The Gossamer II rose gently in an ever so weak thermal updraft, and James gently compensated- almost unconsciously. The canopy bounced slowly up and down in response, James glanced down at the airframe stress indicator- it remained green. Just to be sure he glanced out the side panel and looked at the wing… It slowly bowed one way and then another as its 30 meter length adjusted to the mild change in forces. Its upper surface black and smooth with the solar-film that powered the odd looking propellers, and the underside capped in the almost opalescent N-T composite film. He could see the vague outlines of the Gossamer’s spare skeleton through the cloudy film. The wings and fuselage were evacuated to provide just a little more lift in the tenuous atmosphere. Looking at the props, James smiled remembering his first exposure to flight had been on his uncle’s crop-duster in Nebraska… No crops here…but maybe someday….?

James shook his head grinning and the image relay system fought to adjust- producing an unsettling stilted view of the horizon ‘back to work slacker!’ he chided himself. Satisfied that all was ok he returned his gaze to the landscape. The observation target was still 30 minutes away but the view was already stunning. He looked down, at his altitude of 300 meters he could see the boulder-strewn landscape, it all looked the same- yet it was always fascinating.

From this altitude he could see that a truly cataclysmic flood had shaped the red surface here. Down hill of the small mesas of hard solid stone, debris from the ancient river had collected in streamlined crescents. Rocks of varying size ordered according to the eddies that had formed.

James looked to his left and saw a dark red thread slowly writhing on the horizon, and grimaced. In another month the dust storms would start forming and his job would get much tougher. The dust devil danced in his vision for a bit and the slowly faded as the weak winds lost the strength to confine the powdery fine red dust. He did a 360 scan just to be sure no vortices were a threat to the Gossamer and then returned to the task of guiding the delicate craft to its assigned destination.

“James?” a voice called…He jerked in surprise- yet again he had let himself feel that he was IN the Gossamer… he grinned and said “Ummm, yes? “ still feeling a bit foolish…

“The doc insists that you have some coffee” Anna said
Still recovering his wits James smiled “Oh? Well cant upset DOC can we? “
DOC stood for “Dispenser Of Coffee”

“You have been flying for eight hours straight…” her voice dropped into a conspiratorial whisper….”I think they are worried about you getting VR addiction…”

James smiled…”well they’d be right…<sigh> ok I have a few minutes I will rejoin the real reality for a bit… hold on”… James set the autopilot and then, reluctantly, raised the visor of the VR unit… He turned on the monitor so he could keep an eye on the Gossamer’s status. Anna set a cup of “coffee” before him and he picked it up… he gingerly sipped at it. The greatest sin of the mission was that the “coffee” had been loaded with electrolytes and vitamins, making it taste like Gatorade-coffee… but at least mission control allowed the caffeine. James rapidly became aware that he needed the boost…
“So are the other teams liking the data so far?” he asked …it was a long-standing joke that no flight plan he chose satisfied all the different research teams. The problem was they had so many different interests that many of them were mutually exclusive. After many days of almost violent argument chasm #134 was decided on as the current target… This was based on the fact that it showed what appeared to be sedimentary layering… The fact that we had already lost Gossamer I made the debate fiercer…

“Yes, actually the egg-heads are VERY happy” she said with a grin. The data now supports the “wet Mars” view…you don’t look at the out of visual band data much do you?” James laughed at the “egg-head” term- they were all “egg-heads” with a minimum of two doctorates apiece…his were in physics and geology and a minor in American 19th century literature… the last, he was pretty sure, did not play a part in his getting on the mission.
“I tend to stick with the visual spectrum, yes…I prefer the view…the rest is recorded so it doesn’t matter”
“Well, the GR data shows you flew over a lake you couldn’t see…”
“seriously?!?”
“Well a frozen lake 3 meters underground… actually only at a density of .3 grams of water per cc but still….” Anna shrugged.
“Wow…” he sipped his coffee “that almost beats the record…how big was it?”
“Best we can tell almost 50 square kilometers”
James whistled…”How deep does it go?”
“That’s the best part, all we can tell is it goes deeper than 10 meters, beyond that the GR detector can’t say…”
He smiled in surprise, then chuckled “Let me guess, Sanjay has already started lobbying that excavator 4 go there immediately!?”
“Yup, and this time I doubt anyone will argue with him- he is very ummm adamant…” she smiled…
James grinned “I bet…he is an odd chap” he said emulating the mannerisms of Dr. Rajesekhar Sanjay… they both laughed…
“He started this mission downplaying the idea of Mars life but in the past 20 months
he has become obsessed in being the first to find life…. I sometimes worry that the trip has…unbalanced him a little”
“We have all changed a bit, Anna- we won’t know how much until we return to Earth…”
“I guess you are right… and I hope Sanjay gets his wish….”
“Me too I think it would be…” The Gossamer control panel bleeped indicating that the observation target was near….James smiled ruefully, “sorry, duty calls”
Anna smiled and got up, “Have fun!”
“Naaahhh seen one mars canyon you’ve seen ‘em all…” he winked and put on the visor.

He was immediately immersed in the view from the gossamer… The canyon was now visible- maybe 10 minutes away at this speed. Technically, the Gossamer II’s AI could handle the whole flight- but after the unexplained loss of Gossamer I, mission control insisted on human monitoring of all flight missions. Canyon cruising was the most challenging… and even the original mission specs called for human control when canyon cruising… problem was the humans were used to flying on earth, James wondered if it wouldn’t be wiser to leave it up to the computers…

The cliff edge slowly grew nearer…he could see the strata on the opposing cliff face… James started a slow turn to steer the gossamer down into the canyon…. He was sweating a little even though the room was cool…

There was a bounce as the Gossamer passed over the cliff wall- thermals buffeted it weakly… he gently dove down until he was just below the cliff walls… he watched the 500 meter high red/brown walls slowly slide by…

“Ok, everyone on line?” he asked
“Yes, all systems are communicating fine” Sarah responded through his earpiece…
He stared at the massive wall sliding away beside him. The stereoscopic view he had with the VR gear showed the distinct strata with slightly varying colors had been eroded by the winds at different rates…creating a rippled vertical face…..

James looked at the cross bedding “Fossilized sand dunes” he said in disappointment, Sanjay spoke up….”We expected that James, look on the bright side, chap, these are billion year old dunes!”

Grinning James slipped lower…. “Care to try out the remote sampler, Anna?”
“Hold on, the laser is charging….ok ready…..any of you egg heads have a preference on a target?”
James grinned, “well that white layer looks as if it could have been formed by evaporates- maybe….”

“Hold on, ok got it… firing….” The femtosecond pulse lashed out and vaporized a few cubic microns of rock, the spectrometer analyzed the light from the small spark… The unique signature from the plasma revealed all the elements present in the layer.

“Hmmm not inconsistent with an iron rich gypsum……good call…”

He continued down the chasm….. the bottom was strewn with slabs that had fallen from the sheer walls many millions of years ago…

“Unusually high water signature at the floor of the canyon…..” Sanjay muttered…..
“What?! Sorry James taking control of the IR cam…..” Anna said excitedly…..

silence….. she would only have done that if something unusual had caught her eye….

“Oh my!”
“what is it?” James whispered…

“Hold on….” She replied abruptly….

The team waited as James concentrated on gliding down the canyon…..

“Ummm we have a hot spot ahead…. 20 degrees above ambient!” Anna didn’t sound like she believed what she was saying…..

“sure it isn’t a glitch?” They had been fooled by instrument glitches a few times….

“I cycled the camera power twice…..I think it is real!”

“Volcanism stopped here long ago… can it be just dark soil that….”

“no this is a hot spot on the shaded wall, optical shows nothing unique……”

“That makes no sense! “ James exclaimed…

“Tell me something I don’t know flyboy!”

James checked the IR view…. Sure enough there was a hot spot ahead at the base of the canyon…maybe 5 km ahead…..

“Ok guys I am limited here, we need a quick vote Do I drop a puppy?”

:”puppy” was what they called the small remote crawlers that could be dropped by the Gossamer….They only had a few….

Erin tapped at her terminal, “You would have to be the relay, James we have no com sats in range….That will cut into the data rate.”

There was little argument among the team….. “Drop the puppy as close as you can” the team leader said….

“Try to stay in line of site with it….”

“Easy for you to say!” muttered James

“ok preparing the drop…” James cycled on the power to Rover 6 checked its diagnostics… All green….the hot spot was coming up…

“I am reading high water vapor readings from the region around the hot spot” Anna mumbled… James grinned, maybe this wouldn’t be the typical mission after all…

James had practiced rover drops in the simulator, but had only done 2 drops in reality at 2 million apiece they were not parted with lightly. The onboard computer gave a rough drop window- the human side of a drop was reading the terrain and estimating the proper moment to drop the airbag protected rover so that it would bounce to position as close to the target as possible. Sizing op the terrain, James picked an initial impact point just upslope of the hot spot. The drop went smoothly and he watched the rover tumble through the tlin air- the drag chute fluttering behind it.- the impact point was on target- he watched the ball that contained the rover bounce and roll to within 10 meters of the hot spot. “Hole in one!”

James took up a lazy circle above the target site and waited the 5 minutes for the rover to deploy from its cocoon. Then keyed the communication link that turned the gossamer into a relay station for the data sent by the rover…

“Guys, I hate flying at nite- we should try to hurry it up- we can come back tomorrow if we have to- the rover power supply should last a few days”

“Already on the move” Anna said.

James looked at the monitor for the picture feed from the rover- the update was horrendously slow- once a second, with some bit skips. The rover was already negotiating its way around a large slab of rock- moving towards the cliff face.
James set the gossamer to auto pilot and left it to circle over the rover. He asked Sarah to keep an eye on the rover and went to grab a fast bite… He was back with a MRE in under a minute- as he ate he idly looked over Annas shoulder at the rover feed.
There were two camera feeds, a visual, and an IR feed. The IR feed showed elevated temperature at the base of the clff face. The visual showed a dark recess at the base of the cliff. Looked like more layered weathering- a recessed layer under a shelf of rock.

The recess was maybe 4 feet high, but there was something wrong…. “umm, Anna can you rotate the camera to the left?”
The picture went jerky as the data flow lagged behind the camera rotation, then settled down…
“See, the bottom strata over here- it shows LESS weathering than the one above it, why would the recessed region form in that layer? I can see differential weathering between layers, but within the same layer, so close together?”

“Umm could it be a cave?”

“It would be the first!”

“We’ll know soon enough”

The rover approached the dark recess, nothing was visible in its depths… “we have lights on the rover? “ James asked -a few rovers had dim lights for night missions at high latitudes…

“sorry, not on rover 6 , once we get in there we have to rely on the IR”

The rover slowly moved in toward the opening…

“we need to worry about loss of signal?” James asked

“depends how far in we go, if we see significant loss of data flow we know it is tome to turn back…”

Sarah interjected “its even warmer deeper in, and the water vapor is off the scale!”

The visual picture got dimmer as the rover entered the opening… The IR was harder to interpret… mottled temperature profiles created a confusing image on the screen. A dark patch in the mottled colors indicated a continuing passage

“Losing some data flow- can we lower the gossamer for better contact?”

James returned to the vr set- “I’ll try”

In 5 minutes James had spiraled down into the canyon a few hundred meters…. Keeping an eye on the rover feed.

The circles of the gossamers path grew tighter to avoid the thermals along the canyon walls, the long wings bowed and oscillated more violently, but still were in the acceptable stress range.
The data transmission rate moved up… and the rover went further in …

“uh oh, dead end…no wait- odd… this :”cave” has a right angle turn!”

The tension was palpable, James could sense it even with the vr gear on….
“turning….oh my god! The IR is off the scale! Sarah can you recalibrate?”

“Hold on, oh shit!!”

James had to call up the rover feed- both the visual and IR were bright white- “we lose signal?”
A pause then sarah said, “no, it is weak but strong enough….the cameras are saturated- give it a moment to reset”

“Saturated? It’s a CAVE?!, “ James exclaimed exasperated…

But as he watched, the cameras recalibrated and some structure was revealed- the room fell silent- for nearly 2 minutes…. The “cave” was brilliantly illuminated, the walls radiated a yellow light, and in the center of the room sat a black geodesic sphere- The IR camera showed it off the temperature scale the camera was designed for. This didn’t belong here, and there was no possible way it was natural, or of human manufacture.

After everyone started breathing again, the team lead cleared his throat…

“People, you have 48 hours to pack, we are moving the base camp”

for the first time in his 2 years of command, not a single team member argued….

The room became crowded as the rest of the crew pressed in, Team Lead, Commander Anthony Hawking put his foot down- His voice shook the light walls of the control room: “Attention! All non-essential personnel must leave this room! You can follow the action from your terminals. THAT IS AN ORDER!” His change in demeanor stunned the crew almost as much as the unexpected find. The team lead almost NEVER invoked his official authority. The room quickly cleared.
“James, how long are you comfortable staying here? You have one hour until your return will be in the dark.” Team lead asked
James took off the visor “ummmm Antho…, err uh Sir, we can stay indefinitely – the batteries should last through the night easily- Lets stay here and get all the data we can!”
“No James, The G2 is our only sail plane left, and I will not have you fly it in the dark, in a canyon, while fatigued” He paused… “You have 45 minutes, you will return to base and then get some sleep. We can continue tomorrow.” Anna and James both started to argue, but decided otherwise- Anthony was in ‘commander mode’, and even worse, he was right.
James swallowed his protest “Ok, lets make the time count…” He put on the visor again. “Ok Anna gun it!” He pulled up the rover feed in a separate window and saw the image of the black sphere again… it chilled his spine… What was it?
Anna started by examining the sphere with the rover’s stereoscopic cameras…
“Diameter…5 meters, it is a black bucky ball… temperature is off the scale- so its above 10 Celsius… There is a 1 meter mound of fine dust around the base… it is glittering… it is layered in color- gray and reddish… the facets of the sphere look polished- Christ! What IS it?! “ Anna murmured
“Look at the walls, Anna… They are glowing- how?” James interjected.
The rover turned slightly and slowly approached the nearest wall… It was not the native rock; it was smooth and glowed with a mild light… The rover approached, the camera sent back a featureless bright image. James called up the specs for the rover- it had a pulsed laser spectroscopic diagnostic package…
“Anna, take a shot at the wall with the laser… lets see what it is made of…”
“Ummm you sure, James? We don’t know what that will do to it…”
James winced- Team lead was still in the room… he cleared his throat… “Ummm sir, can we sample the wall…?”
There was a pause… There was no time to consult Earth …“I figure it has been here a long time, and has survived a lot- a few cubic microns cant hurt, go ahead, but just one shot”
“Ok… charging…” Anna said nervously. “Firing”
The cameras showed a brief puff of vapor on the wall– they waited for the result.
“High in silicon, oxygen, carbon… some gallium, neodymium, and platinum in trace amounts- hold on… some chlorine and nitrogen too…”
“A semiconducting polymer? Like our ‘paint on’ lights?” James asked
“Maybe, can’t really tell with just this” Anna answered.
“Pan around” James said…
The view haltingly changed as the camera moved… the chamber was featureless except for the black sphere in its center. The walls glowed a uniform mild yellow. The only thing with features was the sphere.
The rover rolled closer to the sphere… Its wheels had trouble with the talcum powder dust at its base… it got within a few centimeters of the shiny black hexagon of one of the spheres facets…
“Team lead, asking permission to sample the sphere” James asked.
Hawking paused….”No, not yet… this is the reason for this ‘cave’ lets treat it with care sample the dust around it”
James couldn’t answer immediately, as a thermal buffeted his craft violently… he didn’t want to leave so he kept quiet…. Anna targeted a red layer of the dust pile.. and sampled it…
“Typical Martian soil…” Anna said
“Try the gray layer Anna…”
The rover slowly moved, and a gray layer was exposed… the laser fired…
“If we want to have the rover last longer we need to conserve our shots” Anna said.

“Ok, we have 10 minutes left anyway..”
“Ok.. hold on… High levels of iron silicon, gallium, germanium, and oxygen…”
James asked “What trace elements?”
Anna paused “NONE!”
“What about the isotopic composition?” James asked
“Rovers don’t have that resolution, sorry!”
Team lead cleared his throat, “Time to come home kiddos, move the rover out of the cave and fly home… NOW!” Anna sighed and moved the rover out of the cave. She put it in sleep mode, and cut the connection.
James spiraled up and glided to home… the dusk landing went without incident… James let his breath out with a whoosh and when the team pulled the G2 into the hangar he pulled off his visor… only Anna and Commander Anthony were in the room…
James got some water… “What did we just see?”
“A message, a gift, from someone else…..” Anna said dreamily
“We have to study this” Anthony said formally
“ummm we can’t can we? “ James said “ It is at the base of a 2 klick tall cliff”
“We have no choice… you Anna and Sanjay are now deputized…. While we all pack you three come up with a way to move to the cave, THAT IS AN ORDER…”