Patterns by Michael Sweeney
The aliens had
come, but would they see...
Patterns
by Michael
Sweeney
"Well, it's just rock. Nothing but dirt and rock."
Johnson felt the red soil crunch under his boot. A mixture of pebbles and
loose soil skittered down the face of the outcropping.
"And?" Elders pushed, his voice filled with
amusement.
"And." Johnson had known the risks. Nothing deadly,
just your average disappointment tinged with humiliation. "And it doesn't
look like a face at all." Johnson sighed, and looked back down at Elders.
"It was just a trick of the light and shadow after all."
Elders smiled in smug satisfaction through his
plexisteel helmet. Johnson had dragged him here over twenty klicks from
the base camp to investigate the mystical 'face'. Mars had never seemed so
boring. "And now you'll keep your agreement?" Elders prodded.
Johnson signed again, feeling the enthusiasm drain out
of him. He looked up at the noon day sun, red sky as far as you could see.
Slowly he rotated his waist collar and jumped down from his perch above
Elders. He landed with expert timing, and small cloud of Martian soil
puffed around his feet. "I'll shut up about life on Mars."
"Good." Elders face tightened from a smile to a frown.
"Now, get those stupid soil samples and let's get out of here."
Johnson heard the hardness in Elders voice. He also
felt his face began to burn, blushing red, and was thankful that his sun
shield was down. Elders turned and walked back to the scooter. Walked was
a relative term. Ambled, hopping, slightly off step was more like it.
Despite, his elaborate training Elders had yet to get used to the Martian
gravity. A few of the other crew has teased him about it, asking if he
would rather crawl, or wanted a cane. Elders was an excellent geologist,
but he had never been athletic.
Johnson opened the sample case and briefly looked up
at the outcropping he had been so interested in before. Where once it had
held the secrets of the universe, now it was a muddy red hill in the
middle of the Martian wilderness. Dead soil, scorched by unchecked solar
radiation. Slowly assembling the soil sampler, Johnson chuckled at his
failure. How long had it been since those Viking landers? Decades?
Tantalizing flashes, glimpses of possibilities. Life on mars. The soil
sampler clicked into function, and Johnson jammed it into the surface,
pushing it down about six inches. Surprisingly, the sampler met no
resistance. It pushed right through to the fill line without effort. The
sampler deployed its stabilizing legs and began to vibrate. Soil and
pebbles jumped and dance around it. The vibrating sampler caused ripple
waves around it, concentric circles, loose dirt and pebbles dancing in
mysterious rhythm. Johnson stepped away, afraid he had found a fault or
the Martian equivalent to quicksand. There was a beep inside Johnson's
helmet signaling the sampler was full. It stopped vibrating and retracted
its legs.
Reaching down, he gingerly tested the tube. It was
stuck firmly upright, the ground solid again. Johnson grabbed the tube
firmly and twisted the metal tube until he felt the satisfying click.
Despite its rigid upright stance, the tube pulled easily out of the
ground. Johnson looked it over for moment, and then used a grease pen to
take a note about the odd behavior of the soil. Loose sand? Water residue?
A geologist's possibilities filled his mind. Eraway wouldn't be happy
about this little trip, but at least she couldn't complain that it was
unauthorized. Johnson has two wild card soil sample trips to play, and
this was only the first. Occasionally, xeno geologists needed to play a
hunch without data to back them up. It was also important to give them a
sense of freedom. On earth, justifying a 20 kilometer trip would have been
laughable, but a zillion miles away in space, it was deadly serious.
Johnson smiled, he knew the others wouldn't be
impressed by his report. He needed more than his own eyes to prove what
had happened. Slowly he pulled out the miniature video camera they were
each equipped with. Covered in velcro he readied the camera for record and
slapped it to his chest. Bending over he pushed the second sampler into
the ground and set it to vibrate. Johnson jumped back and put the camera
to his eye. He barely had time to push the record button when the ground
went liquid again, with circles moving out from the vibrating sampler.
Slowly the circles moved out, in time with the sampler. Johnson zoomed in
on the base of the sampler and a hard edge caught his eye. He zoomed out
and nearly dropped the camera. The patterns moving out from the sampler
were no longer circles! They were squares!
Johnson stepped back and nearly stumbled. Abruptly,
the sampler beeped, causing Johnson to nearly jump out of his skin.
Johnson stood silent for moment, barely breathing. Suddenly, he swung his
right arm up and looked at his oxygen gauge. Was his air mixture off, was
he hallucinating? Fiddling with the smooth display he studied the reading
for every part of his suit. Everything was in the green. Slowly he looked
back at the sampler. It stood motionless in silent testimony. Johnson
glanced at the camera. It was still on record. Quickly, he stopped the
recorder and had it rewound. The machine signaled it's readiness, and
Johnson pushed play. The small screen played out the samplers beginning
vibration, and a glimpse of the sudden angular lines, but then zoomed out
into blurriness and swung left erratically.
Johnson cursed himself for acting so foolishly. What
was happening here? He was just over reacting. There had to be a logical
explanation. Dismissing fantasy from his mind, Johnson pulled out the
third and final sampler. He readied the camera and set both machines to
work at the same time. The camera began recording and the sampler began
vibrating. The ground turned fluid again, and ringlet patterns moved out.
Abruptly, they formed angles, but this time they moved into triangles!
Johnson felt his heart rate go through the roof as the camera recorded
every bit. The last sampler beeped, but Johnson was already running across
the Martian frontier in a mad dash to show the others.
***
Two. There had been two. The presence was definite.
How long had it been? Moments measured against eons. 'I felt them too.'
Surisa moaned.
Girasa smiled, though no change occurred in his
appearance. An inner smile, an emotion based in thought and chemicals.
'They will come back.' he reassured.
Surisa moaned again, a cascading chemical reaction of
sadness. 'But when, how long will it take?'
Girasa extended his chemical tendrils slowly,
encompassing Surisa with a warm understanding. 'Patience, young one, they
have taken Murisu and Opersa. They are ambassadors of communication.'
Surisa wriggled free in a chemical spasm. 'How will we
communicate with the carbon ones?'
Girasa signed in an oxygen-nitrogen exchange. 'It will
happen. All things will come to pass.'
Surisa grew impatient. 'How will it happen? How?'
Girasa did not know the answer. It was not his to
know. His confidence faded as the chemicals depleted their energy. He felt
the community, slowly dying away, losing their ability to stay in touch.
Even the young ones were drying out. 'It will happen.' he reassured.
Surisa pushed against him in a sharp waste of energy.
The exuberance of youth, a failure to understand the limited resources.
'We are dying, how can we communicate, how can we save ourselves?'
Girasa extended his reach toward the departing ones.
Two, but beyond them, more? 'The aliens will show us
how.'