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The Spirit Lingers by Stuart Atkinson


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This place, she knew instinctively, was a Place of Beauty. That was why they had brought her here – but what was behind her?

All would be revealed in time, she knew. She walked on.

"Hey," Louise called out over the comms, ten minutes into the hike, "just been listening to a news flash... some prospector has driven into Tharsis claiming she's found the Beagle..."

Lauren and Mark groaned simultaneously. At least once every month someone claimed to have "found" the wreckage – or even the complete body – of the famous Beagle 2 Mars probe that had mysteriously vanished in 2004. Like all the others, this girl was probably just a chancer, a poor, bankrupt settler or farmer out to try and make some money from dressing up a hopper full of garbage as the British spaceprobe.

Probably...

"I don't know," sighed Mark, "those prospectors... after a few months in the Outback thay all turn into Indiana Jones – "

Now Lauren really was puzzled. "Indiana who?" she asked, wondering why her father had suddenly started talking in riddles.

"Let me explain," Louise said, wrapping her arm protectively around Lauren's shoulders. "Back in the days when nearly all films were in just 2D, there was a famous hero called Indiana Jones. He was an archaeologist who found many amazing things statues, chalices, that kind of thing."

Lauren nodded. She'd heard of the character - she'd even seen the seventh film in the series - the one where the original Indiana Jones's great grandson rescued people from a lunar shuttle which had crashed in the crater Tycho, down near the southern pole,
And, as an added bonus discovered a cave full of alien artefacts - but the connection between the legendary exploits of "Indy" and her father was as clear as mud, and she told Louise so.

"Oh, didn't you know? Your father's a bit of an Indiana Jones himself," Louise said, and clearly thought that that was enough of an explanation. But Lauren was still none the wiser. "He's nop stranger to finding long lost treasure himself – "

"What have you found?" Lauren asked, turning excitedly to Mark.

"Oh, it was a long time ago..." he said, obviously none too keen to tell the story, but Lauren repeated her question, again and again, ignoring each dismissal of her interest, desperate to know more about this previously unknown part of her father's life. "Well, it's a long story, but basically while I was on the Moon I stumbled across something, that's all."

"Something? What something?"

Mark heaved a weary sigh. "Oh... just the Apollo 11 Lunar Module - "

Lauren laughed loudly. "Oh no you don't!" she cackled, "it was a nice try, and I almost fell for it, but you can't just stumble across that! It's standing there in the open! Everyone knows where it is, in the middle of the Sea of Tranquility!"

"No," Louise said patiently, "that's just the descent stage, the bottom of it; they put a replica ascent stage on it to make it look complete when the Armstrong Museum was built." Lauren stared at her blankly, missing the point; Lunar history had never been her strongest subject at school.



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