The Martian Enigma

by D. B. Reynolds-Moreton

  Having reached relatively flat ground, they set off up the valley, scouring the steeper side walls for an entrance hole into another complex, and the ground for any remaining building foundations.

  Rounding a slight bend on the valley floor, the last orange marked site on the old map came into view. A vast ornate portal, with massive supporting columns on each side, beckoned invitingly.

  ‘Well, there’s been no attempt to hide this one,’ said Ben,

  ‘Looks like we can just walk in.’

  ‘We’ll check the ground out with extension rods, just in case there are any hidden holes.’ said Greg. ‘Who’s got the hand lamp?’

  The sharp beam of the powerful lamp was swallowed up in the inky blackness of the hole, and they moved forward cautiously, looking for any hidden dangers. Fifty metres in, and the first sign of habitation came into view.

  A series of rooms led off from each side of the tunnel, which led to further rooms, but all were devoid of anything which might have indicated who or what may have been there.

  As there were no roof lights to help them, progress was slower than normal, and they had to be extra careful not to lose their orientation and get lost in the labyrinth of rooms which seemed to be never ending.

  ‘This is a bit disappointing.’ said Paul, after a while.

  ‘There’s no trace of anyone ever having been here. Perhaps they cut this place out, and then went somewhere else for some reason.’

  ‘Don’t think so.’ Hans added, who was kneeling down, ‘there are wear marks in the doorways, faint, but they’re there, so it was inhabited at sometime.’

  They worked their way back to the main tunnel, and walked even deeper into the labyrinth of passageways and rooms which made up the underground Martian City.

  There was not one vestige of furniture, picture, utensil or anything a civilized people would have used. It seemed to be just kilometres of bare stone passageways and rooms, hewn out of the living rock with a few additions where their own special concrete had been used.

  ‘Sorry folks, there’s nothing here for us, so we may as well go back and take a look at the red marked complex Paul found, and then it'll be time for home.’ Greg turned, and the others followed, disappointed.

  The way back was easy, they just followed the main tunnel out into the bright sunlight of a Martian afternoon, bright to them after being so long in the darkness of the tunnel.

  ‘Right, let’s find the last of your discoveries, Paul. We’ll take a quick look at it, and go back for the night. That will leave tomorrow for an exploration, and maybe a few hours of the day after.’

  Finding the hidden complex proved to be not as easy as they had thought. Paul had a rough reference point, taken off the old map, but the exact location was anyone's guess.

  They expected the entrance to be booby trapped in some way, as the other one had been, but first they had to find it.

  In what they thought was the approximate area of the hidden entrance, they began probing the almost vertical walls of the valley with their extension rods, hoping that eventually, one of them would find his rod disappearing into an illusion of solid rock.

  It was very late in the afternoon when an excited shout from John brought them all running to where he stood, triumphantly waggling the end of his pole in what looked like solid rock.

  ‘Well done, John.’ said Greg, relieved that they had found their target, and had come to no harm in the process.

  ‘Do we go in now?’ asked Paul, glancing up at the first tinges of evening colouring the thin sky.

  ‘I think not, we’ll head back to the Lander, have an early night, and see what we can find tomorrow.’

  They marked the entrance with the obligatory line of stones.

  To get up onto the plateau, they had to go back down the valley some way before they found a slope they were able to climb, and then it was difficult with the trolley, as the valley walls were unstable and tended to crumble.

  At one point, they had to rope themselves together for safety’s sake, driving in a stake as an anchor point, while they went up one at a time to a more stable section, hauling the trolley up last of all. Hans was in the lead, and about halfway up the tortuous climb, when he called their attention to something white, a few metres to his right.

  ‘I could take a look at it, if two of you take the strain on the cord in case I slip.’ Greg nodded his approval, and Hans began working his way horizontally along the slope.

  He reached the object and picked it up, letting out a yell,

  ‘You won’t believe this, I think, no I’m sure, it’s a skull! There’s been a bit of a landslip here and exposed it. Want me to look for other bones?’

  ‘If you can do so safely,’ Greg answered, ‘but don’t take any unnecessary risks, it’s a long way down.’

  Hans searched around the area, but no more bones were found, and he concluded that the skull must have been the last part of the body to be exposed, the rest being scattered somewhere down the long and slippery scree slope.

  By the time they had gained the plateau, it was getting dusk, and a feeling of panic took hold, as the Martian day was cold enough at zero on a good day, and the night a good deal colder.

  What little atmosphere the planet had, was just enough to suck the heat from their suits, and the travelling power packs had a limit to what they could supply. A quick glance around failed to reveal the Lander, and no one had thought to switch on the homing beacon before leaving.

  ‘If we track back along the edge of the plateau, we should catch sight of the marker pole and then the Lander, as it wasn’t too far from the edge.’ said Greg, sounding confident.

  ‘And if we don’t find the bloody thing soon, it’ll be too dark to go back down into the valley and shelter in the old underground tunnels.’ John’s comment only served to increase the pace at which they were walking, which in retrospect, probably saved them.

  Hans began emitting wheezing noises through his audio unit as he struggled with the trolley, so Paul dropped back to help him, while Greg ordered a slight lessening of the pace so that he could recover. Then, as he turned back to face the direction they were walking in, he noticed the distant silhouette of the Lander in the deepening lilac of the skyline.

  ‘Sighted.’ he called, and the relief he felt spread to the others as they strained their eyes in the pinkish gloaming to pick out the distant Lander.

  ‘Just so long as it’s not a bloody illusion.’ said Paul, and the string of expletives which followed were unprintable.

  It was nearly dark as they approached the Lander, the light from the hand lamp glittering off the more shiny parts and confirming the fact that it was real, after all.

  Tired and hungry, discipline still prevailed, and the necessary chores to prepare them for the following day were executed with more than decent haste. After a meal, they sat around pooling their ideas on what they had found, trying to make sense of an alien environment which until their arrival, had defeated all who had dared to enquire.

  ‘We don’t have all the data we need to be certain,’ said Greg, ‘but I think the old remains coupled with the newer workshop complexes we found earlier, can tell us what happened here, up to a point.’

  ‘Based on what we have found out so far,’ Greg began, ‘it looks as if a race of people, possibly from the Orion Constellation, as you suggested, Paul, for whatever reason, had to leave their home world and find somewhere else to live. Why they didn’t seek somewhere in their own area to settle, we don’t know. There may have been other forces at work which we can’t comprehend, or possibly they had some specific reason for choosing our part of the galaxy.

  ‘They landed here, and judging by the sequence of their constructions, made their first dwelling places of cut stone. The quality of their work indicates a method of construction unknown to us, despite the ravages of time. Again, we don’t know why, but they abandoned these block constructed dwellings, removing all but the foundation stones, and they don’t seem to h
ave used them anywhere else.

  ‘The next phase, which must have been in conjunction with the destruction of the first, was to rebuild a relatively short distance away, but using a casting technique and a compound unknown to us.

  ‘This in turn, seems to have been abandoned, and to some degree destroyed, when they moved into the hole in the valley side. I suspect that something caused the atmosphere to have been damaged, possibly a passing meteorite storm, ripping the air away, causing a reduction in pressure.

  ‘I don’t think those portals were just for decoration, they could well have been air seals, or part of an airlock system, so that the tunnel and room system could be kept under the necessary pressure for the inhabitants.

  ‘The last complex we explored, and the one we shall be looking at tomorrow, could have been their last attempt to live here, and was turned into the workshops we found to manufacture their escape vehicles.’

  ‘Somehow, they retained enough of their old knowledge to build the necessary machines to construct space ships, and so were able to escape the planet, which, for whatever reason, could no longer support them.

  ‘Where they’ve gone is anyone’s guess, perhaps it was back to their old system, remembering the pyramid and dome show we were given. Someday, after a research team have pulled this place apart, we may have the answer.’

  They all agreed that Greg’s summing up of the situation was probably as near the true state of things as they were likely to get, and they settled for that.

  Sleep came easily that night, nothing prowled around the Lander, and the orbiter was still in place next morning. The tool trolley, which they had left outside, wasn’t.

  ‘How are we going to carry the extra oxygen without the trolley?’ asked John. ‘And dare we risk the trip to the new complex without it?’

  They were worried at the loss of the trolley, but more so when trying to work out who or what had removed it, as the proximity alarms hadn’t been triggered.

  Hans thought he might be able to cobble up something which would carry the oxygen tanks, but the other equipment, most of which they could replace from the Lander, would have to be left behind.

  It was when Paul, whose curiosity had got the better of him, found the faint wheel marks of the missing trolley and began tracing them, that the mystery was solved. The only conclusion they could come to was that the wind had got up in the night, and as they were sleeping so deeply, they hadn’t heard it. The wind had been strong enough to blow the trolley across the plateau until it slid into a depression, and then it sat there waiting for them to retrieve it.

  Now that the trolley had been recovered, the oxygen tanks exchanged for full ones, and the fear of some alien force hell-bent on impeding their exploration expurgated, they couldn’t get away on their final exploration of the valley complex fast enough.

  This time they remembered to switch on the Lander’s homing beacon, and Hans drove the odd pole into the reluctant Martian surface just to make sure there would be no problems on their return.

  They used a cord anchored to a well driven in pole at the edge of the slope, easing their way down over the steepest part of the drop, and were soon at the twin lines of marker stones they had left the previous day, at the valley bottom.

  ‘It still amuses me to see a pole disappear into the illusion.’ said John, pulling the rod in and out of apparently solid rock.

  ‘So we’ve noticed.’ replied Paul, with an ill concealed edge to his voice.

  Surrounding the trolley with it’s light ablaze, they pushed it into the illusion, Greg led with his rod, probing the ground ahead for unseen holes. They got through the barrier and into the tunnel beyond without mishap, and began the expected long journey down the tunnel to what they thought would be a duplicate of the first complex they had visited.

  When they came to the main cavern, it was a surprise, as the tunnel didn’t seem to have been as long as the one in the first complex they had surveyed, nor were there any floor traps, and the Sentinel failed to put in an appearance.

  ‘This must be the tunnel they used for themselves,’ commented Hans, ‘lucky we found it first.’

  No lights had come on in the tunnel, and as the airlock was wide open, they entered the main cavern, it was also pitch black.

  ‘The lack of lights is going to slow things up a bit,’ mused Greg, ‘so let’s check out some of the workshops first, just to see if the complex is basically the same as our first one.’

  ‘We have the same set of twin tracks running down the middle of the cavern,’ Hans observed, ‘but our light won’t reach the end, so I can’t tell if they have the same big doors.’

  The workshops seemed to be a duplicate of those found earlier, the same sets of tools adorned the racks on the walls, but when Hans tried the laser cutter, it failed to work.

  Out in the main cavern again, they looked for the control room, but the door refused to open for them.

  ‘Looks like the same sort of shutters blocking off the rail track,’ said Paul, ‘and I’ll bet they won’t open either.’

  They didn’t, so the team looked for the narrow tunnel which they thought might lead to the pyramid and dome, and finding it, fumbled their way along. The door came into view in a surprisingly short time, complete with its jewel, but the jewel looked lifeless and dull, only reflecting the light from the hand lamp with no fire of its own, and didn’t react to Greg’s hands being placed on it.

  Disappointed, they returned to the main cavern, checking out a few more of the workshops, but none of the tools worked, even those they recognized and had used from the first set of workshops.

  ‘Looks like this place has shut down completely, so I think it’s safe to assume that whatever they were doing here, had reached a satisfactory conclusion, which begs the question, why was the first complex still powered up, and the tools working?’ asked Greg of the others, but no one answered.

  ‘Maybe their project didn’t get finished,’ Hans suggested, ‘or was held up for some reason. I for one, would like to find out what they were making, and why it was stopped.’

  ‘I think we all would,’ said Greg, ‘but the only way we can find out what they were up to is to get behind those doors in the first complex, and we didn’t have much luck last time we tried it.’

  ‘Whatever was in there, or maybe still is, must be massive based on the size of the tracks, so there must be a large exit somewhere. Why don’t we look for that?’ asked Hans.

  ‘For one reason,’ replied Greg, ‘our time here is nearly up, and if we don’t go on schedule, we’ll have a very long journey back, and the other reason is, where do we look?

  ‘I didn’t see any signs of an exit in the valley, unless of course it was hidden by an illusion, and we can’t go tap tapping every millimetre of the valley wall, it would take forever. If there is an exit we’ll have to find it by reasoning out its most probable location, but we don’t have much time left, tomorrow is our last full day.’

  ‘Why not try once more on the doors at the end of the tracks?’ suggested Paul. ‘There must be some way in, surely.’

  As Greg didn’t think either objective would produce results, he thought it only fair to let the team vote on it, after all, they had done what they had been sent to do, and it would now be up to future teams to continue unravelling the secrets of the Martians.

  The vote went in favour of trying the pair of doors at the end of the cavern once again, and they set off towards them, the light from the lamp on the trolley almost lost in the vastness of the cavern.

  They played the lamp over the surface of the doors, and down the sides of the portal, looking for anything which might be an opening device, but apart from some decorative stud work part way up, they were flat and featureless, and shut tight.

  ‘We know there are no controls for the doors in the control room,’ said Ben, ‘or at least there weren’t in the other complex, and there’s nothing attached to the doors in the way of a lock or handle, so maybe they can only be ope
ned from the other side, so there must be a way into the other side, somewhere.’

  ‘Look, this place has shut down, and the general conclusion we’ve come to is that whatever it was built for is now done, and so it’s of no further use to anyone.’ Hans said. ‘So therefore if we damage it a little, it won’t matter.’

  ‘Just what do you intend, Hans? Bearing in mind nothing we did had any effect on the other door.’ asked Greg.

  ‘I have a small amount of explosive on the trolley, and I don’t think that stud work up there is just for decoration. Look at it, those are hefty metal studs. If you only wanted a bit of decoration, why go to the trouble of putting something like that on the door? I think it is part of the mechanism holding the doors shut.’

  The decoration covered a space of nearly a metre square, bridging the line where the two doors came together, and was composed of an ornate scroll design of considerable intricacy.

  The studs themselves were of different coloured metals, a good ten centimetres in diameter, and raised from the surface of the door by nearly five.

  ‘How are we to get up there?’ asked John. ‘It's nearly six metres up, and we have nothing to climb on.’

  ‘Oh yes we have,’ Hans replied, ‘we have ourselves. If two of us hold the trolley steady, two more climb onto it and link arms, I can then climb up them and should be able to place a charge on the decoration. I think it’s worth a try, there’s nothing else we can do.’

  Hans rummaged about in one of the trolley’s compartments, and brought out a small brown package, holding it up gleefully.

  ‘Bloody vandal.’ muttered John under his breath, not being all that keen on explosives at the best of times.

  They pushed the trolley hard up against the doors, Paul and Ben climbing up and linking arms to shoulders, while Hans tended to his explosive charge.

  Having set the timer in place, he climbed up to stand on the shoulders of the other two, eliciting the odd grunt, and stuck the charge in the middle of the design.

  ‘OK, it’s in place, let’s get the hell out of here.’ and with that the human pyramid collapsed in an undignified manner as they all scrambled for the safety of the nearest workshop.