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MARS-2

MARS-2

Bookshelves lined a wall of the craftsman-style room. In its center, Patrick Burke sat cross-legged on the floor, eyes closed and breathing steadily. A gentle male voice wafted through the room.

“Sit with a posture of ease and dignity.” He stretched his upper body to be tall and centered, like he had stretched to warm up when he rowed in college. “Feel yourself connected to the Earth. Let your attention turn to the sensation of your breath.” A tablet began to ping on the table beside him; Patrick silenced it. “Feel how your body breathes itself. As you sit quietly, reflect on a mind that has balance; that sees all with equanimity.” The tablet vibrated.

He lifted his long frame and stepped to the table. “This must be why monks leave their devices at home when they meditate.” He inserted the earpiece. “What's up, Kate?”

“You're probably already in your car, but I wanted to encourage you to get into the office as soon as you can. We're seeing some things from Hab 3 that you will need to be on top of.”

“Can you give me a clue? Can you send me something to look at?”

“Nope. This is I-P-O. That's all I can say. See you in a few.”

Patrick put down the tablet. In-Person-Only had limited interpretations: tragedy, big geological discovery, big bacterium-on-Mars discovery. That's it. Nothing else could be so high security that encrypted satellite is not secure enough.

It took Patrick an excruciating ninety minutes to get to NASA West on the LA freeways; that was ninety minutes for him to turn over and over the possibilities that would meet him at the office. Fortunately, each of the preceding Mars missions had developed extensive play books to cover any number of discoveries and tragedies. He didn’t let his mind linger on a possible tragedy; he knew the people on this crew.

At the time he had signed-on to handle communications for the third exploratory mission he knew that Mars Habitat 3 was not meant to push boundaries; their job was logistical: survey the lava tubes and document three likely locations for a permanent colony. They would collect data and NASA would analyze it and make a decision. Then the next mission would swoop down in thruster fire and glory, there to write the story of the first humans to colonize another planet. Mars Habitat 3 would be forgotten. That was why he took the mission: no pressure, no public interest. He’d finish this mission, then take an uneventful job with a subcontractor and enjoy life in Pasadena. So, as he pulled into the parking lot at NASA West, he was still perplexed that something had occurred with the mission that Kate couldn’t discuss over a secure channel.

Kate, a petite ginger perpetually in jeans and sneakers, met him in the hall, grabbed his upper arm and guided him into the nearest empty office. Then she delivered the scenario NASA had no plans for.

“Here's your pre-briefing briefing. You don't want to go in cold on this one. We just received the first set of GEOPAC scans from A-5.”

“And the equipment isn’t working?”

“Strange shapes. Underground. Things that look like a buried city. They’re re-testing the systems. Work teams are trying to find explanations. That’s all I know.” She pointed him at the doorway and patted him on the shoulder, “Okay? Now you look like you've been on top of it all along. Get into that briefing.”

The room was open and airy, with a wall of windows looking west, toward Manhattan Beach. In the center, a half-dozen people sat in a circle of comfortable swivel chairs with small attached writing tables. A few of them swiveled to look at Patrick as he entered. Annie Dixxon sat at a small table at the front of the room. She looked up and greeted Patrick, then turned to the assemblage of scientists and project specialists.

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“I think everyone has some idea why we're here today. That ‘why’ is the GEOPAC scanner. Yesterday, a communication came in from Mars Hab, along with the first scans of Arsia A-5 to the northwest of the base. Those scans revealed something highly unusual. What you are about to see is under strict embargo.” The first image came up on the screen behind her. Reactions burbled through the group. “This is the LiDAR and AGPR data from A-5. We expected this scan to show geologic formations, the lava tube. Obviously, we got something we weren't expecting.”

The image on the screen showed a labyrinthine pattern branching off from the lava tube, clusters of circles, squares, and rectangles, large and small. There were shapes within shapes, and lines connecting to form grid and star patterns.

“I’m going to turn this over to the people who know GEOPAC better than anyone here.” She pointed to two young engineers. “Paula, Matt, would you come up and explain what, exactly, we are seeing here?”

Paula stepped to the front table. “The scanner is looking for different densities of soil to help us map the tubes and identify mineral deposits, the presence of water, and even ancient fault lines. As you can imagine, those formations would be irregular shapes. You can see a few of those on the upper border of the image—those, by the way, indicate subsurface ice. What we're seeing here are different densities of materials embedded in the soil—they’re just not appearing the way natural formations should.”

Patrick mulled-over her last statement as he looked at the screen. In the entire history of space exploration, no image, even one as low-definition as the one he was viewing, had revealed anything like this pattern of geometric shapes and connectors. What he saw were completely unnatural formations.

Paula continued, “GEOPAC doesn’t reveal much detail. Its job is to I.D. the geology, map the tubes and any possible entrances. We've only just begun to analyze the data. The shapes are probably basalt. The less dense areas in-between appear to match the surrounding deposits. We can get much more detail from a tomographic ground array.”

Patrick raised a finger. “What have you heard from Commander Nasri?”

“The initial communication was a request to have us check the data with our systems to see if we got the same readout as they did, at Mars Hab. We unpacked the data and got exactly the image they sent in a screen grab from their monitor. We ran a preliminary test, to see if there was any corruption and it came up clean. We reported that back to Commander Nasri and informed her we were going to run this up the chain and to stand by for instructions.”

Dixxon added, “And I've directed them to run an end-to-end systems check and to hold a communications blackout on this until I can get back to them with word from the Corner Office. That's where I'm headed next. In the meantime, GEOPAC, continue running a detailed test of all systems on our end.” She looked over at Patrick, “Pat, we can sit on this information for now. I'm going to request immediate top secret classification for all aspects of the Cupid exploration until—and maybe after—we determine what it is that we've discovered. What's your read on communications issues?”

“Assuming we're locked down, I'll have time to put a plan together. The problem is, just running tests of the system may get people's attention, if for no other reason than to report that NASA's galactically expensive space glider is having problems. I'll develop talking points, should the question come up.”

“And scenarios?”

“If this comes back as a system glitch, I think we come out first with a human interest angle, featuring Matt and Paula: ‘NASA had a crossed data transmission today, and for the two technicians monitoring the transmission, what they saw looked less like science and more like science fiction.’ Another possibility is that it comes back as a hack. If that happens, the response is trickier, because it shows a breach in our security.”

“And if it comes back that the scan is accurate?”

Patrick looked up at the geometric, crisscrossing lines on the screen. “If the scan is real... and that's not a natural formation, it doesn't matter how we want to proceed. Even with a top secret classification, it's going to leak, and it could leak within a matter of hours.”