“Don’t you have an accounting of your own ships?” Sebastian asked. “How could he hide a ship on Earth for half a century without anybody noticing that one was missing?”

“It may have been an unidentified one.” Rubin said. “There are citizens that have them, just not very many.”

“Are you in orbit of Mars?” Sebastian asked. “How can you communicate with this little lag?”

“I am at my home on Uranus. I can do an Earth run if you need me to.”

“Has there been any communications with Jonathan or anybody at Roswell?”

“Not through our government.” Rubin said. “Communications with Roswell have not been established since just after we left for Jiirdrian.”

“Yes, please do an Earth run.” Sebastian said. “We need to have an investigation to see what happened.”

“I’ll get some help then.” Rubin said. “I will get back to you when I know more.”

...

Mars Or Bust IV was adjusting its orbit for separation and landing when another communication came over the radio. It was Rubin. He had a tone in his voice that made it sound urgent.

“We don’t have time to wait for you to do everything on Mars.” Rubin said. “We will land on Mars with you and help you to assess the cargo, and then a small compliment of people will do your work there while you come to Uranus with us. The timetable has been changed.”

“What about the prophecy?” Lane asked indignantly. “What happened?”

“This is commander Boshard.” came a voice over the radio device. “Jonathan has taken the Roswell personnel and disappeared. We have learned that he has had a team of conspirators on a secret base on Uranus for some time.”

“Well go get him and punish him or whatever.” Todd said.

“It’s not that easy.” Boshard said. “He has help. He is illusive.”

“What did he do? Just kidnap some people who wanted to go into space anyway?” Lane asked.

“He thinks that he is the prophet, or at least that he is A prophet.” Rubin said. “He has taken some technology and used it in at least one location hidden on the surface of Uranus.”

“To do what?” Lane asked.

“To make clones, or at the very least, to clone something.” Commander Boshard said.

“Me?” Mike asked. “Is he cloning me? How many clones could he have made of me by now?”

“He is cloning your eyes.” Rubin said. “He has had enough time to make at least a few dozen copies of them. And if he has facilities enough, He could have hundreds.”

“And then replaced his with mine.” Mike said. “Now he can do what I can do.”

“Holy shit.” Lane said. “Can’t you just scan the surface and find him that way?”

“You have been watching too much television.” Rubin said. “We need to find him the old-fashioned way. And Uranus is big.”

The seriousness of the situation did little to stifle the young men from giggling.

“How can we help?” Mike asked.

“We will come and get you from Mars once you land and get in the habitats and inspect your cargo.” Boshard said.

“Why do I need to inspect the cargo if you guys sent it to me?” Mike asked. “Don’t you know what’s in it?”

“We suspect that we know, but we didn’t send it.” Boshard said.

“I thought that you guys sent it from Uranus or something.” Mike said. “Isn’t that what you said Rubin?”

“I said that.” Sebastian said. “But I didn’t say that they sent it from Uranus.”

“Where did it come from then?” Mike asked.

“That shipment has been in orbit for tens of thousands of years waiting for the return of the prophet.” Rubin said. “When you keyed the runes it automated the shipment, and it came in and landed.”

“Why didn’t you just look at it while it was in orbit then?” Sebastian asked.

“We did.” Boshard admitted. “And so did the factions that have broken off from our government.”

“Like the ones that are working with Jonathan?” Lane asked. “The same guy who cloned Mikes eyes and thought that he was the prophet?”

“I don’t think that he thinks that he is the prophet, but I do think that he intends to fulfill the prophecy with your eyes.” Boshard said.

“That dirty bastard.” Lane said. “He has to be stopped.”

“I want a look at the prophecy.” Mike said. “Get me a copy of the prophecy when we land on Mars.”

“We can’t just...”

“BRING IT TO ME!!!” Mike shouted before regaining some composure. “I need to see what he is planning. He has had access to this information for an exceedingly long time. We need to be playing with the same set of rules.”

...

Mars or Bust IV landed on the surface without incident. They landed just as the sun had risen in the east to maximize exposure to the natural light of the sun and increase the time that they could work before enveloped in darkness. The crew broke up into groups as planned and checked out the equipment that landed before their arrival. Rubin and the other aliens didn’t want to be on the surface of Mars at the same time as they could be witnessed from Earth.

Gamers may not have designed the space suits that they wore, but they definitely had some influence on the design and function of the suit and the communications that the suits used. They were comfortable albeit bulky and heavy, but neither of those attributes made much difference on the low G surface of Mars. The rigid design of the torso section that housed the life support system also used electric actuators to assist if the occupant needed to do some very heavy lifting. The communications hub was able to be toggled with voice commands to determine who would hear what the occupant was saying from inside the suit. The coolest function was that in “Proximity Mode” it would communicate to transponders of the other suits in accordance to how loud the operator was speaking. If they were talking normally it would communicate with people within a varying distance from the suit according to the parameters of the occupant. This gave the operator a quick method of communicating with their immediate surrounding suits, as well as quick long-range communications with everybody on the planet when they would raise their voice. It was easy to understand, and worked on the same principles that people already use to communicate. It also had a heads-up display reflected on the front visor that would map out the area with a zoom function, and display color coded dots that indicated the position of the other suits.

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All the landers were stationed near a slope on the west foothills of Olympus Mons. It was a short walk from Mars or Bust IV to the nearest of them. The early morning light on the mountain's west side left the crew in the shadow of the mountain for a long time. The thin atmosphere didn’t reflect and refract light like Earth which gave it an ominous darkness to the morning that was compounded by the longer distance from the sun. Mars days were just slightly longer than one on Earth. About 39.5 minutes different. Huston was told they were to cater to Mars time for the crew's duration. There were plenty of satellites on earth to relay radio, but they were limited by line of sight on Mars’ end.

Lane and Sebastian accompanied Mike to the first of the containers. Lane said he was always assuming they were the size of cargo containers on Earth, but they were all surprised by their enormous size as they approached.

The first container that they came upon was the smallest one. It was round and domed like a pressure vessel. It was just shy of 100 meters across. It appeared to have struck the bedrock hard judging from the ejecta that it produced. They separated and walked in different directions around the base to see if they could find the door but found none.

They found a portion of the container that was partially covered with rubble and rock that gave access to the gentle slope of the top of the container. The men clambered up and started walking across the sloped surface. Sebastian moved toward the top of the dome while the other men started in each direction in a helical search pattern for any indication of a door or access point. They avoided loose materials around the edges so that they wouldn’t lose footing and slide off the edge. Sebastian reached the top but was out of view of the others due to the shape of the dome.

“There is a reinforced port hole up here.” he said. “I am going to look in it.”

“That’s probably the access that will get us in.” Lane said. “Should we continue examining the exterior in our search pattern?”

“Yeah.” Mike said. “I am as anxious as anybody to look inside this thing, but let's complete the survey of the outside first.”

Sebastian looked inside the port hole and saw some discs laid out like pancakes of increasing size. They were about 4 inches diameter on the top and about 2 feet at the bottom. There were 7 total discs stacked this way. There were twelve thin rectangular rods that seemed to be used as supports for the stack connected to all the discs. Sebastian saw some shimmering flux colors that must be a list of instructions on the bottom 3 discs but nothing on the other 4. He noticed that there were some indications of scoring and abrasive grinding on the metal surrounding the port hole, but none on the transparent, glass type materials, that made up the window. He examined the window further and noticed that it was neither protruding nor recessed. When he ran his gloved hand over the surface, he did not feel any blemishes of any kind even where the scoring had taken place. He looked at the HUD on his helmet and saw that the other 2 men were nearly complete in their survey of the surface of the dome.

“It’s a flying saucer.” Lane said as he reached the top. “It’s a flying saucer.” he repeated loudly to communicate what they had found to the others.

“Holy shit it is.” Sebastian said. “How could I have not noticed that before?”

“The others are more than half buried in ejecta from crashing into the surface.” Lane said loudly again. “This one must have struck last.”

They took a minute to get a better look at the 4 cargo containers while the scuttlebutt over the radio became an overlapping jumble of voices. They would have to sort out the information that they were going to send to Huston.

“There are a lot of indications that someone or something has been trying to get access to this saucer.” Sebastian said. “Probably for a long time.”

“Jonathan knew about this ship.” Mike said. “And he has had access to it for 161 days while we took our detour.”

“Well, he didn’t get in.” Lane said. “If he did then it wouldn’t be here.”

Mike was reminiscent of opening the armored chest in Jonathan's contest. The image that his DNA had created on his retina was a rune that the lock on the device recognized and unlocked it. Mike had a strange feeling that this port hole device was going to scan his eye in the same way and open. When he peered into the port hole, he could see the phased writing on the discs. Unlike Sebastian he could see writings on all 7 of the discs. He moved his position around the window as he read the text. When the angle of his iris was aligned with the runes of the discs it caused light to emanate from the outline of a door that opened automatically to admit the 3 men to enter the ship. When it was fully opened Mike, and the others went inside.

“We are in.” Lane said as Mike entered and Sebastian followed. When Lane looked over to the others preparing the habitats, he noticed that none of them were working inside. Instead, they were all headed to the small saucer.

...

All 6 astronauts were roaming the inside of the small ship searching for any indication of where it was controlled from. It was a shiny metal that may have been stainless steel except even harder material than that would be. There were no seams or expansion joints like Lane would have thought it would need to have if it were to be used in varying environments and temperatures. There were living compartments spaced evenly around the outer edges of the craft next to the engines. There were 12 of them spaced around the perimeter of the craft at the widest portion of the ship when viewed from the side. There did not seem to be a front or back. The bridge of the ship was inside the center mass of the craft with 4 doorways for egress. The controls were similar to those of the Special Delivery that they took to Jiirdrian except there were more of them. There were pilot stations strewn about around the perimeter of the bridge. There was a curious number of them as if it would be necessary to have many people to operate the ship. Everything that was not done with a single set of controls was grouped into 2, 3, 4, 6, or 12.

“Have you guys noticed that everything is set up in numbers that factor into 12?” Paige asked through the intercom.

“There are 12 engines on this craft.” Sebastian noted.

“Rubin has twelve fingers.” Mike observed. “Maybe they don’t use the decimal system because they have twelve fingers. Or maybe it is set up like a clock.”

Mike sat at one of the control stations on the bridge. A console lit up in front of him and the saucer started emitting a hum. Text came over the console that he sat at and asked if he would like to power up.

“Yes.” Mike said to no one. But nothing happened. It was then that he noticed a small lens at each consol. He put his eye closer to the lens and the ship began to power up. The first thing that happened was the ship suddenly had gravity that was 1 G. The occupants were suddenly burdened by the heavy suits that were not too heavy on the surface of Mars, but much heavier at 1 G.

Monitors that were hidden lit up and became visible. Air recirculation systems started. Temperature and humidity controls began to circulate the air and adjust values to match Earth specifications albeit slightly more oxygen and carbon dioxide to nitrogen ratios. Star maps lit up the inside of the bridge like a heads-up display.

Mike asked to see the cargo, and a green powder appeared on several HUD displays. They looked like the same cargo as viewed from different angles.

“Show me the drawings of the ship.” Mike said, and it was instantly displayed for him. The shiny metallic surface would alter itself to provide whatever he asked for.

“Show me the path to the cargo hold.” Todd asked.

“Access denied.” Came a female voice from nowhere and everywhere as the text that read Access Denied appeared on the viewscreens.

“Show me a path to the cargo hold.” Mike asked, and the graphic changed, and the path was drawn out in bold lines on the viewer.

Todd gave him a crusty look.

‘Grant access to everyone onboard.” Mike said.

“Please provide retinal scans.” the computer said.

Everyone complied.