Ian Douglas - The Complete Heritage Trilogy - Semper Mars, Luna Marine, Europa Strike

Not that Garroway was that interested in watching the sere and barren Martian landscape; he’d seen quite enough of it already during the past two weeks, as the Marines had gotten themselves settled in. But the interiors of the habitats were all the same, and, roomy or not, they forced your attention inward, to your own thoughts and to the people you were with. The idea of another year or more locked up in close quarters with Mireille Joubert was not exactly a solid inducement to emigrate to Mars. She might be nice to look at, but she’d become strident and overbearing since they’d landed. Worse, she was wielding the opinion that she was in charge of the expedition’s science team like a weapon. Garroway generally tried to arrange things so that he could be where she wasn’t.

Sometimes though, like during these department-head meetings, that just wasn’t possible. Garroway had already decided his first day on the beach that the only way to keep his sanity over the next few months was to keep his head down and to say as little as possible. He allowed himself a private smile. The never-volunteer philosophy was generally the prerogative of enlisted men, rather than officers.

This was the worst such meeting he’d run into yet. He hadn’t heard the whole story, but he gathered that Alexander had done something to put Joubert really out of sorts. The discovery—four beings that looked human or damned close to it—would seem to have been worth whatever risk or shortcut the man had taken, but Joubert had been raking him over the coals for it.

The funny part was, he didn’t think she even had the authority to do so.

“A discovery of such potential,” Joubert said, “demands extraordinary care in just how the announcement is made to the general public.”

“We’re not suggesting a release to the public,” Alexander pointed out. “We’re talking about transmitting text and images of what we found to Mission Control. They can decide what to say, if anything.”

She rolled her eyes toward the chamber’s ceiling. “Please, David, don’t assume that I am stupid! I know how your press works…and your politicians. Transmitting this data to Earth is the same as plastering it all over every netnews download on the Web.”

“I don’t understand,” Graves said. “What do you want…for us to just sit on this find? To run more tests?”

“Yes, just what more would you suggest, Doctor?” Alexander asked reasonably. “We don’t have the equipment to run sophisticated tests, and I’m afraid that just touching those bodies will make them crumble away into dust.”

“For one thing, we should try to establish scientifically what all of you seem to be taking for granted…that the bodies are human and that they are associated with the Builders.”

“They’re inside that room,” Kettering said. He was leaning back in his chair, his arms folded across his chest. “The four of them looked like they were trying to claw their way right through that door. That looks pretty damned associated to me.”

“And you can’t seriously be suggesting that those bodies are not human,” Dr. Patricia Colt said. She was Cydonia Prime’s Life Sciences Department head, a rather broad job description that included the study of Martian parabiological soil chemistry, cataloguing microfossils, and running the base med lab.

“And why not?” Joubert replied.

“Everything we think we understand about xenobiology,” Colt said, “suggests that when we meet extraterrestrials, they will look nothing like us.”

“Hell, the big mystery that drew us here in the first place,” Alexander added, “was the Face…and the question of what the representation of a human face was doing here. The fact that we found humans in that room suggests some extraordinary possibilities. If nothing else, it suggests that humans were here when this place was built. And that was…when, Dr. Graves?”

“It depends on the dating method you use. Somewhere between four and five hundred thousand years, though, is a close guess.”

“The recordings shot by Dr. Alexander and his people,” Colt added, “suggest that these…these people are not fully modern humans. Their facial features, the brow ridges, the receding chins, they show some characteristics that I would associate with archaic Homo sapiens…or even with late Homo erectus.”

“In other words, people from half a million years ago,” Alexander put in. “To find them…here…. That suggests to me that extraterrestrials took an interest in humans—or in what one day would become humans. They visited Earth in the mid to late Pleistocene, picked up some specimens of our ancestors, and brought them here.” He laughed. “My God! We have here proof that there was direct interaction between the Ancients and the dominant hominid species on Earth half a million years ago. More than interaction! Those bodies are wearing uniforms and carrying devices that might be communicators or even small computers of some kind. There’s at least a possibility that our own ancestors had a hand in building some of what we’re seeing here, and it certainly casts an intriguing new light on the existence of the Face. We need to bring the rest of our colleagues back on Earth in on this as quickly as we can.”

“But that’s just where you are jumping to conclusions! Don’t you see? There are so many other possibilities!”

“Such as?…” Graves asked.

“Those bodies might not be human at all. They could be aliens.”

“Hardly likely, Doctor,” Colt said. “The chances of a separate evolution producing a species nearly identical—”

“Let me finish! They could be humans, certainly, members of some ancient, lost civilization, one that developed space flight long ago in our remote prehistory.”

Alexander snorted. “A global, highly technical civilization that leaves no trace of itself?”

“Our rise from the Stone Age spans, what?” Joubert said. “Six thousand years? Seven? The blink of an eye compared to half a million years.”

“Maybe. But in that ‘blink of an eye,’ as you call it, we’ve managed to pretty much tap out all of the easily accessible copper, tin, silver, gold, chromium…most of the elements necessary to produce a high-tech civilization. Not to mention draining most of the world’s oil fields, polluting and fishing out the seas, creating vast garbage dumps, heating up the atmosphere enough to start the polar caps melting and paving over whole forests. Even after half a million years there’d be signs left of that kind of activity.”

“It still seems at least as viable an explanation as what you seem to be suggesting, that we were…were tampered with by aliens. That is what you’re suggesting, is it not?” She made a face. “That smacks too much of the old ancient astronaut nonsense.”

Alexander folded his arms. “I’m no von Danikenist, if that’s what you mean. But Occam’s Razor seems to apply here. We have people, beings, if you will, who—”

“We don’t even know that those bodies have been here as long as the structures!” she said quickly, interrupting. “Those poor men could have been brought here in recent times, by members of an alien expedition.”

Alexander turned to the others, as several in the room groaned or chuckled. “In other words, ancient astronaut theories aren’t even worth considering, but we can begin seriously investigating UFO abductions!”

“My point, gentlemen, and Dr. Colt, is that there are far too many possibilities for us to make any snap judgments! We should not recklessly broadcast this information to Earth. We should investigate further, gathering data, assessing further finds, and proceeding in a thorough, professional manner. Not,” she added sharply, looking at Alexander, “conducting half-baked excavations on a whim. And not jumping to premature conclusions!”