The team was sitting around a large metal table. Across from them were several people who, unexpectedly, lived in the Mars base. The youngest, a teenage boy sat against the wall in a small chair, while the oldest, a man with a scruffy beard and white hair sat directly across the table from Sarah. He introduced himself as Tom Bosworth. He was obviously the leader of the base, and took the lead in the discussion at hand. Sarah had taken it upon herself to speak for the Homestead team. The man had a very even, calm voice, with an accent that was hard for the Homestead team to understand. He seemed to take everything in stride, and had a very dry wit and humor about him.
He leaned back in his chair, crossed his ankle over his knee and addressed the team, “Well, I’m guessing you are all a bit more surprised than we are. We had expected some visitors someday, but I imagine you never expected to see us here.”
“Yeah, you can say that again. I’m feeling a little overwhelmed right now.” Sarah said, sounding more overwhelmed than her words spelled out. “I admit we weren’t sure what we would find when we arrived, but I can say for certain that we weren’t expecting to find people living here.”
Tom laughed a hardy laugh, “I imagine not. Let me just say that you should not feel threatened to be here. In fact, we’re overjoyed that someone finally found us. This base is called Genesis, we’ve been here nearly 500 years, dozens of generations have come and gone from our numbers. The human race has long ago forgotten us, we’re sure. The problem with a secret base such as this one is precisely the secrecy. Our people at NASA couldn’t acknowledge us. We, and when I say we, I mean our ancestors of course, had been here about 13 years when we last had contact with Earth. We had been sent here on a 25 year mission of discovery. In the 13th year, we were awaiting a mission to bring a relief crew and supplies to repair our return craft. The craft never arrived. We tried to communicate back to Earth, but we couldn’t find a satellite. Since then, it’s been silence from Earth.
“The crew had a choice at that moment, either try to repair the craft themselves, and attempt to get home, or prepare to survive on Mars, and wait for another rescue mission. They chose the latter. After a decade or two, it became clear that a rescue wasn’t coming. They determined that they would survive here on Mars. The base was expanded below ground, where sealed chambers were easier to build. The greenhouse became more valuable than ever before, and a great deal of work went into the production of food, fibers, and the other things needed to survive. Our original mission was neglected for a century.”
“Pardon my asking,” Sarah took the opportunity to jump in during a pause in Tom’s speech. “Do you have any idea what has happened down on Earth?”
“Not a lick. Although, we’re pleased to find out you’re not all dead. Our leaders sure did have quite the arsenal back then, figured the planet was dead long ago. But I’m glad you’re still alive, that’s great news!.”
“You and me both.” Sarah Laughed
“We can get to that in a minute.” Tom said. “So after that initial 100 years, we were able to increase our population enough to get on to some research. Technology used to advance pretty slowly on Earth, other than military tech. We were able to devote our full efforts to studying what we came here to study. We advanced in leaps and bounds. In fact, after being here for 500 years, we have done things we never dreamed were possible. Sure, we accomplished our original mission, but we took it way beyond that as well.”
Sarah had a confused look on her face, which Tom recognized, and stopped, allowing her to get a word in. “Tom, this is interesting, but I don’t think we have any idea what your mission was. You see, we found our way here because of some documents we found on Earth, but those documents said nothing about why you were sent here, only that there was a base here. We came hoping to find some answers, and find a way to make the Earth livable again. So I guess I’m just wondering, what exactly was your mission?”
Tom smiled, “Intergalactic travel, of course.”
Sarah’s jaw dropped, “But you said you accomplished that a while ago. Why didn’t you come home?”
“We are home here. By the time we got ourselves to Alpha Centauri, nobody here had ever seen the surface of Earth. Earth wasn’t our home, it was a planet that we see in the night sky once in a while. But this base right here is the place we call home.”
Garst was amazed by this, the gearhead in him came out immediately, “Oh man, what kind of thrusters do you use, what’s the craft like, is life support at those speeds difficult? How long did the journey take? Man, I gotta sit down with your engineers.”
Tom guffawed. “Slow down there, kid. If you talked to any of our engineers, they wouldn’t know the first thing about it. That’s a bit like asking you to explain a steam engine. Obsolete technology, long gone. Fact is, we found that travelling by spacecraft was terribly inefficient. All that mass to move over all that distance, and it took so long to do. No sooner had we returned from Alpha than we changed gears immediately.
“Truth be told, we haven’t even gone anywhere since that first trip. We’ve been waiting a long time for the right technology, and we finally have it.”
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