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 The Lost Dawnby Stuart Atkinson Page 2 of 4 Really? Yes, really, and if you have a planetarium program which
allows you to place yourself on the surface of Mars, you can see
this amazing dawn for yourself Enter the date - July 20th, 2001
- and put yourself at the co-ordinates of the Viking 1 lander,
and tweak the time until the eastern sky is just beginning to
brighten with the approach of sunrise...
Now look. Just look at *that*. Oh my... I have an image in my mind, as clear as day. Somehow, somewhere along the line, history took a different turn, and we reached Mars in 1986, ten years after Viking 1 settled its circular feet onto the Red Planet's fine-covered surface. And as the dawn of "Viking Day" approaches a group of white-suited colonists is trekking across the star-lit sands towards the lander, which, like all the other man-made artefacts on Mars, has been restored and preserved by hard-working members of "Mars Heritage", a volunteer group set-up to protect and preserve both the planet's human history and its natural environment. There are a dozen or so in the group; almost half the colony's population have made the journey from the wagon-train like circle of habs to watch the sunrise, knowing that no-one, not even their far descendants, would ever see its like again. One of the figures crunching towards the lander is a mother, carrying in her arms a small child who has slept most of the way. Of the three children on Mars, her daughter is the youngest, naturally the one they all adore, and as the party reaches the lander they all, one by one, anxiously check on how the young girl has fared during the long hike from the rover. As the girl wakes, yawning and stretching inside her over-sized suit, the smiling colonists arrange themselves into a line, then turn, as one, to face the east. The eastern sky is glowing, the ebony blackness of the martian night shot through with flushes of violet, rose and umber as sunrise approaches. To the south-east, the stars of Orion shine like jewels, but Orion himself is tipped over at an unnatural angle, proof, if proof were needed, that they are on a different world. Mars' twin moons, Phobos and Deimos, blaze high above the toppled figure of the Hunter, each one as brilliant as a lantern. Helmet HUD's tell the colonists that Phobos is shining at magnitude -7.5, making it easily the brightest object in the sky... But this morning Phobos is a side-show, a mere distraction. This morning the colonists' attention is drawn towards the sky just above the eastern horizon, where Nature has chosen to reward their determination, bravery and spirit by putting on the sky show to end them all. Just above the horizon, two bright stars are blazing close together, one almost on top of the other. But these "stars" are in fact planets, and they are not alone; three more are shining above them. Standing there, the first men and women of Mars can see five of Mars' sister worlds flashing and blazing in an area of sky no larger than their outstretched hands. Closest to the horizon lies Mercury, a silvery magnitude -1.5 spark. Less than a finger's width above it shines Jupiter, just as bright. A zoomed-in HUD image shows the planet's cloud belts aligned perpendicularly to the horizon, and three of its four largest moons close by too. As one of the colonists near her laughs in surprise at the view, the young girl asks to be lowered to the ground, and nods in satisfaction as she feels her boots sinking into the tinkling duricrust. Copyright© 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002 Stuart Atkinson, sffworld.com. All rights reserved. No part of this may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the author. |
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