After a long delay, Chris started up again.
“Adam, I admit that’s what I thought too. I was convinced I was having a religious moment. However, if you look closely you will see that all three of the vertical lines are the same length as the diameter of that circle. The top bar on that tall cross is really short, roughly fourteen percent of the length of one of the vertical lines.”
“Could it be Pi?” asked Yeva. There was a long silence as the message went to Earth and Chris replied.
“Yes, Yeva, excellent conclusion. We think so,” admitted Chris. “If you wanted to prove to some future explorer that you were an advanced culture, then you might present some advanced-thinking information. Like the Sun is round and then you might tell the future travelers that you’re familiar with the number Pi. If you know about Pi, then your math system is very advanced.”
Keller admitted, “Okay, I don’t quite understand. I consider myself pretty tech savvy, but I slept through geometry class. What is Pi again? Why is it important?”
Adam thought for a moment and started with, “Well, no matter how big a circle is, if you wrap a string around the outside of it once and then unwind that string into a straight line, the length of it is always equal to about 3.14 times the width of the circle. It works for any circle of any size.”
Keller looked unimpressed, “And?”
Yeva answered, “And it is absolutely crucial for advanced math. The kind of math that gets you launched off the Earth in rocket ships. You cannot leave your planet without knowing about the number Pi.”
Keller was suddenly overcome with regret about sleeping through high school geometry. He blurted out, “Look who was paying attention in math class!”
There was silence.
Chris piped up, “We believe this granite slab with symbols was meant as a calling card to say, ‘We know our stuff, pay attention to us.’ However, we are really interested in what is in the background of the picture.”
The astronauts looked closely and could see a pyramid structure with a circular door on it. It wasn’t very large, but it all seemed to be made out of granite or smooth rock of some type.
Chris continued, “Once you establish your living quarters on Mars, we’ll have you take some better photos of the fossils. However, after that, we’d like you to focus on that pyramid. We want to know what is behind that door.”
Keller questioned, “So do you think we’re going to find little green men behind door number one?”
A minute and half later, Chris came back with, “Probably not. Uh, there is one more thing. A few days after our NSA image experts analyzed the photos, they found that the round door on the pyramid structure actually has a symbol carved on it too. It’s right in the middle, so look closely.”
The astronauts leaned in to see if they could discern some other image on the black and white photograph. There it was; a drawing of a square with a line floating underneath of it.
Adam looked perplexed. He asked, “So what does that mean?”
Chris answered him after a long delay.
“We don’t know. Our guys are stumped. We’ve got a team of mathematicians trying to decipher it. Whatever it is, I hope it’s wonderful.”
“I guess we’ll find out very soon,” replied Adam.
Chapter 15
The Little Turtle was no longer hurtling through the vast emptiness of space. Right now the only sound onboard was that of the various computer cooling fans. Two days earlier the MM10 motors had been turned around in an effort to help slow it down before it eventually used the outer Martian atmosphere for auxiliary braking purposes.
Each of the four astronauts commandeered one of the porthole windows and was staring out at the giant red sphere floating in front of them. After nearly 28 long days they were now in a stable orbit around the Red Planet and would stay there until the landing sequence was initiated.
For the first time since they left the International Space Station, they were once again floating inside the cabin. It took some getting used to. Adam and Keller goofed around with the weightlessness by doing some body flips. Loud static sounds emanated from the speakers followed by the sound of talking.
“Little Turtle, this is Mission Control. Do you hear me?”
The crackly voice was barely intelligible over the intercom.
Adam broke away from the floating fun and wandered over to the communications panel. He turned on the microphone.
“We hear you loud and clear. We’ve achieved a stable orbit around Mars. We plan to start the landing sequence in 30 minutes. Please advise.”
It would take nearly five minutes for that message to get to Earth and then just as long for NASA’s reply to reach them with further instructions. This was very different from the Moon missions where the messages only took about one second to travel between the astronauts and Mission Control.
Keller was standing in front of the large porthole window. He said, “I can’t stop staring at it. The giant red orb. It’s just, big... and red.”
Adam replied, “I know. And just think. We’ll be walking around on it very soon.”
Keller looked at Adam to say something, but he stopped and then turned back to stare out the window, afraid he would miss something.
Adam and Yeva floated up to the flight deck. He pulled out two green three-ring binders and gave one to Yeva. They began to go through several checklists; if all went well they could consider initiating the descent process. Once it was started they could not stop. In a very short time, they would either be on the surface of Mars or in the surface of Mars.
Adam had forgotten about Mission Control already when out of the silence came the long awaited reply from mission control.
“Congratulations crew, everybody is going crazy down here with tension. All systems look good. Proceed with the landing sequence at your discretion.”
Adam replied, “Roger that Mission Control. We’ll send you a message once we land. Over and out.”
The astronauts made their way to their closets and put on their space suits and helmets. Then they floated back to the flight deck and strapped themselves into their seats in preparation for landing.
“Just think, we’re about to land on a planet that is completely inhabited by robots,” joked Adam to release some tension.
The crew snickered.
Adam was closely watching a display on the computer screen that showed their approximate position over the surface of Mars. It was overlaid with some satellite imagery. Once the ship passed over the dormant volcano named Olympus Mons, he would start the sequence with the flip of a few switches. This would put them down at right about where the housing unit had landed and not far from the fossils.
He stared intently at the screen and waited. Over the horizon came an enormous mountain. It passed under his target site. He lifted the protected toggle switch cover and pressed two red buttons. The Little Turtle jerked and a few mechanical clunks were heard. Those were the traditional rocket engine landing systems arming and filling with fuel. Then the astronauts felt a slight deceleration as the retro rockets fired off and on for a period of a few seconds. Then the engines turned off and stayed off.
Adam looked at the others and said, “That’s it. We slowed down enough for the gravity to pull us in. Once we get low enough, we’ll fire the landing rockets full blast and navigate our way to the Big Turtle.”
The descent started out very smooth. The atmosphere was so thin that they did not experience the same type of buffeting that the space shuttle experiences when returning to Earth. After about 5 minutes, the module started to creak and moan. Aerodynamic stresses on the structure were causing the metal bulkheads to oilcan, making popping sounds. Adam told himself this was normal.
He whispered, “Please stop the noise, please stop the noise.”
Molly was monitoring the life support systems and said, “All support systems are good.”
The astronauts no longer saw the edge of the planet. It was all red from their view
with streaks of dark brown and some black. The ship was descending into the Martian afternoon haze.
The occasional shake turned into a constant vibration and the noises were getting louder by the second.
“We’re about 3 kilometers up!” yelled Adam.
The other astronauts looked at each other. The shaking was getting more violent than they had expected. Adam was staring at the screen intently; something wasn’t right.
“We’re falling too fast! Our retro rockets won’t be able to stop us.”
Keller’s eyes were wide open now and his heart was pounding. He would be the first rich man to die on Mars. He assumed they would name the impact crater after him.
Adam had a hard time focusing on the computer screen due to the shaking.
“We’re going too fast! I’m gonna to have to use our return parachutes!” yelled Adam.
“But those are for the landing back on Earth. If you use them now, we’ll be doomed!” yelled Yeva over the noisy ship.
“If I don’t, we’ll be dead!” screamed Adam.
He reached up to a panel on the top and grabbed a big red handle marked Parachute. He yanked down on it. Nothing happened. He tried again and his hand slid off the handle. He grabbed it again and yanked. Nothing. Now the ship was bucking violently. He grabbed the handle with both hands and pulled so hard that he lifted himself against his seatbelt straps. Three long ropes deployed from the top of the Little Turtle. At the end of the ropes three enormous parachutes exploded open and filled with the thin Martian air. The vehicle slowed down so quickly that the astronauts heads slammed backwards.
The buffeting stopped. The rattle stopped. Keller’s heart stopped (or so he thought). Adam began breathing again.
They were dangling beneath three giant parachutes, but nowhere near the surface housing unit.
Adam called out in a breathless voice, “Okay, we’re at about 400 meters, I’m starting the retro rockets. We’re still hanging from parachutes, but the rockets are going to do the steering.”
He flipped two red switches on the panel and grabbed the joystick. His eyes squinted while he tried to watch several charts on the computer screen and some instruments on the control panel at the same time. Adam carefully guided the ship as it descended.
Yeva looked out the window and saw the housing unit.
“There’s the Big Turtle! Keep going forward. We’re not far now,” exclaimed Yeva.
“I see it on the navigation screen. We’re almost there,” said Adam.
He was really throttling up the engines now. The rumble was echoing throughout the interior of Little Turtle. The engines kicked up the red Martian sand and gravel. A huge cloud of dust was now obscuring the windows.
“We’re at ten meters. Eight meters. Hang on….. okay, four meters. Here we go folks.”
Clunk. They were no longer floating. They were on something very solid. The sound of the parachutes falling onto the top of the Little Turtle was loud; like ropes falling on the roof of a school bus. Adam turned off the engines. All was quiet except for the sound of their own heartbeats.
Adam had never been so relieved. He picked up the microphone and said, “Mission Control, this is Little Turtle. We’ve landed safely. I repeat, we have landed safely. No system faults are being reported as of right now.”
Adam stared at the blinking red light that signified the parachutes had been used prematurely. No need to explain that part of the descent to Mission Control just yet.
The four astronauts felt intense relief. The gravity of what they’d just accomplished matched the gravity they felt holding them into their seats. They were all grinning from ear to ear. The crew knew that even if they went no further, they had just changed human history; they alone had just advanced our species to another planet.
In ten minutes the astronauts would hear back from Earth.
Chapter 16
“Why is there so much static coming from the speakers?” asked Keller with a confused look.
Once they were on the surface, their communication with Earth relied on an intermediary satellite in orbit around Mars named Odyssey. It had been sent there years earlier, mainly to measure thermal surface data. If that satellite failed, they would only have a direct line of communication with Earth for a few hours every day. Adam was now concerned that the relay satellite was malfunctioning.
Yeva’s frown turned to a grin. She laughed and said, “I think that static is the sound of cheering from Mission Control.”
She was right. The sound of a hundred people clapping and yelling overwhelmed the microphones at Mission Control. After a minute, the crew could finally distinguish a voice talking over the cheers. It was the Mission Control Director.
“Okay guys, we can finally breathe!” said Mission Control over the speakers. He continued, “The entire room, no, the entire planet is going nuts down here. There is confetti falling in Times Square!”
“They like us. I think they really, really like us,” joked Keller.
Mission Control kept on talking, “Hey guys, somebody here has a few words for you.”
Adam raised his hand and said, “Be quiet everybody.”
“To the group of men and women who just took our species from this planet to the next, you have my wholehearted thanks for taking on this audacious task and making it happen. God speed to your experiments, exploration and a safe trip home.”
And that was it. The culmination of mankind’s hard work wrapped up in a few words from the president of the United States of America. His re-election was now guaranteed.
Mission Control started talking again.
“Thank you President Jennings. We have another message, this one is for Yeva.”
For the next minute the Russian president spoke directly to Yeva in her native language. None of the other crew could understand it, but when she smiled and her eyes filled with tears, Adam realized it was something heartfelt.
Mission Control knew the astronauts had a big job to do and decided to keep this talk short.
“Those were some special words from the world leaders responsible for this mission. Crew, we’re going to sign off now, but we’ll be calling again soon. Over and out.”
Adam was the first out of his seat, happy to walk with solid gravity again. He only weighed a third of what he did on Earth, but the constant gravity felt good and reassuring.
“Congratulations everybody. From now on, every step you take is history in the making,” said Adam in a fatherly tone.
As much as they wanted to get outside and walk around, their first task was to make sure the life support systems were working well and to extend the pressurized hallway all the way to the Big Turtle which arrived a few weeks earlier.
The Little Turtle sat on four landing pads with powered wheels on the bottom. It automatically crawled slowly toward the Big Turtle until the pressurized hallway was near the hatch on the other side of the gap. Once everything was aligned, the hallway would extend, crossing the chasm between the two modules resulting in an air-filled walkway between them. When the connection was made, it would virtually triple the available living space. That was the plan anyways.
Adam paused the hallway extension.
“Hang on everybody; we can’t extend the hallway until we drop the grounding cables. Otherwise, we’ll have all kinds of nasty static electricity problems when the hallway touches the other ship.”
Adam lifted a small panel near the hallway hatch and exposed two red switches. He pushed the first switch down. Underneath the Little Turtle, a spike fired downward from an air cannon at high speed. It drove deep into the bedrock and dragged a steel woven cable with it. Adam flipped the other switch and a similar spike fired from the bottom of the Big Turtle. Both ships were now electrically grounded. Any static electricity buildup from the constant blowing winds would be dissipated easily through the cable and into the ground beneath.
Adam returned his attention to making the extendable hallway cross the gap over to the Big Turtle. The as
tronauts watched out the windows as this delicate mechanical dance took place. It was done automatically by the control computer once initiated.
The hallway wheels slowly rolled along the Martian surface leaving a rut in the loose soil. When it reached about half way, one of its support wheels ran into a rock on the ground that was just taller that it could climb. Normally, it would back off and try to roll around the obstacle. This was a wide rock and it was a very serious problem.
Adam frowned with worry.
“Crap, we didn’t plan on that. We have to get that hallway attached or the mission just got more complicated; the airlock for external excursions is on the Big Turtle. We can’t exit Little Turtle without depressurizing the entire ship every time. And we can’t do that very often.”
Yeva thought for a moment and then suggested, “We need to push that rock out of the way, right? Perhaps we can use the mini rover to nudge it?”
Adam smiled and said, “Yeva, you are brilliant!”
He walked over to the rover station and lifted the handheld control transmitter out of the wall caddy. Although the mini rover was meant for exploration purposes, nobody said it couldn’t be used for a little rock bulldozing.
Adam held in his hand something that looked just like any common radio controlled toy transmitter. He pushed a black power button and a noisy ramp extended from the bottom of the ship until it hit the red dust and sand on the ground. The rover itself resembled a small toy Jeep. It rolled down the ramp and onto the ground. Adam pushed the throttle stick frontwards and the mini rover took off like a rocket.
“Whoa! That little thing is fast!” yelled Adam.
“Slow down there, cheetah,” laughed Keller.
Adam used smaller stick movements and brought it back around maneuvering it to be near the problem rock. He used the mini rover’s claw attachment to grab the rock and roll it out of the way. As he did that, the hallway extension jerked back into motion and continued moving toward Big Turtle.
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