The Attempt (The Martian Manifesto Book 1) by Bob Lee Read Free Book Online Page B

sat on the bench. It had a huge round Martian rock located on each end of the bar. On each rock was stenciled ‘500 lbs.’ in magic marker. “That photo we took of our geologist Brad while he was standing in his underwear holding the bar with the rocks overhead was shear genius,” he laughed to himself.
    He heard a small thump behind him. “Let’s go, Chuck. I want to see what our baby has dug up,” Brad said.
    Charles walked over to the rover remote control desk. He saw on the monitor that the rover had stopped drilling, and a message light was flashing on the console. Charles typed a few commands to pull up the message. It read, “Depth, 2 meters. Ice detected. Recommend changing drill bit. Alternative action: utilize ChemCam laser.”
    “Chuck, use the laser. It will give us a quick chemical analysis and we can determine the water composition at this depth.”
    “Spoken like a true geologist, Brad. You don’t care if we zap any poor Martian microbes?”
    “Nah. The laser will be faster in determining if there are any chemical precursors of life. If there are, you can try to bring some samples up. Otherwise, we’re probably just wasting our time. I want to get over to that nearby crater to see if we can snag any meteorite fragments.”
    “ Okay, Brad. That makes sense.” Charles issued the command to retract the drill, and moved the arm with the laser over the hole it had created. “Firing the laser now.”
    # # #
    “Warning, Warning, Threat Detected.”
    Probe Spit came to high alert. The hopper had discovered something. The hoppers had limited intelligence, but were good at what was required from them. Spit changed from the hopper audio feed to video surveillance and analyzed the resulting image with its neural processors.
    The creature nearby had multiple articulated appendages. Pointed instruments of destruction were located on some of them. It appeared that it also had optics attached at various locations. At the top, there was a dangerous coherent light attack weapon, which was what had set off the hopper alert. Spit switched the hopper video feed to infrared. Sections of the detected creature had very high temperatures compared to the surrounding terrain. ‘Possible heat weapon’ was added to the list of threats it was compiling. As Spit scanned the intruder, it noticed that the foreigner’s legs were composed of wheels and treads.
    Spit’s analysis was definitive: ‘Robotic, possibly intelligent. Most dangerous above ground.’
    It parsed the list of responses. “Yes, the electro-biosynths will do perfectly to handle this menace,” it determined.
    The factory had just completed the additional three hoppers, so these were dispatched to other sections of the crater rim to cover all approaches. The probe then released three more picograms of antimatter to the factory in order to create two of the response synths. There was still enough antimatter remaining to complete its mission and to create additional defenses if needed. The programmers had planned well.

CHAPTER 6
    Shackleton Crater, China’s Baojia Moon Base
    Chief Scientist Li Julong stood in front of General Zhou Desheng of the PLA Air Force. “You sent for me, sir?”
    “Li Xiansheng,” the general started, using the formal method of addressing the scientist. The general had ensured that this meeting would take place in his office, where he sat behind an impressive desk on a raised platform. Since there were no other seats in his office, glowering down on the standing scientist would ensure proper respect. “We have been given a new mission from the home world. You will play a crucial role, and no errors will be tolerated.”
    “Yes, General Zhou . Have I not done everything needed so far? We have successfully completed the mass driver, and launched the first test packages into lunar orbit just this week. The incentives you instituted for the North Korean workers have been most persuasive.”
    Li Julong was, of course, referring to