.
“Well, it seems to have altered – and we could have found another encounter – and it’s tremendous!”
“What could it be?” he moaned, confused, and wondered if he had known something of it before the shuttle had come down.
“It could be that on the shuttle we were not able to properly check anything as it was so far away and there was too much disturbances! Now that we have landed we are detecting it and it is also more powerful this close ...”
“Is it near us?”
“I don’t have a clue where it is! It could be anywhere! I will try to get the information on it!”
He handed him some readouts and Cronenberg stared at them with amazement, gasping, and muttered, “What the hell could create such power? It’s colossal!”
“It’s also like someone is playing around with something out here! Has anyone got any science or military establishments or anything at all out here?”
He considered it for some time and was amazed that someone could build something like it there, but he could not grasp what or why it would be put there.
“Nobody has been near here as far as I’ve heard!”
“But it could be confidential?”
“Yes! But why would it be built out here? Why would they be using anything or experimenting on anything?”
“Perhaps they are using or creating something too dangerous to be activated in an inhabited zone!” he replied firmly.
“That would explain it being so secretive and at an uncharted region but it does not explain anything of its use!”
He kept going, curious in what the scientists would make of things if he pushed them further.
“How did they manage to hide something of its size and power though?” he moaned. “Nothing seems to add up here!”
“They surely would have to have technology beyond anything we’ve heard of!”
Cronenberg stood still, staring out at the Martian landscape through the front shuttle window, unable to grasp it!
“What could create such power and what is its use?”
“It could be someone using a natural phenomenon or something? Like someone harnessing and manipulating energy in the planet’s core or something?”
Nothing added up though, as it was only used to control the shuttle and take it there, and they could easily have hidden away, and never be found, and they would be found out eventually.
He could not realize what it was and realized that the real solution to what it was would be far more unbelievable and crazy than what they would come out with, and he wondered if he could get what it was, and it could be far too ridicules for them even to assume existed.
The night before when it had taken control of the shuttle he had detected something of unknown origins, and it had been like that when it had made a full appearance.
Yet there clearly was no evidence of anything and only someone making a ridicules mistake would add anything to what had been said, and he filled in his account of what had occurred on the flight, and going by what all the crew about him indicated it was a crazy occurrence and they never had any proper facts anything was there.
“To discover whatever is here we’ll need more reasonable and solid clues!” he finally announced, especially to Rosenberg, who seemed to be the most interested and knowledgeable on it.
They eventually left the shuttle through the airlock wearing their suits with extra oxygen tanks on them, and they started to go further out from the shuttle to a nearby small hill with a view of the surrounding view, where they blankly viewed the surrounding area, and Cronenberg looked back and down at the shuttle, which resembled an airplane brought down in a desert region like the Sahara, surrounded by bright reddish sand and rocks in bright sunlight, in a cloudless white blue sky.
The surprising thing was his spacesuit’s high temperature and the surrounding view combined to give the impression of it being incredibly hot, instead of incredible cold and at the Antarctica of the world, and he even considered if any of them were capable of making some form of mistake because of it.
The adrenalin of the crew was visibly rushing through their veins, overwhelming them, as they checked their new surroundings, and most realized where they were, and he thought he saw the Earth in the sky.
All around them they examined things like they were strange new phenomena, and he wondered what they thought they were discovering.
Even though they had been exploring areas of Mars, especially about the base, they had not been to an unexplored area like it, and they moved over to an area where it looked like a cold region like the Antarctica, and they looked for ice and water.
“Look at all this!” Campbell explained, picking up a strange rock, and none of them could recall seeing it before, and he then looked as if he recognized it.
“What do you think brought us down now?” he asked, curiously. “There’s nothing out here! Nothing can grow!”
They all discussed it and it was apparent none of them properly knew, and they started examining the landscape and giving facts and their thoughts of it, and Cronenberg and Rosenberg examined the best map they had of the region and discussed it, and they all then discussed what to do.
Rosenberg pointed at the highest hill, buried away in the landscape, in a southerly direction, in the direction of the southern pole, where they had been traveling to, and he examined why most of it was covered up and saw small sand hills in front of it, covering up most of it, and what was below.
“There’s a better chance of finding water there!” Rosenberg announced.
The more Cronenberg examined what was there the more he thought it was a good place to go and he announced that he would like to go and check there.
It looked familiar to him, as a place with something, and he was sure it was where the shuttle had been going.
“It’s as though it has formed differently, by some means, by something else ...” Campbell mumbled, looking at it through his binoculars.
“Could be a fault line?” Rosenberg replied.
They all examined it and avoided replying, and Cronenberg wondered if they agreed or disagreed!
Chapter 4
The Haunted Hill
Cronenberg leapt onto his feet when a strange explosion shattered his sleep and he stared out into dark Martian night!
They had wrongly calculated the distance and time it took to get to the hill, and they had only been able to leave late in the evening, and it had become dark on the way and they had rested and had fallen asleep below the hill. The long day and march over small hills in the thick heavy spacesuits, marching through deep regions of sand carrying large amounts of equipment, including oxygen tanks and supplies, had tired them, and they were unable to do anything but sleep anyway.
Cronenberg was staggered when he considered what the noise was, as it had sounded like an artificial explosion, and he stood trying to explain how it could be there, and he wondered how the atmosphere could even carry the sound through it, and he realized Mars was different, and it might even be some form of volcanic disturbance from below, blasting up through a vent.
The other two astronauts, Rosenberg and Campbell, who had accompanied him either ignored it, or were asleep, or had not heard it, and he examined them through their dark helmet faceplates but could not see what they were doing.
When a second explosion blasted out he stood shocked, as he had just started to ignore the first and had considered it to be his imagination, and the powered rifle blast exploded into the empty silence staggering him, and the explosion sounded so powerful he believed it had some form of powerful explosive in the bullets!
The other two astronauts at first never reacted or even moved and he finally spotted Rosenberg opening his eyes, and watched him looking startled and realized he had also heard i
t and had been trying to ignore it.
“What the hell was that?” he finally asked, as he stood.
“It sounded like a gun!”
“We don’t have any guns on Mars though?”
“There’s nobody out here either!”
Rosenberg yawned, and replied, “It has to be something else!”
Rosenberg went back to where he was sleeping and tried to go back to sleep.
Whoever was there had to be crazy or up to something and he realized he might even get the answer to what had brought them down there and decided to investigate it.
He silently crept away, and tried to creep up on whoever it was to observe them and realized that if there was someone there that they surely had to have left traces of themselves, as there was sand everywhere and there had to be footprints or something.
It felt silly looking for someone there, in such a desolate place, where nobody should be! He could not realize who was there and just accepted that they might be trying to do something! Perhaps it was the shuttle they wanted, as it was priceless and its technology highly confidential on the Earth.
It had to be located in the coldest and most remote place on Mars, and its southern pole! Even in the summer the place was deadly cold without the spacesuits!
As far as he was concerned there was nothing to be there for! The hidden coldness around him at times made him cringe, and he, almost blindly, rushed on to where the sound came from, and for some reason when he reached a specific region he realized it had to be where the noise came from.
Suddenly a loud explosion blasted out and a bullet thudded somewhere nearby and he automatically switched off his light and ran through the darkness for his life!
He dared not use his light now and he could barely see, and regularly tripped up and continued!
He realized that he could have an infrared filter on is faceplate, to see in the dark, and he searched for the switch to activate it, and realized it was a different version that had it, and he just dived into a pile of sand behind some rocks, and hid himself. Surely he would not be found there, and he had not left any footprints nearby and had changed direction a few times!
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