Forever, Revisited
Chryse Planitia. June 24, 2426.
On a particularly chilly sol, beneath a sky the color of coffee with too much cream added, Virgil 3 crawled toward the horizon.
Alicia Holloway peered through one of the self-driving transporter's thick windows. "There's nothing here. I told you this wasn't the right spot, Kim. You can't trust twentieth-century records for anything!"
Cathy Kim, chief historian of Sagan Station, looked miffed. "Yet the people of that era managed to send a spacecraft here in the first place, and collect its data for six years, and use that data to help plan future missions, and - "
"Yes, yes, I get the point, but the historic documents lack modern corroboration. According to my team's orbiter data, Viking 1 is five kilometers that way." Alicia pointed to the starboard side of Virgil 3.
"How are we sure the orbital photos are reliable? Last week, they showed the lander near the rim of a small crater. Two sols ago, it was smack in the middle of a flat plain. It's not like the thing can get up and walk around. Your sats must be flagging random boulders or something."
Alicia ignored Cathy and turned back to the window. Cathy ignored Alicia and flipped through the mission documents on her tablet. They carried on in silence until Alicia saw something in front of them, glinting dully in the afternoon sun.
"Kim, call the tech. Looks like we found it."
Cathy pressed a button on the underside of her desk that opened the control room door. A robot rolled in on six small wheels, its four arms folded neatly in front of it. "How do you do, Drs. Kim and Holloway?" it said cheerfully. "Your EVA suits await you."
Alicia and Cathy, suited up and properly equipped, stepped out of Virgil 3. Chryse Planitia looked much as it had long ago, almost three hundred and fifty years to the day, when Viking 1 landed. Cathy gazed at the flat plain, dotted with rusty rocks of various sizes. She tried to imagine what it had been like for the original imaging team, seeing the same view in black and white, assembled strip by strip on a computer screen in California, on Earth. How it felt to see a dead world, and then step outside of the lab and breathe the sweet air of a living one.
"Ground Control to Dr. Kim," Alicia said over the suitcomm, "Let's get a move on."
"Okay, sorry," Cathy said, walking forward to join her colleague.
Slowly, the thing on the horizon took shape. It had three legs, fuel tanks, retrorockets, and a satellite dish, like the old diagrams showed. Its "back" faced Cathy and Alicia, meaning they couldn't get a good view of its soil sampler quite yet. Cathy paused, staring at the lander with the awe one reserved for holy relics. "This is really it. We're the first people to see Viking 1 on the surface of Mars, the first people to see it at all since it was built."
"Oh, I'm aching with joy!" Alicia mocked.
Cathy rolled her eyes and strode forward, ahead of Alicia. She approached the lander from the left, while Alicia moved to the right. As they drew closer, Cathy noticed something odd.
"Hey, Holloway, look at its weather sensor. It's dragging in the dirt! It must've gotten knocked down in a dust storm."
"What the - why is it moving? There's no breeze today."
Cathy watched the lander's weather sensor - the thing at the end of its "arm" - as it pushed through the soil. Wait a minute, she thought. No, that's impossible. There's no way the lander is drawing in the dirt.
"Do you see this, Kim?" Alicia pointed to the ground in front of Viking 1. "Kind of looks like a Christmas tree, with an angel on top and everything."
"Weird," Cathy said. "You have the harness? Let's go."
The two women stepped in front of the lander. "Be careful with that weather arm," Cathy told Alicia. "If it's broken, then the mechanics already have their work cut out for them, and I'd rather not do any more - Holy shit!"
Cathy and Alicia stared at Viking 1, and Viking 1 stared back at them.
"What the living Hell?" Alicia shouted, making Cathy's ears ring. The women turned to face each other.
"What gives?" Cathy said. "I don't think we've been out here long enough to start hallucinating."
"Oh good, you saw it, too. I'm not losing my mind."
"Did it...was it just me, or was the lander looking right at us?"
"Uh huh," Alicia nodded. "Its mouth - how does it even have a mouth? - was open, too. Agape."
"Did we scare it? Sorry about that, buddy."
"And God, this is going to sound nuts, but I think it was crying. I swear I saw tears in its eyes."
"Tears of joy? Sadness? Fear?"
"How the Hell should I know? I can't believe we're having this conversation. It's a machine, for Christ's sake!"
"Right," Cathy said. "Let's get it hooked up and get out of here."
Alicia and Cathy turned to face the lander again. Its arm was back in its proper position, and its cameras (how had they ever mistaken the cameras for eyes?) faced forward. A layer of red dust, the residue of three and a half centuries, coated the lander.
"Okay," Alicia said, unfurling the harness. "You take the left, I'll take the right. Virgil 3 is almost ready."
They wrapped the harness around Viking 1, careful not to disturb its arm and dish. Out of the corner of her eye, Cathy saw Virgil 3 inching closer to them in reverse. The transporter was huge and, if Cathy was being honest, a real pain in the ass to use. It needed a lot of space to turn around and back up, which meant a longer EVA for Cathy and Alicia as they trekked toward the lander and a longer wait before they could deploy the crane. Still, it was the only vehicle in Sagan Station large enough to transport the two humans, their equipment, and the lander, so Cathy and Alicia didn't really have a choice.
Cathy stepped around the side of the lander to face Alicia. They attached their segments of the harness as Virgil 3's crane lowered itself into position. Cathy reached up, slipped the harness over the crane's claw, and secured the claw's latch. She stepped back and knelt down to what would have been the machine's eye level if it had eyes, which it absolutely didn't.
"Alright, old friend," she said. "Let's get you home."