A Face in the Crowd

He didn't dream in the Big Sleep. It was like one long blink. The scenery had changed in that the stars looked different. His throat was dry and his first attempt to talk was a failure. They'd warned him about that. Six months of a medically induced coma would atrophy his vocal cords and he's have to ease back into it. They don't tell you that in the movies. The movies could call it bio-stasis or suspended animation all they wanted, but when it came down to it, it was simply a medically induced coma. His suit hung off him loosely. Their bodies were "fed" nutrients by the computer, but without actual food, he'd lost a lot of weight. He felt weak. His legs trembled when he tried to stand on his own. The doctor signed to him to take it easy. Doc must have been a recent revival also; he still had no voice, either.

Interplanetary travel was not as glamorous as it was made out to be. Scientist Marc Jennings could attest to that. Half a year in suspended animation felt like having a hangover during a bout of the flu with laryngitis.  He hobbled slowly over to the port, steadying himself against the bulkhead as he glanced outside the ship.

Mars, in all its orange glory, hung brightly in the black void of space. Jennings couldn't stop his eyes from welling a bit. After all the training, the preparation and the tearful goodbyes, he had finally made it. Fifty-five million miles. It was the chance of a lifetime for Jennings and his fifteen fellow explorers, going where no one had gone before.

It would be another four or five days before they actually reached the Red Planet. One by one, the travelers would be woken up, in order of their importance. Doc came first, then as mission commander, Jennings. Getting named head of the mission was no more difficult than simply pulling the longest straw. That and maybe his proclivity for keeping tempers under control when arguments broke out.

Mars. It was like a dream come true for Jennings. As a kid he'd watched scratchy reruns of old Buck Rogers television shows and replays of the Moon Landings. Those far off spacemen, real and fictional, were his heroes. Now, he was flying in their space wake. Jennings said a quiet prayer of thanks for the late Benedict Mathers.

Benedict Mathers was a billionaire with the money and the determination to unveil the dirty secret of NASA.  There was evidence of intelligent life on Mars and NASA and the US Government was hiding it. In 1976, the Viking 1 Mars orbiter relayed picture back to Earth of the Martian surface. Staring up from the hills of Cydonia was a distinctive face. Another photo taken many orbits later and from another angle continued to show evidence of The Face. There was wild speculation how such an obviously artificial structure could be found on an uninhabited planet so far from Earth.

As a teenager, Mathers was enthralled with the prospect of life developing on Mars. He devoured book after book on the subject, both speculative and scientific. as he developed his first television station into a global ruling media empire, Mathers was determined that he would find out the truth. Even after NASA declared after the 2001 Mars Global Surveyor sent back sharper and higher resolution photos that it was all a trick of light, Mathers knew there was something mysterious on that distant planet and he was going to uncover it.

It took most of his fortune, countless favors and every bit of determination to see his project through to fruition. In the end, it was probably what killed him. Fortunately, his two sons rode the same rocket fins as their father. The project would go on. In July 2026, fifty years after the original Viking 1 photographs were transmitted to Earth, Jennings and his crew arrived in orbit around Mars. Together they would be the first to step onto the coral sands of mighty Mars.

"It's beautiful, isn't it?" Doctor Johansson asked in a shaky whisper. Jennings nodded and reluctantly turned away from the port. There was a lot of work to do before they could make their way to the surface. The rest of the crew would have to be revived and allowed to recuperate from the journey. Mathers would be proud of how this turned out, and even more proud that his granddaughter, Corinna, had joined the journey and would be among those who explored the planet.

The one-quarter artificial gravity of the ship felt far heavier on this wobbly legs. Jennings moved to the center of the medical bay and checked the vitals on the slumbering humans behind the opaque glass of the travel pods. Everyone seemed to be in good health. It was time to wake them up.

There was supposed to be a specific order to the wakening process, but as commander, Jennings could change it as the needs arose. Corinna would be first. Not only as the granddaughter of his greatest benefactor, but also as his greatest Muse. She dared him to believe, and that little bit of nepotism had also shortlisted him to the crew tryouts. It may have been the fact they were lovers that he made it into the tryout, but his abilities far surpassed the fringe benefits from his personal life.

Corinna was also the lead geologist on the crew. She would be able to tell immediately whether the Face was a natural occurring phenomenon or carved and chiseled by an intelligent species. She's also want to see the planet up close to see exactly where they needed to land to keep themselves safe from the elements and close to their work area.

Jennings heart beat quicker and he had a renewed rush of energy. They were so close to the goal, so close to unveiling the mystery of the Red Planet. Had their ancestors been space-faring extraterrestrials, Atlanteans who had conquered the skies and space, a simple freak rock formation, or the cruel joke of a bored analyst at Goddard? Marc Jennings was going to be the first human to walk on Martian soil. For that alone, the trip was worth all the sacrifices.

Doc saw Jennings heading for Corinna’s cryogenic tube and made a beeline for him. Doc grabbed Jennings by the arm and worked hard to formulate the words in his throat before he could get them out. Jennings could tell by the stammering look on Doc’s face that he had something on his mind.

“No,” was all that Doc could get out before he let out an exasperated sigh and grabbed the communication tablet each crew member was assigned. Vocal paralysis was an expected side effect of the coma and the mission had made provisions for allowing crew members to communicate in those few days when talking wouldn’t be so easy.

Doc started to tap on his tablet with enthusiasm and didn’t look up until he was done. Jennings expected the message and gave a look of frustration as soon as he got done reading it.

“You know that you have to thaw out Booker first.”

Booker Phillips was the lead engineer and the only guy who really knew how to fly the ship. The protocol for reviving crew members had Doc going first, then Jennings and then Booker. Doc was always panicky because he knew that Jennings could not maintain the ship on his own. With the mission so close to touchdown, Doc was on extra high alert.

Jennings just looked at Doc and frowned with a look that he really didn't care what the other man thought. Jennings was the flight commander and he wanted his muse by his side as soon as possible. Jennings went back to Corinna’s tube, but Doc grabbed his arm again and then started typing into his tablet.

“You’re thinking with the wrong head.”

If Jennings ever wanted to punch a doctor, that was the moment. The thawing process took eighteen hours to complete and the ship was only able to thaw one crew member at a time. Even after the crew member was thawed out, it can take a day or two to get back on his feet and become operational. Jennings was still feeling the effects of being aroused from his coma and he knew just how long it really took for someone to feel useful after being thawed out.

Jennings waved Doc off and started Corinna’s process. Once the process was started, it could not be stopped. Too much energy siphoned off at one time could cripple the ship. Jennings darted a look at Doc and went back to staring out the window at the surface of Mars. Doc saddled up next to him and resumed staring as well.

Jennings pulled out his tablet and started typing out a comment to Doc.

“It’s not as red as I imagined it would be.”

Doc just nodded and tried to force a smile. Whether Doc liked it or not, Jennings was team leader and everyone was going to be stuck in space for a long time together. Holding grudges over breaches in protocol did not benefit anyone.

Jennings had decided that he was done staring for the moment and headed over to the food preparation area to try and eat some real food. There was a different kind of real food for each stage of the recovery process. If you tried to skip right to the cheeseburgers, your stomach would hate you for weeks. The doctors on Earth were extremely clear on all of that. Jennings started to look at the Phase 1 food when a loud bang was heard. The ship vibrated violently and then slowly moved to the left. Some alarms went off and the ship started to right itself.

“Dammit!” Jennings thought to himself. “That has to be the oxygen tanks again! I thought they fixed that on Earth.”

Jennings knew how to stabilize the tanks, but he wasn’t sure how to initiate a full repair. That was Booker’s expertise. Dammit! Maybe Jennings was thinking with the wrong head. Doc glanced at Jennings in a manner that suggested there was an echo. They were on the same page now. He should have thawed out Booker first. But even if they had, it wouldn’t solve the immediate crisis.

“It happened yesterday, too,” Doc typed on his communication tablet. “The noise.”

Jennings grimaced. He wasn’t sure if the fact that it happened yesterday was good or bad. On one hand, it could mean that it’s a minor issue. Like an air pocket in a hydrogen booster on a car. On the other hand, it could mean the the ship was falling apart and by the time Corinna was awake, they’d all be dead.

That’s when the real terror hit him: He might never get laid again. He looked over at Doc, who must have been able to hear his thoughts or something because Doc was shaking his head “no.”

“Might as well eat,” Jennings tapped on his tablet.

Doc nodded and headed to food prep. He’d been awake over twenty-four hours so he was on Phase 3 already food-wise. That mean solids. Fruits and vegetables. But no meat yet. Still, it was a huge step up from the porridge Jennings would be forcing down. Porridge reminded Jennings of flavorless vomit. He was never sure if it being flavorless was a good thing or a bad thing.  After nearly six months of eating through a tube in his left forearm, though, Jennings decided it was an upgrade. But, what he wouldn’t give for an orange.

After dinner or breakfast or lunch or whatever — the concept of meal time got fuzzy in space — Jennings tapped Doc on the shoulder and started to walk towards the propulsion lab. He was hoping against hope that the noise they had heard was not the oxygen tanks as he had suspected, but rather something innocuous. He was thinking that anything innocuous wouldn’t make that type of racket, but he was hoping nonetheless.

“Been back here yet?” Jennings asked the doctor as they headed through the doors to the propulsion lab.

“No. Too tired when woke up. Still tired. How you have energy?” Doc tapped back. Doc usually spoke in full sentences but tapping letters on the tab while walking was apparently not something he was adept at.

Through the second and third set of doors to the lab the space pioneers went, walking past the central computer system, capable of running the whole ship without human help, excepting for starts and stops. After the CCS was the coolant field, which prevented the ship from overheating and blowing up. And after that, the oxygen tanks, which provided both air for the space travelers to breathe and fuel for the propulsion system.

Looking at the oxygen tanks everything looked fine to Jennings. They were all there. Twenty-four of them. They were tall. And silver. Lights were all on. There wasn’t anything blinking or flickering or buzzing. They looked fine.

Doc pointed to the CCS access point. Jennings nodded then waved his tablet at the access point. Entering the passcode into his tablet, he could run a diagnostic on the oxygen system. Now if only he could remember the passcode.

A message popped on his screen: “It’s oxygen … dumbass”

Seriously, the fact that Doc could seemingly read his mind was a bit disconcerting to Jennings. Was he that easy to read? Jennings starts to tap the passcode in — O X Y — when he swore he saw something move out of the corner of his eye.

Judging by the look on Doc’s face, he saw it too.

Jennings studied the shadows of the module. Nothing moved, but the orange tinge to the light gave every shade of darkness a sinister presence. He shook his head, thinking that the vision issues could very well be linked to the extended time in suspended animation. It would probably explain why Doc apparently saw the same thing. Jennings turned his attention back to the oxygen tanks. The readings all came back fine. Five by five. He turned back to Doc, who shrugged. Jennings disconnected from the CCS and moved to relocate to the forward bay where he could get a better look at the planet outside. As they stepped through the hatch, the ship lurched violently to the right, sending both men into the bulkhead and floor. Jennings gasped and pulled himself to his feet. Again the ship lurched. The last thing he saw as the blackness overtook him was the same leonine face as the Face scrambling out of the hatch behind them.

*   *   *

Jennings stood frozen in the middle of a vast orange plain. He was in his bio-suit on the surface of the planet. His brain rebooted around the same nagging question over and over again. Where was he and how did he get here? The last thing he remembered was the ship lurching and falling into the bulkhead. And that face. It was so much like the Face from the 1976 NASA photos, but it wasn't rock and it wasn't from a picture. It was alive, whatever it was. And now he was here. What had happened in the intervening time? His name echoed in his earpiece. A louder, firmer attempt pulled him from his reverie.

"Jennings!" Joanne Garvey's voice scratched through the radio. Garvey? How much time had he lost? Garvey was the last to be revived according to the manifest. And she was talking and walking on the planet. Somehow, he had lost a month of time. What the hell had happened on the ship? Why could he remember nothing of that last month?

"Jennings!" Garvey roared, driving the radio speaker to the edge of its capacity. He turned toward the suited figure he figured was most likely the scientist. There weren't a lot of identifying marks to differentiate between people in the suits and it was even more difficult when your own presence was deeply mystifying.

"Garvey." he replied calmly. The scenery was hard to fathom. He was on the surface of Mars, a planet that held the dreams of so many people throughout history back on Earth. He was one of the first people to trod these sands. One of the first? He should have been the first. It was one of the most important dreams of his own life and now he didn't even remember it. The automated cameras on the lander obviously would have recorded the event and transmitted it back to Earth. What were his first words as his foot made its imprint in the Martian soil? Were they as deep and meaningful as Armstrong's. Would it make Neil proud to have a person such as Jennings following in his proverbial footsteps? He'd have to study the footage with his next allotted computer time.

"Thank God you're back. It was you were in your own little world for a moment there. I've studied the outlying rock formations along that ridge," she pointed to the feature only about fifty yards away.  All our reading show that water once flowed along here, which agrees with what the Rover found back on '12. The Face should be just about a kilometer or so further in that same direction. We'll never get our rover over that ridge, so we'll have to carry everything ourselves and hoof it."

"Sounds like fun." Corinna chimed in. Thank God she was here. Maybe she could enlighten Jennings on recent happenings. The five suited explorers turned as a single unit and began the slow, meticulous trudge toward the artifact that brought them all to a distant planet. While they were all overly excited to get to the Face, Jennings knew that every little piece of the planet would enthrall the bunch of them, especially for Corinna as the geologist. Jennings' attention started to wane as daydreams filled his thoughts. What would they find when they got to the site? Would there be evidence of an advanced intelligent civilization? To Jennings, the Face was going to his Kilroy moment. Anything less than a direct link to ancient Atlantis and the true origin of the modern human race would be depressing.

The pink sky suddenly blinked several times, flashing a light across the horizon. It reminded Jennings of being in the dance club. The four suited figures in front of him never paused in their quest. They must not have noticed it, or his imagination was working overtime.  Again the sky flashed and a pair of shadows moved at the periphery of his vision. He whipped his head in that direction. A sudden chattering filled the earpiece speaker in his helmet. Again the team ahead of him never missed a step. The chattering grew louder. Jennings slammed his hands to the sides of his helmet in a useless gesture. Still the sounds continued. He moaned. With an active radio link, his team finally paused and turned toward their leader. Corinna took a sudden step toward him. At her second step, her head whipped in the same direction as Jennings had just looked.

"Did anyone see that?"

"What the fuck is going on? It's like back on the ship just before Doc ejected himself out the airlock in the escape pod. There is definitely something going on," Garvey said suddenly filled with fright and dread. "I can hear that sound again, too."

Jennings, apparently getting the worst of the chattering, dropped to his knees. A cloud of sanguine dust rose gently in the near-absent atmosphere and covered his suit. He wanted the noise to stop. He screamed into his microphone. The multiple voices in this head silenced for a moment then resumed with only one voice. It was a language like he had never heard before, but it had a definite, structured pattern. Some of the words sounded to Jennings like an old form of Greek or Aramaic, yet nothing made any sense. The voice grew agitated, like a pleading or warning. He closed his eyes, trying to concentrate on the sounds invading his temporal lobe. Nothing made any sense, but he could feel that the jibberish coming at him was a warning to go no further.

"There! I see something!" David Henderson cried. Henderson was the crew biologist and backup doctor. Well, now he was the main doctor after Doc's accident.He swung his camera up in an attempt to capture the cause of the movement digitally.

"You're all nuts! What are you seeing or hearing?" Hodge Hartley demanded. He stood the farthest from the group, only half turned away from the direction of the Face. Among the others, he was considered to be the hardest to get to know and the most standoffish crewman. Yet, he was likely the world's foremost expert on ancient megalithic structures, such as Stonehenge and the Sphinx. It was his professional opinion that the Sphinx actually dated to 10,000 BCE rather than the Third Dynasty of Egypt like most Eqyptologists believed. It was his utmost belief that ancient Martians fled their dying planet and came to Earth where they were partially lost in history, remembered only as fragmented stories of Atlantis.

"How can you not hear that?" Garvey asked. "It's melodic and haunting at the same time. Beautiful. Almost like song."

"Syrens ready to lure you to your death," Hartley scoffed.

"Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! I can't think. I can't hear my own thoughts with all your babbling! Just shut up." Jennings wailed. Corinna knelt next to him and rested her hand across his shoulders. Jennings was rocking in his crouch and started to hum a song along with the voice that was in his ears.

"My God. You people are delusional. Get off your knees and let's get back to the job we were sent here to carry out. There's nothing out there but the greatest mystery in human history, ready to be solved." Hartley said. He turned back to the path they had been taking. Garvey yelled after the receding silhouette. Hartley waved his arm and kept moving away. The others turned their attention back to Jennings, the voices and the fleeting movement at the edge of their vision.

"We're never going home!" Jennings screamed and dropped face first to the ground. Garvey and Corinna rolled him over to his back. Jennings' blue eyes stared unblinking into the sky. Corinna hurriedly checked his bio-signs on his chest. He was still breathing, but was completely unresponsive.  Garvey shook the team leader. There was no change.

"Marc! Can you hear me?" Corinna asked. She attempted to shake him back into consciousness. Jennings' lips started to move, but no sound came through the speaker. From the speakers came a burst of static and a scream.

"That was Hartley!" Henderson cried. He trotted off in the direction Hartley had taken. He stopped abruptly and dropped to his stomach. "There's something standing right over there!"

"Where? I don't see it?" Garvey questioned.

"Right there!" Henderson pointed at a house-sized rock about a hundred yards to the left of the group.

"Get up, Marc!" Corinna pleaded. She and Garvey pulled him to his feet. Somehow Jennings' legs moved of their own accord and they were able to hustle together over the slight rise. They followed Hartley's footprints toward the Face. Even in their rush they could just see the edge of the ridge that formed the edge of the anomaly.  Hartley was nowhere to be seen. The chattering once again filled their headsets with a renewed fervor, progressively growing louder the closer they got to the ridge.

Garvey screamed into her headset, “Hartley!” With Jennings temporarily out of commission, everyone looked to Garvey to lead the group. Truth be told, Jennings hadn’t been much of a leader throughout the entire mission. Ever since everyone had been thawed out, Jennings spent all of his time staring out into the Martian horizon in the direction of the Face. Corinna knew that Jennings’ first words when he landed on Mars were important to him. That is why she didn’t understand why he said what he said.

It was Jennings who was to be first on the surface of Mars, yet he kept pushing ahead of people in the decompression chamber like a school child butting ahead in line. Garvey made sure that the cameras were rolling when Jennings put the first human footprint on Mars. Jennings slowly turned back towards the ship and just said “Now it is full circle.”

What the hell did that mean? Henderson even asked Jennings what the hell it meant and Jennings just smiled and started slowly walking towards the Face. It was Garvey who kept everyone to their schedule and got everyone back on the ship when they were supposed to. Garvey and Corinna had to practically drag Jennings back to the ship as he reached for the Face and started mumbling something in a strange language.

After a month of studying the surface and the atmosphere, the five-man crew decided to start plotting their course for the Face. As they moved away from the ship, Jennings started to mumble louder and louder and then collapsed. When Jennings came around, he was yelling about voices and seeing things in the rocks. As if that wasn’t bad enough, everyone else was hearing and seeing things too.

Garvey helped Corinna rest Jennings against a large rock and then she looked at Henderson. “David, we have to go see what happened to Hartley.”

Henderson was a biologist and had no desire to be Indiana Jones, but he knew that Garvey was right. Henderson sheepishly nodded to Garvey and then hoisted his shoulders, which then dropped with an audible sigh. “Fine, it isn’t like I have anyplace else to go,” Henderson responded.

Garvey went back to Corinna and Jennings to check on them. Jennings had stopped just staring and was mumbling again. Garvey just looked at Jennings, who was looking right past everyone, and then she looked over to Corinna to make plans to find Hartley.

“Look, Corinna, David and I need to go see what happened to Hartley. You stay here with Jennings and make sure that he is okay.”

Corinna nodded and she looked into Jennings’ face. As Garvey took one last look at Jennings, she could hear his mumbling start to mimic something that sounded vaguely like English. He started mumbling the same two words over and over again and staring past Garvey and Corinna.

“Gobekli Tepe. Gobekli Tepe. Gobekli Tepe.”

Corinna looked at Garvey and both women had confused looks on their faces. Garvey almost looked like she knew what Jennings was saying, but it also looked like she didn’t think it made any sense. Garvey started to think out loud as the other voices and noises in the headsets stopped when Jennings started to mumble those two words.

“Gobekli Tepe? That sounds really familiar. I think Hartley was talking about something like that when we were on the ship. Hey Booker, can you look up what we have on Gobekli Tepe?”

Booker was always aboard the ship because that was his domain. He was a pilot, engineer and consoling friend, but he was not a research scientist. He was very familiar with the ship’s library, but he had no idea how to look up details. Booker chimed in with a response to Garvey.

“How the hell do you spell that?”

Garvey stopped for a moment and caught herself before giving a terse response. She realized that she had no idea how to spell it either.

“I don’t know. Just guess. Let me know what you find.”

“10-4.”

Suddenly there was more static and another scream over the headset radios. Garvey recognized the scream instantly.

“Henderson!”

She looked over and David Henderson was gone. Garvey, Jennings and Corinna were alone on the surface of Mars, something was hunting them, and no one had any answers.

Suddenly and without explanation, Jennings stood up and started walking towards the Face again. He looked back at Garvey and Corinna.

 “You ladies coming? Or what?” Stunned, the pair looked at each other and followed Jennings toward the face, which, of course, was also the direction Hartley and Henderson had gone. After a few minutes of radio silence, Booker jumped on the comm.

 “Welcome back to the land of the living, chief. What was that Gobekli whatever you were mumbling?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about, Booker,” Jennings retorted. “You hitting the sauce again?”

Corinna chimed in, “Marc, just a few minutes ago you were mumbling something. The only part I could make out was ‘Gobekli Tepe,’ which I’ve heard or seen before. What does it mean?”

Jennings shrugged. “I think you’re hearing things.”

“Hartley, Henderson, where you boys at,” Jennings asked.

“Captain Jennings, they. Um. I think we lost them,” Garvey said.

Jennings trotted along without a word, the ship's women in tow.

“Hartley, Henderson, come in,” Jennings said.

Corinna grabbed Jennings by the right forearm and spun him around. “Marc. We need to all get on the same page here. You flipped out. You started mumbling. And Hartley and Henderson both went over the horizon and screamed. We’re pretty sure they’re dead.”

Jennings stared into Corinna’s eyes. Silent. 

“I think we should go back to the ship and regroup. Figure out just what the hell happened to you. Where you went," she continued.

“No!” Jennings said calmly but forcefully. “We’re going on. We’re going to find Hartley and Henderson.”

Jennings ripped away from Corinna and continued walking. Silently. Purposefully.

Booker broke the silence about five minutes later. “I found it, guys. Gobekli Tepe. It’s an archeological site in Turkey. Made of of 200 pillars in - get this - circles.”

“Now it is full circle?” Garvey asked to Corinna.

“No,” Jennings deadpanned. “Now it is time to find Hartley and Henderson.”

“I don’t get it,” Garvey said. “I don’t think either one of them had gone this far. It seems to me like we should have come across them by now.”

“No,” Jennings deadpanned again. “They’re up ahead. With Doc.”

Clearly agitated, Corinna said, “Marc … Doc is gone, too. Remember, he took an escape pod out the airlock before we landed?”

“Yes,” Jennings said. “He’s up ahead. With Hartley and Henderson.”

In a sense, Jennings was correct. The trio found Doc’s pod shortly thereafter. And Doc was there. Well, what was left of him. He appeared to have been eaten. So had Hartley and Henderson.

“Okay,” Corinna said. “I’m going to ignore the fact that you knew Doc was here. And let’s just get back to the ship.”

“Yeah. Let’s,” Garvey chimed in.

“No! We go on,” Jennings retorted.

At this point, Corinna and Garvey weren’t sure who or what Jennings was. They weren’t sure whether to follow him for his own protection or retreat back to the ship for theirs. Jennings wasn’t waiting for them. He trudged onward.

Corinna yelled after him again. Garvey looked poised to retreat back to the lander, but stuck close by Corinna. She would follow her lead. Corinna struggled with her decision, but ultimately followed her partner toward the towering ridge of the Face. Garvey sighed and brought up the rear.

At the base of the ridge, Garvey could see a perfectly rectangular opening. Obviously it was nothing natural. Was Mathers right after all? It was almost like a doorway into the bottom of the Face. Jennings was making a beeline directly toward it.

"Sweet Mother of God." Garvey muttered. As the trio closed in on the opening, they were able to discern what appeared to be cuneiform writing all along the ridge as far as they could see. Definitely not a natural feature. Ahead, Jennings started muttering again and waved his hand ritualistically before disappearing into the darkness of the opening. Corinna quickly followed.

As Garvey entered the Face, all sounds changed. Suddenly she could hear footsteps crunching in the dust ahead and the rustling of the bio-suits. There was atmosphere in here. It seemed impossible, but those sounds could not exist in a vacuum. She checked her suit readouts. Puzzlingly, the sensors continued to show complete vacuum. The walls of the passage were carved straight from the bedrock of the planet and were obviously ancient. Stress cracks cut off some of the writing along the walls. Jennings halted abruptly. He was staring at something on the wall. Garvey edged past Corinna cautiously and peered over his shoulder.

There as a series of pictograms on the section of the wall directly in front of them. Carved into the wall was a very recognizable rendering of Mathers I Explorer, the very ship they had arrived in from Earth. Also shown was the crashed pod of Doc as well as close approximation of the path they had taken to the Face from their lander. Garvey felt a bead of sweat roll down the side of her neck. She absently brushed at it, forgetting she was sealed in her suit.

"How the hell could this be?" she thought. Their arrival at this location at this moment was carved into a wall that couldn't possibly exist, by beings far older than ever known, in a time so distant that the trio's ancestors hadn't even come down yet from the trees. The probability made it virtually impossible that these depictions could be carved. Jennings tapped the image of a man. There were three people's faces staring back at them. They were without a doubt, perfect images of the three of them, Jennings, Garvey, and Corinna, staring out of the rock at them. Jennings turned toward his two fellow explorers.

"Full circle." he stated. He smiled and moved to break the seal of his helmet. Corinna screamed and lunged forward to stop him. With a preternatural quickness, Jennings shoved her away and ripped the helmet from his head. Garvey couldn't move in time as Jennings' head reared back. His mouth opened wide and snapped shut as his lungs fought to find air. Garvey stumbled backwards, falling as she met resistance from the opposite wall. Corinna's screams continued to fill the radio speakers. Jennings dropped to his knees and fell to his back. His lips peeled back from his teeth in an odd grimace. His blue eyes focused on a spot along the ceiling beyond Corinna. The last thing he saw as the blackness overtook him was the same leonine face as the Face peering over him.

*   *   *

"Doc." Jennings croaked. The ship was settling back into its natural rhythm after the latest jolt. He pulled himself up from the decking. Doc, across the passage from him, wiped at a trickle of blood from his forehead.

"I'm okay," Doc whispered.  The two men steadied themselves and moved into the forward bay. The large window was uncovered after the long journey. From launch until arrival, it had been covered and protected by a shield. As part of the arrival sequence, the computer had woken Doc and ejected the shield simultaneously. Jennings and Doc stood before the bay gazing on their destination.

Mars was beautiful, more beautiful than any of the photos relayed back from any of the probes. It was more beautiful than anything they had ever seen through telescopes. In all its natural beauty, the planet was countless shades of oranges, reds, gray and white. Seeing in person was far more impacting than mere photographs or video. And that impact would only be greater once they set foot on the surface.

"All our sensors indicate there is absolutely nothing anywhere on the planet. It's completely dead. I've pinpointed the old rover and one of the landing explorers. They're close enough for us to gather the last bit of power from their cells and strip anything of value for any repairs we may encounter." Jennings' tablet beeped with a message from Doc.

"The Face?" Jennings replied.

"Nothing there. Simply a bald mesa like the Global Surveyor found back in 2001. There's nothing here. We came for nothing."

"Not for nothing. We may be the first, but we will not be the last."