Chapter 15
The Treasure Hunt
Now Cronenberg entirely apprehended how complicated and messed up things had really become, and that things had gone far further than before, which he had originally not been able to accept, and he started disbelieving what he had thought as fact and what was fantasy.
He did not know if he believed there were diamonds as when he read all his notes and checked documents looking for the mention of a diary by the scientist he found nothing and there was even a suggestion there was none and he started to realize that all the information showed little of if the diamonds existed, as there was barely a proven fact in them, and the scientist could easily have been wrong or up to something else, like many of the documents claimed that they wanted the rocket vehicle.
Commander Eagle seemed to have talked every astronaut there into seeking the treasure, even though most were unsure what they were going to find or were even doing, and most seemed to think he was going to take them for himself at some point.
All the shuttles in their sectors had left as the day went on, carrying out their first scan of Mars, as the sun moved over their sectors of Mars, and Cronenberg had finally left to do his, and had sat confused in his seat, examining facts over and over, and realized that Orwell had to have let out the information about the diamonds and the map out, and he could not fully realize what he had intended to do and if he had even deliberately told them to carry out some elaborate plan, but if he had was he crazy doing it or had he made a mistake in depending on Commander Eagle?
He was surprised when Orwell approached him, when the rest of the crew were occupied, and started apologizing for his mistake, and for what Eagle had done, and Cronenberg realized that he had known the shuttle commander before they had gone to Mars, and he recalled it and that they were both connected to other influential people, and at the base.
“What was your agreement?” he asked, confused at what the situation was.
“Well, he is a distant relative of mine!” he replied, surprising Cronenberg, and he watched his face and saw his resemblance.
Orwell rested against a wall, and looked at him.
“I told him only about there being diamonds and we were searching for them! I figured we would have a better chance of finding it, as for starters we only cover one small sector of the area of Mars being checked.”
“You’re correct there! We will have to search through all the stuff recorded …”
“Exactly!” he swiftly replied. “And if we’re not able to find it on the recorded stuff we’ll not get it! But now all of them are searching with their detection equipment, which can’t be used on the map, and could very well spot something …”
He realized that it was a good point and that they could all together detect something, and their chances of finding them alone were low, and he was sure the method the scientist that originally found them had used to get them with the satellite were unknown.
He thought of how long it would take to map the entire world and rested back into his seat, and he wondered what would happen, and if he had really blown it, giving the information Orwell and to every astronaut there, and he realized that Orwell could have made a mistake and that he should have had them looking for something else, and he realized that it was Eagle that had ruined it and he was sure he never realized what he was doing.
He thought over what he had said and realized that Eagle had only known the diamonds were there, and could be found, but he had found the scientist’s diary, and Cronenberg recalled that there had been other libraries at the base, but small ones and were not for the public, and he recalled what he had said and that the diary said it was on the map and he wondered what information was in the diary and wondered if it gave how the scientist had located the diamonds on the satellite.
Cronenberg had searched the map repeatedly for the clue, after he had read a mention of it on Anders’s wife’s letter and he decided to try to find it later and started searching for information on the scientist and other scientists of that time, on his computer, and how they might have hidden it away.
Chapter 16
The Missing Shuttle
Cronenberg was almost asleep when an urgent communication was received and he partially grasped one of the pilot’s urgent voices and he rapidly realized it was something important and started to comprehend what it was to do with!
“Our mission has been cancelled!” Lyndon, the pilot, called out.
“What?” he moaned.
“For the moment! One of the shuttles has just vanished, and they’re starting to search for it!”
“Whose shuttle?” he called back.
“Wait a minute! I’ll ask! Whose shuttle? It’s Commander Eagle’s shuttle!”
Cronenberg gasped and jumped up and saw all their faces lit up, after Eagle’s name was mentioned, and he watched Orwell slowly move over to him, and he considered what to do.
“Tell them we’ll search for it too!” he announced, and he asked them to go to the location where the shuttle was last seen.
He was amazed when he replied, “They’re at the location we went down at!”
“What at the exact location?” he gasped, considering changing the order, considering them crashing down again.
It was a dangerous mission and he just had to go there and investigate what was happening, and he wondered why the hell Eagle had chosen that route, and he realized that the diamonds could be there and hidden at some place he had not noticed.
“It’s not the exact location!” Lyndon replied, looking over at him, and searching his face. “It’s further south!”
After a few minutes considering it he noticed he knew something else, and asked, “Is there any other information, and anything unusual you can find?”
He announced, “We’ve detected the shuttle! I cannot discover if it is damaged but there is no communications from it, and no information from anyone aboard! It seems dead!”
“If you detect anything trying to take control of this shuttle turn back! We cannot afford to crash again! We can go there later!”
“They want to explore what’s there – if nothing happens – and check what’s happened!”
Chapter 17
The Second Occurrence
In the distance he spotted the crashed shuttle, and it rapidly expand in size, and Cronenberg saw their crash site over at their side, and watched the hill he had stood on, where Campbell had died, and he sensed something, even though there was no sign of what had brought them down, as well as Eagle’s shuttle.
When they reached Eagle’s shuttle their acceleration automatically decreased and they flew in a circle around the shuttle, and he spotted damage to the shuttle, and signs that a fire had damaged it, and he saw there were no signs of anyone, or anyone leaving it.
It looked as though it had been brought down the same way as them but had sustained more damage, and he asked Lyndon to try to contact them again, and was immediately replied with there was nothing there to contact.
He struggled to grasp what was there and saw that the whole area was just a flat area of ground, similar to a desert region, with the hill he had stood on behind them and another hill at the same distance in the opposite direction, towards the Antarctica, and where Eagle’s shuttle had come form, and he focused on the deformed sun below the window, as it went along just above the horizon, and he gasped when the pilots announced the other shuttles in their group were arriving, in the distance, and he ordered them to land!
There had to be something there! He wondered if it was the hill after all! It was exactly in the middle between Eagle’s crash site and their crash site!
He looked for the diamonds and anywhere he could see that looked like where they could be and realized he could not see anything, and even wondered if they really existed.
The shuttles were new and recently built and they were still testing them for the first time over Mars!
Something staggered him about the mission and he sensed someth
ing was going to occur, and had seen it approaching, with it edging its way towards him, and he felt he could not avoid it! He had to go through with what was going to happen! He believed he could survive if he did everything he could to avoid any serious and deadly mistakes!
He watched the pilots do a perfect landing next to the shuttle, and he put on his spacesuit, and followed Orwell out the shuttle, and marched over to the other shuttle, and he wondered if they were still alive, as it looked like they had landed to fast and hard, as the shuttle looked embedded in the soil.
Chapter 18
The Second Hill
What had he done? Cronenberg completely realized his mistake and gasped, and examined the dark Martian landscape about him, with some amazement, astonished he was on another world!
Out of the silent empty Martian night high-powered rifle blasts were astonishing, especially in the deep darkness engulfing him, threatening to totally blind him! The explosions were so powerful that he believed a powerful explosive was used in the bullets, and again he was staggered that he could hear anything in such a thin atmosphere!
Someone definitely was trying to kill him, and as he rushed furiously away through thick reddish Martian sand, with his legs sinking deep, deeper and deeper in regions, threatening to impede him completely, and even turn to some form of quicksand!
Why he had been so stupid as to leave the shuttle without anyone else, and without saying anything, and even without any form of communications, and he wondered why he kept doing such things on Mars, which he never did on the Earth!
He had left the two shuttles, on his own, and as it was getting dark, and he had entirely underestimated the depth of the sand there, and that there was even anything there, which had impeded his speed for a long time and by the time he reached the hill, in the southerly direction, south of the last hill he had climbed, when they had crashed there.
He had to see the hill as he was sure it was really where there was something, and he was sure it had been where Anders and the scientist had intended to land, and he had known that he would never have a chance to search there again!
More high-powered rifle shots blasted out and hit the ground behind him and he realized how deep the darkness was now, and why he had survived, especially when the person had been close!
His pale cold complexion had entirely altered now and his face was bright red! Sounds of his heavy breathing and outer sounds took strange tones as he started trying to explain what they were, and he strained his eyes trying to see in front of him, and in the darkness he spotted the mountain stone was nearby, and that he would entirely escape the sand there, where he would have to escape from the gunman behind him!
While he rushed furiously on he thought of the injured state the survivors of Eagle’s shuttle crash had been in, and their account of what had landed them there, and he thought of all the things they said, and when he had realized that something had definitely landed them there, as the they had approached from the south, and he had worked out the distance that they had claimed it had taken control of their shuttle, and then the distance it had been taken control of at the other side, as they had approached from the north, and he had worked out where the central point was, and the hill that he was going to had been directly in the middle, and he was sure it was where there was something, and that it had been only able to use its powers on both shuttles at a certain distance, at either side of it.
Though there was no sign of the diamonds being there he was sure they had to be there somewhere, and he wondered what the hell the connection was between them and what had made them crash there.
The solid ground ahead of him increased in size, as he slowly got nearer and nearer, and he considered using his light, by flashing it, to get a brief view of what was fully there, and where to run, but he decided not to as the person would see him and could easily shoot him.
He was sure it had to be someone from one of the other shuttles, as he had the same reactions, and he realized how desperate they had become to get the diamonds and he blamed it all on Eagle and his scheme to get the treasure, and have all the shuttles search and have himself go to that site, and crash.
Something staggered him about the mission and the fact that from the very start he sensed something was going to occur, and had seen something approaching, edging its way towards him, which he knew he could not avoid! He had to go through with it! And he somehow thought he could survive if he did everything he could and avoided a deadly mistake!
It was unexplored Mars! It had new dangers there! It was exploring where nobody had been before, with its great deadly environment with its hidden dangers! The region they were in was the least explored and the great Antarctica!
He could hardly believe he was at the legendary Martian Antarctica, and he still sensed there was something strange there! Something he had not encountered before! Something that could only exist at such a place, out in the depths of space, which might not be able to exist on the Earth, and it gave him an even more chilling sensation of something he could not grasp!
As he accelerated on, closing in on the dark stone of the hill, he increasingly felt a presence of something, somewhere, in the chilling darkness of the alien world around them, which he realized never existed earlier.
Whoever was after him had to be stark raving mad and out for the kill, and was stupid for going to such levels to kill him, as if they found his body, which they would surely discover, as they would find his footsteps in the sand from near the shuttles and would be able to trace him, and the other person’s prints, and there would be someone that noticed the person had not been around, and he could not realize who was there and just accepted that he was trying to kill him to get the diamonds, which might have been detected by them!
The place had to be located in the coldest place he had been in and he detected it in places all about him, and it had the look of being the most remote place! Even in the summer the place was been highly deadly to any form of life!
He could not grasp why the person was so positive that there were diamonds, and could go so far to get them!
The dangers and the coldness made him cringe and blindly rush on through the blinding blackness, almost lost, and he wondered why people took such risks and gambled so far.
A loud explosion blasted out and a bullet thudded somewhere nearby and he had to jump through the sand into the dark landscape for his life! He dared not use his light now, and he could barely see anything!
The man could be heard over to his side behind him and he realized that he could have an infrared sight and was playing with him and when he reached the stone area below the hill he just dived at it and ran as fast as he could into the darkness, going straight to an area of small hills nearby, at the bottom of the hill, and that was covered up from being seen by the gunman, and once there he rushed round a hill and rushed towards one of another five hills, which he chose randomly, and immediately rushed around, and realized he had finally got away from him, and with delight saw many more small stone hills going over to the base of the large main central hill, and randomly kept rushing through different hills, covering up any sign he was there, and made sure his footsteps were not visible and he was not being watched, and he saw the gunman had vanished behind him.
Once he realized that he had escaped he started to enjoy going slower and being free from being attacked, and he thought through what had occurred!
Why would he go to such lengths to kill him? Surely the diamonds were not worth that much? There had to be something else! What else could possibly be there? What could be there in such a desolate place?
Suddenly it was like he recognized the place and mysteriously followed routes through different hills, and was constantly surprised that he knew things were there before he arrived and went around corners, and felt he could find somewhere to hide there and when he finally found a hiding place at the hill itself, in a small tunnel in a large pile of large boulders, and he rushed into the small tunnel going through and aro
und the boulders until he reached the hill itself and found himself surrounded by a small hidden cavity, where he hid, and faced outwards, buried away in the boulders, seeing if he could see anything, and checked for any gaps in the boulders, and when he found there were no holes or places light could escape he turned on his light and quickly checked his oxygen supply, and spare tanks, and realized he could escape in the morning, before it was light, and realized the person would eventually return to the shuttles, if he never found him, as he saw the person never had extra oxygen tanks.
He rested and started going over everything and what had happened and he wondered if something else was occurring that he never knew of, and why they had been so determined to get the diamonds as there was no real proof of the diamonds existing, anyway, and he had seen the diary Eagle had, which had belonged to the scientist, and the diary had virtually nothing in it as far as he was concerned, and he recalled Eagle mentioning that that the location was hidden away on the map and he realized that Orwell had to have told him, and convinced him there was definitely something there, but Orwell never knew of the map, and he had not told anyone, and he had been sure Eagle thought he had it, and he recalled that someone did know he had it, and it was Rosenberg, as he had seen him take it out of Anders’s spacesuit!
Chapter 19
The Light in the Night
Cronenberg’s dreams were strange and as though he was floating through mist, which shifted about beneath him, and he never recognized anything, and he was too tired to awaken, and he observed it all with amusement, and an annoying whispering sound that he kept listening to, from some unseen place, which sounded artificial when he firmly listened.
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