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 Message Home  (12 ratings)by Stuart Atkinson Page 6 of 6 "Today, whilst climbing the wall of the Mutch slopes, over to
the south west of Basecamp, we - that is, the whole team,
collectively; no indiviual requires or seeks specific credit -
found a rock. (Cdr Lewis holds rock up to camera briefly.) This
rock. Hardly surprising, I know, when the whole of this planet
is covered with rocks... but this rock is the most important
rock found in history - more important even than the Genesis
Rock recovered from Taurus Littrow on the Moon, by the heroic
crew of Apollo 17. Let me show you why..."
(camera shows Cdr Lewis reaching up to touch a pad on the side of her helmet, activating a spotlight mounted on its top. The light beam shines on the rock in her hand, illuminating it brightly, while throwing everything else into dark shadow. The camera view flares briefly before it zooms in on the rock, showing tiny white features upon its flat face) "This is what we came all this way to find. *These* are what we came to find. This is the discovery that all of human development, perhaps even evolution itself, has been leading to. These... (pauses)... are fossils, the fossils of tiny, primitive, native martian lifeforms, laid down in stone thousands of millions of years ago, when Mars had oceans and waterfalls. (Cdr Lewis holds up rock closer to the camera, and the tiny shapes are resolved into delicate spiral-shell structures, and some which resemble miniaturised trilobites). Here, in my hand, is the proof we have been seeking - the proof that Mars was once a living world like Earth, perhaps it was even alive at the same time as Earth, and, for a blink of a cosmic eye, the Sun was orbited by not one but *two* living worlds... Here, in my shaking hand, is proof that Earth is *not* unique in the Solar System. One other world has, or had, life. Life found a way..." "Of course, we know Mars is dry and dead today - or so we thought. (pause) Our seismic probes have shown that the ground beneath the lake floor is not solid, rather it consist of many chambers, like a honeycomb. Perhaps... just perhaps... some of those chambers contain traces of water, and in those pools descendants of this primitive life stubbornly cling on, resisting the planet's best attempts to exterminate them. Believe me, if it is there, we will find it. And if we find it then we will cherish it and nurture it, and guard it with our lives as we learn from and about it, because while it may be our destiny to return Mars to life in the future, it is our responsibility to protect any life which exists here *now*, and we will allow no harm to come to it." (camera zooms out to show Cdr Lewis flanked on each side by another Team member, all three are holding hands.) "This then, is our gift to you - a new, we hope, sense of, and appreciation for, our place in the Universe. We are not alone. We never have been. We need never feel alone again, for if life evolved here, it evolved - and exists still, today - out there, in the timeless depths of space. "We leave you with a thought... and a request, perhaps even a plea. Look at this stone, and think about the message it contains... and then turn your back on your TV- or holo-screen, go outside and, if it is night where you live on the Home Planet, seek out Mars among the stars which are shining above your village, town or city, and think of us, as we are thinking of you. This is Commander Beth Lewis, and the members of Mars 1, wishing you, and *all* the people of the Good Earth, a Merry Christmas, and a happy, and peaceful, New Year..." (camera lingers on trio of smiling astronauts until picture fades and breaks up...) ----------------------------------- (c) Stuart Atkinson 2000
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