“If we knew exactly what to expect throughout the Solar System, we would have no reason to explore it.”
Poul Anderson
American fantasy and science fiction author
November 25, 1926-July 31, 2001
Earth Outpost at Lyot
Region North of Deuteronilus Mensae, Mars
Thursday, October 15, 2082 (Gregorian Earth Calendar)
Sol Jovis, Kanya 5, 251 (Darian Mars Calendar)
You’ve not heard from me, Kate, previously in the history of the grand adventure that began the human occupation of Mars in earnest sixty years ago. My wife Jenny, and our daughters Celina and Celeste, have had a turn as the narrator in the compendium of tales that Mavis Buckley compiled. I hope you have enjoyed their telling of their exploits in this first volume, which we’ve called The Hydrogen Thieves.
In her later years, Mavis broached the subject of compiling the account. Jenny and the girls jumped at the chance to record their stories. But me—not my thing. Jenny encouraged me to share my story, but it’s not much different from hers. Sure, I was there with Jenny and the girls through all the scary excitement that took us to Mars and to Jupiter, surviving the first recorded space battle that almost stranded us in orbit around Europa.
But I’d prefer to stay in the background, not draw attention to myself. It’s gotten better in my seasoned years, and I work at being outgoing in small social groups, but too much attention scares the crap out of me.
A quiet background role could only last so long. Mavis passed last year at a ripe old one-hundred, and her last request of me was to at least pen a final chapter, not looking back, but briefly recording where we are now as a family. Well, I couldn’t refuse our lifelong leader and protector, and the first mayor of the Lyot Outpost.
A quick aside regarding that name. We have got to find a better name for our growing community. Mavis was insistent that we do not call it a colony, considering the historical connotations that designation carries. She became adamant on that topic when we made first contact with the indigenous life form on Mars. More on that later.
Now, at eighty-eight, I guess I can have something to say. The good news is, I don’t feel my age. Living on Mars has proven to be easy on the aging body, the joints in particular. I don’t envy the crews that have had to spend a major portion of their time on the orbiting station, living in the gravity wheel, staying in one-G shape if they ever want to return to Earth.
On that topic, the medicos have figured out how to mitigate bone loss and let us live long lives, as I know, but not how to have babies and raise children on Mars. Anyone wanting a family needs to live on the station with only brief visits to the surface.
Which brings me to my family. Celeste, always the adventurous one, is on board the Marius which was refit as a deep space exploration ship—no weapons this time. They are on a five-year mission to contact the beings discovered on Saturn, and hinted at residing on Uranus. Whether they get to Uranus depends on how long they remain at Saturn, in particular, exploring Titan. Regardless, they’ll be back in orbit around Mars in five or six years, orbital mechanics being what they are.
With Celeste are her husband, Marco, and their son, Jason. Until he was an adult, Jason lived on the orbiting station or one of the exploration ships. He’s truly a space baby, never having been to Earth and not visiting Mars until his eighteenth birthday. He’s not unique. More and more space born humans are living their lives in space, calling the cosmos home, only stopping at the “rocky balls” as Earth, Luna, and Mars have been called, when necessary.
As a Space Force lieutenant, Jason is the navigator on the Marius, but his first post was sitting at the helm of The Horns of Ammon on its voyage from Europa to Mars. Space Force had refit the abandoned ship with a gravity wheel, staffed it with a crew and brought it home.
The onboard AI, Seth, was happy to join the growing fleet of interplanetary explorers. I’m not sure where he was exposed to century old pop music, but when the crew arrived at Europa to bring the ship home, Seth happily greeted the rocket “persons” with a quote from Elton John, “It’s lonely out in Space, On such a timeless flight.”
I’ll miss the kids, but mostly I’ll miss my beloved wife, Jenny. She’s gone along on the Saturn expedition as what Jason lovingly calls her, The Ancient Mariner. It’s full circle for Jenny, meeting the entities she contacted sixty years ago with that first message Jessa translated. I couldn’t bear to ask her to stay, making that same sacrifice she made back in New Mexico. But she’ll be back, and Celina is here to keep me company.
One question that we’ve failed to answer in the last thirty years is why alien invaders selected Saturn, and more concernedly, Jupiter, to steal hydrogen—if that was in fact why they were here. Neptune, Uranus, the Oort cloud, are all much easier targets. Why expend the energy to drag the plentiful element up and out of the two most massive gas giants?
Theories abound in our scientific community. Were they here to “terraform” the planet and colonize Jupiter? Was it some other feature of these planets, such as radiation, their magnetospheres, and so forth, that attracted them? Were they going to turn Jupiter into a small sun and occupy the moons?
In the darker trenches, some believe they were not aliens from outside the Solar System at all, but were a separate faction within the indigenous population and we involved ourselves in a civil war. Some say that explains why the Jupiterians ignore our communications. It’s hoped that the Saturn expedition can find an answer.
Which brings me back to the indigenous life form we contacted here on Mars. I hope you will forgive my indulgence in a brief retreat into history. Please accept my apology if you’ve read parts of this story in other parts of this history, for Celina and I were not alone in experiencing this discovery.
The science team discovered the entities when weak, modulated signals interfered with communications between our outpost and the field stations in the Gale and Jezero craters, where the old Curiosity and Perseverance rovers are located. When we arrived home from Europa, the science team contacted Celina and me for help.
I’d seen the pattern before. It was eerily similar to the signals I built Jessa to analyze. They weren’t exactly the same, almost like a harmonization of what we detected from Saturn and what the team in New Mexico had found emanating from Jupiter.
So, Celina and I created Saphir to translate the signals. Saphir was not a clone of Jessa or one of her “offspring”, like Lexi and Seth. We built the new entity on a novel architecture and “taught” it the protocols by having it read the communications between Jessa and Lexi and the entities on Saturn and Jupiter. Saphir was capable of translations and communications in real-time.
When we established a communications link with Jezero crater, the results were startlingly immediate. An ancient energy being that existed in the briny substrate of the crater had contacted us. In the early stages, communication was confusing. At times, the entities would speak as one voice, at others as a choir of individuals. We were later to learn that the Martians existed simultaneously as thousands of individuals and as a collective. I realize that’s a parochial human term, but it was all we had until later.
We learned that billions of years ago, they’d been physical beings, living in the rivers, lakes, and swamps that covered Mars. As the planet dried, they transformed themselves to live as energy beings. In the last millennia of the change, they cast their essence into the solar wind, hoping their race would find new homes on the outer planets. They trusted their fate to the vagaries of that same wind that had stripped their planet of its atmosphere and water. When we told them of our journey to Jupiter, they rejoiced in their success, pleased their brethren thrived on Jupiter and Saturn, and expressed gratitude for our efforts to expel the Hydrogen Thieves.
While the rest of our family is off on their voyage, Celina and I have immersed ourselves in working with our new friends. They are guiding us to water and mineral resources. They hope we can establish reserves where they can try to resume their former physical selves, and we have agreed to respect their need for the briny substrates beneath the crater floors.
A new adventure awaits as we re-think how humans can settle and terraform Mars, living side by side with the locals who we now know call themselves Shimmery200.
THE END
Note: If you’d like to read more about the Shimmery Collective, please read Mars vs. The Invaders at wstevewilson.com. I hope you enjoy the tale.