IMAGINATION'S PLACE
FICTION
JOURNEY TO THE LIGHT
By; Speaker Gerald Polley
All rights reserved.
Chapter 22
As the days passed Carol's readings became more and
more certain. The object was going to go into orbit. It was
going to give Mars a hell of a jolt but it would go into orbit.
As the day neared things behind them began to go wrong. The
telescopes on the moon would not be in position to observe what would
happen. The one that would be broke down! The weather on
Earth got unusually bad. All three telescopes in orbit developed
communications problems.
"It's a virus!" one of the communications people
announced. "Somebody doesn't want us to get pictures of this!
We're going to be the only telescope able to view what happens.
I'm not going to accept any data from Earth but we'll send back a
stream of what we receive. I don't want this thing infecting us
until they track it down and find where it came from. Damned good thing
we're here. We'll have perfect viewing and at this distance we ought to
get some very good images!"
Carol tried to rest but it was like she was
expecting a child. "What about the satellites orbiting Mars?"
Carol asked.
"If we don't shut them down," the communications man
said, "this thing's magnetic field will fry them! So we've got to
protect them. It'll take a couple of days to reboot their
systems. We're it! Let's hope nothing goes wrong here!"
"Let's make sure it doesn't!" Carol insisted.
"Let's double check everything, make sure everything's
insulated."
The communications officer looked odd. "What?" Carol asked.
"I'm not sure," he answered. "For a few moments I
thought I was receiving a signal. Then it abruptly stopped.
It was when we were sending the commands to the satellites. Hmmm.
Well, I'll keep that frequency open. See if we get anything else.
Why don't you go get some rest?"
Carol tried. Her husband threatened to knock
her out if she didn't sleep. Finally she reentered the operations
room. "Fifteen minutes!" Cher told her. "It's gone right by
Mars' moons. They wobbled a little bit, but then continued on in their
orbits. Here it comes! She's goin' in!
Whoa! Mars moved a little bit in its orbit, not enough that it's
out of orbit but I think it's a bit closer to the sun."
"I think you're right!" Carol sighed, "Whoa!
Look at that dust rising! A lot of stuff was knocked loose. It's
going to be several days before that settles down."
"But I think we got some images," Cher put in,
"before the dust really spread. Look at this! The walls of the
great canyon are collapsing but not all on the same side. It goes
a few miles then shifts to the other side. When this
is all over there should be easy accessibility to the bottom.
Great sections have collapsed forming slides that make easy routes from
the surface down into the valley. Craters have collapsed!
The whole surface of Mars is going to be different!"
"Damn!" Carol moaned, "I'm beginning to agree with
everyone. This can't be natural, it simply can't be!
Everything is just too perfect. I sure wish I could talk to this
thing."
A voice spoke up. "What would you ask me?"
Carol and the others looked around. The communications officer
pointed at the speaker built into the console. Carol stared at it then
managed "Who are you?"
"Do not understand the term who," the speaker answered. "Please specify."
Carol thought for a minute. "O.k.!" she managed, "What are you?"
"Reestablisher," the voice answered.
"Reestablisher of what?" Carol asked.
"Of viability," the voice answered.
Carol cleared her throat. "You've come to
reestablish the viability of Mars, to make it life sustaining?"
"Is Mars the planet I have just begun to orbit?" the voice asked.
"Yes," Carol answered. "Who sent you?"
"They sent me," the voice answered.
"Who are they?" Carol asked.
"They are they," the voice responded. "That is
the only way I have of speaking of them. They are they."
"Oh!" Carol managed. "Were they The Martians, the people that first inhabited this world?"
"You are the people that first inhabited this world," the voice answered.
Everyone stared at each other. "I don't think
so!" Carol managed. "There is archaeological evidence that our
species evolved on Earth. We were interfered with but that
interference only created a hybrid. We are still descendants of
the people of Earth."
"Hmmm!" the voice remarked. "We are going to
have to discuss that. But you will have to excuse me now.
My free time is concluded, and I must return to my duties. But it has
been very nice conversing with you. Perhaps when I have free time again
we will converse more. You are coming towards me, are you not?"
"Yes," Carol answered. "But it will take us some time to reach you."
"We'll see!" the voice concluded. "We'll see!"
Carol and the others stared at each other. "I
hope to hell you got recordings of that!" Carol asked, and a fix on its
source."
The communications officer nodded. "Let's keep
this quiet for now," Carol insisted. "I don't want anybody firing
missiles at us."
Everybody again nodded. "Whoa!" Carol snapped, "Whoa!"
Everyone agreed. They weren't going to be able to do
much until the dust settled so Carol finally decided she'd get some
sleep. She was woke to the sound of the klaxon. "Emergency
situation!" a voice was screaming. "Secure all bulkheads!
Turn on all internal shields. Turn off all sensitive electronic
equipment. All computers shut down immediately!"
Carol threw on clothes and ran for the operations room. "What in the hell is going on?" she asked.
"We're going into orbit around Mars!" the ship's
commander answered, "Don't ask me how, all of a sudden there was a
flash, we were surrounded by some kind of light and there was a flash
again! Now we're heading into orbit. But we're gonna hit
the edge of that thing's magnetic field first. So hopefully all of our
equipment won't be fried! Here we go!"
There were a few moment buffeting. "Has rotation been stopped?" the commander asked.
"Yes sir!" an officer answered.
"Full thrust!" the commander snapped, "or
we'll go right by her. Give her everything we've got for twenty
seconds!"
The command deck trembled as all the ship's
thrusters fired up. Finally they stopped. Everyone was
frantically checking instruments but Carol knew they didn't need to
worry. She could see the planet below them as they slowly circled
around it. "I think we've got a good orbit!" she remarked."We're
going a little bit faster than her rotation, so we'll be able to scan
most of the planet."
"Confirmed!" an officer cried. "The rotation
is twenty-one hours. We're orbiting just a little bit faster."
"I don't know," the captain remarked, "I might want to put us in a geosynchronous."
"Not for a few days," Carol insisted. "Let's
take advantage of this for a while, then do that. I'd like to be
able to monitor what's going on down there until the satellites are up
and running again and we'll have full coverage. Then we'll pick a spot
to settle down over."
"Very good!" the captain agreed. "Cooperating
with you is very easy. You always seem to ask me exactly what
should be done. You're making my job too easy."
Carol laughed. "I'll take that as a compliment!" she finally managed. "Anything from our friend out there?"
"Not a thing!" the communications officer
answered. "Just before that thing happened to us I picked up a
few minutes of music. It sounds awfully familiar but I can't
quite put a name to it."
"Play it!" Carol ordered.
A few moments later stirring music came out of the
speakers. "Beautiful!" the captain remarked, But it sounds
familiar to me too."
"There's very slight differences," Carol put in,
"but it's "The Stars And Stripes Forever" by a bandmaster named John
Philip Sousa. This is getting weirder all the time!"
"Something else weird," one of the scientists
mentioned. "We can pretty much tell the age of about anything in
the universe by the amount of cosmic decay from The Big Bang.
That thing out there has twice as much decay as anything around
us! Therefore, it must be billions of years older than the matter
here! But that's impossible!"
Carol stared at him trying to make full sense of
what he was saying. "What is it he used to say?" she remarked.
"There are some things that are highly improbable but nothing that is
impossible. Give people enough time and they'll figure out how to
do anything.'"
"That is what he said!" the commander sighed. "I would
give almost anything for a small fraction of his knowledge. Some
people say he had existed for a million years. What he must've
picked up in that time!"
"Thank God," Carol muttered, "he didn't give us some
things. I don't think we're ready for those weapons that could turn a
planet to quartz crystals, tons and tons of quartz crystals! I
want it to be a very long time before we develop any of those things!"
The captain nodded. "Yes ma'am!" he snapped. "Total agreement, ma'am!"
"But I've heard," the engineer put in, "that some
scientists have been experimenting with positive and negative matter
and they've found that the negative stuff is just as volatile as he
predicted."
"Yeah!" Carol agreed. "They're gonna be a long
time filling in that hole in that mountain in Argentina! Well,
they needed a site to dispose of trash!"
Everybody laughed. "Carry on!" Carol insisted, "and thank you for your support, gentlemen!"
Things settled down. Everybody was so excited
about the images they were sending back to Earth few people asked any
questions. Though Carol was sure there were plenty to be
asked.