Europa Strike(47)
Jack leaned back, stunned. Excavations of the vast complex of ruins on Mars had continued for decades, but the task had really only just begun. The XTA teams on site estimated that perhaps 8 percent of the Cydonian ruins and structures had been surveyed so far, and less than 2 percent actually excavated and explored. There was a lot left to discover on Mars.
One artifact that had been turned up in some numbers, however, were the so-called floaters. These were bundled cigar shapes, like elongated eggs perhaps three meters long and a meter through at their widest. All were badly corroded—some were little more than metal and ceramic shells flaking away beneath the relentless UV flood and exotic oxidizing chemistries of the Martian sands. All appeared to be filled completely with electronic components of staggering complexity and miniaturization. All possessed between five and nine lenses scattered about their bodies that were almost certainly optics, plus numerous other components that probably represented other senses.
Current theory held that they were robots of some sort. They were called “floaters” because it was assumed they used some sort of electromagnetic repulsive force to hover above the ground—even, possibly, true antigravity, though none possessed circuitry or power systems intact enough to confirm such speculation. When found, every one had been lying on the ground as though they’d simply fallen there when the power cut off.
Sam Too’s discovery put a new light on things. The landscape visible on Display 94725 in the Cave of Wonders had yielded various tantalizing bits of information. For one thing, the room was oriented in such a way that the sun could be observed setting behind the monolithic Needle once every 216 days—from which the length of the planet’s year had been deduced. Better, the spectra of that star had exactly matched the spectra of Alpha Centauri A—the specific bit of research that had resulted in the Ad Astra, humankind’s first true starship.
By sharply enhancing the image, bits of the background had been studied, and objects that might have been alien statues had been glimpsed and reconstructed. The XTA teams had assumed that each statue represented a different alien race, though not enough information had been available to make that more than a guess.
The teams had assumed the floaters to be robots in the original sense—servants and workers. If floaters were among those statues, though, that seemed to upgrade them from robot to living being.
Jack felt a delicious thrill shiver down his spine. For over twenty-five years, archeologists had been searching for some physical remnant of the Builders themselves, the advanced beings who’d built the Cydonian complex and other sites on Mars. The only signs of life so far identified had been the mummified remains of archaic Homo sapiens, humans evidently civilized and trained and brought to Mars for some purpose—presumably, again, as laborers.
Had they been in possession of the bodies of the Builders themselves all along?
Had the Builders been machine intelligences?
“So much for the alien gods nonsense,” David said, grinning. “They didn’t build their colony on Mars, then ‘return to the stars whence they came.’ They came…and they died. Here.”
“There’s still the Earth colony idea,” Paul pointed out. “Maybe the survivors went there when things…went bad.”
David snorted. “Go back to Columbia and take another year of biology, son. Humans are not descendants of space castaways, no matter what the astronut religions and feel-gooder Net channels say.”
It was an argument Jack had heard played out before. The notion that humans might be the offspring of spacefaring Adams and Eves had been around for well over a century now, despite quite convincing proof to the contrary. Human beings shared over 98 percent of their DNA with chimpanzees, and significant percentages with creatures as lowly as starfish and coliform bacteria. Humans were inextricably bound up with the web of Earth-evolved life; there could be no question that they’d started out on Earth.
Paul shook his head, “Not saying they are, Dad. But we know the Builders tinkered with our DNA to make us what we are today. You found the proof of that right here at Cydonia. So maybe they moved to Earth when things collapsed here.”
“If they did, we haven’t found any sign of it,” David replied. “Science demands proof, not speculation.”
“You don’t need to bite his head off, David,” Teri said. “The best science begins with speculation. We call it hypothesis. It tells us what we should be looking for.”
“Yeah, and when we rely too heavily on hypothesis, we end up looking a little too hard for proof that our pet theories are right. That’s not science. It’s religion!”