If this is going to be part of a cover up, he thought, how likely is it we’ll be allowed to return home alive?
“What do we do now?” Danny broke the silence.
Montreaux looked over at him, hoping that the reinforced Plexiglas of his helmet did not reveal anything. “I have an hour of air left in this cylinder, how about you?”
“About the same. And we have three hours more in Herbie.”
“Dr Richardson,” Montreaux hailed her.
“Yes?”
Through the environmental interference on the com system, Montreaux fancied he could detect something odd in her tone, a hint of self-assuredness, of knowing, and suddenly an alarming thought materialised: was she in on it? Were they both? The dark thoughts crystallised, only making sense now, as he stood on the alien stone with the enormity of the situation staring him right in the face. Did either of them know of the cover-up because they were involved? He had a momentary flashback of Dr Richardson and Captain Marchenko the previous day, having one of their friendly arguments. As they did every day, he thought. He swallowed hard. Was he the only one not in on the cover-up? Was he going to be next?
“Captain?”
Danny’s voice came through faintly in his earpiece. He cocked his head and looked at the Russian. Suddenly extremely self-conscious, he realised that he must have been looking into space for quite some time.
“Yves, are you alright?” Jane sounded genuinely concerned.
He snapped out of his daydream in an instant. Nonsensical paranoid delusions, he concluded.
“Dr Richardson, you’d better put a hold on those steaks, for an hour or so.” He gestured towards the wall of the crater, to where the groove in the stone disappeared. “Captain Marchenko, let’s get some tools from Herbie and find out where this groove goes.”
From its viewpoint two thousand metres further along the edge of the Hellas Basin impact crater, Beagle watched the two figures ascend the crater wall. Using a high-resolution lens, it zoomed in on the black object, three hundred metres below, upon which they had been standing moments earlier.
The rover edged forward slowly, coming to a halt against a small round rock which hid most of its body from the direction of the MLP.
The lens re-focused on the object, picking out the grooves in its surface.
It started taking pictures.
Chapter 31
The rain came down in waves, lashing the flat sides of the tall building again and again. Bright halogen beams cut through the darkness from their source along the roofline of the building, reflecting against the drops of falling water on their way to the ground. A simple white door was the only noteworthy feature of the plain white walls. A group of tall palms bowed under the forces of nature, their flexible bodies saving them from the worst of the hurricane. In the distance, the roar of the disturbed sea was hardly perceptible above the sound of the rushing wind.
At the side of the building, a white van sat purring in the darkness, its headlamps dipped, waiting.
“So much for global warming,” the driver said, resentfully.
The percussive fall of rain on the van’s roof was almost incessant, save for the short bursts of very strong wind, when the water would be whipped back into the air before it had the chance to hit.
His passenger shivered and tucked his hands deeper into his coat pockets. “Warmer for some, though, isn’t it? Otherwise where do you think all this would be coming from?”
They both stared into the building’s courtyard and contemplated this. Suddenly, as if on cue, the driver turned off the engine and the heating. “Here comes another one, let’s get out of here.” He switched off the headlamps and rested his hand on the door release.
Outside, the howling wind reached its terrifying crescendo then dulled, the threat of its return lying oppressively in the air.
The men jerked open the van’s doors and slammed them shut behind them. As they ran towards the small door in the side of the building, the driver pointed his arm behind him and pressed a button on his keys, rewarded by the quick chirp of the van’s central locking system. His passenger had already reached the wall and was pressing the intercom button repeatedly.
The door gave a loud buzz and they pulled it open in unison. They were barely through the opening when the wind made its return, violently slamming the door behind them and making the frame shake. They had been outside for a few short seconds, and yet they were soaked through to the skin. The passenger stood motionless with his legs apart, leaning his body forwards and holding his arms out to his sides, frozen in the posture of a man who has just been punched in the stomach.
“My God!” he exclaimed. The water had already left his hairless scalp and most of it had made its way to his bearded chin, from where it dribbled to the floor with a patter.
They found themselves in a short corridor with another door at the far end, also secured by an intercom.
The driver shook his arms before running his hands through his short hair. “And to think people come here to retire.” He stopped in the middle of unzipping his coat. “Your bag?”
The passenger looked in disbelief at his own empty hands. He turned his head back towards the door and the raging storm outside. “Damn.”
“You’re kidding me, right?” he gaped, still halfway between taking his coat off and reluctantly putting it back on again. “I don’t get paid enough for this! Here, take my keys, you can go and get it.”
A few moments later, the passenger burst through the small door again, this time holding a satchel against his chest.
“Time for a drink,” he said.
“In this place? I think machine coffee is about as good as it gets!”
They walked towards the second door hastily and the passenger pressed the intercom button once.
“Coffee it is then,” he said.
Seth Mallus, dressed in an immaculate black suit, crisp white shirt and light blue silk tie, sat in a large executive chair at a large executive desk. In front of him, a letter-size notepad sat exactly perpendicular to the edge of the desk. A Mont Blanc pen lay on the pad, aligned to the margin, in which the day’s date had been written neatly and underlined: November 9th, 2045.
“Dr Patterson, how are things progressing?” he said to the dishevelled man who sat opposite him in jeans and short-sleeved shirt.
Patterson had been in the facility for barely half an hour, the time to quickly dry off, change and grab a terrible coffee, before their meeting had begun. He brought his hand to his chin and played with his beard briefly. It was well kept, but the silver-grey hue added at least a decade to his fifty-six years.
“Here are the latest transcripts, with the translations.” He slid the paper across the table. “They are consistent with the other transcripts; whatever happened to these –” he hesitated before saying the word, “– people, there was nothing they could do to stop it.” He flicked through his notes. “There is a lifetime of work here,” he gestured to the small folder on the table in front of him.
Mallus leaned forward in his chair and fixed his eyes intently on the man. “A lifetime can be long or short, Dr Patterson. You have been studying these texts for years now. How long will it take before you find out what I need to know?”