by John Dreese
“I don’t want to waste time re-packing those chutes right now. Let’s continue,” he commanded.
Satisfied that nothing else seemed out of place, she floored the pedal and they tore off toward the direction of the dead Curiosity rover and the fossils.
For several minutes, they wound their way around rocks, boulders and old dry river beds. The ground color alternated between dark red, light red, and the occasional black. As they crested a rocky hill, they could see what they came for.
Down in a shallow valley of smooth soil, they saw the idled Curiosity rover next to large sparkling boulders.
“That’s what we came all this way to see,” remarked Adam.
“Yes,” said Yeva. “Those rocks look just like the ones in our photographs. I am excited to study the fossils up close.”
It was strangely odd to see the rocks from this angle – like seeing a childhood home years after moving away. The arrangement was familiar, but the surrounding details were foreign. In front of both the rover and the fossil rock was a pyramidal structure that appeared to be made out of large flat granite walls.
Yeva remarked, “The pyramid certainly looks manmade.”
“You mean Martian made?” asked Adam.
Yeva laughed, but quickly remembered how Adam had betrayed her. She scowled at him.
Yeva maneuvered the golf cart down the hill and parked just a few feet from the Curiosity rover. They hopped out.
Adam went to the back of the golf cart and grabbed the replacement RTG power unit and some tools. He moved them over to the Curiosity and started the laborious process of replacing its dead power unit. Adam had to work carefully because the suit gloves, although advanced, were still clunky. The RTG was wrapped in a special shroud to protect the crew from radiation. Adam focused very intently on this task.
Yeva walked over to the fossil rock and kneeled down to look at it. Her knees sank into the small sand dune that had grown near the base of the boulder. She touched her glove to the bony hand fossil protruding from the stone. The hand was similar in size and shape to her own, but it was millions of years older. She was now the closest a human had ever been to an alien life form. She sat there, unmoving, as she daydreamed. Yeva imagined this place as a once luscious life-supporting landscape. She ran her fingers over the symbols on the granite block as it lay in the skeleton fossil’s hand. The bony structures were embedded just in the surface of the huge rock. She took picture after picture of this most alien find.
Adam finished replacing the power unit. “There you go, little buddy,” he said. His term of endearment was laughable, given that the Mars Curiosity Rover weighs almost a ton. “Wander off and find some more amazing stuff.”
In an hour or so, the NASA rover control center in Pasadena would direct the Curiosity to continue exploring. It would be gone from view by tomorrow morning.
As Adam walked back to the golf cart, he picked up interesting rock samples and put them in collection bags. Most were rust colored, but a few had greenish tint and sparkly quartz. If they had to abort the mission for any reason, at least they’d have these priceless treasures to take back to Earth.
Adam put his tools and collection bags back in the golf cart. He picked up his digital camera and started taking high-resolution photos of the fossils near Yeva.
“I gotta admit,” he said. “They look posed. Almost like they were put here on purpose to become fossils.”
“Possibly, but how do you think they went about embedding them in rock like this? I hope the person was already dead when they put them here so long ago.”
Adam examined the boulder closely.
"I don't think this boulder is a naturally occurring rock formation. It looks more like concrete to me. Except, instead of using gravel, they used greenish gems. Maybe olivine? Why would they do that?" asked Adam.
"My guess is they wanted to grab the attention of any future travelers. It sure got our attention, yes?" asked Yeva.
"Good point," replied Adam.
The only visible parts on the fossils were the hands, arms, and legs. The head was partially visible, but mostly encased in the gem-infused boulder. Upon closer inspection, the symbols in the granite block were inlaid in gold.
Adam remarked, “In hindsight, it seems obvious now that these lines represent Pi. Just like Chris said.”
Yeva was the only crewmember who had guessed that correctly. She ignored Adam’s statement and said, “Look at those leg bone fragments. This person was extremely tall. I suspect seven, maybe eight feet tall? Must be the result of living with lower gravity.”
“That’s not the only strange thing here,” said Adam. “Have you noticed how this symbol stone and the pyramid are the only examples of granite within sight? Just look around. All I see are random volcanic stones and some broken sedimentary rocks. There’s some basalt over there. I wonder where they got the granite from?”
Yeva nodded her head in agreement.
“There must be a quarry somewhere around here. The ground cover is interesting, too. It looks like sand mixed with red dust. I move my hand through it, and it’s just so light, yet on top of a very hard crust. It’s like we’re only inches from bedrock.”
Over the radio came a transmission from Keller, “Hey, have you guys found anything yet? Your little jumping stunt has reached Earth and returned. The crowds are going wild.”
Adam laughed and said, “Yeah, I’m not sure what came over me; I must’ve lost my footing or something.”
Yeva stared at him with hateful eyes.
Adam continued, “Um, we’re at the site. I replaced the power unit on the Curiosity, and we’re looking at the fossils now. The symbols are much more impressive in person. Isn’t that right, Yeva?”
He looked up to see her still staring at him with disdain.
Yeva hoped he would fall down and break his legs. She would pose his skeleton next to the fossils for the next civilization to find.
“Now, don’t go stealing those artifacts. Me and Molly want to see them too,” said Keller.
Yeva brought out her toolkit and took a few samples of the fossils from the boulder. She put them in plastic bags to be examined later.
After taking some more pictures, Adam noted that they had already burned through half of their oxygen. The two astronauts walked over toward the pyramid structure. On the side facing them was a big round disk made of smooth rock, leaning against the pyramid. In the middle of the door was an engraved square shown floating over a straight line.
However, there was also a ring of symbols going around the outer edge of the door. This detail hadn’t been visible in the photographs. These etchings were much more elaborate than those in the fossil’s hand.
Adam remarked, “It looks like the sign on the door has an added bonus for us. Wish I knew what it meant.”
Yeva used her fossil brush to clean the dust out of each engraving. She documented all of them quickly with her camera. Adam walked around the outside perimeter of the building to see if there were any other potential entrances. When he arrived back, Yeva asked, "See any other openings?"
“No. Nothing else," answered Adam.
“Oh. Well, do you think the door rolls open or maybe it swings on hinges?” asked Yeva.
“I doubt metal door hinges would’ve lasted long, so they probably used the classic rolling slab door. Whatever it is, I sure hope it’s hiding something awesome inside.”
Yeva wondered, “How should we move it?”
The two explorers looked around for some clues about how to roll this big round door away. Adam pushed on it hard. It didn’t budge. He returned to the golf cart. He pulled the utility shovel from it and brought it back to the round door.
“Maybe if I dig away the sand from one side of the door, it’ll roll away?”
He started digging, taking big scoops of the red sand and tossing it aside.
Suddenly, the ground shook. It shook a lot. Adam stopped digging. The shimmying lasted for five seconds before fading. S
and shifted away from the circular door.
Adam asked over the headset microphone, “Hey, did anybody else feel that Earthquake?”
“You mean Marsquake?” returned Keller over the intercom.
“Yeah, I suppose that’s what I meant. It’s stopped now.”
“Yes, we felt some shaking, but it didn’t last long,” said Keller.
Adam was flustered, but he continued removing sand from one side of the circular door.
After a few minutes, the round door began to roll toward the low point, albeit slowly. Adam tried to push it again, but it didn’t budge. He took a break and gave the shovel to Yeva. After digging some more, the disc rolled far enough to the side for the two astronauts to squeeze by, but only if they turned sideways.
“Hey, Yeva. How much oxygen do you have?” asked Adam.
Yeva looked at the gauge on her wrist.
“About 15 minutes. We’ll have time to go in and take a few pictures.”
Adam spoke over the intercom, “Okay. This is it everybody. We are now going to enter a room built by aliens. Can you believe it?”
“Go for it,” came a message back from Molly.
Adam walked back to the golf cart to grab the tripod-mounted floodlight. He planned to use it to illuminate the interior of the pyramid. Adam hefted it up and laid it against his shoulder. When he turned around, Yeva was gone.
Chapter 17
“Yeva! Yeva! Where are you? Yevaaa!” yelled Adam into his headset microphone. He frantically spun around looking for her. His eyes searched the ground for footprints.
“Relax, mutton-head. I am inside the pyramid. I wanted to be the first at something,” said an irritated Yeva over the headset.
Adam complained excitedly, “We gotta work as a team and not lose each other. Just like in training, we’re using the buddy system.”
“Seriously? Okay, we will work as a team from now on,” she said sarcastically.
Adam could see her flashlight beam moving around, just inside the doorway. He jogged over to the opening and peeked into the darkness. His right hand reached up to his helmet and flipped two switches. The first engaged a helmet-mounted flashlight. The second turned on the helmet-mounted video camera. It would record all the amazing things they were about to see.
Adam turned sideways and squeezed through the door opening. Think thin, he thought to himself. Once through, he walked over to the middle of the room. His flashlight sent an erratic beam all over the floor.
Adam put the floodlight down on the dust and spread out the tripod legs one by one. This was no normal floodlight. It contained a large omnidirectional LED bulb that was brighter than most normal floodlights back on Earth. He reached just beneath the bulb and turned on the power switch. The entire room lit up like Texas at lunchtime. The two explorers immediately realized that this building was split into two rooms – a vertical stone wall partially separated the spaces. The room they were standing in was much larger than the other room. With limited oxygen, they decided to focus on the room they were in.
Gray granite walls surrounded them; all polished flat and filled with meticulously engraved carvings. This was not caveman art. With all of the sharp angles and elaborate curves, this was the work of intelligent beings.
Adam and Yeva both found themselves drawn toward the walls. They wanted to experience the feel of the precisely cut characters. The indentations were large enough for their gloves to follow them.
Adam pondered out loud, “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say this is an advanced written language. Discrete characters made with only a few strokes and the occasional dot. Looks closer to English than, say, Chinese. What do you think Yeva?”
“It is so beautiful. Not sure what to make of it. It actually looks a lot like proto-Elamite. In style at least.”
Adam agreed, “Yes, yes. And what is proto-Elamite?”
Yeva turned and looked at him incredulously.
“And you call yourself a scientist?” she asked.
Adam jokingly replied, “No, I’m half-geologist and half-engineer. An engeologist.”
“And a complete traitor,” she said accusingly. She looked back to the glyphs and explained, “Proto-Elamite is the oldest undeciphered written language on Earth.”
Adam raised his eyebrows, “Wow. That is something.”
Yeva rubbed her gloves on the smooth granite, “How has the granite not lost its polish after millions of years?”
Adam and Yeva walked along the walls, recording as much as they could on their helmet-mounted video cameras. At the same time, each of them was taking high-resolution photographs with hand-held digital SLR cameras. Eventually, they found themselves standing next to a granite block near the back of the room. The block was roughly the size of a dinner table. Adam stared at it in confusion.
“And then there’s that thing,” he said sarcastically.
On the four exposed sides were groupings of letters. Words perhaps, organized into paragraphs. On the large top surface was a string of characters all evenly spaced with large gaps in between each one.
“These carvings on the top must be their alphabet. Each letter is so delicately drawn,” pondered Adam.
Under each letter was a column that contained tightly packed horizontal grooves, like the cross-section of an old vinyl album with tiny hills and valleys.
Yeva was photographing all of these while Adam, in a trance, slid his finger along each of the engraved letters.
He counted them. As he traced each letter, he realized that he was the first sentient being to do this in millions of years. The person who carved these must’ve done the same thing with his fingers, thought Adam.
“Twenty-nine letters. Amazing, eh? Millions of years and millions of miles apart, and yet, our alphabets are so close in size.”
Yeva motioned for him to move his hand away so she could take more pictures.
“Hey Yeva, what do you think of all the writing on the side of this block?”
Yeva paused to think about Adam’s question. She nodded her head and answered, “It appears to be some type of Rosetta stone, perhaps. You know, the same story told on all four sides, but each side in a different language to help some future translator. Unfortunately, we now see four stories that we can’t read.”
A slow beep started.
Adam looked down at his beeping oxygen gauge.
“Uh oh. Ten minute warning; gotta get going. We’ll leave the floodlight here. Did you get a lot of photos too?” asked Adam as he walked over and turned off the floodlight.
Yeva nodded her head in confirmation.
“Yes. Lots of pictures. When we get back to the Big Turtle, we can upload them to the NASA servers. Maybe the NSA guys can work their magic on this alphabet.”
The two astronauts walked toward the dusty sunbeam shining through the thin door opening. They squeezed through the gap and trudged over the red sand toward the golf cart. Yeva once again hopped into the driver’s seat before Adam had a chance. He climbed into the other seat. She pressed the accelerator pedal and they took off up the hill, sending a rooster tail of cloudy scarlet dust.
“Hey, Molly. Hey, Keller. Do you hear me?” asked Adam over the main headset communication link.
“Yup, loud and clear,” replied Keller.
“Well, Mom and Dad are on their way back. Hope we won’t be interrupting you two,” Adam said over the intercom as he grinned and winked at Yeva. She did not smile.
Keller sat with his boots up on the main table. He saw a red cloud of dust in the distance. The cloud seemed to eject a slow moving golf cart. He casually wandered over to the airlock control panel, ready to let the weary travelers back into the life boat.
Keller hummed the lyrics to his favorite space song: “Rocket maaaan, burning down the trees on every lawn...”
The cart pulled up next to the ramp, but Yeva backed it up into the direct sunlight. She hopped out and gathered up the cameras and fossil samples. Adam deployed the solar array to charge the bat
teries on the golf cart.
The two explorers made their way up the ramp and into the airlock. Keller pushed a sequence of switches which flooded the evacuated vestibule with breathable oxygen. Simultaneously, a strong fan in the ceiling of the airlock blew a powerful wind over them. It removed any Martian dust that may have collected on their suits. Finally, the door opened. Yeva walked in first and removed her helmet.
“Did you see any little green men?” asked Keller.
Yeva quickly answered, “No, but did you see what this arrogant monster did to me during our walk down to the surface?”
Keller felt like he was in the middle of a messy domestic quarrel. He said, “Um, yeah, we noticed that. Fortunately, nobody at Mission Control knew what was supposed to happen. And may I congratulate you, Yeva, for not punching Adam on live television in front of billions of people.”
Adam redirected the mood and said, “We did take a lot of photos. Let’s get them uploaded to NASA, pronto.”
Yeva added, “We have some samples from the fossils, too. Let’s get them into the thermal ionization spectrometer right away and find out exactly how old they are.”
Molly hooked up the cameras to her laptop. After some fiddling with the software, she started the upload process. This would move gigabytes of photograph files through the long void of space to the high-bandwidth antenna on the International Space Station before finally going to the NASA servers at the Mission Control Center in Houston. This process took over two hours. The combination of large files, large distances, and error correction algorithms complicated the transfer. When it was all done, they had a teleconference with Chris Tankovitch to discuss what they’d found.
“Thank you everybody. The media is itching to get ahold of these images,” said Chris excitedly as he viewed them on a nearby monitor.
The ten minute round-trip delay made communication very difficult. At the end of the disjointed discussion, Chris congratulated them and made some assurances.