The Martian Pendant (4 page)

“One year, late in the season, when they were pursuing reindeer, men of the two groups clashed. Because of a squabble over who had the right to a kill, the first human blood was spilled. The outcome proved earthshaking, not because of the killings, but due to a viral epidemic that followed, reducing the already-faltering Neanderthal population to unsustainability.

“Two Martian descendants were trailing a party of native hunters following a reindeer herd through a long narrow valley. Whenever someone approached too closely, the skittish animals would retreat out of range of their spears, much to the hunters’ frustration. The stolid cave men blamed the newcomers, who in turn attributed the problem to the apparent dullness of the plodding natives. In this atmosphere of frustration, the first kill, instead of being a reason for celebration together, became a
casus belli
. While occasioned by only one bloody death, the incident indirectly became the beginning of the end for the entire race of Neanderthals.

“It began when the Neanderthals cut out a lame, lagging old stag from its fellows, and were closing in for the kill, yet were still having difficulty of getting within range with their heavy spears. Seeing this, one of the Martian descendants brought the beast to its knees with his weapon, propelled by a throwing stick, striking the stag in its hindquarters. It was a lucky shot for him, weakened as he was with influenza. That act deprived the natives of the honor of the first blow, or
coup
, a strong tradition among warriors, proving to be an intolerable affront. When the migrant arrived to retrieve his weapon, he was quickly dispatched by a spear thrust to the back, followed by a skull-crushing blow with a heavy club.    

“The Neanderthals dressed the reindeer, and triumphantly made their way back to their hungry families. But while much-needed food was being provided, the men carried an influenza virus with all the virulence of the strain that brought death to millions in the pandemic of 1918-1919. Combined with the inordinate cold of the last ice age, the resulting epidemic would ultimately lead to their extinction.

“As the increase in the population from Mars brought them into the colder climes, competition with the native people resulted in the Neanderthals dwindling into ever-smaller groups, where they succumbed to the ravages of the alien virus and its complication, lobar pneumonia. After the last ice age ten thousand years later, and in some cases earlier, the newcomers became the occupants of the empty caves.

“When they could, the Neanderthals had always buried their dead, or encrypted them, along with their weapons, but the invaders burned theirs, thriftily collecting their weapons and other effects for envisioned later use, at least for their first ten millennia in Europe. This explains why no remains of modern humans have been found from that era in Northern Europe. Few remains of the Neanderthals who were pushed into the frozen tundra were ever found either, due to scavenging from wolves and other carnivores, and the grinding action of ice on the stone upon which the advancing glaciers crept forward.

“Not until modern times did examination of the ‘record of the rocks’ give an idea of the age of our planet by studying the layers of geological strata. In widespread digs, but on a smaller scale, archeologists excavated the layers of dirt and debris of cave floors north of the Alps. Deposited during this period of change, using radiocarbon techniques in the deepest layers, dated most recently to around 40,000 years, signs of the vanquished Neanderthals were found. But not for ten thousand years of strata would traces of modern humans,
Homo sapiens
, be uncovered.

“First discovered in a large cave in southwestern France, these are known as Cro-Magnon man,
or EEMH, European Early Modern Humans. Traces of the descendants of the Martian invaders were finally found, but only when their presence was betrayed by their final immersion in belief in their adopted world. Over the millennia, most began to substitute burial for cremation. No longer would they give up their dead to the sky, or to whatever planet became the subject for their reverence.

“It was then that an evolving belief in an afterlife, as expressed in later cave paintings and ornaments, began. With burial in the now-revered soil of their second home, it became the custom to inter their worldly effects with them. It was this plentitude of artifacts, technically advanced over those of the Neanderthals, outlasting the bones of their makers, that ultimately drew attention to the beginnings of this new race of humans.”

The End

She put the paperback down, absently holding her little pendant and reflecting on what she had written. To her, the story remained fascinating. It
was
science fiction, no doubt about that. It also occurred to her that she was in love with the story. She realized that she had created a fantasy, yet she reveled at the prospect of discovering the secrets of such a landing site. What could be revealed? The possibilities were endless, from commercial to military. But she cared only about the science, the anthropology, and the furthering of humankind’s knowledge of its own origins.

All she needed was confirmation of her theory, a seemingly impossible undertaking. But she was an optimist. Somehow she would find the appropriate location and also a sponsor for the anthropological dig she envisioned.

FOUR

The Satellite

In 1957 a super-secret satellite was launched through a partnership between the Army and a consortium of large American oil companies. The key to the accomplishment was enlisting the aid of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, or JPL, in Pasadena, California.

At that time, the Navy was encountering repeated problems with its own rocket, the Vanguard, in the race that was ultimately won by the Soviet Union's successful orbital placement of Sputnik. Competing with the Navy, the Army had quietly developed a reliable ballistic missile, the Redstone, under the direction of Werner von Braun, employing the technology he had developed during World War II with the Nazi V-2 missile that had so bedeviled London. There was only one problem: the Redstone didn’t have enough power to put a payload into orbit.

Scientists at the JPL came up with the fuel that could boost the Redstone to orbital velocity. Working with the Buell Tool Corporation, they also achieved another technical breakthrough, a satellite that could record and transmit back infrared, magnetic and nuclear radiation data emanating from the earth’s crust. This achievement promised to revolutionize exploration for subterranean fossil fuel and mineral deposits.

While the Government was busy in the space race with the Soviets, Big Oil was quietly financing this pioneer commercial venture, using a satellite dubbed GeoSat. Relegated to the back pages of the news because of the reams of print covering our competition with the USSR, little notice was taken of the successful launch of this commercial satellite. By achieving a relatively low orbit, and passing over every part of the globe, GeoSat opened the entire planet to its sensors.

With the consent of friendly governments, receiving stations had been set up throughout the world, ostensibly as monitoring posts for radio signals from outer space. They were equipped to receive the orbiter’s signals, which were then relayed to Buell's Corporate Headquarters in Southern California’s Culver City.

It had long been known that signals of a magnetic type emanate through fractures in earth’s crust. As GeoSat circled the earth, it became apparent that the radiation the sensors were picking up over the numerous fault lines was so intense as to make interpretation of the data obtained nearly impossible. That problem was partially overcome when the Cray Research Company came up with a version of their super computer, available to private industry. Without such processing, the readings from the satellite appeared to be massive tangles of magnetic static, punctuated by scattered infrared hot spots.

It was recognized that the heat in the Earth’s crust indicated volcanic activity, and it was easy to see the magnetic signal complexes radiating from within. Some of the signals were solitary and linear, continuing uninterrupted from a hot spot, and others, complex in form, ringed the volcanic signal. Then there were more complex patterns of these circles, broken by energy radiating away from the source in all directions.

A linear pattern could be seen in the Pacific’s “Ring of Fire,” with its faults defining the tectonic plates of continents as they ground against or over marine plates, the thinner crust under the seas. There, the great shield volcanoes that had formed in part by that action could be seen in infrared, reminding one of a huge game of “connect the dots.” This pattern could also be seen in the mid-oceanic ridges, such as those making up the Hawaiian Islands, and even in the Atlantic, with the northernmost point being around Iceland. For other areas on earth, the patterns were not as predictably regular, as in the volcanic chain of islands making up much of Java, and certain regions in Africa.

The participating oil companies had rich information from the satellite, raw as the data was. It was already known that oil deposits did occur along fault lines, as on the Pacific Coast of California, but of the oil found in Africa, aside from the Southern Sudan and the equatorial belt in the west, there seemed few other likely sites. East Africa had largely turned up barren, at least before GeoSat, and this led to a focus on that area once again by oil engineers privy to the satellite data. It was evident that fault lines, especially along the Great Rift Valley, that had been unexplored previously, existed in abundance on that side of the continent, and so it was a prime area to examine more closely.

The data was being read from the satellite signals by the big computer at the Buell Tool Corporation in Culver City, across Los Angeles from the JPL in Pasadena. Buell had the fastest computer at that time, an early Cray. Even then, there were problems because of its size, and as it ran continuously, there were difficulties with cooling.

*    *     *

How Diana, in Chicago, longed for a warmer climate in which to work, since a cold autumn, nothing like the usual Midwestern Indian summer, promised a particularly frigid winter. She may have been descended from Vikings, but as she shivered much of the time, she fancied that ice and snow must have been the reason why her Norman forebears on her father’s side, and the Swedes on her mother’s, had left Scandinavia.

An opportunity to finish her doctorate in a warmer location came in the form of a job fair held at the University of Chicago Faculty Club, where Max had invited her to lunch. As she waited for the professor, she was attracted by a display put up by Buell. They were hiring technical writers, and their representative seemed very interested in her. When Max finally arrived, late as usual, his appraising eye still made her uncomfortable. Even after all the time she had spent working with him, she still regarded him with suspicion, concerned that he would ever settle down.

Over BLT sandwiches and tea, she enthusiastically told him of the job offer from Buell. “Great benefits and salary, and a good chance for advancement. They need people with science and statistics backgrounds, especially.”

“Diana, hold on a minute. I want to talk to you about staying on with me after you receive your Ph.D. You’ll have a living wage, and probably tenure in the future.”

“No, Max, I’ve decided to take the job offer on the West Coast. It's a great opportunity, and I’ll have time to finish my dissertation in balmy Southern California. Chicago weather is getting me down. Another winter here and I’ll go bonkers.”

*    *    *  

She was hired as a technical writer at Buell, translating the sometimes confusing scientific jargon of the scientists into words that could be understood by all, from the engineers who would be building from the plans, to the accountants in the finance office who would have to assure management that funds were available to cover the costs of the projects.

Her work was quickly seen as far superior to what they needed. She would append comments and statistics to her work, further clarifying the material. This quickly brought her to the attention of the vice-president of her division, which was engaged in perfecting a reliable ICBM, envisioning the use of the Army’s Redstone Rocket technology.

Her name came up in one of the weekly breakfast meetings in the boardroom, where over doughnuts and coffee, managers of the various projects would kick around the problems they were facing. The satellite signals were being decoded and interpreted with the aid of the huge computer, but the data obtained needed further analysis. The huge amount of material already being processed had the computer working past its design limits, constantly tripping circuit breakers, leaving little capacity for anything else. That week they were looking over the files of employees, searching for someone with the expertise needed in that department.

“Say,” one of the young executives exclaimed, “Here’s someone who has the right expertise. She's a recent hire, Diana Howard, young enough, and nice-looking, too.”

“Here, lemme see,” another manager said, taking Diana's file. “Hey, look at this letter of recommendation from Chicago extolling her work there.”

The file made it around the table, bringing the approval of all, except for one skeptic.

“My experience,” he said, “is that beautiful blondes are rarely bright,” then adding facetiously, “and rarely are they really blondes.”

“Oh, come off it, Mark, how can that last fact be important?” It was the man who first came across the file. “Examine her credentials before you turn thumbs up or down because of her looks. Her background is English. Plenty of natural blondes in that part of the world. Now look at her resume. An honors graduate of Cambridge University, took her Master’s there, and great recommendations. A dumb blonde? Are you kidding?”

The chap across the table seconded him. “That gal’s a virtuoso, which is just what we need for our GeoSat data interpretation. Grab her before someone else does!” Even the somewhat chastened doubter had to agree, and before the day was over, Diana was moving into her own office in the computer wing.