‘What worries me most,’ said Paul, ‘is that he somehow knew what would happen to the other two expeditions before they went, and that’s unnerving to say the least.’
‘Where else can we get any information from?’ asked Ben, ‘unless we start believing in fairy tales and old legends. I think we must make up our own minds based on what we know to be real.’
‘But what is real?’ Hans replied. ‘Nearly everyday some long held theory gets thrown out on the scrap heap, and a new one takes its place. It’s getting to the point that if you can’t pick it up and take a bite out of it, it probably belongs to your, or someone else's imagination. I think we must make up our minds based on what we know, tool up for the job, and see what happens. We must take every precaution possible of course, and we can always back out if things get too hot.’
They all nodded in solemn agreement. They were the most qualified for the venture, and apart from an outright refusal, which would be very difficult to justify, they were stuck with it.
The next three days saw the crew going through their normal top up training routines, designed to keep a fine edge to their abilities, interspersed with frequent meetings to discuss their needs for the forthcoming expedition with the supplies department.
It was generally accepted between them that they would take the mission, but what they would take with them was still open to discussion. Lists were made, torn up, remade, and finally they had a comprehensive catalogue of equipment they considered necessary for their survival, hopefully covering all aspects of what they may have to face from the mystery force which didn’t seem to want to be disturbed on the red planet.
At long last on the third day, a meeting was arranged with the psychologist who was going to provide them with the ability to block out the singing sounds, which had been so devastating for the previous two attempts at exploration.
The group dutifully assembled outside the offices of the ‘mind bending department’, and trooped in, a little fearful of what they might be subjected to from a section of the complex they had had little to do with in the past.
The long white haired, gaunt looking doctor who finally ordained to see them, did little to boost their confidence in his ability to provide them with something useful against the mind curdling Martian sounds designed to impair their sense of reality.
As he explained the intricacies of what he proposed to do to their minds in order to combat the sounds, they agreed that he seemed to know what he was talking about
‘A posthypnotic suggestion will be implanted in your minds, such that when the ‘sounds’ begin, the implant will be triggered and go into operation.’
‘The idea is to lessen the volume of the ‘sounds’ you actually hear, but leave just enough to keep the ‘command’ locked in, so that it can do its job. Once triggered, the ‘command’ will filter out anything which you have no reality on, so that any extraneous mental pictures you are exposed to will appear hazy. You will know they are there, but will be able to distinguish them from reality, and so will be unaffected by them.
‘There is only one problem, as I see it. We don’t know exactly what ‘sounds’ the others experienced, as we only have their descriptions of them, so you will have to be careful in the first instance of exposure. Once you recognize the sounds for what they are, they will be logged in your mind for future recognition.’
‘It sounds a little too good to be true.’ Ben remarked. ‘Is there any way we can test your proposals?’
‘You could try it out in the virtual reality room, I understand you have had plenty of experience of that, so you will be able to compare your reactions with and without the mind block.’
They all agreed to take part in the experiment, although not as wholeheartedly as the doctor would have liked.
The following day, the VR room technicians were instructed to throw everything they could at the five, to try and confuse them and prevent their normal tasks from being completed. The mind block worked, and the group held the doctor in higher esteem than they did on their first meeting with him.
Having had their minds implanted with the posthypnotic command, and completed their lists of the extra extras they considered necessary for their expedition, they went to see the Director to give him the good news.
The Director couldn’t hide his delight now that he had a crew who had decided to take up the challenge of the next Mars landing, and his smile was even wider than normal as they entered the hallowed sanctum to officially accept.
‘The launch is scheduled for take off in three weeks time, all being well,’ he beamed, ‘and I have a little update which you may not have been privy to. Just before the last manned landing, a mechanical probe was sent to look for possible water in the equatorial region. It sent a drill down several metres, analysed the samples brought up, and sent the data back to us. Unfortunately, there was an error in the interpretation of that data, and the engineers considered there was little chance of obtaining water in that area.
‘At the same time, a group had begun designing a device which would drill down into the permafrost of Mars, extract the water contained in the aquatic sand layer, and process it for drinking and production of oxygen by electrolysis.
‘The project had been abandoned when we got the information back from Mars, but the good news is that an error was located on subsequent reappraisal of the data. The water producing device has now been finished, tested and shipped up to the space station.
‘This, of course, means that you can stay on the planet for considerably longer than we had anticipated, and the space which would have been taken up with a large amount of oxygen cylinders and water can now be used for any other things you may consider necessary for the expedition.
‘After you take off, another ship will be launched carrying extra fuel for the Lander and for your return journey, and this will take up an orbit near the main craft so that you can make as many Lander trips as you find necessary for restocking your supplies, or as a sanctuary, for instance.’
The meeting went on for several hours, solving the many anomalies such a project created by its very existence.
In the end, they were satisfied with what had been decided in general, and the team left feeling that everything possible had been looked at and checked over for errors, the mind block being the only remaining item which would be proved one way or the other when they encountered the alien singing sound, and no one was looking forward to that.
Over the next two weeks there was further testing of the mind block, Hans’s selection of weapons and a general check of tools and materials to cover all foreseeable possibilities.
Another visit to the ‘Dreamer’ to try and elicit any further information about his dire warnings proved fruitless. He seemed to have withdrawn into himself, and trying to get any sense out of him was more frustrating than rewarding.
The day finally came when they would take the shuttle up to the main space station orbiting Earth, check out the ship which would take them on to Mars, and generally relax for a day or two before the big journey began.
The method of launching the shuttle had been improved considerably over the old system of sheer brute force of rocket propulsion, as used in the early days of space exploration.
The several kilometre long launch track lay along the equator so that Earth’s natural spin would be added to the vehicle’s velocity, and the propulsion system had been changed to one of much greater efficiency, compared to several previous systems which had been used.
The streamlined shuttle lay on a cradle, which in turn moved along the main track until sufficient velocity had been achieved, and then the ram jets cut in, releasing the shuttle for the next stage of her journey.
The cradle, plus shuttle, were propelled along the track using a series of electromagnets, each set being activated just ahead of the cradle at an ever increasing rate as the velocity of the cradle increased. In effect, it was just a form of modified linear motor, using pulsed power. The cradle was kept sus
pended just clear of the tracks by another set of electromagnets so that friction was reduced to a minimum.
The ram jets took the shuttle, once it had been released from the cradle, on up into the fringes of space, and when the air was too thin to supply enough oxygen for the ram jets, the main rocket motors took over for the last section of the journey into full orbit.
They had made more trips up to the orbiting space station than they cared to remember, but Greg still got that indefinable thrill as the shuttle climbed ever higher, and the pale blue of the sky deepened, turning dark blue through to purple and then the deepest darkness imaginable. The stars burst out one by one, and then scores at a time, until the space around them looked like an enormous jet black velvet drape, liberally sprinkled with the finest of sparkling diamonds.
This time though, Greg felt he wanted to hold onto the changing spectacle, make it last forever, somehow afraid he may never see it again, and then the shuttle nosed around to dock with the station, so the business in hand took precedence over his thoughts.
Word must have gone ahead of them, with regard to the mission, for as they debarked from the shuttle, some of the station staff gathered around the airlock and gave them a greeting fit for conquering heroes. This caused not a little embarrassment, because the heroics had yet to be implemented, and the crew didn’t really want to be heroes anyway, just getting back safely was their main concern.
The next few days were spent checking over the Mars ship and its Lander, making sure each crew member had on board those things he thought necessary for the expedition, including the varied weaponry called for by Hans.
Excitement, and the accompanying tension mounted as the departure day neared, and when it finally came it was a relief for the crew to get the project under-way at long last.
The Mars ship and its Lander vehicle were much bigger than its two predecessors, and as it undocked from the main station and slowly drifted away, it was an awesome sight for those left behind.
There being no need for streamlining in space, it consisted of an apparently random jumble of cylinders, box sections and connecting cross beams. In fact, it had been very carefully designed to allow efficient movement of its personnel between the various sections.
The main drive unit with its accompanying fuel tanks were tacked onto the end of the conglomeration of living quarters, food, materials, tools and general stores sections, almost like an afterthought.
The Lander module with its drilling and processing unit lay slung underneath the whole mass, although ‘underneath’ was an arbitrary term when considering a space vehicle.
The whole ungainly mass of the third Mars Explorer continued to slowly edge away from the main station, align itself up on the predetermined flight path, and with a burst of brilliant blue white light, accelerated out towards the red planet.
Under the old system, a Mars probe took far too long to reach its destination for human travel, as it relied on a constant velocity imparted at its insertion point into the flight path, the new system was different and better.
Using the new improved Mass Conversion Ion Drive, a space vehicle was able to continue acceleration for most of the journey, and then decelerate as it approached its target, having lost nearly all its inertia as it maneuvered into orbit.
There was little for the crew to do while the ship cleaved the blackness of space on her mission of discovery, except contemplate the somewhat unpredictable future
The ‘days’ went by as the ship ploughed on towards Mars, under the constant thrust of the new drive. Several times the Director called up his prodigies on the communications link to give encouragement, suspecting that they would soon be facing an unknown force which none of them could comprehend or understand, as past efforts suggested.
Every bit of data, plus the so called expert’s interpretation of it, had been given to the crew and they went over it time and time again, trying to squeeze every bit of information out of it, and so be forearmed to some extent when they came face to face with their supposed adversary.
Hans’s initial solution to the problem was to arm themselves to the teeth, and blast everything which looked like a threat into oblivion, but when it came to deciding what physically constituted a threat, he had to revise his ideas somewhat.
The team decided that after they had landed they would go to the valley bottom, and if they hadn’t been obliterated by then, try to get a radio controlled ‘explorer’ into the hole in the rock. But after that it all depended on how successful the ‘explorer’ was, and what they found out, if anything.
When the ship was almost three quarters the way to Mars, and the deceleration process was about to begin, they received a call from Earth with a startling piece of news, or so they thought at the time.
What Earth’s scientists thought might have been a piece of bone which had been retrieved during a mechanical probe’s foraging about on an earlier mission, finally yielded up what was thought to be a fragment of DNA.
After the excitement had died down to a point where rational thinking could take place again, it was discovered that the DNA pattern was virtually the same as that to be found on Earth, the general conclusion being that the sample had somehow got contaminated during the investigation, so no one bothered to look any deeper into the matter.
‘I think it must have been contamination.’ said Greg. ‘When you consider that the temperature on Mars is only up to freezing point on a good day, and down to minus one hundred centigrade at other times. This would mean that any life there must have been a very, very long time ago, when the planet was a lot warmer. I don’t see how DNA would remain viable that long in such a hostile environment.’
‘But just suppose it did survive, look at what that might infer.’ Paul was getting excited at the prospect.
‘I think the contamination theory is far more likely, and that’s why nothing was found before.’ Ben couldn’t resist joining in, if only to keep the argument going. It was at least, something new to talk about.
It was several hours later when the crew retired for a well earned rest, having exhausted all possibilities of the DNA theory, and what could or would be inferred were it genuine.
During the deepest part of their slumbers, something gave the ship a gentle nudge, not quite heavy enough to trigger any of the sensors and so leave a record of its visit, but a light and delicate contact had been made just the same.
Something, somewhere, now knew visitors were on their way, and would be ready and waiting when they arrived.
Something, somewhere
The ship circled the red planet several times while the crew scoured the surface for anything out of the ordinary, but it looked just the same as the pictures which had been viewed from previous missions.
When the old landing site had been located from the previous landing data, the Lander module was made ready and all five went on board. It had already been decided there was little point in anyone staying behind in the orbiter.
The communication link with Earth was opened and put on permanent transmission, so that everything they heard or said between them would be relayed back for posterity to make of it what it would.
The holding clamps clanked open releasing the Lander, and using the steering jets, it was gently eased away from the orbiter, and then the descent began in earnest. With eyeballs straining almost out of their sockets, those of the crew who had a view port, searched the surface below for any sign of hostility as the Lander made its approach.
Apart from disturbing a little of the red dust, which copiously covered everything on the planet, the landing was uneventful, and the anchor bolts were fired to hold the Lander firmly in place against the hurricane force winds which sometimes blew.
The water and oxygen generating device was lowered beneath the Lander, and the automatic drilling sequence begun. If the expected ice in what was considered to be perma-frost was located, the crew would have nothing to worry about with regard to their oxygen and water supplies.
&nb
sp; As had their predecessors on the unfortunate previous landing, they sat and waited to see if anything would happen, but it didn’t, and they were given the go ahead to debark.
It had been agreed, mainly on Hans’s insistence, that all would be equipped with weapons, and Hans made sure they were, despite a few grumbles.
A trolley, with its large balloon type tyres, was loaded with the robot explorer, extra oxygen, and a selection of other items they thought might be useful.
The radio links between them were tested, Earth confirmed good reception after the prescribed twelve minutes or so, and they set off towards the rim of the valley where so much misfortune had befallen those who had gone before them.
The light gravity made travelling across the surface very easy, once the crew had got used to a different way of walking, and the valley rim was soon reached.
‘Do we go straight down, or do you think we should wait a while to see if anything is offered in the way of discouragement?’ Hans asked, peering over the edge.
‘I think we’ll wait a bit.’ Greg replied, scanning the length of the valley for the protruding rock face. ‘We may be offered one of ‘its’ illusions, and I’d liked to see that first hand, and from a distance, if possible.’
They waited for what seemed like hours, though in reality it was only several minutes, but nothing happened except a small stone on the edge of the valley rim decided that the valley bottom was probably a better place to be, and descended, sending up a small swirl of red dust as it bounced and rattled its way down.
‘Right men,’ said Greg, when he couldn’t wait any longer, ‘let’s go see what we have down there. If anything moves, freeze. It may be movement which triggers off the responses.’
Halfway down the slope, the trolley hit a stone, and the noise picked up on their external microphones caused them all to look back at Hans who was handling it.
The Martian Enigma Page 4