Martín leant forward. “So who could be responsible?”
“I do not know, Martin. But there’s one thing that is even more certain than the fact that NASA couldn’t be responsible for this.”
“Yes?”
“NASA would never intentionally kill an astronaut.”
Martín leant back and crossed his arms. “To hide the truth, they might,” he said.
Larue sat upright and laughed. “This isn’t Capricorn One, Martin! This is NASA! This is 2045, and the Clarke is a multinational mission to Mars! Why would anyone want to jeopardise our first manned mission?”
Martín had no idea. He looked at his shoes, as if the answer somehow lay in the criss-cross pattern of his laces.
“Which leads me to the most important question. The question that lies at the heart of this whole situation: what is there to hide? ”
“We have no idea, Monsieur. The feeds we have do not show anything revealing.”
“And they’re never likely to either!” Larue said in frustration. “They slipped up at the beginning, which is how you and Jacqueline were able to see this, and also why poor Su Ning lost her life. They are not likely to slip up again.” He looked out of the window again and his frown grew as he noticed dark clouds gathering on the horizon, ready to blot out the sun. “And until we know what they are hiding, or at least have some evidence, there is no way we can say anything to anyone. With what we have, we cannot tell anyone, Martin. Do you understand?”
Martín nodded slowly. “There is one more thing, Monsieur,” he said, “that may help us, and give us this proof.”
“What is that?” Larue had a wry smile on his face, as if he already knew what he was about to say.
Martín sat up straight and looked directly into Larue’s eyes. “We still have Beagle 4. While whoever it is controls the feed from Clarke, we have no hope of them slipping up again. But ESA controls the rover, which is equipped with high resolution cameras and microphones.”
“Our maximum resolution being?”
“Beagle can read a book from one kilometre,” Martín found himself grinning, “and can travel at roughly two hundred metres per hour. We can follow them pretty closely, and they should always be within sight as long as the atmosphere is clear. All we need is to hope that Beagle is still up to the task.”
Larue gave a short laugh. That the people behind the cover up were able to control time and data feeds on the Clarke was one thing, but control over Beagle was something else entirely. “I trust you quite a bit, Martin, and based on your recommendation alone I signed off the Beagle mission route changes Jacqueline Thomas put through several days ago.”
“And?”
“You know that Beagle mission routes are planned months, even years in advance. It’s entirely possible that the route change you requested would only be executed in the middle of next year. Normally, that is.”
“Normally?”
“I have just been in contact with the Beagle control room in England, who confirm that Beagle is approaching the edge of Hellas Basin once more. I may be old and on my last legs,” Larue confided. “But I am not stupid. As soon as the request to change Beagle’s route came through I understood why you had recommended it. Putting Beagle in sight of the Mars landing will give us a direct feed, as you say. I had no idea about the time-delay you and Jacqueline Thomas discovered, but with this we will be in a position to prove it conclusively.”
“And then?”
Larue thought about this for a second. “Having information like that is a risky business. There are two schools of thought: either keep it and use it to your advantage, or give it away to as many people as possible and spread the benefit. With the former, you gain the most but also run a greater personal risk. With the latter you gain the least, but you also minimise risk.”
They sat in silence for at least a minute. The pitter-patter of rain drops began against the triple glazed windows.
“Risk,” Martín said echoing Larue’s intonation “doesn’t sound good.”
“Absolument,” Larue said with a raised eyebrow. “If someone’s gone to the trouble they have to hide the mission from us, what will they be prepared to do to protect that secrecy?”
Chapter 29
Captain Marchenko pressed down on the accelerator with his boot, sending Herbie forwards at walking pace. As they crept away Dr Richardson looked over her shoulder at the open crates they had been cataloguing the contents of.
A little over two thousand meters away, Beagle’s mechanical arms seemed to wave goodbye to them as the on-board computer ran through some environmental tests and procedures. It was now standing in the same position in which it had been over a year earlier. Its missions for the last twelve months had been far from linear, and it had frequently crossed its own path on its travels. Each and every time it did it automatically took the opportunity to measure any changes. The Martian weather system had done little to change the terrain, save for few extra coats of fine dust and grit. An examination of the ground proved that, as expected, its past tracks had more or less been erased from the surface of the planet, unlike the eternal footprints of the first men on the Moon.
Beagle’s five forward-mounted eyes, consisting of one long range high-resolution video camera and four smaller still image cameras, watched Herbie as it left towards the horizon. After thirty-two minutes and twelve seconds precisely, the two passengers exited the vehicle, which was parked next to the MLP. Re-focusing, the high-resolution camera adjusted its viewing angle by a fraction of a degree, and captured the smile on the man’s face through his visor as he gestured for the woman to enter the building first. Zooming out, the camera reported back to the on-board computer that the building was exactly four thousand four hundred and six metres away. It hadn’t been there when it had last mapped the terrain, and it duly noted the location and nature of the phenomenon.
Beagle retracted its mechanical arms slowly, folding them against its smooth sides, neatly above the four rows of wheels that had already helped the rover travel over six hundred kilometres on the Martian surface.
The computer had processed and stored the departure of the two people and their vehicle on its internal drives, and had completed its assessment of the surrounding environment.
Its current status and environmental report had already been transmitted to a satellite orbiting Mars, ready for its receipt by the ESA controllers on Earth.
While it waited for their response, Beagle busied itself with some more soil samples. The thin coating of dust that had gathered around it was new and, therefore, interesting.
Chapter 30
Remind me again, why did we come here?” Danny complained as he shook the dust from his boots and placed them against the wall of the MLP. A thick layer of light-brown powder covered the floor within several feet of the airlock. “Atchoo!” he pretended to sneeze and shook his head dramatically, before making his way over to the kitchen area where Jane had already joined Montreaux in preparing the evening meal.
“Because for thousands of years, humans have looked up at the heavens and wondered what it would be like to be on the other side, looking back at Earth, and because we won’t be happy until we’ve looked back at Earth from as far away as is humanly possible.” Jane said without looking up from the tray of hydrated food she had just pulled out of the processor. “And because the food is so good, of course.”