Larue gave a short laugh. That the people behind the cover up were able to control time and data feeds on the Clarke was one thing, but control over Beagle was something else entirely. “I trust you quite a bit, Martin, and based on your recommendation alone I signed off the Beagle mission route changes Jacqueline Thomas put through several days ago.”

“And?”

“You know that Beagle mission routes are planned months, even years in advance. It’s entirely possible that the route change you requested would only be executed in the middle of next year. Normally, that is.”

 “Normally?”

“I have just been in contact with the Beagle control room in England, who confirm that Beagle is approaching the edge of Hellas Basin once more. I may be old and on my last legs,” Larue confided. “But I am not stupid. As soon as the request to change Beagle’s route came through I understood why you had recommended it. Putting Beagle in sight of the Mars landing will give us a direct feed, as you say. I had no idea about the time-delay you and Jacqueline Thomas discovered, but with this we will be in a position to prove it conclusively.”

“And then?”

Larue thought about this for a second. “Having information like that is a risky business. There are two schools of thought: either keep it and use it to your advantage, or give it away to as many people as possible and spread the benefit. With the former, you gain the most but also run a greater personal risk. With the latter you gain the least, but you also minimise risk.”

They sat in silence for at least a minute. The pitter-patter of rain drops began against the triple glazed windows.

“Risk,” Martín said echoing Larue’s intonation “doesn’t sound good.”

“Absolument,” Larue said with a raised eyebrow. “If someone’s gone to the trouble they have to hide the mission from us, what will they be prepared to do to protect that secrecy?”

Chapter 29

Captain Marchenko pressed down on the accelerator with his boot, sending Herbie forwards at walking pace. As they crept away Dr Richardson looked over her shoulder at the open crates they had been cataloguing the contents of.

A little over two thousand meters away, Beagle’s mechanical arms seemed to wave goodbye to them as the on-board computer ran through some environmental tests and procedures.  It was now standing in the same position in which it had been over a year earlier. Its missions for the last twelve months had been far from linear, and it had frequently crossed its own path on its travels. Each and every time it did it automatically took the opportunity to measure any changes. The Martian weather system had done little to change the terrain, save for few extra coats of fine dust and grit. An examination of the ground proved that, as expected, its past tracks had more or less been erased from the surface of the planet, unlike the eternal footprints of the first men on the Moon.

Beagle’s five forward-mounted eyes, consisting of one long range high-resolution video camera and four smaller still image cameras, watched Herbie as it left towards the horizon. After thirty-two minutes and twelve seconds precisely, the two passengers exited the vehicle, which was parked next to the MLP. Re-focusing, the high-resolution camera adjusted its viewing angle by a fraction of a degree, and captured the smile on the man’s face through his visor as he gestured for the woman to enter the building first. Zooming out, the camera reported back to the on-board computer that the building was exactly four thousand four hundred and six metres away. It hadn’t been there when it had last mapped the terrain, and it duly noted the location and nature of the phenomenon.

Beagle retracted its mechanical arms slowly, folding them against its smooth sides, neatly above the four rows of wheels that had already helped the rover travel over six hundred kilometres on the Martian surface.

The computer had processed and stored the departure of the two people and their vehicle on its internal drives, and had completed its assessment of the surrounding environment.

Its current status and environmental report had already been transmitted to a satellite orbiting Mars, ready for its receipt by the ESA controllers on Earth.

While it waited for their response, Beagle busied itself with some more soil samples. The thin coating of dust that had gathered around it was new and, therefore, interesting.

Chapter 30

Remind me again, why did we come here?” Danny complained as he shook the dust from his boots and placed them against the wall of the MLP. A thick layer of light-brown powder covered the floor within several feet of the airlock. “Atchoo!” he pretended to sneeze and shook his head dramatically, before making his way over to the kitchen area where Jane had already joined Montreaux in preparing the evening meal.

“Because for thousands of years, humans have looked up at the heavens and wondered what it would be like to be on the other side, looking back at Earth, and because we won’t be happy until we’ve looked back at Earth from as far away as is humanly possible.” Jane said without looking up from the tray of hydrated food she had just pulled out of the processor. “And because the food is so good, of course.”

Danny laughed and peered into her tray. “Tell me, Jane: how long until you start providing us with some real food?”

“Soon, Danny,” she nodded towards her experiments across the MLP. “Everything is set up.”

“Thank God for that. Is that really what you think?”

She looked at him strangely. “Of course, my experiments and material are all ready, so –”

“No,” he laughed as he interrupted her. “I mean, do you really think that we came here to simply look back at Earth?”

She shrugged. “Why else? Firstly, we are by nature curious creatures, peering into cupboards we’re told we can’t open, wondering where rivers start and mountains end, when and where we came from. But despite our desire to go into the unknown and explore, we have an overpowering sense of belonging; that we come from somewhere and that in a way we are a part of that place. Secondly, as well as being incurably curious, we are constantly trying to better ourselves, I think to improve on what our parents achieved, to perpetuate the advancement of the human race.”

“So you don’t believe that we came here to find life, or advance science?”

“Of course we did. We have a scientific role to play, a mission that is well defined and thought out, the result of decades of research and theorising by the best minds on Earth. But I believe that is our secondary goal. The underlying reason we came here is to gain a different perspective of our home.”

“I don’t agree at all!” he exclaimed. “You make it all sound so futile and superficial.”

“Captain Marchenko,” Montreaux interjected. “When you were a child, did you ever play outside?”

“Of course, everyone does.”

“And when you ventured further away from your home than ever before on your own, did you look behind you to see how far you had gone?”

Danny thought for a moment. “Yes, I guess I did. But I wouldn’t say I was inherently interested in what my home looked like from the top of a hill, I was probably more nervous about knowing how to get back and wanted to make sure that I didn’t go too far.”

“Yes, you are right about that, and there’s an element of that when we look for Earth in the Martian sky that comforts us when we find it twinkling above the horizon,” Jane agreed. “But I am sure that the desire to look back at your house is not just fuelled by concern, but by interest also. When you first visited the United States, did you feel that you had an increased interest in anything to do with Russia, sometimes even in things that you would not normally express an interest in?”

“I found myself reading stories about Russian politics, despite the fact that in Russia I do everything to avoid them,” he said.