The intelligent rover bumped its way across red gravel hills.
Its laser flashed, computers directed forward motion, and then it
stopped before the selected specimen. The Boom extended, rotated,
and a sampling drill lowered. A core taken, it deposited it into a
heating chamber and scanned results. Precursor elements of life were
found in a dry riverbed.
The days work done, this workhorse paused, uplinked to an
orbiting satellite, and sent the days results. Then it awaited
instructions for the next trip out.
When it approached the next blunted hill, the laser flashed
like it always did. But this “rock” awoke, and quickly swelled
to engulf the entire rover.
***
“Where did it go?” asked one of the mission controllers
at JPL. “One minute it was there, the next, nothing.”
“Here, let me have a look,” said his shift supervisor,
hurrying over. They studied the screen.
"Try all of the alternate freq's, then repeat at one-minute
intervals. Check with the deep-space network for faults. There has
to be a logical explanation.” The technicians went into
overdrive, checking and re-checking everything humanly possible.
The entity had been listening in on transmissions, and took
little time to understand the primitive craft sent from the blue
planet. The alien creature, although automatic compared to it's
builders, was still sentient at a level far above anything humans
could devise. It rapidly made some modifications to the rover, and
set Curiosity back on its predetermined path.
“Hey, Chet! Curiosity is back!” said the controller who
first noticed it missing. “Look here.”
Several other technicians crowded around, then raced back to
their own stations to confirm various telemetry feeds. A muted cheer
went up.
The supervisor came over and looked, and then raised his
voice: “It appears we have re-acquired Curiosity. We still need
to figure out what went wrong, but for the time being, it looks like
we are in business. Good work, everyone.”
The international crew had few problems on the way to Mars,
twenty years later. Their landing craft separated properly, and they
came down in a flat area near some intriguing crevices. There would
be a lot to study, and they would only have a month before departing
once again. As their huge lander made a controlled descent, and got
closer and closer, they began to notice discrepancies between the
radar imager and the visual display.
“Hey Cap, the visual shows a flat plain. Radar is telling
me there are giant boulders all over the place. What gives?”
Captain Valdez leaned over in his seat and scanned the long,
narrow panel graphics. Red lights blossomed within the images. An
alarm sounded.
“It's too late to abort. Take it to manual and try to find
a radar-flat spot. That is an order!”
Pilot Armstrong moved fingers rapidly through 3-d images,
gaining manual control from a bevy of computers. He tried to slow
and hover, and barely succeeded.
“Fuel at 5%. 4%. Still large rocks on radar. 3%.
Radar gone. Repeat, I've lost radar image. Visual still shows flat.
I've got to try and set it down, Cap'n.”
Captain Valdez hesitated, then said, “Go ahead. Set down.
Brace everyone.”
The last of the retro fuel was expended as the three-story
lander set down in a field of three-meter high boulders. The landing
struts caromed off of rock, and three of them bent at very unhealthy
angles. The huge lander slammed down at a tilt, and finally,
unceremoniously fell over on its side.
“So much for our landing on Mars. Emergency procedures,
everyone. Get those suits on!” Valdez yelled.
The astronauts within went into emergency routines. But when
Captain Valdez crawled out of an auxiliary hatch, he was still not
prepared for the sight that greeted him. An old, beat-up bus-sized
rover, extending a boom towards him. On the end of the boom were
spinning blades. They made short work of his suit, and then him.
The rest of the crew managed to stay alive for a day, before the
rover finally found them.
- The End.
