Tevun-Krus #108 - International 7: The Big Bang!

α (part 2) - An English Story by @EvelynHail

α (part 2)

by EvelynHail
(Find part 1 of this story in Tevun-Krus #107)

Professor Barnaby sat down opposite the captain, and set the tea down without pouring.

"Go ahead," he murmured, in a tone that was intended to be confidential. "As I told you, we found the bodies in the Tharsis region. Specifically, we spotted them in a valley formed by the Arsia and Pavonis volcanoes.

"Which makes a lot of sense," he said. "I'm working on the hypothesis that these stones are volcanic rocks. They are, in fact, almost certainly.

"But it's not that simple. Along with those four bodies there were another thirty or forty thousand identical bodies. And not only were their measurements and appearance similar, but their arrangement was orderly. I don't know if you understand me. The bodies were neatly lined up and they were equally spaced apart."

Professor Barnaby rose from his seat and began to walk in circles in one of the few unoccupied spaces in the room, arms folded behind his back.

"Yes, I see what you're getting at. It's hard to explain something like that through natural phenomena."

"Exactly." The captain slapped his knees with his palms. His gaze was a little lost, her pupils were wet. "It is impossible to explain it in terms of physical or chemical reactions. At least, between inorganic substances."

"Wait, wait. Actually, our ignorance of the geomorphological characteristics of Mars is very great. So we cannot rule out the possibility that the arrangement of the bodies was a natural effect of erosion. Don't you think so?"

"I don't think so, doctor."

"And in principle," continued the scientist, "although we assume that the laws of Martian geophysics are very similar to ours, we cannot rule out that the bodies are the result of the solidification of the unpredictable magma of one of those two volcanoes.

"I don't think so, Doctor," repeated the star traveler.

"The contrary, Captain, would imply organic activity, or an intentional manipulation of those rocks. And that would represent..." The professor's voice registered a slight tremor. The greatest discovery that man has ever made about the genesis of life in the Universe: the existence of life, intelligent or not, on another planet.

"Listen to me, Dr. Barnaby, I'm just telling you what I saw. Those stones were perfectly distributed all along the red and dusty valley, in an order of thousands. As if they were a mighty army ready for combat. Or of the huge roads that the same army had built in the purest Roman style."

***

As it could not be otherwise, the following day was a day of enormous intensity.

Again, this time with even greater dedication, the professor concentrated on his experiments from the early hours of the morning.

The first thing he did, with the help of the mechanical man, was to place the samples, one by one, between the polarized plates of the radiometric measuring apparatus. Later, he transcribed what would be the first of many new notes.

8:39 ante meridiem - According to the isotope radiation levels of the Martian samples, they are 270 million years old. This is not an extraordinary dating for a rock, as it is known that on Earth we have dated some as much as 3.8 billion years old.

What is really unusual is that geological formations almost three hundred million years old are scattered on the surface of the planet, instead of being buried in a much deeper layer of sedimentation. The conversation he had had the previous evening with the captain of the MarsExplorer had renewed his motivation and spurred his enthusiasm. Those revelations gave him a new focus for his research, and now more than ever he was eager to get to the bottom of the mystery. If these questions could be solved without having to traverse space again, if they could be solved within the four walls of a small laboratory, he was certainly the man to do it.