“Go on,” Anne urged.
“Well, you see, we on Earth had one big advantage when it came to going out into space. We had the Moon. Only around a quarter of a million miles away — a very short distance on an interplanetary scale. And big enough for space stations to be built, its lower gravity providing an excellent launch site for planetary exploration.
“Mars has only two very small satellites — Deimos and Phobos — neither anywhere as ideal as the Moon. A very low gravity, of course, but little more than large rocks.”
“So what were they doing with nuclear energy all those millions of years ago?” Clive spoke to no one in particular. “If they were such an advanced race, why have we found no ruins of their cities? After all, the Martian surface has been completely scanned over the last few decades and nothing has shown up.”
“Would you really expect anything?” Helen asked. As the geologist, she considered this her particular field. “If this site is at least two million years old, a lot can happen in that time. Violent winds and sandstorms occur over almost the entire surface. If there are any ruins left, you’d have to dig pretty deep to uncover them.”
By now they were approaching the far end of the room. Here there was more scientific equipment, all of which had been designed for purposes at whose nature they could not even guess.
It was Anne who drew their attention to a small triangular shelf which stood only a few inches above the floor.
“Look at this,” she exclaimed.
Clive shone the torchlight directly onto it. A thin layer of reddish dust covered it and on it were five strange objects unlike anything they had yet seen. All were identical, made out of crystal. A faint tracery of weaving light blurred the interior slightly and in the center hovered a weirdly pulsing sphere.
As far as they could determine there was nothing holding up the tiny globe suspended there. But even more intriguing were the two oval spaces in the dust indicating that two of these objects had recently been removed.
Anne reached out a hand towards the nearest. “Do you think we should take one of these back with us?”
“No!” Clive spoke more sharply than he had intended.
“Why not? I’m sure the nuclear physicists would be delighted to get their hands on one of these. It could advance our knowledge by centuries. Obviously the other two teams never managed to get one back.”
“Which is precisely why we must exercise caution. Either it was pure coincidence what happened to those other ships on the way back to Earth — or these were the cause of it.”
His words fell into an uneasy silence.
Finally, Anne persisted, “I still think we can’t afford to miss this opportunity to find out exactly what these are. We’re scientists and whatever they are, they’ve obviously been here for millions of years.”
She fumbled in her belt and unhooked the small radiation counter. Pushing it forward, she placed it close to the objects. There was no reading at all.
“Evidently they’re not radioactive.”
“Very well,” Clive nodded. “We’ll take one back with us.” Giving Vic a quick glance, he added, “But we exercise caution with it.”
The next five days were spent examining everything in the two chambers. Most of the machines were incomprehensible to them. Only one further piece of evidence was found which they could understand without any ambiguity. Engraved on a metal plate attached to one of the machines were several lines of Martian characters.
Underneath them were three odd symbols. The first two were identical consisting of a large sphere with a smaller one some distance from it. The third was merely a fuzzy patch.
After studying it for a few moments, Vic said, “There’s no doubt what that’s intended to represent since it’s in a universal language. It’s the equation for hydrogen fusion. The first two are hydrogen atoms, a proton orbited by an electron.”
“And that third symbol?” Helen asked. “It doesn’t seem to represent anything.”
“Certainly it does. It depicts the energy released by the reaction. Just think of it, a race possibly far in advance of our own that disappeared completely. Somehow, I doubt if there’s anything here which will tell us what happened and where they went.”
The take-off from Mars was uneventful. Acceleration tore at them as they lifted clear of the rust-red surface. Below them, the enigmatic escarpment receded swiftly as the planet dropped away into the void.
As on the two previous occasions, Clive had transmitted his report to Earth control telling that they had completed their mission successfully and had blasted off from Mars. Once they reached their maximum velocity, the artificial gravity on board matched that of Earth. After the lover gravity of Mars it took them a little while to acclimatize to it.
Now there was little for them to do but keep a close check on the life-support systems and examine the photographs they had taken inside the chambers. The alien artefact they had brought with them was securely stored in the hold. Both Anne and Helen were of the opinion that it was a highly advanced source of energy, possibly one utilizing cold hydrogen fusion.
Vic, however, was more dubious. He couldn’t shake off the feeling it was not only the reason why the Martians had apparently died out in a very short period of time, but also the reason those other two ships had failed to return to Earth. Yet, no matter how hard he tried, he was unable to put forward any plausible link between these events.
Three days out from Mars, he knew he had to check the ancient relic more closely. Mentioning his intention to the others, Helen and Anne were noncommittal but Clive was dead against it.
“We should leave it where it is until the experts back home take a look at it,” he insisted.
“I don’t agree. If it was the cause of the loss of those two ships the more we know about it, the better. If it is a weapon left by the Martians, we’d have known about it by now.”
Clive could see a number of flaws in the astronomer’s argument but it was obvious that both Helen and Anne were in agreement with Vic. “Very well so long as you all realize we’re dealing with an alien culture and science.”
Down in the hold, the lights came on automatically as they entered. It was not a really big space and apart from holding their food and water supplies, it was virtually empty.
The Martian artefact stood on a small shelf held securely in place by magnetic rods. Looking down at it in the harsh actinic light, Vic felt his eyes twist slightly out of focus as he tried to follow the hypnotically spiraling film of the faint gossamer-like sheen covering the inner surface.
Straightening, he said, “You know what that film is. It’s a plasma, highly ionized atoms held there by an intense electrical and magnetic field.”
“And that odd-looking globe of light in the middle?” Anne asked. “Any idea what that might be?”
The astronomer shook his head. “No idea at all.” He bent closer. “There’s also a small protrusion on the base here.” He touched it with his finger to indicate its position.
The next second, the tiny globe split into three, each glowing spark of light spinning away from the center, whirling about each other in a frenzy of seemingly chaotic motion. At the same moment, the ship gave a sudden violent lurch, throwing them all off balance.
“What the hell—?” Clive gasped. Somehow, he managed to steady himself.
Within a split second, the ship had righted itself and everything returned to normal. “Possibly the detectors picked up some object in our path and took avoiding action,” Clive said finally when nothing else happened. “But I’d better check the instruments.”