| Story |
 
|
(Page 3 of 57) Martian Autumn: Transit Day by Stuart Atkinson
 (2 ratings)
|
Focus. Concentrate.
With just a couple of fingertip taps she activated the computer's systems, surprised as always by the speed at which the holographic keyboard and screen appeared in mid-air in front of her.
"Okay, what's first..?" Callie wondered aloud, tapping away "on" the keyboard and opening up her To Do folder. A list of tasks appeared in front of her face, written in glowing but subtle holo-neon. Wait a minute, hadn't she already answered him? Hmmm, apparently not. Oh well –
"Mom..?"
"Hmmm?"
"Are we there yet?" two giggling voices asked in unison from behind her.
Little monsters, Callie grinned, as her friends laughed around her. But she kept typing. The work of a Parliamentarian never stopped.
Not even on the long-awaited Transit Day.
Three hours later, the cabin intercom chimed twice and the shuttle pilot's voice informed them they were, finally, approaching their destination.
"Ladies and gentlemen, I am happy to be able to inform you that we will be landing in approximately ten minutes' time, that's one zero minutes. Those of you seated on the starboard side will be able to see our destination, the famous Gusev Crater, out your window, with the Ma'adim Valley opening out into it's southern plain..."
Callie and the kids were, of course, on the correct side; as a Parliamentarian she would automatically have been given seats on the shuttle's starboard side without even requesting them, but with the shuttle only half-full – a surprising number of colonists, both native- and Terra-born had decided to either just watch the Big Event from Ares or miss it altogether – there had been no unseemly scrabble for positions, so as Callie looked out through the window, shielding it from the glare of the shuttle cabin's lights with her cupped hands, she was able to enjoy the view.
Beneath a vast, overpowering butterscotch-coloured sky, Gusev was a vast, almost-circular pit; a vast, steep-walled crater with a floor dotted with smaller craters and marked and streaked with dust dines, escarpments and undulating ranges of low hills.
To the south, exactly as the pilot had said, the entrance to the huge Ma'adim Valley was a wide gap in the crater's looming, mountainous wall, the gaping mouth of a valleys which meandered and sneaked its way towards the south pole. Once, she knew, that valley had carried raging torrents of icy water into Gusev...
None of which made it anything special, of course. There were dozens of craters just like it on Mars, some larger, some smaller. But none of them had Gusev's Claim To Fame.
None of them could declare themselves "Home Of The First Fossils Found On Mars..."
"We will be landing on Husband Hill," the pilot continued over the intercom, "the tallest of the Columbia Hills range which lies almost exactly in the centre of the crater, from where – if the Beakers have done their sums correctly - we will all enjoy the best possible view of today's historic transit. With landing now imminent, I need to ask you all to pack your travel things away and strap yourselves in.
| |
