Z stood near the entrance to the airlock, wearing a grey body suit and booties. Open lockers lined the wall and inside each hung an EVA suit and helmet. She took out her suit, stepped into it, and pulled it up over her body. Then she stepped over to the hoist on the wall that held her life support backpack. Her task was easy. One of the experiment packages had stopped transmitting. Regolith got into everything and a circuit board probably needed nothing more than to be cleaned and re-inserted. After she had safety-checked her suit, she closed the inner door. Sun visor down, evacuate air, open outer door. The sunlight of a cold, arid Martian day greeted her.
Colin checked-in from the control room. “All good, Z?”
“All good, Colin.” Z replied as she surveyed the scene. “You know, sometimes I get a déjà-vu, like I’m still in training back on Earth—another dry, rocky, volcanic rubble field, except this rubble field extends as far as I can see. It covers the planet.”
“A whole planet of rock and subsurface permafrost. No wonder they want to colonize this place.”
She grabbed a toolkit from a storage bin outside of the Hab and set out. As she walked, she considered the experiment package on the hill ahead of her, looking so completely alien and out of place within the context of the barren, desiccated, irradiated landscape. “Mars has been a dead planet for a long time,” Z mused aloud, knowing that Colin would be listening. “The thing I keep thinking is: the timeline doesn't sync-up. An advanced civilization could never have developed fast enough on the surface before the atmosphere eroded. Right?”
“Mars and Earth formed at about the same time,” Colin answered.
“And Mars lost its atmosphere billions of years before humanoid life appeared on Earth.”
Colin glanced out the window at Z climbing the hill. “Yeah. So it makes no sense. The surface would've been uninhabitable long before intelligent life could've evolved. And if a civilization evolved underground, who knows what it would look like? We might have found the tunnels of some intelligent worm.”
Z reached the experiment package and stopped to take-in the view of the expansive slope of Arsia Mons—rocks and sand and dirt of different tones of beige, grey, brown, red, and burnt orange. “Up the slope of this volcano lies a mystery, buried in the ground, and it just might change everything,” she said.
Colin chuckled. “You know, we could still find out that it's some digital leftover from an early test scan—that it's the drainage system in downtown Pasadena.”
Z shook her head. “If it is, it will be a shame. I like the idea that this planet wasn't always empty and desolate. That creatures once lived here.”
...
Patrick spent the night wrestling with a troubled dream about a press conference full of reporters floating around the room. Pinging. His tablet was pinging. Patrick grabbed it from the night stand. It was Dan Sharp, the NASA Administrator.
“The scans are real. What's your plan for announcing this?”
...
MESSAGE: Patrick Burke to Elizabeth Nasri CC: NASA Information Office
Z:
As you know from mission command's communication, the scans have been verified. We've initiated a set of criteria similar to the Ladder of Life only you might call it the Ladder of Civilization. Since we don't have any biological evidence, yet, the astrobiologists are out, astrogeologists and archaeologists are in. That’s tweaking a few noses. The White House is on alert. My office has run some scenarios, as we are concerned that the information will leak soon. So, we are going to try to get ahead of any leak by calling a press briefing within the next 24 hrs. to reveal the discovery but focus on what we have observed, not on conjecture.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
The embargo continues re: mentioning the discovery in any personal communications from Mars Hab 3.
Thanks. Pat
...
The briefing happened in the same room they had always used for missions of minor interest—unmanned rovers and infrastructure projects like Mars Habitat 3—which meant the room was way too small for the crowd of press that now overflowed into the hallway. Patrick stepped to the podium. “Thank you all for coming. I know word has leaked that this will be an important announcement. You'll be able to judge that for yourselves in a moment. By way of preamble to today’s briefing, I want to ask you all to set aside your instincts as storytellers and to approach this information with the same level of scientific skepticism that we've been maintaining on the mission team.
“A week ago, we re-launched the Cupid Drone Glider over a new area of Arsia Mons. Cupid is a crucial tool for mapping the subsurface geology looking for habitable lava tubes, the presence of water, and valuable minerals we can tap for resources in colonizing Mars.” He pressed on the monitor in front of him and the first image came up on the wall screen—a photo of Cupid in the initial moments of flight above Mars Habitat 3.
“This shot of Cupid happened right after take-off. Cupid was designed for the unique conditions of the thin Martian atmosphere. Through a combination of solar glider wings and high-speed levitating rotors, Cupid can fly vast distances, extending our range of exploration up the slope of Arsia Mons to the locations of lava tubes. The engineering details of the craft are in the materials we're transmitting as I speak.”
The next image was a photo from orbit, with markers showing the location of Mars Habitat 3 and the lava tubes at quadrangle A-5. “Cupid is investigating the lava tubes 100 km to the northwest of the Habitat. This has been considered a prime location for a base because it reads for water vapor and shows depressions that indicate collapsed areas that will provide entry—details of which are also in the telematerials.”
The next image was a composite of the valley, taken by Cupid. “Cupid is equipped with the GEOPAC multi-spectrum scanner, which includes a high resolution visual spectrum imager, a LiDAR scanner and Series 9 AGPR—aerial ground penetrating radar. Here, you are seeing the visual scanner output. And now, let's add the LiDAR and AGPR.” The next image showed the fingerprint of lines and geometric shapes. Slouching reporters suddenly sat up straight, some craned their necks to see the entire image. Conversations buzzed in the briefing room.
“Remember what I said about scientific skepticism,” Patrick reminded them. “This is the subsurface imaging, down to about 15 meters below the surface. It is something we did not expect. One could easily jump to conclusions about what is shown in this scan. I'll remind you to search for David S. McKay if you do not already know who he is. We're sharing this image in the spirit of transparency, but truth be told, it's still too early for us to say for certain what this actually is. It could also be geology; there are plenty of unusual geologic features on Earth—think Giant's Causeway in Ireland. There may be even stranger formations on other planets. We’re also running tests to determine if there is any problem with our systems. So, for now, NASA's position is that we don't know what these patterns represent. At this moment, our plan is to scan the area with an array of higher resolution ground-mounted sensors. This is unfolding as I speak and we'll be briefing you as soon as those plans are finalized. I'm sorry, but this is all the information I have at this time. No questions, please. Thank you.”
Reporters raised their hands and called-out for attention as Patrick made a quick exit.
Two floors up, NASA Administrator Dan Sharp turned-off his screen as the press conference ended. In his two decades of government service, Sharp had learned never to trust the media and he chuckled at Patrick’s attempt at transparency. A former college football player, he liked to diagram out his plays, always with the media as the other side.
Soon, Patrick bounced into the office. “Mission accomplished. Leaks preempted, discovery revealed, issues framed, hysteria minimized.”
Sharp looked down at his tablet, then held it up for Patrick to read. On it was a giant headline: ‘NASA Finds Martian City,’ accompanied by a photo of the scan. “Human nature reconfirmed,” he added with a sardonic smile.
Patrick threw his hands in the air. “I did as much as I could. Let them be crazy. We're the ones who have to keep our heads.”