by Bob Lee
Bonnie stared at her husband. After they had returned from the burial ceremony, Jeff had yelled at her and thrown things around their cabin. “How dare you embarrass me like that, asking to leave us and go with those unbelievers,” he had shouted at her. “And how humiliating to have your wife beg for you. I didn’t ask for your help; I could have taken that stupid astronaut easily!” he had snarled as he grabbed her and shook her. He had then stomped out of their room and wandered around the new base. But now Jeff was back and totally ignoring her. It was so unlike him.
“Jeff?” she queried. “Where are you going? What did Brother Jacobs want you for?”
“Shut up,” he replied, but Bonnie noticed it was almost half-heartedly. “I have a mission, an important mission,” he droned. “You’ll learn about it soon enough. I have to go now.”
“Here, Dad, let me help you,” Jean said as she got up and went over to him. In a few moments, she had affixed the helmet to her father’s suit and checked the readouts. “You’re ready to go, Dad,” she said.
Jeff briefly put his hand on his daughter’s head and distractedly patted it. He then turned and left. Jeff shuffled down the hall, holding himself up by dragging one hand along the wall. “I can’t believe the honor is mine, all mine,” he thought. He took a deep breath and straightened up taller. “This is what I was born to do. It will put to rest all of those snickers that I was simply riding on the coattails of a rich and famous actor. Perhaps the Great Consciousness has selected me to be the new great leader. Ha, wouldn’t that be a hoot. Then Brother Jacobs will need to take orders from me!” Jeff walked even taller as he confidently headed for the airlock to go outside and meet his destiny.
# # #
Sergey rushed over to greet his teammates and the new arrivals as they entered the airlock of the Star-Kissed base. “You did it. That was amazing!” he gushed as he hugged Roy and Sam after they came through the portal. “Wait until I tell my comrades back in Russia about a successful skip reentry on Mars. There are a few of the old scientists still alive that performed the same technique with the Zond lunar probes, and they will want to hear all about it!”
“We never would have made it without all of you,” Roy stated. “It was definitely pucker time there for a while. By the way, you sure took your sweet time getting that radar array up, Sergey” he said. “I just might have to report you!”
Sergey looked at his fellow astronaut in consternation. “He’s kidding, Sergey,” Grant said.
“Oh,” Sergey replied. “But I have news for all of you. We just received a transmission from Earth. I was waiting for you all to arrive before we watched it. Come, upstairs. No doubt it is important.”
CHAPTER 44
Jeff strode into the central Mars One module. A few members of the Called were still there cleaning up before turning in for the night, and they glanced at him in his spacesuit but said nothing. They assumed that Platinum One was on a minor repair or maintenance mission, since nothing had been announced over the intercom. Jeff ignored them and took the ladder down to the airlock. He glanced briefly at his two fellow Platinums’ suits that were hanging there next to the exit door. Jeff had never felt comfortable leaving his spacesuit thus exposed, and had always kept it in his cabin instead.
He entered the airlock and waited impatiently as the air was cycled out and replaced with the atmosphere of Mars. Soon, the light turned green and he pressed the control to open the outside door. He stepped down to the surface and looked around. One of the tiny moons of Mars was in the night sky, moving with a perceptible motion, but its light was too dim to see much. Jeff could see nothing but vague mounds everywhere he looked. “Has it left?” he thought. “Did I not respond quickly enough?”
“Platinum One, are you outside yet? What do you see?” he heard Brother Jacobs say over his suit radio.
“Nothing, there’s nothing here,” he responded. “Has the emissary left?”
“No, I can still see it clearly on the monitor. It has not moved.”
“Give me a moment. I’ll walk around the base,” Jeff said. He turned on his helmet light so that he could see in the gloom, and walked towards one end of the line of habitats. As he came around the end of the last one and turned, he saw the blinking light about twenty paces away. “I see it!” he shouted. Then more quietly he said, “I’ll approach it now.”
Brother Jacobs saw Jeff appear at the side of his monitor as he approached the blinking object. When Jeff came close to it, the object made a giant hop backwards, away from him! “Stop!” the leader called to Jeff. “Wait a moment.” When Jeff stopped, the creature simply sat there, blinking. “What does it look like up close?” the cult leader asked breathlessly.
Jeff shone his headlamp directly on the creature and then gave a small laugh. “Why, it looks like a toad with small spikes on its head like a crown. I swear it looks like those fairytale pictures of the Frog Prince waiting for a Princess to kiss it.”
“Do not be flippant, Platinum One,” Brother Jacobs admonished. “Proceed, but stop if it hops again. Wait, and then move forward once more. If it hops and then stops repeatedly, it is directing you to follow it.”
Jeff took a few paces forward, and sure enough the ‘frog’ hopped away again and waited. After repeating this another time, Jeff said, “Yes, it looks like I am meant to follow it.”
“Excellent. Use the base’s rover. I will monitor from here,” Brother Jacobs responded.
Jeff walked over to where the sole rover for the base was situated. It looked similar to those that the Apollo astronauts had used on the Moon long ago. There was no enclosure, and needed someone in a spacesuit to utilize it. The two seats were reminiscent of folding lawn chairs. Jeff sat down, fumbled a bit as he buckled the seat belt, and then grabbed the control lever. Next to it was a small display. He tapped it and selected ‘start’ from the menu. The next option was to select a set of speeds from one to ten, with an R at the bottom that must have meant ‘Reverse.’ He picked the ‘three’, and the rover lurched forward. He saw there was also a ‘light’ icon, and pressing it turned on the rover’s headlights. Soon, he was driving over the Martian scape following the tiny hopper.
Brother Jacobs could also see what was happening through the small camera that was mounted on a pole behind Jeff. He could see the small emissary zigzagging away from the rover and disappearing periodically when it jumped out of the headlights’ beams, only to reappear further on. He waited in anticipation for his first view of the Supreme Being he had always known was here on Mars. “Soon, I will be vindicated,” he mused.
Jeff was also lost in his own thoughts. “This is it,” he thought as he was driving. “I am the one who has been called to the Great Consciousness. Soon the rewards will be mine, all mine, exactly as I knew I always deserved.”
# # #
The six NASA astronauts hustled to the top level of the Star-Kissed living module and crowded around the monitor in the central room.
Sergey went over to the controller to press play for the recently arrived message from Earth.
“Wait, Serge,” Grant said. “Before we watch the message, each group should brief the other on our activities of the past few months. NASA limited our contact with each other, so it’s best if we review what we each know about the situation. We may need the information in order to put the message into context. I’ll start.”
The base commander looked at Roy and Sam. “Before you arrived, our rover was attacked by some underground beasts resembling snakes or electric eels. When we went to investigate, we were attacked by them. We managed to retrieve the body of one, and Chuck subsequently analyzed it. It was bio-mechanical. NASA decided that they were non-indigenous to Mars and a threat. We were then ordered to create weapons to defend ourselves against any further attack, with the message that you would create support materials.”
“Ah, that explains the pistol that Charles shot into the air during the burial ceremony,” Sam said. “I wondered where that came from. It was one of
the weirdest looking things I’ve ever seen.”
“Yes, Serge designed it to be totally safe to create and handle. Making explosives for bazookas and mortars, as we were ordered, was much too dangerous. Unfortunately, the accuracy of the rocket pistols isn’t quite there, and if you are too close to your target they are totally ineffective. We have been practicing with them, awaiting your arrival. Mission Control directed us to stay put until you came and we had more manpower. We would then get instructions on how to deal with the situation.”
“You know, this now makes more sense about what happened to us. The leader of the colony suddenly flipped out and set fire to the Cycler as a distraction and then took off in the Pegasus. He had standard public communications with Earth from his cabin, and must have heard about your being attacked. He knew all about it. His whole goal in life has been to contact some supreme alien being that he is convinced is here, and that must have tipped him over the edge. The only thing that stopped him stranding us on the AB Cycler was that he didn’t know that he needed to refuel the Pegasus. Luckily we found a way to catch our ship. He locked us out, in spite of our being their only hope of survival, but we used the voice emergency override to find a way to get in.”
“Wow, I also got the impression that your Brother Jacobs was pretty obsessed, although I only met him briefly,” Grant said. “Was there anything else that happened to you?”
“One more thing,” Roy responded. “When we first sent out a Mayday, we briefly had contact with another ship. A voice told us that it was a Chinese Mars mission, but then another voice with a definite military bearing cut in and told us to basically get lost. I guess the Chinese also heard about your escapades here and decided to investigate.”
“Boy, it sure is getting crowded in just a short time on this planet,” Brad said. “There goes the neighborhood!”
“Alright, I think we’ve heard enough. Serge, start up the message,” Grant said. The Russian pressed the control button. The screen lit up, showing an image of a man in uniform who started talking.
“Who’s that?” Brad asked. “It’s not our primary contact, Brick, at Mission Control.”
“Oh my God,” Roy said. “It’s Major General James Warneck. He was appointed the new NASA Administrator by the President just as we left Earth. I had some dealings with him when we were both pilots in the Navy. He’s a hard-nosed no nonsense, leave no one behind type of guy. This is most unusual for the Administrator to contact us directly with instructions.”
“Hush, everyone,” Grant said. “Serge, restart it from the beginning.”
When the video restarted, the astronauts watched in rapt attention. “Greetings to all of you, our brave Mars astronauts, from the people of Earth. As your NASA Administrator, I am contacting you directly due to the urgent nature of the mission you are about to be given. First, I want to convey from the President his best wishes and congratulations on a job well done so far. I understand from Mission Control that the Pegasus successfully landed under the direst of circumstances. We are all proud of the way you performed.”
“Next, I want to apologize for the fact that you were kept in the dark about continuing developments. We discovered that there were spies at NASA who were stealing information, and we had to ensure that additional leaks did not occur. Now that you are all together and we’ve captured the spies, we can impart to you what we have learned.”
“Well it’s about time,” Roy said in exasperation. “That nut job Jacobs found out more information than we did during our entire trip here.”
The Major General continued. “We discovered that the spies were Chinese nationals, who were passing all of our sensitive discoveries directly to their military. The Chinese have long talked about their desire to control the high ground of space and to obtain whatever resources they can find throughout the solar system. The U.S. government is not without its own deeply imbedded sources, however. We have discovered that the Chinese sent a military contingent to Mars, and are attempting to confiscate all alien artifacts that may be there. The reason we ordered you to create weapons was not only to defend against any alien attack, but also to be able to interdict the Chinese if they move towards the alien location.”
“Oh great,” Charles said. “Now they’re ordering us to start a war with the Chinese here on Mars. It’s not bad enough they want us shooting at any alien life, but they also have to export their paranoia of other countries to us!”
“Our surveillance satellites above Mars,” the general continued, “discovered that directly after the attack on you by the alien snakes, two large creatures moved to another nearby location.” The six astronauts sat bolt upright when they heard this. “It appears that these creatures also moved some bulky equipment. Our best analysis indicates that these aliens are intelligent and are the ones who directed the snakes, as we have been calling them. Perhaps they were using the snakes as we use our guard dogs.”
“Well that’s an interesting theory,” Sam said. “Snake guardians from space.”
“Don’t laugh,” Sergey said. “One of them almost blew my arm off. They were equipped to provide jolts of electricity and were quite dangerous.”
“And smart,” Charles added. “They even dug pits in the sand and lured me into one.”
“You are ordered,” the general in the video message said, “to attempt capture of the aliens and any of their equipment as soon as possible. Under no circumstances are you to leave if you are unsuccessful, allowing the Chinese to secure the material for themselves. If gathering of the alien material is unattainable, you are to utterly destroy everything at that location. We cannot afford letting advanced technology fall into China’s hands. The international situation here is tense, and any new capabilities might tip the balance. That is why we need you to capture, or destroy, everything at the location we are sending you to. Good luck. The coordinates of the alien location are attached at the end of this message.”
As the message ended, Grant turned to the others. “Well, we have our mission. I suggest we all get a good night’s rest and decide how exactly we are to proceed in the morning.”
“This is just superb,” Charles said. “I sign up for one of the greatest missions of mankind, only to find out I’ve been turned into a glorified Rambo.”
CHAPTER 45
After about an hour of tedious driving, Jeff was slightly dozing until he saw the small frog jump over a crater rim and disappear. Up until now, it had diverted around any and all obstacles. “This might be it!” he thought excitedly, coming fully awake. He carefully drove up the outside slope of the crater and crested the top, not knowing what to expect on the other side. He pressed ‘Stop’ on the controls and he sat looking down into the crater.
It was empty! Even the small frog had disappeared. There was nothing but a few small boulders scattered around the floor of the shallow bowl. “Brother Jacobs, do you see this?” he said over his radio. “There is nothing here.”
“Drive down,” Brother Jacobs commanded. “You were led here for a reason. Have faith.”
Jeff reengaged the engine, selecting the slowest speed, and steadily drove down to the crater floor. When he reached the bottom, he continued cautiously forward. As he neared the middle of the crater, he saw a short line of light appear on the sand about twenty feet in front of him. He pushed the ‘Stop’ button on the panel. The line of light in front of him spread until it formed a squared off ‘U’ shape, and proceeded to become brighter and wider. Jeff realized that he was seeing a hatch opening in the sand. The hatch rose further and further, revealing a rectangular opening that was bathed in pure white light. At either edge of the hatch were long sinuous glittering objects. “It is glorious,” he heard Brother Jacobs gasp over the radio.
When the hatch was fully open, Jeff could see that there were four overwhelmingly reflective and glittering objects that looked like tentacles, and they appeared to meet somewhere below the opening in the sand. The tentacles released the hatch, and now groped forward with ti
ny fingers at their ends. The tentacles grew longer as whatever was below emerged.
Jeff screamed. A head with four malevolent eyes, situated in the middle of those four tentacles, had emerged from the hatch. The eyes reflected the rover’s headlamps, and reminded him of the multiple eyes of a spider. As he sat there in frozen horror, more of the creature emerged. It was enormous, and looking directly at him.
Jeff could take no more; he frantically tapped at the control screen, fumbling to reach the speed control, and pushed the ‘Reverse’ selection. The rover started to retreat away from the giant creature that had finally fully emerged. “Faster,” Jeff urged his vehicle.
The creature rushed forward at a tremendous speed. Jeff screamed again, and frantically scrabbled at the seat belt so that he could free himself to run. Just as the buckle became unlatched, one of the tentacles snagged him around the neck and lifted him free of the rover.
“Please, please, oh Great Consciousness,” Jeff begged as he grabbed both hands around the tentacle that was holding him. “I am here to serve you.” The tentacle dragged his helmet so that it was almost touching the hideous head. The top two grotesque eyes of the creature rolled around as it looked through the helmet at Jeff’s face. The bottom two dark eyes glittered. Jeff’s remaining courage broke, and he beat at the tentacle with his gloved hands and tried to kick the horrid head of the creature. “Let me go,” he yelled over and over.
Another tentacle wrapped around Jeff’s legs, pinning them, and a third wrapped around his waist. The creature left his hands free to beat futilely at the appendages while it held him out horizontally and proceeded back to the open hatch.
Brother Jacobs, who was watching this in stunned silence, saw Jeff disappear below ground. However, he could still hear Jeff yelling through the helmet radio transmissions. He saw a tentacle reach up and pull the hatch closed. In a moment, all was darkness once more. Brother Jacobs might have convinced himself that it was all an illusion if he was not still hearing Jeff over the radio. He also heard some screeching and deep booming sounds. He did not know it, but he was hearing the voice of the Master.