The Alien Artifact 8 by V Bertolaccini Page B

details in the booklet to see if he
was missing anything he should know.
    It was the perfect time of the year for the
mission, for it to be light enough in the Artic and Antarctica, and
the mission was for all twenty shuttles to go to and assemble at
the Martian Antarctica, going there at their different sections,
and the first sections to leave would cover the current daylight
region of the world, would do their first scan, and a practice scan
of Mars from the Artic to the Antarctica – as all the shuttles were
to scan a section of Mars from the top to the bottom, over many
months, and they would all scan an equal amount of Mars, and map it
in more detail than had ever been done before, giving people the
ability to study anything on the surface of the world back on the
Earth, and someday people on the Earth would completely explore the
whole of Mars!
    They had to properly check all the shuttles
were working and giving them the exact information they needed, and
satellites would make sure they followed the exact routes and
control them.
    If successful it could be used to explore
many worlds and moons, and in other solar systems, and he wondered
if someday they would replace them with computers, and create the
ultimate probe voyager that would scan entire worlds.
    It was an incredible piece of luck for them
as they were getting to scan every square foot of the world and
they could use it to find the diamonds there, at whatever location
they were at.
    He was positive it was located at the
southern pole though and he was starting to believe it could be at
the pole itself, and Orwell had agreed and they had eagerly joined
the new mission.
    The world that they were exploring was like
it had no sun, and it was like there were billions of light years
of space between them and the nearest stars.
     

Chapter 14
     
    The South Pole
     
    Something startled Cronenberg, when he
stepped out the shuttle and stepped onto the south pole, and he
struggled to grasp what as he focused on the bright sun, over the
Martian horizon at the side of the shuttle, and he gasped as he
watched the glowing landscape.
    Other shuttles were resting behind the
shuttle and he saw that five were still landing, making it all
twenty being there.
    Something staggered him about the mission and
he sensed something was going to occur, and he shivered, and
examined the ice around him, and that it was hard and had been
there a long time, and he realized how ancient the world was.
    He saw the sun edge its way along the
horizon, and he realized he could not avoid whatever he was going
to encounter! He had to go through with everything! He believed he
could survive if he did everything he could and avoided making any
deadly mistakes!
    The world about them was a flat stretch, with
occasional large asteroid dents.
    “ What a place? ” Orwell finally moaned, and tried
laughing, and moved close to him, and Cronenberg watched him,
wondering what he was talking about.
    “ There’s something not right about this
mission!” Cronenberg confessed, considering if he could give him
anything that he might have missed.
    He realized it could be just Mars affecting
them! It was the new things and hidden dangers there! It was
exploring where nobody had been before, and the great deadly
environment and mistakes they could make being somewhere with such
an environment for so long! The region they were in was the least
explored!
    It was the legendary Martian Antarctica, and
he still sensed there was something strange there! Something he had
not encountered before! Something that could only exist in such a
place, and in the depths of space, and it gave him chilling and
weird sensations, but he could not grasp what, and he wondered if
he was destined to die on the remote world.
    As the shuttles completely turned silent he
watched the rest of the crew rush about observing the whole south
pole, and he increasingly felt a presence of something, somewhere,
in the chilling distance of the alien