The People of Mars

The People of Mars


“Hold on.” I checked my lenses and peered into the monitor. “I’ve seen this before. Give me a minute.”

“We suspected as much. That’s why we came to you first.” General Farabee waited a little less than patiently with a team of other scientists on the video conference line. “What’ve you got?” he asked, almost as if he already knew the answer.

“One moment.” I scanned through my database, years and years of archeological records I’d accumulated, finally finding it in an old set of petroglyphs from the desert southwest. I recalled it didn’t match any other Native American etchings in the area. Most experts thought the rough scratches and abrasions were a hoax, contemporary graffiti defacing an otherwise historical landmark. They were wrong. Forensic analysis indicated they were way older. “Here it is. I’ll admit, it’s not much.”

“Is it a match, is the question.”

“Let’s see.” I enlarged the image. A broken line starting at three peaks snaked across a wide expanse and into a narrow gorge, then emptied into a broad, rounded basin. It stopped at the center. What was most interesting was the line ended in a box, like the ‘X’ on an old pirate treasure map. I’d theorized it to be some sort of chart, even published a paper on it – a paper that was widely ridiculed among my so-called ‘peers.’

“Well?” the general asked, impatience tainting in his voice.

Shifting my archival copy, I superimposed my image over the picture provided by the general – an absolutely barren desert with a few, now overlapping, features. “You found it,” I marveled with vindication, not even able to take my eyes away. “It was a map. X marks the spot.”

The silence on the other end preceded a low whispering.

“Where is it?” I was desperate to know.

“Pack your bags, Dr. Branson. You’re gonna be away for a while.”



ii

“You know Amelia, when Farabee told me to ‘pack my bags,’ this isn’t exactly what I expected.” I stepped away from the rover and surveyed the landscape. Mars was desolate, an inhospitable planet of fierce dust storms and dry lightning.

She grinned. “But I can’t imagine being any place but here. You seeing this, Jimenez?”

“The hi-def feed’s green across the board, commander,” he replied from back inside the shelter of a comfortable control center.

It was different seeing the surface with my own eyes, even with the separation of a helmeted environmental suit between me and the thin atmosphere. The world felt too alien, and so far from home. “So, we ready?”

“Just running the checklist. Besides, we’ll want to stretch our legs a bit. The rover’s really designed more for function than comfort. Anyways, some of this tech is pretty sensitive and I want to make sure we’re good to go.”

“Well, you are the mission commander,” I noted, admiring the familiar trio of peaks I’d only known from a protected archeological site back on Earth. Some genius named them Phorcides, after the three gray sisters in the tale of Perseus. I suppose it was fitting, considering we were one of the first human explorers of a planet named after a Greek god.

“And that…should…do it.” She tightened the last of the fittings.

Finally inside our pressurized rover, it was more than cramped, even without our suits on, and just a bit claustrophobic. We knew the first stretch would be a long one across an unforgiving desert, little to see other than some wind-swept dunes and, true enough, five hours later we finally rolled to a stop at the mouth of a narrow gorge. Peering into the depths, it was hard to believe it wasn’t cut by a rushing river but instead eons of wind. The jagged cliffs made it that much more ominous. “Are we seriously going in there?”

“We’re just following your map,” the commander noted. “Jimenez, we’ll be dark for a while.”

“Roger that,” he responded. “Resuming comms on the other side.”

So, we sloped down the decline into the mouth of the fissure. The sun was low, casting darker shadows into the hidden parts. “I’m not sure I understand the reasoning of taking the long route. We know where the target is, why not just drop us there?” Amelia asked.

“We considered that. It would have saved some budget costs, for sure. And I’ll admit, I was one of the more vocal proponents of taking the long way. There had to be a map for a reason.”

“You mean, other than simply providing a reference to get started?” There was a subtle glow up ahead, only notable because of the dim shadowing in the deeper parts of the ravine. “What’s that?”

A chill ran down my spine. “Unexpected. Maybe we should stop.”

“I’m not reading any radiation, no life-threatening emissions. Still, I’ll ease back a bit.” The glow steadily increased as we crawled closer. “Hmm…not so much as a microrad.” An unnatural sapphire glow surged in the darkness, yet our curiosity pushed us ahead into the unknown. Clearing the last turn, we rolled to an immediate stop. “What the hell is that?”

Of course, I’d never seen anything like it. Towering a hundred feet and encased in solid rock, an obviously constructed machine pulsed with fizzling blue parts. “It almost…it almost looks like a generator,” I realized.

“On Mars? Why is it here? I mean, this planet is dead. No life.”

“No life, now,” I corrected. “There’ve been theories, some fringe ideas. Anyways, we suspected we might find something surprising. You seriously never wondered why they sent an archeologist on this mission?”

“I’d be lying if I said no. Okay, what next?”

“You’re the mission commander.”

“And you’re the archeologist.”

“Point taken. I’d like a closer look. And not from inside this rover.”

With heavy consideration, she sighed, “Okay.”



iii

“Do you feel it?” I asked. “It’s heavier here.”

She checked the readings on her suit. “This can’t be right. I’m detecting air, and I don’t mean Martian. Breathable. 72% nitrogen and 21% oxygen.”

“So we can remove our helmets?”

“No way! Jesus, haven’t you seen any alien infection movies?”

Of course, she was right and I returned to my own analysis. “Looks like the whole structure was subterranean at some point. You can see where the wall to a closed chamber must have collapsed, exposing it to the canyon. It’s been here for a while, maybe millennia. Half the foundation’s buried and there’s some general corrosion you’ll see on metals when exposed to an atmosphere. Obviously, no one’s been around to maintain it. Built to last, though.”

“What do you think it does?”

“Who knows? Let’s get a closer look.”

“No.”

“Seriously? This is the type of stuff we were looking for…the type of stuff I was sent here for.”

“We’ll tag the site and they can send a team later. Besides, we don’t know if it’s even safe. There’s too much of the wall laying at the foot of this cavern.”

“But…”

“You said it yourself. I’m mission commander. Right now safety is a priority. I mean, just documenting it at all is groundbreaking. We’ve got enough images and readings to keep our scientists busy for years. Anyways, today’s mission was to scout the route to Destination X, and we’re only halfway there.”

So, I regrettably climbed back inside, secretly relieved to avoid being crushed to death on an alien planet.



iv

Our momentous discovery behind us, the cavern emptied into a broad basin we knew to be an old crater. “Jimenez, you read?”

“I’m here, sir. Good to hear your voice again.”

“You’ll never believe what we discovered. Sending the data now.”

There was silence on the other end. “You’re shitten’ me,” was Jimenez’s only reply.

“Not shits. We’ll debrief later. Stand by.”

The wide basin’s walls towered above us on all sides as we steadily approaching our marker on the map - the X at the heart of the crater. Eased to a stop, our destination seemed just a heaped pile of sand and rocks, the remains of an ancient asteroid impact, but I knew better. “This shouldn’t be here,” I explained.

“What? The rocks or the sand?”

“Something’s buried here.”

“How can you tell?”

“Experience. These are ruins.” I turned to her. “I have to know for sure.”

She reluctantly agreed.

Exited our rover, we scaled the nearest dune and I dropped to my knees, digging frantically, wiping the sand away.

“Well, I’ll be damned.” Amelia ran her fingertips along the sides of an exposed, carefully hewn column, not unlike the kind you’d find in Greece or Italy. “What does it mean?”

“It means, at some point in Mars’ past, somebody lived here. There’s no doubt now.”

A sea of wind-blown dunes stretched away from us and even she could see them now, the hints of a civilization poking through the sandy carpet of accumulated time. “It goes on forever,” she said of the towers of cut stone, sharply crafted corners, and surfaces rounded smooth by hand. “How did we not know about this?”

“Because despite all our surface exploration, we’ve only surveyed less than 1% of the planet’s surface. Most of what we know is via satellite, too far to spot these details.”

“There!” She motioned across the dunes to a familiar sapphire glow and we hiked directly for it, finally reaching a depression - a wind-blown cavern leading underground. Amelia brushed the sand from a rocky outcropping and was immediately stunned to discover a face stare back at us, carved from solid rock and too familiar. “Impossible!”

“Improbable,” I corrected and studied the visage carefully – the face of a human woman. Past it, the bluish glimmering called to me and I climbed into the opening.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Commander, part of being an archeologist is about taking a calculated risks. This is too important. Besides, few people have made any great discoveries by playing it safe.”

“Get your ass back here!”

“Not this time.”

It was dark and the LEDs on my suit led the way. What I thought to be a cave actually became a smoothly carved corridor leading to a broad chamber, nearly black but for a solitary blue beacon in the center of the room. I could tell there were other things there in the darkness, hints of ancient lives in the shadows, but the sapphire pinpoint had my full attention. Closer now, it became a button, alive and waiting atop an elevated pedestal. So, I pushed it.

Immediately, the room lit to the brightness of day as a virtual depiction of a solar system filled the room, familiar with one exception, an extra planet between Mars and Jupiter. Then, next to the image of each world, were a set of vaguely familiar scratches, angled markings I inferred to be writing I couldn’t quite decipher. A ghostly projection of a woman materialized next me. Wearing a long gown, she began to speak gently, though I had no idea what she was saying. Thankfully, every word was followed by the familiar scratches and I suddenly understood. “Holy crap.”

“What is all this?”

I jumped. Amelia had followed after me. “Oh, uh, I'm not completely sure, but the writing is Sumerian. Very old. I did a research project on it once.”

“And?”

“Well, looks like there were dozens of cities like this one, a whole complex civilization living in peace. There’s stuff about some of their technology – cures for every disease, limitless energy, different realities. Talk of an apocalypse, I think.”

“You think?”

“Honestly, my Sumerian’s pretty rusty. Um, there was a disaster from the sky, some sort of cataclysm.”

Next, tiny icons erupted from Mars, every one headed toward Earth just as the fifth world exploded, peppering Mars and Jupiter, devastating the fourth planet's surface. “Does this mean what I’m thinking?”

“It means we’re the Martians, and we’ve come home. Our history’s about to change in a big way. And we’re going to need a bigger team.”



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