by Ian Sales
Then he turns around and looks at the MM, crouched in the middle of this desert, its gold skirt smeared with red dust, streaks of orange across the silver planes of its face, and beyond it the D&M Pyramid. And, by God, it looks like a goddamn pyramid. The edges are blurred, the top has collapsed a little, but it looks no more natural than the pyramids of Egypt.
Rested, he heads back to the MM. He jumps up onto the lowest rung of the ladder—it’s a struggle, no doubt it was easier on the Moon—and then hops up each rung until he can reach the insulation blanket covering the MRV. He rips it free, pulls off the operating tapes and, lanyard in hand, hops back down the ladder to the surface. Backing away from the MM, he gives the lanyard a yank, and then holds it taut as the Mars Roving Vehicle folds out from its bay, its rear wheels lowering into position and locking, then the front wheels. He shuffles about the vehicle removing pins and cables, then lifts up the seat and footrest.
He steps back and gazes at the MRV. He’s done enough for his first EVA, he thinks. Tiredness eats at his bones, his muscles burn, and he can barely bend his fingers in his gloves. It’s going to be a fight to get back into the MM, and he best do it now while he’s got a chance of succeeding. The mission plan has him out here for another hour, but he’s cutting it short.
The mission planners have filled his nine days for him and after forty minutes on Mars he knows there’s no way he’s going to be able to do everything they want. He’s going to have to focus on the important stuff, and he knows the real science is going to get short shrift because another agenda has come into play now. The pencil-necks are going to be pissed at him because other things are more important now—
The goddamn Face. And the Pyramid.
1999
Elliott has been on the Robert H Goddard for a week now and he’s fairly sure he knows his way round it. The module through which he came aboard holds supplies, then there’s the command module, and the last one is the passenger and crew module. Occasionally he uses the wrong connecting tunnel and finds himself not where he expected to be, but it’s pretty easy to figure out which module is which. Everywhere he turns, he is assailed by memories of Ares 9, and they trick him into thinking he knows precisely where he is. And then some strangeness, something that reminds him he’s not aboard Ares 9 en route to Mars, he’s in the Goddard, travelling to an exoplanet faster than the speed of light.
They’ve assigned him a compartment, though he had the pick of them as he’s the only passenger aboard. They’re all exactly the same: a triangular space with a locker against the curved exterior wall and a sleeping bag fastened to an interior partition. A mat on the floor and a canvas ceiling provide privacy.
This tiny compartment where he spends his nights is only a smaller space within a tiny universe. He’s cut off from everything outside the Goddard and since he’s a passenger he has nothing to do. His thoughts inevitably turn to Judy, and he wonders if he should have contacted her from Space Station Freedom. And then he thinks, no goddamnit, she left him, not the other way round, she’s the one who’s throwing away their marriage, the years they had together, the good times, the life he created for her. He’s not going to apologise, she knew he had to take this mission, he couldn’t turn it down, she’s the one with the goddamn problem. And he pulls out the photos he brought with him, but it hurts too much to look at them so he puts them away.
He spends most of his time in the command module—the daily operations of the Goddard he finds endlessly fascinating. The crew module has exercise and recreation facilities, and he has to exercise for two hours every day on the ergometer, but he doesn’t sleep as well as he once did, not even in zero gravity. The Goddard’s crew are mostly young, taciturn, and even off-watch they treat him according to his rank. No one is ever really off duty in space.
Major Finley doesn’t seem to mind him hanging around the command centre, providing he stays out of the way. Elliott spends hours in the cupola, gazing out at the surface of 1862 Apollo, which glows silver beneath a nacreous sky.
What is that? he asks Finley, pointing up at the pearly brightness which surrounds the asteroid.
Light, Finley tells him. We’re in a bubble of spacetime generated by the Serpo engine, and the light trapped inside with us can’t escape until we reach our destination and collapse the bubble, so it just bounces around and produces that effect. When we arrive, it all escapes with a big flash. The guys on Earth Two say they always know when we arrive—the flash lights up the sky.
It’s kind of weird, admits Elliott.
You get used to it, replies Finley. The major floats beside him in the cupola. He glances down at the two officers manning the pilot and flight engineer positions, and then looks across to Elliott. I guess, he says, it’s about time you told me what your mission is.
Elliott has been ordered to brief Finley once the Goddard is en route. So he says, About three weeks ago, one of the guys at NASA figured out we should be able to see evidence of Phaeton Base on the L5 Telescope.
Right, says Finley; It’s been fifteen years.
Elliott continues, So they watched Gleise 876 for a week and scrutinised the data every which way. Nothing. They expected something, maybe just a shift in the star’s spectral lines, maybe a change in brightness—but something.
Nothing? Finley scoffs; Did they get the date right?
The date is right. How long since you were last there? Elliott asks.
Maybe three months, admits Finley. We’ve been doing these supply runs three times a year since they founded the base. Everything’s always been pretty normal. You know we had a scheduled trip in three weeks?
Yeah, but this may be urgent. Maybe something happened, it needs checking out. That, says Elliott, is why you’re taking me there now.
Finley is plainly not convinced. Why you? he asks. You’re not Space Command, you’ve not been in space for twenty years.
That’s classified, Elliott tells him.
Later, Elliott regrets the conversation. Whenever he surprises a member of the Goddard’s crew at something, their expression changes when they see him. It’s something about himself that causes their features to harden, their brows to lower and eyes narrow. He’s seen it before, back at Edwards, when they get some guy through the Test Pilot School and they can all see he’s out of his depth. Elliott knows they’re thinking he’s the only man to visit Mars, he’s some kind of astronaut celebrity, so the brass, maybe even POTUS himself, decided he’d be good for this.
He’s in the rec area at the galley table, his feet angled up towards the ceiling, trying to spoon chocolate pudding from a see-through pouch. One of the junior members of the crew, a lieutenant called Stewart, joins him.
They call it Hell, you know, Stewart tells Elliott.
He doesn’t understand. The Rock? he asks. The bubble? What?
Earth Two, Stewart replies.
Now that makes sense. Elliott has been studying Earth Two, Gliese 876 d, and it does appear infernal. It’s a red globe bathed in red light from its red sun. There are no surface features visible in orbital photographs, only vague lines which hint at mountain ranges, valleys, rifts and plains. The atmosphere hides detail. Pink clouds drift slowly across the hellish landscape, softening the view. Elliott remembers Mars and how every rift and desert and shield volcano was visible from orbit, identifiable from thousands of miles away during his approach.
Is that so, he says.
Stewart nods slyly. They got all the creature comforts there, he says, but they hate it all the same.
What are they doing there? he asks.
Stewart shrugs. Science, he says. Who knows? Science for science’s sake. One up on the Russkies, I guess.
1980
The Face was a bust. Three days he drove out to it in the MRV and explored its slopes, but he couldn’t find a way up. From some angles, the top of the mesa looks like a real face, with eye-sockets, nose, lips; other times, it just looks like a weathered hill in some pitiless desert. He does not know how old it is
, this region was formed during the Amazonian age and is likely three billion years old. At 0.087 psi, a hurricane here is going to feel like a light breeze, it’s not going to do much weathering. A mesa like this could be millions of years old on Earth, but here it might be a thousand times older. He doesn’t even find any real evidence it’s artificial, and that’s why they sent him here. There are some cracks between rocks, and maybe they’re proof the mesa was put together out of blocks of stone like the Sphinx or something, but they could just as easily be natural. He’s not sure, but he has the Hasselblad mounted on his chest so he takes lots of photographs. Let the pencil-necks figure it out.
The City was no better. Two days he spent there, but it’s just a jumble of rocks, and if there were any buildings there once it’s impossible to tell now. Now he’s got two days left on Mars and all this driving around in the MRV has helped a bit but he still feels weak and bone-tired all the time. His spacesuit chafes, he’s got some kind of rash that’s getting real close to painful, and his hands are black and blue from trying to do things in EVA gloves.
There’s only one place he’s got left to look: the D&M Pyramid, and it’s six miles south of the MM, just over an hour’s drive in this terrain in the MRV. He shouldn’t go so far, mission protocols say stay within walking distance of the MM, but it’s not like he has much choice. He’s got to find something.
The Pyramid is a good bet because it looks just like one of the pyramids in Egypt. Except it has five sides. The top has been scoured flat by dust storms, and the edges are no longer sharp, but there’s no way it can be a natural hill. He pushes the T-bar forward and the MRV picks up speed, throwing out two fine plumes of red dust from its rear wheels. The ground is soft, but at least it’s mostly flat, and the wire wheels have more than enough traction so soon he’s hitting nearly eight miles per hour. He crests a small dune around three feet high, and bounces down the other side. He’s getting the hang of the low gravity now, his reactions are tuned to it. He speeds across the Martian sand and he can’t help himself, for the first time since landing here he’s feeling happy. The sun is a small white spot, mountains dance in the haze of distance, banded and striped in shades of red and brown and black, and the sky above the horizon is a salmon pink blur. He hits a shallow graben, like an empty stream-bed, and pulls back on the T-bar to reduce speed. If he hits one of those too fast, he’ll bust the MRV and it’s a long walk back to the Mars Module.
Two and a half miles before the Pyramid is a big round crater five or six hundred yards across. He was going to ignore it, drive round it, but now that he’s close something about it puzzles him. There’s no ejecta, no apron, the rock of the rim is the same basalt as the Pyramid and the surrounding area. He can see no discolouration, no debris where an ejecta blanket should be.
He reaches the rim of the crater—or whatever it is—and brings the MRV to a slewed halt. He unfastens his lap belt but waits a moment before climbing off the vehicle. He’s on VOX but none of this conversation is going to get relayed to Houston:
Okay, Bob, I’m at the crater, and it’s no crater, man. It’s like a collapsed cave or something.
I hope you’re taking photos, Brad.
Yeah, but you just know they’re going to be classified, right?
[laughter] It’s probably natural; it’s just you, your mix is just wrong. So what kind of cave?
Could be erosional, I guess, formed back when Mars had water back in the Noachian.
That’s four billion years ago, Brad. That can’t be right: Cydonia is Amazonian.
Yeah, I guess. I’m standing on the rim now. I’m seeing banding in the walls, so this is no impact crater. And those walls are way too regular, so it’s not erosional either—
You’re saying it’s artificial?
Yeah, I guess… Wait—
On the Viking 1 image, part of the “crater” floor looked to be in shadow but now he’s standing on the lip he can see from edge to edge. And over there, across from him, something glints in a drift against the wall. He looks for a way down—the chamber is about fifty feet deep and sheer-sided—and just around the rim, part of the wall has collapsed, forming a steep slope down. He heads over, kicking up red sand as he bounds across the Martian soil. He weighs 150 pounds here with his spacesuit and PLSS, and that’s just over half of what he weighs buck naked on Earth. He reaches the ramp, and steps carefully onto it, placing one boot firmly on the slope, then lifting his foot. For a moment, he admires the bootprint he’s made in the red sand, but already grains are spilling in at the edges, blurring its clean lines. He puts his foot down again and his grip feels secure. This ramp has been here for hundreds of thousands of years, maybe longer, the rock and sand is not going to shift from his weight.
Still, he’s careful as he descends, but it’s steeper than it looks and he starts to lose his balance so he increases his pace and soon he’s springing from foot to foot down the ramp, always about to topple over, only just in control—
You okay, Brad?
I’m… shit… steep… steeper… than… I thought… shit… Okay, I’m at the bottom now. Damn, that was stupid.
Bottom of what, Brad?
I’m on the floor. I saw something, I’m going to check it out.
He heads across the floor of the—yes, it’s a chamber, a built thing, carved from the rock. He’s hot and his ankles ache and the soles of his feet are sore from descending the ramp at speed. He shuffles across the sandy red rock, scuffing through the drifts of sand, rocking from side to side, and it’s hard work. He can see the glint more clearly now, and once he’s within a dozen feet of it he sees it’s a curved fragment of transparent mineral. It’s too big to be natural, he thinks, but with the Face and now this underground chamber, he’s lost all sense of surprise.
He bends forward, preventing himself from falling over with a hand to the drift, and tries to dig away at it. But the transparent thing, whatever it is, it’s buried deep in the rock, and he can’t get it out. All he does is bruise his fingertips badly in the thimbles of his gloves, and he has to bite back an oath at the pain. He wonders if it’s worth getting it out, but just then some of the rock crumbles and falls away and he can see a bit more of the sheet and—
There’s something inside it.
It’s black and thin and curved, but he can’t see more than that. It’s like a tiny black worm maybe, or a tail of some small creature. He’s got a geology hammer but he left it on the MRV. He’s going to need it now.
He heads back across the floor, scrambles up the ramp, and by the time he reaches the top, he has to stop to cool down. After ten minutes, he’s got his breath back and he thinks he can move without danger of heat exhaustion. He shuffles over to the MRV, grabs the hammer and the sampling scoop from the Hand Tool Carrier behind the seat, and then returns to the floor of the chamber.
He’s sweating and swearing again as he hammers at the rock to uncover more of the transparent whatever. He’s hit it several times with the hammer by accident and it hasn’t even scratched it. He thinks it may be diamond. A giant diamond. On Mars.
It takes him a couple of hours but soon he has most of the diamond dug out. It’s a disc about six feet in diameter and three inches thick, and it’s covered in writing, small symbols about two inches square in a spiral from the edge into the centre. They’re inside the diamond, and they’re not human. They can’t be—this rock the sheet is buried in is millions of years old. And if this is a hoax, then Major Bradley Emerson Elliott, USAF, is not the first human being on Mars, and he’s pretty damn sure he is. Besides which, no one on Earth can make a huge diamond like this.
He peers closer at the symbols and he sees there are two separate spirals. One of them tells a story in little pictograms, with little planets and stars and lines connecting them every which way. He thinks one planet is Mars, and it’s connected by a line to another that could be the Earth but has only one big continent. It also has a line of symbols by it, then there’s a line from some constellation he does
n’t recognise to the Earth; and now here’s the Earth again but the symbols have gone. And another line to Mars where there’s a little drawing of the Face, and even a tiny pictogram of this disc…
He takes photos, lots of photos. They’re going to want to see this back at Houston. His camera runs out of film, and he thinks he should start back to the MM. He looks at his Omega Speedmaster and over four hours have passed. He’s got plenty of time, the PLSS is good for a seven-hour EVA and it’s about an hour’s drive back to the MM. But it’s definitely time he got going.
He leaves the hammer and sampling scoop and crosses to the ramp up to the rim. Exhaustion limits his actions. He moves like an old man, he’s covered in a thin film of sweat and the LCG can’t keep him cool enough. If he stands still too long, he can feel sleep begin to steal upon him, and it takes an effort of will to remain awake and moving.
It takes him far too long to ascend out of the chamber, but eventually he makes it to the top, and he has to rest for twenty minutes. Once he has recovered, he makes his way slowly to the MRV and settles gratefully into its seat. He fastens the lap-belt, grabs the T-bar and pushes it forward. He’s tired, he’s not thinking straight. The MRV spins its wheels and then lurches forward. Too late, he thinks to pull the T-bar towards him. The front left wheel hits a rock, the entire vehicle bounces, and when it hits the ground, the wheel is bent out of true.
