(Recovered from the World Space Archive, 2122)
Hou Yi, they called it.
We had been completely blindsided by the progress of the CNSA.
Leave it to American exceptionalism, our nation’s greatest home-grown foe, to underestimate the complexity and wanton ambition of the Chinese National Space Administration. For three years- three YEARS on the lecture circuit, I had been touring university halls coated in dust, planetariums located in remote hills where America’s top astrologists met to discuss upcoming missions and physical obstacles.
I had told them, succinctly, through data I had gathered during my trips to Beijing and Wuhan, that the Chinese were extremely close to breaking the threshold, seizing the Martian season and performing the unthinkable. That small window where Earth and Mars line up just right for a straight orbital shot.
Now, every television set and internet livestream, from coast to coast, was occupied by the granular footage of the Chinese rocket- an insignificant thing on video, given the low, compressed quality the landing drones afforded it- but this was real. A national disgrace, proof positive that America was no longer the leader of the free world, home of the brave or sector of innovation. We would not covet the prize we had envisioned for so long. In t minus five minutes, enter stage left, the two first humans on Mars. Chinese humans.
This is the conundrum all space agencies face, that they don’t tell you about. The inherent competition. Nobody in this game wants a new frontier for all humankind, that’s marketing bullshit. We all want the best for our own people, we cheer on our team as if they were football players, every world government is concerned with what proportion of the ISS crew is made up of who. Landing on Mars, therefore, meant nothing if it wasn’t an American venture.
Here I was, at Mission Control, sitting before my console, 500 other NASA techs and staff running around wildly with stacks of papers, printing off up-to-the-minute reports, yelling into phones, some just slumped over onto their arms, crying, hopelessly. As for me, I maintained a calm and dignified air of defeat, of acceptance. I had seen this coming a mile off. I, alone, had warned the higher ups that this would be an inevitability unless they funneled more money into a manned project. Seized the window. They ignored me, and now they- and the entirety of the American people, our morale, our dreams- would face the consequences of their hubris.
“Well, this is it,” murmured Sakan, my technical advisor, from the desk opposite mine. He was wearing a button-down polo shirt and crocs. Nobody was willing to put in the effort to show up in professional attire. Today would be treated more like an unofficial day off.
“Did you get those reports on the outer hull sent to the lead engineer?” I asked. He shrugged, readjusted his glasses on the bridge of his oily nose, clasped his hands behind his neck and leaned back, hard, into the cushion. He was tired, I could tell. Probably downed at least 5 cups of coffee the night prior, wasn’t in the mood to work.
“Yeah. Yeah, I guess I did.” More scrolling on his monitor. “Wish this thing would hurry the fuck up.” There it went, Hou Yi, the archer god, descending through the Martian atmosphere, what little there was of it, thin clouds obscuring the Drone’s view every now and again, little wisps of debris in front of that omnipresent static blob, that capsule that would write the history books, be featured on the cover of every magazine, every movie, its occupants hailed as heroes and the Chinese Government hailed as one of the most valuable on Earth.
Sakan’s miserable eyes remained glued on the screen, lines near the edges indicative of unbridled contempt. He’s always been mildly unattractive- balding, little fluff near the ears, glasses that don’t look good on him but maybe they were the only pair at the optometrist’s, and perpetually single amid a crowd of well-respected geniuses. You could see why he felt like the underdog, always trampled on, ignored, given menial tasks by those in positions of seniority. This sense of having been dealt the wrong hand was only exacerbated now.
Before me were Hou Yi’s blueprints, intricately crafted, leaked a few days earlier. The genius and brazen attitude of the CNSA- to launch this rocket without informing the International community, to keep its flight a secret until a week before touchdown, when it would be too late for any other nation to realistically compete with it- that was a stroke of genius.
On board were Lee Chen, 26, and Ming Duan, 30. Both were propped up by China as examples of the ideal scientist gentlemen: well educated, from prestigious backgrounds, educated at the same Hong Kong academy and given rigorous instruction in math and physics. Duan was the mission’s leader, older with a touch of scholarly affectation in every speech he gave prior to launch. Lee seemed impulsive by contrast, yet the Chinese press agencies had worked to tout this as a positive- his intrepid spirit and inclination toward risk, they argued, would be vital in learning about Martian conditions.
I could imagine their mindset now. Rumbling engine beneath, eyes closed, preparing for the shock of contact with the ground. I sat back, zoned out all the noise and beeping. Put myself in their shoes, attempted to bridge the gap, imagine how they felt, what they were thinking. Quiet on that alien world, distant and remote, cold days with little respite. Quiet, solace, peace. Tranquility. And the low hum of the rocket’s throttle. Lee and Ming both breathing heavily inside their protective helmets.
The colorful old tune rattled around from the depths of my skull. I want to know what you’re thinking. There are some things you can’t hide. Echoing.
On my monitor, the distance closed in. Two miles now. The meter subsided and shrank, little static blob now avoiding the wisps altogether. A clear Martian day, red and cold and ready. Hou Yi emerged from the haze, the drone tracking it perfectly as it descended, effortlessly, cutting into the air like butter. The shot now framed a beautiful plateau off in the distance, red cliffs around two hundred feet tall, and the ship plummeting toward a granular flat in the foreground. Everyone stood perfectly still in place.
Boom. Legs on the soil, outstretched, welcoming- no, gripping- the dirt like a firm handshake. The connection achieved, never to be severed, denied, or avoided.
I checked my watch. 3:32 P.M. February 12, 2046.
The dragon had landed.
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Over the course of the next several weeks, reports from the surface came back, and we at Mission Control begrudgingly processed them as best we could, although of course we didn’t receive the full reports- those were reserved for the Chinese.
America is not in a state of celebration anymore, has not been since the War on Terror, and it’s been a slow decline into demoralization. You have to understand certain things about where I’m coming from- in the 2040s climate refugees increase by the thousands every year and the sky is always warm, salient to the touch. You can feel a slow collapse impending. What kind, you’re not sure, but it is definite.
So this was the ultimate blow to our morale, and to see it happen up close myself, to have joined the space program at the exact same time this breakthrough was achieved- well, you can imagine the enthusiasm with which I reviewed the scans of the Martian soil. It was absent.
We’d abandoned private space travel after 50 of SpaceX’s homegrown rockets simultaneously blew themselves up on a launchpad back in 2032, killing a dozen people. In the years since, private space travel had been discouraged- not criminalized, certainly, but guidelines and codes had been strengthened to prevent similar disasters in the future, and in doing so keep irresponsible billionaires out of orbit. Sakan had been on the committee to implement these codes. He had been in elementary school during the Challenger launch in 1986.
When I first got out of college and joined NASA- there weren’t many applicants at first because my generation had not been prepared for a new Space Race, we had been conditioned for a pleasant computer-run utopia by Silicon Valley tech firms all through our childhoods in the 2020s- Sakan was there to bring us back to reality. I have to thank him for that.
He wheeled out a VCR and a CRT monitor propped up on what looked like a metallic cart. Its wheels clattered across the empty jet hangar we sat in, and we were confused by the outdated technology and the stern gaze Sakan held us in. His eyes were points of light, beams that methodically plugged the VCR in, inserted a VHS tape with a piece of Scotch tape affixed crudely to the front, and pressed play. It whirred to life.
“Now watch closely.”
There, in grainy hues, a white plume of smoke jettisoned itself upwards- and then, at a certain altitude, it veered to the right and began jerking from side to side as if it were an animal seizing in a trap. The tape remained eerily silent as the plume veered every which way and then, without applause or screams, the smoke dissipated over the course of several minutes and the evaporation of human life was complete.
“That,” Sakan said, “Was what I watched in ‘86. They showed it to us, on a live news broadcast, on equipment just like this. I remember the day well. My teacher, Mr. Harper, wanted to show us the effectiveness of our tax dollars at work. The strength of the Space Shuttle. Then, after it was over, he had to explain to us that everyone on board was dead, with tact and grace.”
“You’re not children, and I’m sure you’ve learned from your history books what happened on that day. I’m sure you’ll learn from history.This was the result of hubris and overconfidence. You cannot allow hubris to infect you. Hubris is the domain of artists. We are not artists, we do not design with frivolity. We design efficient, capable machines, and we ensure that they achieve what they’re designed for. We do not fail. We cannot fail. The fate of the world rests on your shoulders, but you’ve chosen to accept that burden, and I have chosen to accept it with you. Whatever the cost. At all times, simply remember those plumes of smoke.”
So it was that NASA began receiving a fresh stream of funds- and the ISS began adding new wings on, and that same year we launched a small America-exclusive satellite called Freedom. Two years later, we had done the unthinkable- we had landed one woman on the Moon. Her name was Janet Duchovny, she stepped out and for the first time in well over half a century, we saw crisp, clear footage of the lunar surface beamed back towards us from the hands of a living being. She set her footprints down alongside those of Gene Cernan, and returned safely.
Back then, I had assumed that Martian dominance was inevitable. What I didn’t take into account was that Sakan’s principles of timid reservation, and the similar attitudes of his superiors, would lock us into a direct stalemate with the Chinese Government where we both competed on similar craft at roughly the same period of time, but we knew nothing about theirs, and they didn’t even take ours seriously- and so now they had taken us by surprise, aand our model was still languishing in the garage, and we were left to wallow in second place.
That wouldn’t do, the higher-ups said. Not at all.
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I had been sifting through the news reports of Hou Yi’s success. The Russians didn’t pose much of a threat but they were making claims to the lunar surface, which worried us. The preferable course of action, we decided, would be to wait until the next orbital window and send our people to Mars. But the window was a long way off now, and none of us were in a very good mood, especially when the screens of Mission Control were filled with the images of the two Chinese scientists smiling in their inflatable geodesic dome.
Duan set up a small table at which they both ate, and the live stream displayed their living quarters, in which they displayed things such as the reduced gravity by jumping higher than anyone on Earth could. They seemed to be taking it in stride, and we did our best to laugh as their various photos and documents were sorted into our folders.
“Damn,” the guy at the desk adjacent to mine said. “They’re teaching us a lot. At least we’ll know what to do once we’re there, they’ll pave the way. They don’t look like such bad neighbors.” And he was right, of course- China wasn’t going to start a war, we weren’t going to kill each other once we got there, engage in armed combat and risk piercing the protective Geodesic shelters we constructed, and likely trigger a war back on earth to boot. We weren’t Barbarians. We weren’t even necessarily angry.
It was merely the principle of the thing. You wanted to be on the winning team, part of the in-group. That was the competitive human spirit at work, and it remained even when you didn’t have initiative to match. It stayed with us, guiding us forward.
I hated having it.
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So it was that, in 2047, our prototype was completed, and it was down to Sakan’s specifications and blueprints. The hull was airtight, the steering controls were simple and refined. The craft was modest and lacked any fluff. It was admirable, and looked like something from the old photos of Apollo modules- the detachable landing pod, the separate stages. We were almost guaranteed to make it if we left soon enough.
Then the news came.
It was early one April morning and I was the first into mission control. I rubbed my eyes, brewed myself a steaming cup of coffee and sat down to review the night’s activity.
I clicked on my monitor and there I was greeted with screens that showed several innocuous documents courtesy of the CNSA. I then opened up my translator. It was relatively accurate to a point, but when I read the strange terms and descriptions of the latest overnight, I assumed it was broken. Anyone would.
“Opening- aperture- darkness- 2:00 A.M. global Earth time Ming Duan leaves enclosure, wanders out into Isidis Planitia. Toward opening-” Opening? That couldn’t be right.
I switched on the live stream, wound it back to 2:00 A.M. The Geodesic dome was dark, unlit, just that table and a couple beanbags tossed around, and throughout there was the howling noise of a dust storm. The sky outside looked hostile, and the lens appeared to be shaking slightly. Several blocky pixelated artifacts manifested on the borders of the screen due to the signal lapsing.
There was Duan, or someone who looked like Duan, given his general physiology, wandering aimlessly around the parameter of the room, just on the edge of the frame. Yet he was shrouded in darkness like everything else, and couldn’t be seen. And then there was a weird noise, like a bandage being peeled off, and suddenly the room was filled with what appeared to be smoke, and a hideous roar like a gas engine being charged up- but of course, it wasn’t smoke, it was dust, dust where dust had no right to be, within the enclosure. Toxic iron dust which would have consumed Duan’s fellow crewmember in his sleep.
Sakan and a few techs wandered in, noticed me. They looked horrified.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“Run it forward,” Sakan insisted. “Now. To the present time. There’s a 7 minute delay, but it’s all we have.” He was sweating and holding a clipboard, tapping the top of the monitor with urgency. It wasn’t often I saw him in a state of hysteria, he tried his best to keep a cool head in dire situations, but I took his word and used the mouse to click ahead.
There, in center frame, was Lee Chen, looking disheveled and weak. He was rambling and apparently trying to pick the camera out of its housing. Beneath him, auto-generated subtitles in bold text appeared.
“Woke up,” he said. “All around me, the dust. Horrible dust. I scrambled to the airlock, just in time. Washed myself off with the hydro-spray. Was able to filter the air and restore normal levels. But cannot leave. See.” he was short of breath, but even so he managed to somehow dislodge the camera and crawl on his hands and knees towards where Duan had been hours earlier, right near the protective zipper which led out onto the surface.
“Duan has been sleepwalking,” Chen explained. “Goes out every night. To collect rock samples, he said. But this is not true. Look.” Chen held up several black-and-white photographs to the camera- grainy renderings of some small dark structure on the edge of the crater. I had only seen one of these, but assumed at the time that it was a rocky outcropping, and that Duan’s nighttime expeditions were merely for research purposes, and didn’t think much of them because he always fastened his suit and reported these excursions before leaving, which was in line with the CNSA’s protocol.
“Now,” and Chen held the camera up to the circular window on the side of the dome which gave a clear view of the outside terrain- “Look at it now. It approaches.”
And there, clear as day despite the trembling of Chen’s hands, was a door. Not a fissure, not an outcropping, not a structure which could have existed on Mars without human intervention. Yet there it was. It was imposing and getting closer at a slow yet visible rate, like the second hand of a clock that does not tick but slides. It was around a hundred feet beyond the dome. Chen zoomed in, and the camera made a little whirring noise.
“No,” Sakan gasped.
The door was ornate, with symmetric wooden carvings and a brass knob. It was the sort of door you would find in an old house on earth- a door coated in cobwebs and texture, with an elliptical glass cutout in the center. It was eight feet tall, maybe, and it glided past the Martian pebbles like a hot knife through butter. It was nearing the dome with almost sentient precision.
There was a kind of ambient quality about it, as if it were natural, as if it had always been there but had waited patiently for someone to find it, and now recognized that it had been found and was known. And that attracted it, the mere knowledge of its being there by a living organism. It had manifested itself from thought and broken out of whatever prison it had been held in, and was now in full color for us to witness.
“Can’t leave the dome,” Chen whispered. “Am scared. So scared.”
He turned the camera back onto himself and the door was out of range but still ominously present, and as it neared the dome a strange drone could be faintly made out, like the exhalation of a broken trumpet. Chen’s eyes were full of tears.
The drone ceased.
“Well,” he said, matter-of-factly. “Must go. It is outside. Cannot breathe in here, system is failing. Dome has been punctured. Do not worry. The door is outside the dome. See?”
He turned the camera yet again to show us that the hard wooden surface had indeed pressed itself up firmly against the airlock, and the dome’s system was displaying a flashing red sign which meant the hull of the dome had been somehow breached along with a Mandarin character that signaled declining oxygen levels. Chen’s only escape now would be to open it and walk through it, and he seemed vaguely at peace with the reality of the situation.
“I want,” he said, biting back odd gulps of phlegm to appear honorable, “That my family should know I love them, to stay strong. You see? Father is here. Father made it. For science. Not just for China. For all people, everywhere.”
He set the camera up next to the lock, turned sideways to offer us all a profile view. He didn’t bother putting on his helmet or suit, he just gazed forlornly at the entrance and took dep breaths, the sort an olympic diver does before splashing into the pool.
“Well- Father must go now. The Archer God calls.”
And with those words, the words that would soon be spread like wildfire across the surface of the planet through every mode of telecommunications known to Man, Chen pulled the zipper up and twisted the metallic circle that comprised the lock. His arm rose forward, twisted, grasped something, and there was a small, nearly imperceptible noise- as if a latch had been released.
The door swung forward and bathed Chen in a blinding flash of white light, and the last thing we could make out before the light consumed everything was Chen seemingly crawling in on his own, and his feet vanishing past the threshold.
With that, the stream cut out and the signal was lost.
“We need to help him!” I shouted with pronounced derangement. “We have to help him! Backup cameras! We need to send someone up there! Send it a week earlier-” I clutched at Sakan’s collar and he sighed before releasing me. His expression was stern yet confident.
“That was seven minutes ago, remember? It’s already happened.”
“But the door-”
“Reports from CNSA monitors show no sign of any such door on the Martian surface,” he stated, scrolling through new reports that popped onto his phone with rapidity. “Backup cameras went with the collapse of the geodesic dome. It’s only so much rubble out there now.”
We stood a while as the other scientists poured in, and they were greeted with the morning surprise that would end space flight indefinitely, the one which has kept us off the Martian surface out of fear for five years and counting, and neither us or China or any civilized nation on this frail blue point are willing to leave. We remain.
Because fear ultimately exceeds curiosity.