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Jake stood with mouth agape as he stared at the image showing the rocks on Mars that spelled out his name.

He looked over at his boss, but Rick just stared back at him darkly, waiting for some sort of explanation. When he realized Jake wasn't going to volunteer one he spoke up, "So? Would you care to explain how you managed to do this?"

"Yeah, I need to hear this," said Darryl, who was one of Jake's teammates on the team that operated the rover's propulsion systems. "I figure, given the number of rocks used in that message and the speed the rover moves at, it would have taken months of constant motion for it to go out and pick up each rock, then bring it over to the dune and place it exactly where it needed to be. That would have it covering almost as much ground as the rover's covered doing actual science over the past year and a half! How the hell did you manage it?"

Jake's other teammate, Chris, piped up as well, "I don't see how it was even possible. The rover's not setup to seek out rocks on its own, or even to pick them up effectively. Only the science team can point out objects of interest and they tell us to program the rover to move over and deal with them. There's no possible way you programmed it to pick up each of those rocks individually. The coding for that many moves would take months for a whole team to write. And there's no way I can think of that you could have programmed it to be smart enough to detect appropriate sized rocks on its own, pick them up, and bring them over and place them exactly where they need to be in the message. The sophistication of that sort of program wouldn't even fit in the execution buffer! I'm seriously impressed with you right now, but I have to know, how did you pull this off?"

Both of his teammates were grinning at him as they waited for him to spill how he'd done it, but there was nothing to spill. It wasn't him.

"Guys, I'm telling the truth when I say it wasn't me. If it wasn't either of you, and if no one else has had access to Curiosity's command stream while I've been at home, then it wasn't the rover that did it at all. Seriously, what you guys said is exactly right. It would take it months even at the robot's maximum speed to cover that much ground back and forth to move that many rocks. It was busy doing science right up until just over a month ago. There isn't any conceivable way the rover could have done it. It's completely impossible! The sooner everyone gets that through their heads the sooner we can move on to trying to figure out what's happening out there. Someone's doing this, but it can't be anyone back here."

Rick rolled his eyes and said, "You're not gonna try to tell me there's aliens out there I hope. Are you gonna suggest they're the ones responsible for this? You faked those footprints as part of the gag, didn't you? Even if there were aliens out there, and I'm not dumb enough to fall for your joke so don't even think for one second that I believe that, how the hell would they know your name? And how the hell would they know about the age old 'so and so was here' graffiti line?"

Jake said, "All I can tell you for sure is that I had nothing to do with this!"

Just then another man barged into the office with a scowl on his face. Jake hadn't spoken to him directly very often, but he knew that Randall "Ramrod" Carter hadn't got his nickname for being subtle or gentle. He braced himself for the barrage that was about to be launched in his direction.

"What the hell did you think you were doing with our equipment, Smith? The US government didn't pay two and a half billion dollars to send that machine out there to Mars so you could use it as your personal toy to play some damn prank! We need professionals working in this installation, not fucking frat boys! Are you some goddamn dog who needs to piss on things and mark them as his own territory? Were you trying to claim the planet as your own personal fucking playground? You are in some serious shit right now! You need to explain your actions, and it had better be good!"

Jake tried to stay calm and lowered his voice so as not to antagonize the director any more and he said, "As I was telling these guys, I really can't explain it since I had nothing to do with it. I did not somehow program that rover to rearrange those rocks. I know that machine better than anyone and I can tell you without a doubt, even if you'd ordered all of us to do it as a team it would still take at least three months to make something like that happen. It just wasn't me. It wasn't any of us. It wasn't Curiosity that did that. There's no possible way."

"Right, so I'm supposed to take your word for it and think, what, that an alien did this? Some random alien out there who happened to be tooling around Mars somehow figured out your name and wrote it out there on the sand for us to see? Do I look that fucking stupid to you!?" Randall shouted.

"I don't know what more I can say! It wasn't me!" Jake shouted in exasperation.

"It's your goddamn name that's spelled out on that planet!" the director shouted back, "How the hell do you propose it got there if it wasn't you using the rover to do it?"

Jake sighed and said, "OK, look, I have to confess to something I did years ago. In my defense, and I know it's not much of a defense but at least it's an explanation, I was drunk and not really thinking as clearly as usual. I really thought there would be no harm in it. It was while I was at Rocketdyne. We were celebrating the completion of the design of the power system. It was the night before they would load the reaction chamber in the RTG with the Plutonium-238. I dared the guys to program the robotic milling machine to carve our names into the reaction chamber so we'd sort of have a legacy of our work out there on Mars. They weren't quite as drunk as I was I guess, and they refused. I snuck back into the lab after everyone left and I programmed the machine to engrave my name, but since there was extra room I added the stupid 'was here' part as a joke. I realize I was acting against policy, but it really seemed harmless. It would in no way affect the robot's performance and it would never even be known that I did it."

Randall shouted, "So you did piss on it to mark your territory!"

Jake replied, "That was six damn years ago! I was drunk and I wrote my name on the inside of a small radioactive container! That's all! I had absolutely nothing to do with writing those words out there on Mars!"

Rick said, "Wait a minute. Are you suggesting there really is an alien out there and he somehow saw the inside of that reaction chamber and saw the message you left there? Do you really believe that?"

Jake shrugged, "I don't see how else it could be written out there on that sand dune. Think about it. You said yourself the robot's putting out twice as much power as it was last week. How is that possible unless somehow the radioisotope fuel got replaced? If it was replaced by someone, they would have had a chance to see the inside of the chamber. If they saw what was written there, maybe they wanted to indicate to us that they did it. They probably wouldn't even understand what the words meant, but maybe the message was their way of informing us that they had replaced what was in the chamber for us."

The director snorted and said, "Now you're saying it was some sort of alien version of a roadside assistance service that saw our rover was stalled out so they went ahead and repaired it for us? Are you insane, Smith?"

"I'm not sure if I'd know it if I were insane, but I don't think I am. All I'm saying is if you stop and think about it, none of us could possibly have done any of the things that were done out there over the last few days. How could we magically increase the power output of the generator without replacing the fuel? It's physically impossible. How could we get it moving again when one of the wheels was stuck spinning, and three of them were buried under the sand? How could we possibly manage to clear the dust out of all the joints? How could we use a rover who's average speed is roughly a hundred feet per hour to cover more than twice that distance hundreds of times in the course of just a few days, while accurately locating, picking up and placing all of those rocks? Again, physically impossible. Writing that program would be impossible in that time too. I'm telling you, we can eliminate the robot completely from the equation, there's simply no way it could have done it. So that leaves us with only one other possible answer. Someone else did it. Unless you know of some manned mission to Mars from Earth that I'm not aware of, then, as crazy as it might sound, the only possible answer is that there is alien life out there and they did this."

"I sure as hell can't approach my bosses with a theory like that!" Randall yelled.

"Well, I have nothing better for you to take to them. It wasn't me, that's all I can say for certain."

The director said, "You'll need to prove that, Smith. These men from the FBI have been ordered to take you in for tampering with government property. If you want to get yourself off the hook for this you'll need to come up with some real proof that you didn't do it."

Jake started getting angry. "Whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty? Why do I have to prove my innocence? In any case, everything I did at that workstation for the last six years of the rover mission has been logged. Why don't you just look at all the logs, they'll corroborate everything I'm saying. Every command I've ever sent to that machine has been logged, and so has every result that came back. Check the logs!"

"It's your computer! You have full access to all of those logs! You could have changed them at any time to look like whatever you wanted!" Randall raged.

"That's it!" Darryl shouted, "That's how you did it! You created a fake image using one of the old pictures of a sand dune from the rover. You photoshopped the rocks into it, removed the watermark, then you sent it out to the rover so it would be sitting in the image buffer waiting for us to suck it back down thinking it was a current image that we ordered it to take! The picture was sitting there the whole time waiting for us to request a new image and the rover just sent it right back to us. The only thing you really needed to accomplish was to get the rover to create those fake foot prints in the sand! That would be a hell of a lot easier than finding and placing hundreds of rocks. You knew the first thing we'd do when we got back control of Curiosity would be to send it where those fake tracks led and take a picture! You had us all completely fooled! You're a genius!"

Rick shook his head and said, "No, that can't be it. It would explain the picture with the message, but how the hell do you explain the state of Curiosity's health? How is it suddenly in such good shape?"

Darryl was adamant, "It's the only logical explanation, unless you want to go with Jake's theory of some sort of good Samaritan aliens going around fixing other people's hardware for no reason. He could just as easily have preloaded the fake telemetry on the robot's systems too. Maybe it's still just as unhealthy as it was and it just sent us fake results that he put in place for us to request back from the robot. Maybe it's still stuck where it was, just as broken as it was. He just set this whole thing up as a brilliant joke!"

"I've been arrested by the fucking FBI!" Jake retorted, "They're about to haul me away! Don't you think if I did this as a joke I'd be admitting the whole thing right about now to try to retain my freedom?"

Rick said, "In any case, we've already had the hard disk on his workstation imaged at the bit level, and a digital forensic team is going over it right now. It will take some time but if any of the logs or telemetry have been tampered with, they'll know it. Trust me. If it's a joke on his part, we'll know about it within a few hours."

The operations director sighed and turned to the FBI agents and asked, "Would you two be alright with waiting here for those results? I was the one who called your boss to have you sent over, but I really don't want this man taken into custody unless I'm fairly certain he's guilty. If he's done any of this, that forensic team can tell us without a doubt."

One of the agents shrugged and said, "We're here because of you. If you want, we can leave and come back if you need us to. It's not like he's killed anyone or committed a terrorist act or something. I don't even see why any of this is a big deal to be honest. I think it's a pretty good joke if that's what it really turns out to be. He sure as hell has all of you guys in a twist over it."

Randall said, "Maybe that would be for the best, then. You may as well go. I'll call again if I need you. I'm sorry for wasting your time."

The FBI agent shrugged again and nodded, and the two men left the office.

Randall turned back to Jake and said, "I guess now we wait. If we find any evidence of you tampering with those files I'll have our local security hold you until those FBI men can get back here."

Rick thought for a moment and said, "There's a quicker way to find out. Darryl, you and Chris cobble up a script to wipe out all of the data buffers on Curiosity. Then send it another query on its status. It'll need to re-query all of its sensors again. Let's find out if that telemetry was fake and the rover is still stuck, or if it was real and the rover really did follow your commands and move over to the rock outcropping to take that picture."

Darryl nodded and he and Chris huddled together to prepare the commands.

Jake said, "While you're at it, send it a request for a new image right after the buffer's been purged. Whatever we see then is really what the camera is currently looking at. Some time has passed and you haven't moved the rover, so we should see the same image, but the shadows will have shifted just a bit as the sun moves across the sky. There's no way I could fake that."

Darryl nodded again and said, "Good idea. We'll see what's really out there in just over six minutes."

They all waited patiently and in time the telemetry started coming in. The two men from Jake's team scrutinized it and then Darryl turned to the others and said, "The buffers have been flushed. The results of the new diagnostics are the same as before. All systems are nominal, even the ones that had shut down over the past few months from wear. The generator's putting out more than twice the power it's designed for, and the batteries are at full capacity. The rover is literally better than it was when it was brand new. I don't see how this is possible."

Rick asked, "What about the image it just took? How much longer before it comes?"

"Just a few seconds. All the commands were bundled so as soon as it finished flushing the buffers and ran the diagnostic it would have taken the picture. It takes a bit of time to compress and transmit but it should be here any time now."

Just then the computer beeped and the image viewer launched and loaded up the new picture. Everyone moved in closer to get a good look.

Just as Jake had said, the image looked identical to the previous one with only very subtle differences brought about by the slight lengthening of the shadows from the sun moving across the Martian sky over the hours that had passed since the last picture was taken. What they were seeing was real. The message was really out there, written with rocks whose shadows had also lengthened to match the rest of the terrain.

"This is insane," Randall said, "What are we supposed to think now? If what you all are saying is true and it's physically impossible for Curiosity to have arranged those rocks, then how did it really happen?"

Jake noticed something in the image and he said, "What the hell is that? Zoom in on the sky there."

Darryl panned the image a bit and rolled the mouse wheel forward to zoom in. There appeared to be a repeating pattern of bright dots in the sky lined up towards the surface of Mars. The front dot looked like it was glowing slightly with a reddish-orange hue like it was giving off its own light. The others looked to be simply reflecting the sunlight. There were at least a dozen dots in a perfectly straight line fading off into the distant sky.

"Holy Christ! What is that?" Randall asked.

Jake said, "Darryl, send the command for another image. Do it quick!"

He did as he was told.

Rick turned to Jake and asked, "What do you think it is? Any ideas?"

Jake shrugged and said, "If I don't miss my guess, we're looking at asteroids heading for Mars. They have to be close. The front one is already glowing from entry into the thin atmosphere and would have likely become a streak just seconds after that was taken. It would have already hit the ground by now if that's the case. We need to see what's happening out there."

"But there's a whole string of them! Are you sure it's not just noise of some sort?" Rick asked.

"I can't be completely sure, but this system has been noise proof up till now. The error correction has been flawless. I think those are meteors and I think they were intentionally aimed at the planet. Look how perfect that line is. I can't even see the end of it. There could be dozens of them."

"Preposterous!" Randall exclaimed, "Why the hell would some alien want to bomb a desolate planet with asteroids? What makes you so sure it's intentional?"

"That line is absolutely perfectly spaced and perfectly straight. In fact, look at how well they're framed in the sky above the center of that message. Maybe whoever wrote the message did it to get us looking in that direction. Maybe they wanted us to see what was about to happen."

"Yeah, maybe the reason they're bombing that planet in front of the camera is just to show us that they can do it," Darryl suggested.

"Oh, Jesus! If what you say is true..." the director said as he began to go pale, "Shit, I have to get on the horn. If it's what you think it is, they could do the same thing to Earth! Jesus Christ! We could be under attack already!"

Jake asked, "You really want to start that ball rolling right away? Shouldn't you at least wait for the next image to come in? I might be wrong about what it is."

Randall looked over at him and thought for a moment, then nodded and said, "You're right. No point going off half-cocked."

Darryl said, "Yeah, someone higher up might think you're playing a joke on them and call in the feds and have you arrested or something."

The director glared at Darryl for a moment, then he looked over at Jake and began to turn a bit red and said, "I'm really sorry, Jake. I thought you were screwing around with the equipment and I guess I overreacted. I don't know what the hell is going on out there, but it's starting to be pretty obvious that you aren't behind it."

The computer finally beeped and the image came up on the screen and they all gasped.

Jake said, "I guess you'd better make that call after all, Randall."

The latest picture from Mars showed a massive plume from a meteor impact far off in the distance framed perfectly by the message 'Jake Smith was here' that was written across the sand dune at the bottom of the image. The dust and debris from the powerful impact was caught in the act of rising high into the Martian sky, and above that were several more brightly glowing dots. Each of them likely another meteor following the first one in. The string stretched out so far that they couldn't see the end of it as it faded off into the darkening sky.

The surface of Mars was being pummeled by asteroids, and clearly it was being done by design.

Randall went pale and said, "Jake, send those shots to my computer. I need to get to my office. I'm putting you in charge of the rover since everyone seems to think you know it best. Use it to get a better assessment of the situation out there. See what else you can find out. Anything you find, anything at all, you contact me immediately."

Just before he bolted out the door the director said, "All of you keep this to yourselves. Until you're told otherwise, none of this leaves this room. Got it?"

They all nodded their understanding and he left in a rush.

Jake's team members moved away from the desk to give him room and he sat down in front of his computer.

"I guess the first thing to do is get to a better vantage to try to get a good look at the impact point where those meteors are coming down," Rick suggested.

"It looks like the impacts are happening pretty far away. Probably hundreds of miles," Jake said, "I'm not sure if we'll see much, but I guess we should try. I can take Curiosity up the side of that dune to the top. Now that it's at full power the wheels can handle it no problem, but first I'll have it take pictures to the left and right and behind it in case there's anything to see there."

He quickly scripted the commands for the images, then added the commands to move the rover around the rock message and up the dune to the peak and he sent the program.

They stared quietly at the image on Jake's computer for a while as they waited for the next round of photos to come across.

"Why do you suppose they're bombing the planet, Jake. What would be the point? Are they really just showing us their power?" Rick asked.

Jake shrugged and said, "I don't see why they would do it that way. I suppose if they're for the most part friendly, but want to show us that they could wipe us out if we cause them any trouble, this might be their way of warning us without hurting us. If they were outright aggressive they would show us their power by bombing the Earth, not Mars. I don't think we're in danger from them if we don't act aggressively towards them without provocation."

"That makes sense I guess," Rick said.

"I doubt it's any sort of show of power, though," Jake said as he examined the last photo some more, "I suspect there's some other reason behind it. Look how many asteroids there are. We can't even see the end of the line. Look how perfectly aligned they are. They're gonna hit one after the other for God knows how long. It looks as though they were carefully aimed to hit the exact same point over and over again, almost like they're trying to drill into the planet or something. That many repeated impacts in exactly the same location would liquefy the crust, and if it keeps going it would drill right down through the mantle to the core of the planet I would think."

"Are you saying they might be trying to engineer the planet somehow?"

"It's one possibility. There's a nearly endless source of rocks out in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. They have a lot of ammo they can hit the planet with. It would be a powerful drilling tool."

"But why would they want to drill into the planet?" Darryl asked.

Jake said, "One of the main problems with any possible attempt to terraform Mars is the fact that it has no real magnetic field to protect the planet. The core of Mars should be pretty much the same as Earth, mostly iron and nickel and sulfur. The difference is ours is still in a very liquid state, so the metal flowing around the core acts like a dynamo and generates a magnetic field for us. That field is the only reason we have an atmosphere. When the core of Mars cooled enough that the outer core was no longer flowing around the inner core, the magnetic field collapsed. The atmosphere would have been bombarded non-stop by the solar winds. The charged particles actually dragged the planet's atmosphere out into space over the course of hundreds of millions of years until there was nearly nothing left. The only reason Mars has no significant atmosphere now is because it lost its magnetic field. Maybe they're trying to heat it back up again to restart the dynamo."

"Holy Christ! The amount of energy that would take!" Darryl exclaimed.

"Most of the energy would come from the planet's gravity," Jake said, "All they'd need to do is start accurately slow pitching rocks at Mars and let its gravity pull them in at high speed. None of the rocks in that line look to be huge or anything. I think that would be by design too. If they keep the impacts smaller, controlled, and uninterrupted, they'd be able to drill down deep, melting the rock as they go, until they eventually reach the outer core. Smaller rocks means more control, less devastation to the rest of the planet, and likely they're easier to manhandle when they launch them from the asteroid belt."

"If that's the case then this all would have been started a while ago. It would take a lot of time for those rocks to make their way from the belt to the planet," Darryl said.

"It depends how hard they chucked them I guess," Jake said, "We're definitely talking at least a few months. I suppose we should make sure Randall gets the word out to every astronomer out there. We need all eyes and every piece of equipment available looking towards the space between Mars and the asteroid belt. If my guess is right, I'd say there might be hundreds of asteroids crossing the gap and they could be raining down for days or weeks to come."

His computer began to beep and the first few images he'd requested from the rover came up on his screen.

"Looks like there's nothing of note in any of these," Rick said, "We should get the robot up to the top of that dune so we can look towards the impact zone."

"It's already on the way," Jake replied, "The commands to move it there were bundled with the request for these images. It would have started moving even while it was still compressing these pics and transmitting them back to us. I also told it to take a couple of pictures when it gets to the peak of the dune. It'll take a while longer for it to get there and it'll take a while for us to get those images afterwards, so just sit tight. It'll be almost another half hour."

Once again they settled in to wait while they pondered what must be unfolding out there on Mars.

"I wonder how long it would take them to light up the core again if that's really what they're doing," Chris pondered, "It seems like a hell of a huge undertaking. If they're really doing it for that reason, then why Mars? It seems they're quite powerful. Why not just take Earth from us?"

"You're assuming they're assholes," Darryl said, "Maybe they aren't."

"You're also assuming they could survive on Earth," Rick added, "They might not even be able to breathe our air for all we know. Maybe they need methane or some other gas instead."

Jake said, "If this is all about terraforming, and they're doing it in our solar system, it's because we have small rocky planets in the Goldilocks zone where water can exist in a liquid state under the right conditions. Venus is in the zone too, but for some reason Mars must have been more appealing. Maybe it's in part because it has no real atmosphere so they can more easily add whatever it is they want. Like Rick says, maybe they don't want oxygen and nitrogen. Maybe those are toxic to them. It could also have to do with the size of the planet. Even if we could terraform Mars ourselves, I'm not sure how much we'd enjoy living there. The gravity would be less than 40% of Earth's. I suppose we could get used to it in time. Venus's gravity would be close to Earth's, but maybe both Earth and Venus have too much gravity for them and Mars would be more appealing for that reason. At this point it's all guess work."

"How would they actually make an atmosphere, though?" Chris asked, "There's nothing on Mars but rocks and sand. I think the asteroids in the belt between Mars and Jupiter are mostly just metal and rock. How do they get whatever gas they need in big enough quantities? Wouldn't it be easier to find some way to convert our atmosphere to something they could use?"

Jake shrugged and said, "Conversion is hard. I suppose they'd have the technology to do it, but it would be easier to start with nothing and simply add exactly what you need. The asteroid belt is mostly rock and metal, but the Kuiper belt is mostly water and frozen volatiles like methane and ammonia I think. If they need a large quantity of gas and water, that would be the place to get it. They have the technology to throw asteroids from the belt at Mars so there's no reason they couldn't do the same from the Kuiper belt. Maybe even as we sit here there are already hundreds of comets coming at Mars from somewhere out past Neptune. Maybe we should get Randall to notify the others of that possibility too so they can look in that direction."

"I'll take care of it," Rick said.

"It would take an incredibly long time to send anything all the way from the Kuiper belt. If they really are doing that then they would have had to start years ago."

Jake nodded, "That's right, but we have no way of knowing when this all really began. I'm just guessing about the Kuiper belt anyhow. I might be wrong. Hell, we're guessing about everything right now. We can't even know for sure that terraforming is their goal. If it is, it would take a hell of a long time to complete. It's definitely conceivable that they started the project years ago and it's all starting to come together now."

They all went quiet again as they thought of the possibilities.

While they waited for the rover to make its way up to the top of the sand dune, Rick contacted Randall to inform him of what they were doing with the rover and that they hadn't discovered anything new yet. He also told the director of Jake's suggestion to begin to get word out at least within the government astronomical installations to try to scour the space between Mars and the asteroid belt, and the Kuiper belt, to see if they could see any other objects headed in towards Mars from that direction. When Randall asked him why, Rick explained their theory about terraforming and Randall went ballistic before finally hanging up.

After a little while longer Jake's computer beeped and the first image that came up had them gasping again. The impact site was very far away, likely over the edge of the horizon, but it had begun to glow near its base. The sky above the site was saturated with dust, making it impossible to see if there were still more asteroids on their way. What seemed the most alarming was a massive wall of what looked like dust that stretched across most of the horizon and was at least a mile high. Dust from the explosive impacts of the meteors must be pushing outward from the center at a steady rate. Before much longer it would engulf Curiosity completely.

"Holy! Look at the dust storm that's coming," Darryl said, "There's no way Curiosity will survive that. It'll be buried by it."

"Yeah," Chris agreed, "It sucks. Someone out there spruced her up for us, and now the robot's just gonna get buried by that wall of dust. I can't see it coming through that in working order. If they keep on pummeling the planet like that, this storm could last for days, weeks, or even months!"

"Look over there at the edge on the right. Is that another message written in rocks?" Rick asked.

Jake looked to the right and saw a line. It almost looked like intentionally arranged rocks again, but it was at the extreme edge of the image and the line was cut off by the right edge of the photo.

"One of the next pictures should show it better. I had the rover take one pointed at the impact site, then two more skewed forty-five degrees to the left and right so we'd see everything on the other side of the dune. It'll just be a minute before the next one lands."

The next image in the sequence came up, but it showed what was to the left of the first picture. There was nothing unusual there. Just more of the Martian landscape, undisturbed. They could see the edge of the massive wall of dust that must be expanding out from the center of the meteor impact point and rushing towards the robot at extremely high speed, but there was nothing else of interest.

They waited for the next image and, once again, they all gasped and there were exclamations of surprise when it came up on the monitor.

The line of rocks they'd seen continued a bit further to the right, but two shorter lines were added on the end of it at angles. It made a perfect arrow pointing directly at the base of an extremely wide ramp that went up the side of a very large structure that sat on several squat, thick stilts. The structure looked like it had multiple levels and a massive, two-level double door at the top of the wide ramp that looked like the entrance to a huge hangar that could hold multiple vehicles. The walls of the huge building were straight and tall and the surfaces were all clean and white. It had several small windows all around it.

"Holy Jesus! What is that?" Rick asked.

"It looks like a base of some sort," Jake suggested, "The aliens must be managing their terraforming operations from there. Those big doors at the top of the ramp look like a hangar. They must have vehicles in there. What's really interesting is that they're pointing us towards that ramp. Do you think they're telling us to drive Curiosity up to the top of the ramp?"

Rick said, "Why wouldn't they just bring the rover up there themselves then? Why the stupid message written in rocks on the sand dune? Why the arrow? If they wanted Curiosity up there wouldn't they have just put it there themselves?"

"We don't know how many of the aliens there are out there," Darryl said. "What if they're really small? You know how big that rover is. Ten men couldn't possibly lift it. Maybe they don't have the right equipment to hoist a two thousand pound robot around. Maybe they have other priorities right now and they don't have the time to deal with it, but they wanted to give us the option to move it up there ourselves."

Chris said, "I think I see writing on the big door on the right near the bottom. Zoom in on it, Jake."

Jake panned the image to center it on the hangar door and zoomed in by rolling the mouse wheel forward. "Oh for Christ's sake! It's like they're intentionally trying to get me in trouble."

Scrawled on the white surface of the door like they were written with a black felt marker were the words, "Jake Smith was here" and there was another arrow pointing down as if to indicate that that was where the rover should go.

"That looks like an invitation to me," Darryl said, "I think they're telling us to take the robot inside that hangar to protect it from the storm they caused."

Chris said, "There's only one way to find out if that's where they want us. Program Curiosity to follow that ramp to the top, Jake."

"Hold on a minute," Rick said, "This would essentially be first contact with an alien race. It's a pretty big deal. I think we'd better get Randall back in here. He'll likely want to get the government involved before we do anything more. We shouldn't just rush forward with this."

Jake said, "There's no time for that, Rick. That storm at the front edge of the blast wave from the meteor strikes is probably rushing across Mars at hypersonic speed. It could reach the robot in less than an hour and it would be like Curiosity was being scoured by a planet-sized sand blaster. It would be torn apart, and then the parts would be buried under ten feet of sand over time. It will take time for it to move up to that building. We might not even make it before it hits, but we've got to try. I'm programming it to go right up that ramp to the door. You can go ahead and contact Randall, but I'm sending the robot in. We'll lose it for sure otherwise."

Rick thought about it for a bit, then he nodded and said, "I'm gonna step out while I talk to the director. I don't want to distract you while you're doing it. Just be careful, Jake. Don't bust that machine, and don't run over any aliens or anything."

Jake nodded and then turned back and carefully studied the images and began to write the program to move the rover. He'd been navigating the machine across miles of the Martian terrain over the years and by now he could quite accurately judge distances and angles and surface conditions from the images it sent in order to determine how fast he should run the motors and for how long before he turned it for so many degrees to aim it in a new direction. He needed to be extra careful as they'd have time for only one shot at the ramp and there was no room for mistakes. The back side of the rover was free of any protrusions so he felt it would be best to go up backwards. Even in its stowed position, Curiosity's big arm at the front might cause problems, so Jake choreographed the rover's movements to approach the ramp, turn completely around, then turn the turret around so the rover could move backwards up the ramp while taking pictures of its progress. He inserted commands to send low resolution images back at short intervals while it made the trip so he would have advanced notice if the robot was heading off track. The ramp was a big target and the rover would have lots of room so it likely wouldn't fall off the edge, but he wanted to try to aim it right where the arrow had been drawn on the door to the right. They must have indicated that particular spot because there would be room for the large rover next to their own vehicles.

He sent the program off and they began the wait again. The first image would take the longest to arrive, but after that they would continue to come in at one minute intervals so that Jake could see any necessary course deviations that might be needed well in advance so he'd have time to react and adjust Curiosity's course. The first image had been timed to occur just as the rover turned to line itself up with the base of the ramp while still a distance away so he'd have time to adjust before it got there and started to climb up.

"I can understand that they might not have the means to lift that huge rover," Chris said, "but if they really wanted to make themselves known, and to lead the rover to safety, why the message with the rocks and the arrow? Why write on their door? Why didn't the aliens just stand in front of the rover's camera and dance a jig to get our attention, then lead us right where they want us?"

"Think about it," Darryl said, "They'd have no way of knowing when we'd actually hook up with Curiosity again. They're busy terraforming a planet. They couldn't stand around posing in front of the camera for some unknown number of hours or days in hopes that we'd look through it. They wouldn't even have any way of knowing if we actually were looking through the camera at all since there aren't any lights or anything on the robot to indicate its active. They left a message for us to see and they went back about their business. I'm surprised they would even take the time to fix up the rover for us, but maybe that was a trivial task for them. It seems to me they must be friendly, but they can only do so much. They fixed the rover up, gave us some obvious signs to guide us in the right direction, and then left the rest up to us and went back to work doing what they're really there for."

"Yeah, it could be that they wanted to make a friendly gesture right off the bat," Jake said, "They're the ones that are responsible for the coming dust storm. They knew it would ruin our rover, so they gave it a chance at survival. With their level of technology, fixing one of our robots would probably be child's play. They didn't need to do it, but they did it anyhow. I don't know them, but I like them already."

At last the first low resolution image from the rover arrived and it looked as though Jake had nailed the alignment and the rover was pointed squarely at the ramp and would arrive right at the spot where the words had been written on the door of the hangar. He decided not to send any deviation. He wasn't sure how much time he had and he didn't want to get involved in a back and forth with the robot where he would stop it and get it to change direction slightly to line up better and send him an image back with six minute delays between each part. He asked the others if it looked good to them and they agreed it should have no problem getting squarely onto the ramp and it looked like it was more or less lined up to arrive at the top near the message that had been written on the door, so he allowed the robot to continue on its course.

As each subsequent image came in at just one minute apart they could see the ramp getting closer and closer. At the same time they could see the surrounding environment begin to get darker and Jake became nervous. The dust storm was building higher and getting closer in a hurry. It could arrive at any moment and it would hit hard. The robot would not survive if it was caught out in the blast.

Tension in the room began to build as Curiosity inched its way up the ramp at what felt like an excruciatingly slow speed. They weren't even sure yet what would happen when it got to the top.

That question was answered shortly when one image showed the huge door with the writing on it getting closer, and the very next image in the sequence showed the entryway wide open. They could see into the hangar and to the left they saw the edge of a vehicle with three large black tires. Beside that vehicle, directly in Curiosity's path, was an open space. The way ahead of the rover was clear and Curiosity should have no trouble fitting in the slot.

Jake groaned as he saw the back wall of the parking spot that looked like it had been cleared for the rover. Once again, to his dismay, the aliens had written the message "Jake Smith was here" with an arrow pointing down as if as an invitation to come in and park right there.

"Holy crap! They opened up for us! They even gave us our own parking stall!" Darryl exclaimed.

"Drive it in quick, Jake. It's getting dark out there. The storm's got to be getting close." Chris said.

"No need. I programmed it to continue forward until it detected an obstruction in front of it. It would have stopped at the door, but since it's open the robot should drive right in and stop in front of the back wall."

Rick came back into the office and said, "Randall's on his way. He's a bit hot. He doesn't like us moving the rover up to that building. He's thinking Curiosity is US government property, which makes it sort of our representative, and it's about to go onto what could be considered alien territory. He's afraid we might start some sort of interstellar incident if we don't do this just right. He's saying all of this is way above our pay grade now and we need to go hands off until someone tells us exactly what to do next. He's got the top brass getting in touch with the president's office and they'll likely be sending a team over right away. I tried to impress upon him that we didn't have much time before that storm hits and we might lose the rover for good, but he doesn't seem to think that matters. I think he's gonna put a stop to it, Jake."

Jake pointed at the screen and said, "Too late for that now. The rover's almost inside the building. It would take several minutes for any commands I send it to reach it so it could turn around, but by then it would already be inside and the door will be closed. You can go ahead and blame it on me if he goes apeshit. I don't really care."

At that moment Randall barged in once again and shouted, "Jake, stop that robot right now! We need to hold off until we get word on what to do next."

Jake shook his head and said, "Sorry, I was just telling Rick, it's too late for that. We're almost inside the building and there's no time to tell the robot to stop. It won't even get the message for another three minutes. I couldn't safely turn around at this point anyhow since it's in an enclosed space. I don't know if there's anything or anyone beside it. Just relax and let it finish the trip. You're welcome to use me as the scapegoat if the government gets upset. As you can see, the aliens went ahead and wrote my name on the wall in there. I'm sure when the government men see that I'll be up the creek anyhow."

"You won't be the only one going down! I'm in charge around here so they'll be blaming me, too! Turn that thing around and get it off the ramp, as quickly as you can! If you do anything wrong, like damaging that alien structure or something, you might start an incident the whole human race will have to answer for!"

"Are you not listening? Trying to turn it around now is exactly what might cause the damage you're so worried about! I might even injure one of them if they're standing too close beside the rover!" Jake shouted, "Besides, they invited us in for fuck's sake! They pointed us right at the door! They opened it up for us! They wrote the only English words they know, even though they have no idea what they mean, across the back wall of that hangar like they want us to come in. They even drew an arrow pointing at the floor to show us precisely where to park! What more invitation do you need? If anyone from the government says anything, just tell them we were worried that the aliens might take affront if we turned up our noses at their invitation. We were trying to be diplomatic and not refuse their obvious gesture of welcome."

Randall suddenly stopped and his eyebrows went up as he thought about it for a moment and then he said, "That actually makes sense. I guess if it's too late to turn it around we may as well go with that excuse. Just please, for the love of my pension, don't fuck this up. Drive carefully."

"It's too late for that too, really. I sent the program a while ago. Curiosity's doing all the driving itself. We're just waiting for it to finish. It should stop before it crashes into that back wall."

"It should stop? Are you trying to give me a fucking coronary, Smith?"

Darryl and Chris chuckled.

The last image came in and it showed a closeup of the white wall with the message written in big bold letters and nothing else. Shortly after that, telemetry came back from Curiosity that indicated it had detected a vertical obstruction and stopped all movement and was ready for the next command.

"Let's turn the mast around and look back at the door to see if it closed behind us," Darryl suggested, "At least that way the first thing the government guys see when they get here won't be your name written on the wall, Jake."

He was already typing up the commands and he hit the send button. He was regretting his drunken gag from six years ago more than ever now. The human race had finally made first contact with an intelligent alien species, and the very first Earth-shattering, landmark images from that encounter, that would likely become part of the historical record and eventually get sent out to the masses by every news agency on the planet, were covered with graffiti with Jake's name all over it. He would be happy to take the focus away from that message in any way he could.

"I'm OK with you turning Curiosity's camera away from the message, but I'm afraid that's going to have to be the last command you send for now, Jake," the operations director said, "We'll just be operators from now on and we'll need to take our orders from higher up when they decide what to do next."

Jake shrugged and said, "I guess that was inevitable."

Randall nodded and said, "I did what you suggested and got on the horn to the head of the Hubble team. They're canceling all of the science that was scheduled and reorienting the telescope for imaging towards the asteroid belt and then the Kuiper belt to see if anything's coming from there. They're pretty excited. I imagine it won't be long before word of this leaks out and teams all over the world are gonna be using every telescope available to try to see what's going on out there."

Jake said, "That sounds right to me. This is an event that affects the whole human race, not just our country. Everyone should be in on it."

Randall shook his head and said, "Promise me you won't say anything like that later on when you're questioned by the government."

"Questioned?"

"Yes. They're setting up a response team to deal with this. We'll be getting our orders from them from now on and they've already indicated we're to stand down and not proceed any further. Someone is on the way here now to take over. You know how the government can be. They'll see this as a top secret event involving the United States only, at least until someone outside gets wind of it and the lid is blown off."

"Why the hell would they need to question us? We've done nothing wrong," Chris said.

"Relax, they'll just be making sure they have absolutely every scrap of information available. They'll want to get completely up to speed before they continue to move this forward. Given the level of power the aliens are showing by bombarding Mars, the government guys are justifiably nervous. They're just gonna try to make sure everything is done just right."

Darryl grunted and said, "If you want something done right, you sure as hell don't go to the government to get it done."

Chris chuckled and agreed, "There's nobody more likely to do it all wrong I'd say. They should be leaving this to the scientific crowd."

Jake's computer beeped to indicate an incoming image from the rover once again. It must have completed its command to turn the mast and the picture it had taken was sent across. As was becoming the norm for the room, there were gasps and exclamations all around.

The rover had spun the camera mast 180 degrees to face forward again after essentially backing into its parking stall, and it had taken one last image towards the door it had come through to see if it had closed behind it. The image showed that it had indeed sealed shut once more. The room was quite large and the thick, heavy-looking door was a good twenty feet away from the rover's camera and it was closed against the outside environment. A wide, rectangular view port on the door showed that the sky outside had darkened nearly completely and it was streaked brown as if the storm was almost upon them.

What had caught their attention though was not the door or what was beyond it, it was what was in front of it. If there had been any doubt remaining in anyone's mind about whether it was actually aliens doing all of this, those doubts were completely abandoned.

An alien creature was standing before the door, facing the rover. It was not wearing a space suit, so the whole hangar must be an airlock. It was smiling and it had one hand raised with the palm forward in a sort of gesture of peace or welcome.

The being in the image was quite clearly not human and looked more like a very large, bipedal cat. More specifically, it looked like a tiger. It was covered in short, soft looking fur from top to bottom. Sharp fangs were evident in its smile and it's face looked wide with thick, soft, slightly longer fur at its cheeks and a lighter colored, heavily whiskered muzzle with an extra tuft of fur under its chin.

The hands they saw were in the shape of large, heavy paws. Each had five sharp-clawed digits, one of them opposable just like a human's thumb. The underside of the paw that was raised had pads on it just like a large cat's paw.

The creature looked to Jake almost exactly like a very large and powerful looking upright version of a tiger, but the color was a dark mottled brown over most of its fur except along it's chest and belly which was covered in very light brown fur. The fur everywhere except again on it's belly and chest was covered with jet black, jagged stripes a lot like a tiger would have. The creature looked extremely fit and very muscular with a narrow waist and broad shoulders and they could see down to the top part of his thick, muscular thighs that were cut off at the bottom edge of the image.

It was clear that the alien was male because he wore only a small pair of form-fitting shorts to cover his private area, and the crotch was extremely full. Jake could clearly see the outline of a very large set of testicles and what must be a huge penis or sheath. He surmised that maybe when you're covered in fur, it would be more comfortable not to wear any clothes if you don't have to. The beautiful cat was only wearing something to cover his most private area, and that appeared to be all.

They could see part of a tail peeking out from behind the alien that extended down and out of the picture. It looked like a tiger's tail and it had a ringed pattern of black and light brown fur.

The cat looked incredible to Jake. He'd never seen anything quite so stunning looking and he wished he was over there right now so he could get a closer look. He'd always imagined that if aliens existed they would look small and spindly, and grey or green and, well, alien. Never in his wildest imagination would he have thought they'd be huge, muscular, furry, beautiful cats. What caught him off guard the most though was the reaction of his loins. He found the creature incredibly attractive. Jake was gay, and there was nothing he wanted more right at the moment than to be swept into those powerful, furry, male arms.

The large cat's right paw was raised in the peace gesture, and in it's left paw it had a large computer tablet that it held up at arms length in front of Curiosity's camera. The tablet displayed a plain white background with several clusters of dots in groups in a few short rows like some sort of list. Under each group were odd looking symbols. At the bottom of the tablet were more odd symbols that must be alien writing that were arranged almost like a computer task bar.

At first Jake could make no sense whatsoever of the jumble of symbols strewn about the screen, but as he examined it more closely he noticed a pattern. He ignored the alien symbols and focused just on the dots. Each group of dots along a row had more dots than the group before. He quickly realized what it was the alien wanted to show them. "Those are primes!" he exclaimed, "He's showing us prime numbers! He's starting us off with their number system! Those symbols underneath must be their way of writing numbers! This is incredible!"

"Oh, shit, you're right!" Darryl exclaimed, "Two, three, five, seven, eleven and on and on. He's trying to get us on the road to communicating!"

Jake turned to the director and said, "Randall, I need to send another command to the rover. I need to give that creature some sign that we got the message!"

The director looked at his watch and then glanced out of the office and down the hall as if to see if anyone was approaching yet. He turned back to Jake and said, "Fine. Just one more. Let him know we saw his message. He should be smart enough to figure we'll need some time to absorb it so it won't be too offensive if he gets nothing else from us for a while after that."

"I'm sure he's at least as smart as us, if not more so," Jake said, "I think he probably knows exactly where that rover came from and he'd know how long it would take for messages to get there from here and then back again."

He brought up a blank script and started adding a string of commands. He hit the send button and turned to the others and said, "I told Curiosity to waggle the camera left and right slightly and tilt the camera forward and back on the mast, then wait five seconds and take another high resolution shot and send it to us. I added a loop so it will do that ten times with a gap of twenty seconds between each iteration. We'll start getting a string of images in about six minutes. I hope he gets what I'm doing quickly. I want him to show us the next string of primes, then the next after that. If we can get enough of them, we can figure out what base their number system is by looking at the symbols underneath the groups of dots. I'd guess it's ten since they have ten digits on their hands, just like us."

"Brilliant!" Darryl exclaimed, "Just a few more rows and we'd know that for sure."

"Why would he use prime numbers to try to communicate?" Randall asked, "Shouldn't he be trying to teach us his actual language?"

Jake said, "And how exactly would he be able to do that? We have no common ground to start off on, except of course for mathematics. Prime numbers are universal. It doesn't even matter if you use base ten, or sixteen, or sixty four. No matter what type of number system you use, it will always at the very least include the numbers one and zero. Primes are special because their only whole number factors are themselves or one. If you try to divide them by any other number you'd get a fraction. Primes are the perfect place to start. He knows we'd know prime numbers, so he's using them to show us their alien numbers underneath. If we're lucky, they use base ten like us. It would make things a lot easier going forward."

"I think you're right, Jake," Chris said excitedly, "They must use base ten. Just look at the fifth number in the first row. It has eleven dots and the symbol underneath has two slanted lines like double slashes. The next number has one of those slashes followed by a different symbol that looks almost like an upside down question mark without the dot. Those would be the prime numbers 11 and 13. The slash is in the same place as our 1 would be! It must by their symbol for the number one. Now look back at the second number in the row. That would be prime number three. The symbol underneath the three dots is that same upside down question mark like the number thirteen had! That must be their symbol for the number three!"

"If he'd put more numbers on that screen we'd know for sure," Rick said, "but that sure as hell looks right."

Jake said, "He wouldn't know how sharp the resolution of our camera is and that tablet's not that big. I'm guessing he didn't crowd too many on there so we could see them clearly enough to count the dots. That's why I'm getting the rover to take repeated pictures. If he's as smart as I think he is he probably planned it that way and he's got the next slide ready for us already."

Randall asked, "If he's so smart then why did they not simply come over here to talk to us? Why are they just toying with our rover instead of landing a ship on capitol hill and sending in an envoy to meet with congress?"

Jake shrugged and said, "I could think of a few reasons. For one, if there's no such thing as faster than light travel, and I'm pretty sure there isn't, then it would have taken them decades at least to get here from wherever they came from even if it was from one of the closest neighboring stars. Probably closer to a hundred years or more since even approaching the speed of light is nearly impossible. They might have been able to determine that the Earth was inhabited at the time they chose Mars as their next colony location and started heading for it, but any radio signals they might have detected from our planet would have clearly showed that we were fairly primitive compared to their space faring level of technology. They might have some sort of Star Trek-like prime directive that forbids them from interfering with a primitive species in its formative years. Now that they've finally arrived and seen that in the time it took them to come across we've advanced to the point of putting a rover on the surface of Mars, they might be interested in getting to know us.

"I'm guessing their primary mission right now is terraforming the planet though. I imagine we'll hear directly from them eventually, but maybe this guy is just a part of some advance engineering team sent ahead to prep the planet. His government might not be too happy with him either when they find out what he's doing with our rover. They might have preferred he wait until someone who represents their government could make first contact, just like what's happening over here. What we're seeing out there is likely an engineer, just like me, and he's curious, just like we are. He probably couldn't resist following his curiosity and helping us get our rover to a safe location before he started reworking the planet so he would have something to do in his spare time. Now he can screw around trying to communicate with us while the storm blows outside. It's exactly the type of thing I would do if I were in his position."

They waited impatiently for the first of the sequence of images to arrive, and when it finally did they saw that Jake was right. The tiger-like alien still stood in front of the rover but this time he grinned even more widely, like he was pleased they'd figured out what he wanted. On the tablet was another double row of groups of dots with symbols underneath, but they started with the next sequence in the number of dots from what was displayed on the previous image.

A short time later another image arrive, and once again the alien was smiling and the tablet looked like it was displaying the next sequence of primes.

"He's got it!" Chris shouted, "Look at that! Every time Curiosity waggles the camera he's flipping to the next page! We're up to 103 by the end of that last picture. I see a stack of ten lines each with ten dots and one row on top with three more dots. Look at the alien symbols underneath the dots. There's a slash at the front and that same upside down question mark at the end. The squiggle in between those must be their version of zero! That's the number 103 written in their alien language! Look at the number just before it. Slash, squiggle, slash! That's 101! This is amazing! I'm reading cat numbers!"

They all chuckled as they waited to learn more of the tiger's number system.

The next image showed the next sequence of primes. As they began to compare the symbols underneath with those from the first few screens they were easily able to read the cat version of 107, 109, 113 and 127. As the number of dots became cumbersomely large, the list finally dropped them altogether and simply showed the alien version of the numbers. It would be understood now that they knew they were dealing with a long sequence of prime numbers and the dots became unnecessary. They already had enough to see without question that the cats used the same type of base ten number system as humans do. The clincher would come in the next few screens when the numbers finally rolled over to the two hundreds and then ultimately reached past 1000. There would be no doubt whatsoever then.

Unfortunately, they never got that far. The very next image that came up on the screen looked garbled.

"Uh, oh," Jake said.

Just as he said it alarms started going off on the computer and several screens began to pop up.

"Shit!" Jake exclaimed, "We've lost the link to Curiosity."

"What? What happened?" Rick asked.

"I'd guess it's the dust storm. At full force the sky must be thick with dust several miles high. It's so bad it must be blocking the radio transmission. The rover's transmitter is incredibly weak at best. It wouldn't take much to blot it out completely. I guess that's all we're gonna get for a while until that storm clears. At least we know Curiosity is sheltered safely and in good hands," Jake said.

"What the hell is all of that?"

Everyone turned at the sound of the voice and they saw a man standing at the open door of the office with an angry look on his face who was staring at all of the images of the alien that were displayed on the computer monitor.

He moved into the room and two other men followed in behind him.

Randall spoke up first and said, "I'm Randall Carter, director of operations here. You must be the task force setup to respond to the first contact. I was told you were on the way."

The man nodded. "I believe you were also told not to proceed any further until we arrived and assessed the situation. Why am I seeing images of an alien creature? I assume those were taken by the Curiosity rover? Did you actually move that thing inside one of their structures?"

Jake was about to speak up but Randall motioned him to stay out of it and said, "We had no choice. The alien invited us in to protect the robot from the storm they'd caused with their meteor bombardment. We felt it was critical to keep that rover operational and we also didn't want to risk causing any offense by ignoring their invitation. Besides, the program had already been sent by my team here before I found out what was going on and it was too late to send the commands to turn it around. We would have risked causing damage to that alien structure, the vehicles inside it, or possibly even the alien itself. The last command that was sent to Curiosity was to take a series of images and send them back to us before the storm hit and blocked out all communications. We needed those images to assess the situation after the robot settled in and to be sure that no damage was done and that the rover was safe inside. The alien just happened to be posing in front of the camera with his tablet while the images were taken."

The government man scowled and said, "I suppose in the end it may turn out that you made the right decision, but the fact remains that you initiated first contact without being given the clearance to do so. Your job was simple. Shut your team down and wait for us to arrive. It seems you're unable to follow even the simplest of instructions. It's a good thing we're here to take charge. I'll be filing a report once I've talked to all of you and I'll be recommending that you have no further involvement, Mr. Carter."

Randal glared back, but said nothing more.

The man then looked around the room at all of the others and asked, "Who's the lead technician for operating that robot?"

Rick said, "Jake Smith here is the team lead. I'm his manager."

The man's eyebrows went up. "Jake Smith? The one who's name was written in that message on the sand? The one who first discovered the alien presence on the planet?"

Rick nodded, "This is him," and he pointed at Jake. "He knows the rover better than anyone. He's been involved in the Curiosity mission right from the start of the project eight years ago while Curiosity was still in the design stages and he knows every part of it inside and out. He was the lead engineer for the team responsible for the design of its power and propulsion systems. He's been the lead operator since the rover touched down on Mars six years ago. Anything you might need that robot to do, he can make it do it."

The government man looked over at Jake and thought for a moment, then he said, "I'll be questioning you first. Can you manage the robot on your own, without these other men?"

Jake nodded.

"OK, you'll be our operator when the dust clears and we regain control of the rover. We want to limit the number of people in the room from this point forward so we can more tightly manage the flow of information. This event is to be considered top secret and is now a matter of national security. Under no circumstances is any further word of this discovery to leave this room without our consent. These aliens represent a clear and present danger to our country and possibly to the whole world. We need to tread carefully from here on out. We'll be swearing all of you to secrecy and any release of information on your part from this point forward will be considered an act of treason against the government of the United States. Am I clear?"

They all grumbled, but it was fairly obvious already that they really had no choice. They had to go along.

Jake wanted to ask what gave the US government the right to keep this from the rest of the world, but for selfish reasons he kept his mouth shut. They had already appointed him as the operator for the rover and that would at least keep him in on the ground floor of all the action. This was the most amazing thing that had ever happened in his life time and he wanted to be in on it. He didn't like the approach they were taking, but he didn't want to risk getting punted and replaced with one of the other operators, so he stayed quiet.

An interview room was set aside and each of them were grilled about their version of the events as they had unfolded.

There was nothing more that could be done while the rover was in radio darkness, so they soon settled into a dull pattern. The others were assigned to other work and only Jake was kept in the loop, but that loop now consisted of nothing more than coming to work every day and sitting at his desk poring over the images that had come so far while waiting for the dust storm on Mars to clear up so the rover could break through and bring the link back up.

Jake had no idea how long that would take, but he felt it was going to be the most excruciating wait he had ever had to endure in his life.